DJ Name Brands

A Vid Everyone Should Watch

2011-11-10T09:05:00.000-05:00

Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Snoop Dogg gets new sitcom

2011-10-12T14:29:00.000-04:00

Word is that a new sitcom is in the works that will star Snoop Dogg and should be out by next year. I cant wait to see how they write his character in to the script for a family sitcom that should air in primetime. I can already see an epic battle between the writers and censors taking place at the network. Speaking of networks, let's just hope that when Snoop's pilot is airing, NBC doesn't decide to break into its programming with a special news bulletin that Donald Trump got his hair cut or one of the Olsen twins was caught snorting cocaine. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

NBC, You are douchebags with a capital D

2011-10-05T21:00:00.000-04:00

So I get home, put on the TV, and flip around the channels for something to watch. I land on this show I've never seen before. It shows Christina Applegate getting drunk off of wine and haphazardly placing bids for a hippy van on an auction site as a joke. The next morning when she wakes up hungover, the van gets delivered to her house unexpectedly as she won the bid overnight. So I'm thinkin "hmmm this show looks kinda funny, I'll leave it on to see how the rest of the episode turns out, it might be a good series." At that exact moment, There's a loud warning beep on the TV followed by the infamous NBC Chime, the screen turns RED....This Is an NBC SPECIAL NEWS REPORT! I'm thinking "HOLY FUCK, something MAJOR happened. Was there another terrorist attack? Was there an assassination? Did something get bombed?" No. They broke in to prime time programming, interrupting a brand new show, to let everyone know that Steve Jobs has passed away. Big Fucking Deal. Could this not have waited until the news comes on in 45 MINUTES to report it? I have no beef with Steve Jobs (RIP dude) and actually enjoy my Macbook Pro, but what NBC should realize is that 99% of Americans simply don't give a fuck enough to want to be ripped from their programming with IMMEDIATE URGENCY regarding the passing of some Corporate CEO. Whoever authorized this break in programming should be shot, or at the very least, fired. None of the other networks had breaks in their programming regarding this. Way to go NBC....interrupt your new shows and destroy interest in them before they even get off the ground. No wonder your ratings are among the lowest. Fucking retards.

End of Rant.

Friday

2011-09-23T12:11:00.000-04:00

Back, Only to find out it's going to rain for 2 weeks...Thats just great. On a more positive note, the D3 modem I ordered a while back had arrived so I'll get that hooked up today and see what the results are like. Also, I've found an old stash of Rapcity and The Box VCR tapes from many years past. I'll go through them and maybe upload some of the ish to the Youtubez soon. All I have to find now is a VCR. Theres some stuff in there I know for a fact isnt on Youtube yet or anywhere else on the net for that matter. Heres a couple vids not uploaded by me but this is the type of ish thats on the tapes and theres a ton of it.

EveryDNS Closes Up Shop

2011-09-09T20:13:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone. Sorry for the lack of posts recently but I'm in paradise on a semi-pseudo vacation until next weekend. Or at least I WAS until my phone started blowing up with text messages from monitor bots telling me that 4 of my sites were unreachable. The cause? EveryDNS decided to pull the plug on their DNS hosting service, only without telling ANYONE, or giving ANY advanced notification first. A simple email would have been nice. If you go to their site now, it redirects to Dyn.com with an option to migrate your domains there for a paid fee. Well to this I say fuck you, to both EveryDNS and Dyn. If you would have sent an early warning notification to give me ample time to react, I might have considered migrating to Dyn so they could make the small fee, and EveryDNS could have collected the commission. I appreciate the network resources that EveryDNS used to provide, and even donated to their site a few times, but this was a dick move in all respects. There were probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of sites affected by this. Not to mention people that hosted MX records there as well, so there are probably a TON of people out there with missing emails that didnt have time to make changes to their MX yet. Here's another thing to add insult to injury, This quote is from the Wikipedia article on EveryDNS when they stopped hosting DNS for Wikileaks:
At 10PM EST, on Wednesday December 1, 2010 a 24-hour termination notification email was sent to the email address associated with the wikileaks.org account. In addition to this email, notices were sent to Wikileaks via Twitter and the chat function available through the wikileaks.org website. Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to, with plentiful advance notice, use another DNS solution. Today, also in accordance with the EveryDNS.net Acceptable Use Policy, the secondary DNS hosted domains, including wikileaks.ch, were disabled. That's just great. They give a scumbag controversial site like Wikileaks (one that causes them to get DDoS'd) not one, but THREE different notices of discontinuation of service, but for the thousands of regular folks that run normal sites, NOTHING, NADA...Their sites just become unreachable out of nowhere. Anyway, end of rant. I can take solace in the fact that probably noone will want to migrate over to Dyn from EveryDNS after what took place. Also, in a way they did me a favor: Now that I've had to login to a few of my registrars after so long, I noticed that they employ their own DNS setups now, and one actually uses the services of UltraDNS. And if you know anything about how the internet works, you know that UDNS is some top notch shit. My domains resolve from 2 hops down from the root servers now when it used to be like 4 or 5 with EveryDNS. So in the end, it worked out for the better. The middleman has been effectively cut out and the sites respond even faster than before. Before I get home, I'll try to get more posts up from my mobile as the spotty 3G connection allows(sometimes only connects at 1XRTT so you can imagine how lousy tethering is) Until the next episode, check this crazy Khalifa mix I found on teh soundcloudz and have a great weekend.

