KoCha's Blog

Album review at Dub Flash

2008-12-30T03:25:00.000-08:00

Due to my lack of online activity theses last months I've missed the review made by Ralph (Dub Flash) about the first Almighty Dub Records album !

The album received a nice 4/5 rating, and a wonderful detailed review :
KoCha meets Open Dub Foundation 'Worldwide Dub Meeting #1' Review

Take a look at the whole Dub Flash website if you didn't already know it, it's a nice place full of reviews and information about dub music.

And finally, get ready for new releases soon, I finally ended with all personal issues I got, and I'm actually building a new dub project for the Open Dub Foundation.

Still lot of work to do, but this time I'm really moving forward, far from all Babylon's stuffs that took my time this year !

Worldwide Dub Meeting #2 is at work ... Happy new year !

I'm back online !

2008-06-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Three months since my last online activity...

I apologize to all my friends and members of the Open Dub Foundation, but I had some personal issues preventing me to be active online. Lot of things happened during this times, the Versionist community has changed to a new platform (loosing some members, and for sure a part of his soul) and a new collaboration website for reggae musician is open and seems to grow fast (ReggaeDubwise.com).

Lot of mails are unread in my inbox, so it's gonna took time to answer to each people that had send me a message during this time, please let me 1 or 2 week to answer to everyones.

There is to a lot of stuff to do with the records and the Open Dub Foundation :
- Replace all bad link from the old Versionist platform
- Select tracks and publish the new ODF compilation
- Publish new ODF projects
- Publish a tutorial for the Open Dub Virtual Conference
- Organize next Open Dub Virtual Conference
- Mix new riddims and start production on the Almighty Dub Records

So I'm actually starting some of this tasks, and reconnecting with friends and the online reggae-dub community.

Thanks to all friends for them support during theses hard times !

Riddim Community ?

2008-03-26T01:49:00.000-07:00

Since 2002 I'm an active member of the Versionist website, at begin I was only sending my tracks but since 1 or 2 years I'm too an active user of the forum. Using this website I had met virtually a lot of fantastic reggae-dub producer from around the whole world, and the Murcia gathering was the ultimate experience for me.

The history of Versionist is really complicated cause the website was owned by different people. At the begin, the creator of Versionist was a musician and a pure reggae lover that was happy to give to worldwide reggae musician a nice platform to exchange music, ideas, ...

Today it's a bit different, Versionist was bought by someone that enjoy reggae music but that don't want only host the website for the community, he do that too for commercial purpose cause he had bought and invested money in the Versionist website. The owner isn't active inside the community making a separation between him and the members.

This wasn't a problem until the website was running with same features, but today the website is moving to an other platform, fortunately the owner asked to members what they think about different possible platform, and some constructive debate occured to find best platform.

Now the community start splitting, cause it's seems that the Versionist website going to contain some paying service to enable member host track and use bandwidth. The main power of the old platform was to enable anyone to upload full song without restriction, and some members (including me) don't want to loose that.

Due to this difference of opinion, I first made a demo website to show to all that the community can run himself the platform, and few days ago my friend Irish Moss started a new community called Reggae Dubwise to give members the choice.

Both community are based on the same platform with some minor technical difference, but the main difference come from a philosophical point of view (way of managing/owning the community) and the way both websites going to earn money.

So where is my family ?
I don't want to loose friends/relationships during this migration ...

I think lot of members from Versionist would agree with Irish Moss and let it run the community the way he build Reggae Dubwise, but the fact is that it's impossible for us (the community) to buy the domain name due to his expensive price.

Seems we need to be ready to change our community name, and Irish Moss's Reggae Dubwise initiative sounds good to me (nuff respect to him for this fantastic initiative, he had spend time and money to start this really powerful website).

By the way both websites can run in parallel, concurrence is good in industry, hope it's going to be the case for online community.

Thinking about gathering, I just ask myself why we call them using a website name ... why not calling them 'Online Reggae Dub Community Gathering' (or another name that don't rely to any organization/website), going to be simpler for everyone, and as far as I know the online reggae dub community isn't split we are all sharing same interests.

ODVC 20080302

2008-03-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

The last virtual conference was a total success, thanks to all who have participate, with a duration of approximately 45min the show had run without network failure, thanks to NetroMedia free broadcast service for that.

Next one is planned 6 April at 7pm (GMT) and as requested by a listener, I will try to do a little workshop after the show to explain how I use my controller and how the controller is linked to the PC software.

