Here’s a unique chance to step onstage with electronic duo Justice – well, through photos, at least – on tour in Brazil. Behind a stack of Marshall Amps and other gear that looks ready to push back an invading horde of Barbarians with a battering ram, these two have some very lovely goodies for live laptop performance. No plain-vanilla DJ sets here.

Our friend Fabio “FZero” writes:

I came across some pictures of the gear Justice used to play in Rio. They were taken by a guy which works on Circo Voador (the place were they played) and uploaded to orkut. I’ve downloaded and zipped them to make things easier.

The name of the photographer is Henrique Kurtz and his orkut profile is at http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Profile.aspx?uid=3218703684024828269

3 x Jazzmutant Lemur (THREE LEMURS. It’s good to be rich, I guess.)
2 x MacBook Pro (one is probably backup)
1 x Korg MicroKorg
1 x Korg ZERO8 Live Control
1 x Pioneer DJM800
Software: Ableton Live

Get up close and personal with the laptop rig itself. Okay, you may not be able to afford three Lemurs, but this wouldn’t be hard to scale to other setups. And there’s plenty here to make a “live PA” performance really a performance.

All photos © Copyright Henrique Kurtz. Used for createdigitalmusic.com by permission of the photographer. (Thanks, Henrique – beautiful shots!)

Single Knob Filter [Project Page]
SKF-VST at Google Code [Source, VST Download]

It’s apparently a big improvement on an Ableton forum solution that used 127 different filter instances in a rack.

I’m aware of the goodness of Single Knob Filter thanks to the Aurora open source DJ mixer project (see yesterday’s write-up); they assign an instance of the plug-in on each of the Aurora’s two mixer channels. Aurora’s Matt originally had the SKF plug-in in their Ableton template, but I encouraged them to replace it with Ableton’s Auto Filter for cross-platform compatibility and ease. That said, for plain DJ filtering, this it the One True Knob.

Now, go forth and use it on some crazy experimental noise soundscape you’ve been working on, just to spite cliche.

DVJing: Pioneer Wants You to VJ with Pictures of Their Gear
DJ gear maker Pioneer is banking on the potential popularity of VJing in DJ sets. They’ve got quite a nice site up (good) and are giving away free clips of their gear rotating around (pass).

Sony HVR-V1P HDV Camera: Smooth Slow Motion Test
Jaymis has a new toy. This new toy shoots 200 frames person second. That means super-smooth slow-mo footage. Have a look, because it was enough for Jaymis to end his ban on gear from Sony.

Wearable Wrist Brace VJ Controller
This has potential for music, as well; it’s a wrist brace with embedded sensors and RFID tags, for wireless, wrist-based music control!

Motion Graphics on Trampoline
Anyone using graphics apps will appreciate this one. And anyone using Macs will appreciate the appearance of the hated colorful beach ball of doom.

To keep up with the latest on Create Digital Motion, be sure to grab the RSS feed.

Pioneer, known for their DJ software (and their superb video scratching hardware, the DXJ-X1 as covered here previously) have opted to release a software-only solution. But unless I’m missing something, the new DJS software has little going for it other than the Pioneer name. All the basics are here: MP3 support with built-in ripping, auto mixing, on-screen waveform cueing, cue points and looping, fader start features, and so on. Other than that, though, looks fairly bare-bones, and Pioneer is entering an already-overcrowded market here. This might appeal to Pioneer fans, except — don’t you guys own hardware?

Further commentary and 51 comments (and counting) from the turntablist haven, Skratchworx

So if I’m so bored by this and it’s two weeks old anyway, why am I bringing it to your attention? Because you get to enjoy . . . (drum roll) . . .

Pioneer’s Groundbreaking Explanation of the QWERTY Keyboard!

“The DJ can assign basic functions to a particular key on the PC keyboard. By doing this for frequently used functions, the DJ can establish his or her own playing style – on a keyboard.”

Other software developers, you’re on notice. Pioneer has discovered that by assigning functions to QWERTY keys you can . . . press . . . QWERTY keys and . . . do stuff. If you want to look cool: get a nice big shoulder strap for a Bluetooth wireless QWERTY and play it Keytar style. (Sadly, this works better for QWERTY-mapped synth lines, not DJing. It also helps if you wear a Devo hat.)