9 minute mix Wiz khalifa by SinisterKid

30 min vid mix

2011-09-02T20:04:00.000-04:00

A blast from the 90's. Found this buried on Vimeo. It's censored but since its a vid remix and in HD, it kinda makes up for it. Have a great weekend all.

Interesting Vids

2011-08-30T02:16:00.000-04:00

G'd evening all. After scoping the interwebs late at night again, I ran across these interesting vids showing the type of stuff that tower engineers deal with on a routine basis. Aside from coal mining, this is considered to be one of the most dangerous jobs a worker could possibly have. When people are riding around in their cars blastin' the radio, talking on the cellphones, or goin home to watch the football game on their shiny new HDTVs, they probably don't think twice about the dangers involved in maintaining the towers that bring us these luxuries of entertainment and modern day convenience. Even if you have FiOS/Cable/Satellite for your TV, you still use the services of the cell towers because face it: EVERYONE has a cell phone now. Also, in some cases, your cable TV plant might source the signal from the original TV towers before re-encoding it and sending it down the coax to your home. All I have to say is these people have balls of steel. I would not want to have their job. Another question that comes to mind is how much the insurance underwriting would be for such work. I imagine it's expensive as shit. An interesting tidbit in the first vid is where the one worker makes a comment about it being within OSHA rules not using the safety harness near the top of the tower because it slows progress. I find this hard to believe and if it is true then WTF. Anyway, hope yall enjoy the vids. I'll get some tracks posted later on in the week. Cheers.

Sunday Meh

2011-08-29T01:42:00.000-04:00

Supz all, It's really late Sunday night and I'm incredibly tired and don't have much to yap about tonight, so I think I'll just leave a picture of this chair here.

chairs.....fuck yeah.

The Latest

2011-08-25T04:32:00.001-04:00

Sup all, here's another midi track I was workin on with some oldschool Cypress Hill on it. Lotsa nice bass drops in there. The beat was made using the Yamaha QS midi'd into Kong and 2 NN-19s in Reason. The cracked piano and background strings in the NN-19s are courtesy of Reason's Orkester sound bank.

Cypress Hill - Boom Biddy Bye Bye - NameBrands Remix

Lately Ive been preferring to use the NN-19s over the NN-XT samplers in Reason mostly for their sheer simplicity. You can load a sample, tweak its filter settings a bit, and get it setup for a track with the quickness. You wont have a lot of the advanced ish that the NN-XT has, but for throwing tracks together in a timely manner, its perfect.

The NN-XT is what I call a "busy sampler". It comes in handy if you have a lot of time on your hands and like to tweak every last parameter a sample could possibly ever have. A bit overkill of you have a sample that sounds nice already, or are just lookin to throw a track together. It does have it's benefits tho.