The conference was recorded, I just finished upload materials on youtube, enjoy:
ODVC_20080302 #01 - Endless Fighting Dub
ODVC_20080302 #02 - Tolerance Dub
ODVC_20080302 #03 - Unfreeze Dub
ODVC_20080302 #04 - Opening Connection Dub
ODVC_20080302 #05 - Drum Song Dub
ODVC_20080302 #06 - Murcianists Dub

Don't know exactly how many people was attending to the conference (cause I now use a dedicated server, not streaming to everyone directly with my PC, not enough bandwidth for that), but I estimate near 10 users based on feedback I got, don't hesitate to join us for the next one.

I'm gonna made a tutorial to explain how to stream from PC and run virtual conference, hope Don Fe will be able to do a session for the next one.

Conference managment running

2008-02-27T03:34:00.000-08:00

I've just spend theses last days coding a whole infrastructure to let ODF members managing virtual conference online.

Registered users can now:
- Edit his availability schedule
- View others availability schedule
- Edit his streaming URL and active it when broadcasting

Anybody visiting the foundation website can now view and listen in live the active open dub virtual conference (if one running of course), join the chat room and talk with everyone else viewing/running the virtual conference.

A first public ODVC is planned this Sunday at 7pm (GMT) more info in the dedicated section:
http://open.reggae-dub.com/odvc

Next to all theses improvements, a new project was added to the foundation; 'Murcianists' is dedicated to all people that made the Murcia gathering possible, don't hesitate to download it and make your own version !

Murcia Versionist Gathering

2008-02-20T11:45:00.000-08:00

I just arrived in Switzerland yesterday after had spend some times with versionist bredrens.

This gathering was a fantastic opportunity to meet versionist members, and to share musical knowledge together. We spend first days jamming together, doing irations and enjoying the nice place where we was staying together.

Then Saturday was the day of the show, an amazing show, the venues was full of spanish reggae-dub-head ready to shake their body and enjoy good music.

Many thanks to Don Fe for his big investment and the great organization !

The show was really good, sound system by I-Rebel and the VISS German crew, Luciano with El Bib doing some roots tunes, then we had the pleasure to enjoy The Manor with YaBass doing some toasting peformance on pure dubwise tune... and finally a really impressive show from 'Zacheous Jackson with Dubheart' (one of best show I ever seen, just after Burning Spear's one).

Inside the 'Versionist Mansion':

You can find more info on the Murcia Versionist Gathering thread.

ODVC 20080131

2008-02-01T03:20:00.000-08:00

Here is a video shot from the open dub virtual conference done yesterday, special thanks to KayaGardens (Thomas) to have made test with me.

Was able to do a session with 4 clients (has done first test with 3) at same time without so much lag, but need to do a compromise between image quality/fluidity/sound. Using broadcasting technology, number of clients limit is high.

I privileged fluidity and sound, during session I recorded a full track, here is the result, quality is exactly same as if you was watching the conference in live.

This was done as a try out to test technology for streaming, was able to use VLC but without a stream compatible with an other player than VLC, so I used the Windows Media Encoder.

Recorded at home, I haven't Internet access at studio, so the mix is done using digital stuff (MIDI interface controlling PC), doesn't sound same as mixing in studio !

Next step is to build a good infrastructure on ODF to make able anybody join the conference, and give possibility to member to start their own.

New contents for the foundation

2008-01-31T01:42:00.000-08:00

I uploaded yesterday a new project on the Open Dub Foundation, this project is based on the 'Drum Song' riddim used to record vocal from 'The Gladiators' some time ago.
Feel free to download the project and do a remix !

I still working on the Open Dub Conference project, actually trying to write a license to avoid any issue while organizing 'real' conference, and building a whole infrastructure to easily start running virtual ones.

Hope to be able to run weekly conference soon, first with only one dubmaster (at same time) streaming his performance to other, and then perhaps start doing live collaboration.

Hot dubwise for cold winter

2008-01-22T04:18:00.000-08:00

I just finished last week to mix the dubplate from The Gladiators and the remix of Hot Drop 'Tell Me'.

You can access them here (free mp3 download) :

KoCha meets The Gladiators - Mix Song

KoCha meets Hot Drop - Tell Me

It's from far away toughest production of the Almighty Dub Records, enjoy !

First open dub virtual conference

2008-01-16T02:52:00.000-08:00

What a nice preview of the Murcia gathering that doing a Jam with people that I'm going to meet !

Last week I had the honor to take part of the first ever 'Open Dub Virtual Conference', I wanted to make that from long time and Don Fe (Spain) make it real, so many thanks to him.

For me it's really a historical and technical performance, we was able to do a real 'virtual jam' and record it. Don Fe was mixing the dubwise using his digital mixing desk while streaming audio and video threw Skype to me and KayaGardens, then I used my gypsy to play in live on the dub-mix and stream the result to conference participant. Don Fe was able to hear me playing guitar while mixing dubwise, and fortunately latency wasn't too high.

You can listen to the resulting track of the recorded jam here:
Versionist All-Stars - Open Dub Virtual Conference (20080111) - Track 1

The jam was ~5 hours long and we finished it at 2am, many thanks to Irish Moss to had give us some fantastic exclusive mix.

It's a big step for the Open Dub Foundation Conference project, I hope to make available tools to let people synchronize their time of availability and then do music virtually together.

Hoping to be able to make it run using Ninjam instead of Skype.

Presenting SM9 studio

2008-01-09T02:04:00.000-08:00

I've just spent some times last week to take some shots (pictures and a short movie) of the new ADR studio.

We are sharing the studio with an other band, and the chill-out place with some hip-hop DJ/lyricists.

Just take a look to see where we spend our time to do music:

To get a more precise idea of the studio just go to the dedicated gallery.

The studio is situated in the center of Lausanne City (Switzerland), Saint-Martin street, number 9.

Digital mixing desk

2007-12-19T00:19:00.000-08:00

I've just received yesterday the christmas gift I made to I-Self, after having bad experience with Behringer I usually don't bought some device from this brand, but this time I needed a really cheap MIDI controller, mainly to have fun more than use for production (cause I use analog hardware for production... software simply can't emulate all that wobble that occur with analog hardware).

Hope this little gift are not going to break the budget I'm actually building for the Murcia versionist gathering ...fuck... I'm just falling like a child in this Christmas commercial time, fortunately it's not the case each year.

Now let see the beast:

A simple 4x8 rotary fader midi interface, exactly what I needed to control my Orion software at home, and my 64Studio workstation at studio.

Don't going to use it to do live dubwise cause love analog hardware, but going to be really useful to do mixing of other project at studio, and of course, having lot of fun doing live electro set at home !

Just experienced mixing some Orion project, and tried some minimal stuff... it's a real pleasure !

Not bad for a Behringer product...

Mastering abuse and the RMS value

2007-12-13T00:03:00.000-08:00

I've just spend last weeks to mix a demo for a band sharing studio with I and had learn so much about mastering and general way of working to get a good sounding mix.

After having good discussion on the versionist forum and long exploring of the wikipedia, and now I understand all the debate that running around mastering.

The main problem is that during last decades worldwide producer have done a war to get the maximum loudness possible of their production. Perhaps they had think having a track louder than other studio is a proof of quality, but this war was go to far and until the majority of 'major' production was over-compressed resulting in killing all 'sensibility' of the sound !

A song from 1983

Same song remastered in 2005

So when you have a perfect mix it must not be a problem, but otherwise it's compromise between loudness/sensibility...

This loudness level are call 'root mean square' (or RMS), I'm actually compiling all information about mastering on the ODF knowledge base, so you can get more info here.

Be the master of mastering

2007-12-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sound mastering is one of the most complicated task for sound engineer, anyone having done music and recorded some tracks have notified the problem of mastering.

If you record a song without using any compression and without doing mastering your going to hear a big volume gap between your production and the one's available on a professional release (CD/LP/WAV).

Since today I was always doing mastering manually using my hardware compressor and different software... Compressor was doing a good job put it wasn't enough to get a real powerful sound, so I tried using some PC plug-in without a real success... The only way I had to get a good mix was to manually remove peak !

All that is finish, for sure I keep all my tube-filter and analog compressor (really useful for live...) but I can now forgot all other sad plug-in used before, JAMin is the only one today !

Just try it out (under Linux with JACK) and you will see his true power... really incredible, nice eq, really good dynamic compressor... and all module can be fine tuned. This software is free and can do better job than some semi-pro expansive software !

The 'Dub Discussion Board' is back !

2007-11-23T02:26:00.000-08:00

What a surprise to read in my email-box this morning that the Dub Discussion Board is back !

This board was the home for all online dubmasters to share technics during long times (1998-2006), but due to spam problem the website was closed until today.

Now the board is re-open with all archive inside, it's a really good news for all dubmaster that want to share and exchange mixing knowledge.

We are still migrating and organizing knowledge from interruptor.ch and versionist.com on the Open Dub Foundation - Knowledge Base

First open dub conference

2007-11-21T01:48:00.000-08:00

The first open dub conference 'down in reality' is planned:

Saturday 08.12.2007 / Sunday 09.12.2007 | Starting at 3pm
Gasthof Ritter, Tuebingen, GERMANY
Dub Jam Conference organized by Rick (Overdubber)

More information

Unfortunately I'm not sure to be able to go to this conference due to family issue ... but hope to resolve it before ...

It's really a nice step forward for the Open Dub Foundation, this bring it to reality and make people able to have pleasure making music together.

Finally a big up for all who made that possible and too to every one that make the reggae/dub community alive by making gathering in past and future (versionist, dubconference,...) !