One of the cool things the NN-XT can do tho is load multiple samples that have different midi notes trigger them. I'm in the process now of learning how to use one of the drum sends from the Yamaha to trigger its samples and possibly the LFO for some trippy effects. I'll save that for another time though. Thanks to everyone who left comments regarding the "SP1200 Soundin" track. I appreciate the honesty and agree that the beat was a little repetetive and rough soundin. I literally threw it together in 5 minutes lol. Also, to whoever mentioned Decimort, I've downloaded the VST demo and am already impressed with the results. I hope the new version of Reason that comes out includes support for VST plugins. It will make the perfect addition. Cheers.

Oldschool NYC Track

2011-08-21T23:54:00.001-04:00

Ahhhh the goodies you can find on the Youtubez late at night. I've been listening to a lot more of the NYC stuff lately. I kinda miss that sound from the mid 90s that had the brass riffs. Some shit that would have a sleigh bell sound for the hihat. Also dirty samples that are like the trademark sound which can only be produced using the real 12bit SP1200. Mid 90s were a great time for Hiphop in NYC. The sound of the time has a certain authenticity to it that has yet to be reproduced in anything you hear on the radio currently.

SP1200 soundin ish

2011-08-20T20:10:00.000-04:00

This beat was made solely using Reason's Kong. Envelope filter on the bus to give it that dirty sound. Vocals are offtime as hell. Enjoy.

Sp1200 soundin by NameBrands

Anne Hathaway

2011-08-18T18:22:00.000-04:00

To Anne:

I know you'll never read this but, please for all that is good and well, never EVER attempt rapping again. I caught your rap on Conan the other night and you looked like a complete tool and it was a big turnoff. Stick with what you do best: Looking CUTE AS HELL and being awesome in the movies. We all know that you're pissed at the Paparazzi for not giving you any breathing room but as a Hollywood actress, you should probably be able to brush it off by now.

Also, Maybe you could learn from Natalie haha

Putting the being stalked by Paparazzi B.S. aside, I hope you enjoyed other things our city has to offer. Can't wait to see how the movie turns out. Cheers.

Radio Talkover Beat

2011-08-17T12:41:00.001-04:00

Supz all. Here's a little beat I put together recently using a Yamaha qs series keyboard Midi'd into Reason. This is probably the perfect background filler beat for announcement spots during commercial breaks, like when they're talking about local events or upcoming concerts, etc. The funny thing about this beat is I originally didn't mean for the synth chops to sound the way they do. It was a result of one of the drum sends from the Yamaha being incorrectly patched to the NN-XT in Reason by mistake, but it turned out ok anyway. I also didn't mean for it to turn out to be a minute and a half perfectly, that's just how it happened coincidentally. I was gonna add more to this beat and use it in a remix but decided it's best being left the way it is for what I plan to use it for in the future. Hope yalls likes the bass.

Talkover Beat by NameBrands

Abuse of the MPC 25HUNNIT

2011-08-16T16:45:00.000-04:00

Found this while scopin' the webs for something totally unrelated. This has to be the illest shit I've seen in a long time. The guitar sample gets a little annoying but hang in there...It gets really crazy around the 2 minute mark. I wonder how many actual BPMs were reached. Insanity.

Funny Image

2011-08-15T15:30:00.000-04:00

I was selling an older laptop earlier and before wiping it's hard drive, I poked around to see if anything of value was left on it and came across this image. I have no idea where the image came from or who that is in it, but that caption is absolutely hilarious. It's little comedic gems like this that we randomly find that brighten up everyones day.

Biggie Redux

2011-08-11T22:42:00.000-04:00

Notorious BIG - Gimme The Loot Redux by NameBrands

Greetz all, I havent posted in awhile so I thought I'd toss up this mix I blended. It's a real mellow beat with Biggie Smalls' old "Gimme The Loot" on top. I was debating on either putting Redman's "How High" or this track on it and in the end, I'm glad I did because it turned out half decent.

It was only a matter of time

2011-07-19T16:12:00.000-04:00

before this happened. As if talking on cell phones and text messaging weren't enough. Could there possibly be anything more distracting to a driver than hosting a TV game show while driving? You make the call.

'Cash Cab' kills pedestrian in Vancouver

You can also read a previous rant I made about this show back on Novermber 4th here.
Comments are welcomed. I would like to hear others input on this.