Dub poetry or the roots of slam

2007-11-15T09:40:00.000-08:00

I love dub poetry from long time, the first ever dub album I bought was the 'LKJ in Dub' (recorded in 1981, and bought by myself more than ten years later...) and this was a musical revelation for me.

Then I started listening to Tubby's records and other 70's records, until I found a Prince Far I record made by Adrian Sherwood in 80's... I was shocked by the power of Prince Far I voice, it was like a slam in my face !

Dub poetry is the spoken word version of dub music. For I dub poetry is more related to dub than 'simple reggae', because words get an other power when the music is mixed in a specific way giving voice a strong signification, it's for me the roots of 'today' slam...

I'm actually trying to create a new project about dub poetry, here is some links to get more inside this musical style:

Dub Poetry - Wikipedia article
Dub Poetry Introduction - Nice introduction to dub poetry
Dub Poetry Selection - A selection of dub poetry albums
Dub Poets Collective - Dub poets crew from Canada

Remote dub conference

2007-11-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

Just discover this software with the help of versionist community.
NinJam

This software enable musicians to play together using Internet connection.

The problem when doing remote connection to play music is the latency, the solution proposed by ninjam is to use latency measured in measures, and that's what makes it interesting.

Hope to do jam soon !

Website was hacked !

2007-11-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

The website was down between Sunday morning to Monday evening, sorry for any inconvenience but direct link was still available.

The hack was done using simple script kidding, the corrupted module is now updated and all is back in order.

Opening Dub Connection

2007-11-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

I've just uploaded a new project on the Open Dub Foundation.

A preview of the whole song is available for download at versionist.

This song was build using only digital synth (except vocoder samples), it's first time (since I started use traditional instrument) that I make a full digital dub, I hope artists from the foundation are going to enjoy playing with it !

It's a kind of try out to see how can sounds my music in digital style... It was a real pleasure to build this song.

Don't hesitate to download the new project.

Orion an easy digital dub studio

2007-10-31T08:40:00.000-07:00

Unfortunally Linux isn't perfect for simplicity. It enable anybody doing music but like I talk with others dubmaster on versionist, he doesn't integrate so much 'user friendly' feature keeping focus on function available.

The biggest advantage for Windows is: Simplicity.

It's what I had understand using Orion while doing a digital reggae song.

I'm in love with Linux and recommend all to try starting with this OS when moving to computer music creation, but for people searching for simplicity without need to understand all feature... Orion and Windows make a nice couple !

Hot Drop Remix Confirmed

2007-10-30T02:27:00.000-07:00

I just receive this morning an e-mail confirmation from Hot Drop !

I'm really happy to see how the Creative Commons license can be employed to collaborate on the web.

Music is a free knowledge and it's really nice to see how online artists are interested to share they work for free using this kind of license. Anyone can try to be a dub-master today, there is bad and good part, but for the moment I only see good ones !

So now I'm hurry waiting to receive audio source and start mixing.

Thanks to Hot Drop reggae band for their open mind !

Worldwide Dub Meeting #1

2007-10-25T01:06:00.000-07:00

The first album from Almighty Dub Records are now released ! and for free !

It's a free net-album containing a compilation of tracks done on the Open Dub Foundation featuring me.

Many thanks to all dub-masters/artists active on the foundation, without them this release simply can't be made !

Tracks aren't mastered so volume can change slightly between tracks.

KoCha meets Open Dub Foundation - Worldwide Dub Meeting #1

It's a debut album, the foundation was created in June, I hope quality are going to get higher with next release.

Experimental Connection To The Sun

2007-10-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

I just discovered this week-end, a fantastic software (unfortunately running under windows) called Orion.

Orion is a full featured audio studio, it's a modern version of what I used 5 years ago: Jeskola Buzz.

I started creating music using synth an other electronic instrument/effect inside Buzz, and it's made long time that I want to create a kind of trip-hop piece using synth, but Buzz is really painful and I never found what exactly I wanted... before this week-end with Orion.

Here is the experimental track (done with demo version!):
KoCha - Experimental Connection To The Sun

Hope to find something free and equivalent under Linux one day...

Openning a foundation riddim

2007-10-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

Really good news for the Open Dub Foundation, I've just finished a new riddim based on the Jamaican classic 'Drum Song'.

This riddim was build to provide a base for building some poetry stuff with versionist community using a midi source file from baroque dub (with of course some modification and a whole arrangement).

But more than only a riddim, I'm actually managing to record vocal from a well know Jamaican reggae band.

So I hope to get in few day this vocal and start recording instrument / dub mixing the new track, with Tolerance and the upcoming free album, there's going to be a major update on the website soon !