Issues with Amazon sidebar

2011-06-20T21:42:00.000-04:00

Anyone else experiencing problems with the Associates sideber from the dashboard? Every time I log in this is how it looks:

Alpines and Prostitutes

2011-06-07T12:06:00.000-04:00

perfect for that rainy day

Good News for Pittsburgh Hiphop Fans (WAMO is being resurrected)

2011-05-26T18:58:00.000-04:00

After a long period of not having an urban format on the airwaves in Pittsburgh, a company called Radio Power Inc has secured signals on both bands of the radio dial. Listeners can now tune in to either 660AM or 100.1FM and hear the once familiar format. As of current, the station seems to be in a testing phase as the audio sometimes briefly mutes/changes on the AM side and there aren't any commercials or on air people yet. The format so far, is a product of automation, and theres a lot of cheesy "autotune" music on the playlist. Another interesting thing to note is that the short station clips say "whammo 100" instead of "double yew ayy amm owe". The reason being is that the call sign WAMO is still temporarily licensed to a station in Dushore, PA. I'm sure they are in the process of buying and securing the WAMO call sign as I write this. An ironic thing about this station coming online, is that their FM signal happens to be transmitting from an emitter on KDKA's TV tower, just above WXDX's 105.9 emitter which used to be WAMO's original frequency back in the day. The reason the signal isn't as strong as WXDX's yet is that it's only running at 100 watts while WXDX is 15.5kW. I'm sure this will change soon though once things are settled. Below I made a breakdown of the tower and its elements. (pics courtesy of Google's street view) Click on one of the tower pics if you want to poke around in street view.

Here's a view from the facility entrance.

The AM portion of the station is a daylight only signal and transmits from a tower just across from the Braddock Hills shopping center on Yost Blvd. In this case, the entire tower is dedicated to the radio signal and currently is licensed for 1.4kW of power. It is a powerful signal and can be heard from parts of Ohio and West Virginia.

If you live close to the city, the sound of the FM station is fantastic, cd quality like even. The engineers did a good job of setting up the basics. If i can get permission from the station owners, I will try to set up a high quality streaming simulcast somewhere on this blog. In closing, I wish Radio Power Inc all the best and welcome their efforts to revive the iconic WAMO and bring hiphop back to the Burgh.

djnb

Epic Stupidity

2011-05-18T19:08:00.000-04:00

What has the media come to? Is there anyone out there that actually buys into this shit? I can't wait to post back here on Sunday just to say I told you so. Freaks.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/18/tick-tock-goes-the-doomsday-clock/

New Project

2011-05-10T17:20:00.000-04:00

Sup ppl, hope everyones summer has started off great. I've recently got bored with getting sophisticated Windows and Mac sound production apps to run good from Ubuntu on my DAW. I've recently installed Linux on the PS3 so next on the list is to get a working compiler for the cell engine. After that, I will be looking to install Rosegarden on it and use the PS3 as a midi/audio sequencer! Why? Simply for shits and giggles, and also because the PS3 supports TOSLINK for digital audio output. Using a USB interface, I've managed to get an Oxygen8 to talk to a test app on the PS3 so the midi signal part has already been accomplished. I'm sure the rest will turn out to be a serious undertaking but if successful, I will post a full tutorial here of how I did it. More to come.

Happy St. Patricks Day

2011-03-17T15:17:00.001-04:00

With the help and luck of the Irish, maybe we can all become millionaires this year. Try not to drink too much.

R.I.P. Nate Dogg

2011-03-16T21:21:00.000-04:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Singer Nate Dogg, whose near monotone crooning anchored some of rap's most seminal songs and helped define the sound of West coast hip-hop, has died at age 41.

Attorney Mark Geragos said Nate Dogg, whose real name was Nathaniel D. Hale, died Tuesday of complications from multiple strokes.

Nate Dogg wasn't a rapper, but he was an integral figure in the genre: His deep voice wasn't particularly melodic, but it's tone — at times menacing, at times playful, yet always charming — provided just the just the right touch on hits including Warren G's "Regulate," 50 Cent's "21 Questions," Dr. Dre's "The Next Episode" and countless others.

Just had to

2010-12-25T03:07:00.000-05:00