DJ Gig: 2009-12-31
This year, as I’ve done every year since 2002-12-31, I’m DJing a New Years celebration party at Richard and Christine’s garage, in Sinking Valley. I do not charge them, because this is my way of paying them back some, for all they do for me during the rest of the year. Besides, it’s my way of ringing in the New Year, Hesley-style, with lots and lots of great-sounding Tommy’s Tunes.
In this post and the attached comments, I’ll mention all that I do over the next several weeks to prepare for this gig; everything from getting the computers ready and testing the sound and lighting equipment, to assuring that my hard drive-based library contains all the latest hits I’ve purchased this year.
This will show that there’s a lot more involved with DJing a party than just sitting down, turning on the lights, and playing music when the get-together begins. It’s not as simple as it looks.
So, enjoy.
November 20th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Applied all outstanding software updates to the DJ business laptop computers, here.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
07:50 PM: Sister Christine just told me that this party will definitely happen New Years eve. Her husband will check out the lights a couple weeks ahead of time (possibly this coming weekend), so we can obtain any replacements we might need in plenty of time for the gig.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:08 am
04:10 PM: Added to my computerized music library, the following CDs from Promo Only:
* Express Audio Digital Audio Format (EADFF), Issue: 2009-11, week 1.
* Mainstream Radio: 2009-08
* Mainstream Radio: 2009-09
* Mainstream Radio: 2009-10
* Mainstream Radio: 2009-11
* Mainstream Radio: 2009-12
Track 1 of the 2009-12 issue choked my TTNorm program for some reason, and so I had to perform many of the importation steps manually. But the incident seems isolated; this is the first time I’ve ever seen a bug like this. If appears too often, I’ll dig into the TTNorm code to figure out exactly what’s failing. But all the other CDs today worked without difficulty.
08:37 PM: Well, apparently, the bug is not so isolated after all. I just reproduced the problem with Promo Only’s Urban Radio 2009-09 issue. I’ll investigate this further tomorrow. Will track the repair effort in the TTNorm Early Abort Bug post.
December 15th, 2009 at 8:19 am
10:00 AM: Added the following CDs from Promo Only to the library:
* Urban Radio: 2009-09
* Urban Radio: 2009-10
* Urban Radio: 2009-11
* Urban Radio: 2009-12
* Urban Radio: 2010-01
* Modern Rock Radio: 2009-08
* Modern Rock Radio: 2009-09
December 16th, 2009 at 9:27 am
11:30 AM: Added the following CDs from Promo Only to the library:
* Modern Rock Radio: 2009-10
* Modern Rock Radio: 2009-11
* Modern Rock Radio: 2009-12
* Country Radio: 2009-09
* Country Radio: 2009-10
December 17th, 2009 at 10:55 am
03:55 PM: Added the following CDs from Promo Only to the library:
* Country Radio: 2009-11
* Country Radio: 2009-12
* Country Radio: 2010-01
* EADFF: 2009-11-02
* EADFF: 2009-11-03
December 18th, 2009 at 9:31 am
11:30 AM: Added the following CDs from Promo Only to the library:
* EADFF: 2009-11-04
* EADFF: 2009-12-01
* EADFF: 2009-12-02
11:55 PM: All music I have for 2009 has now been added to the Tommy’s Tunes music library, which brings the total number of recordings there to 59327. I’m going to try for 59500 for this gig.
December 19th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
11:35 PM: Added the following CDs from Promo Only to the library:
* Herman’s Hermits: Into Something Good; 4-disc box set.
Current library song count: 59443. If we played all of these end-to-end, they’d play for 188 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes, and 18 seconds.
December 20th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
05:55 PM: Applied all outstanding Windows Vista updates, and upgraded to Winamp 5.57 on the computer I’ll be using at this gig (Dell Inspiron, 3 Ghz P4, 2 GB RAM). At first, the new version of Winamp kept aborting upon startup. So I moved the old version’s directory out of C:\Program Files, to avoid installing the new version over top of the old one, and possibly having some artifacts from the old version adversely affect the new one. Then, I installed 5.57 into the original C:\Program Files\Winamp location, and this fixed the problem. Now, I just have to figure out a way to move my media library smart views back into the new version’s directory without corrupting it.
08:15 PM: I finally determined how to get my smart views (saved searches) into the fresh copy of Winamp’s media library.
But I hit a snag that kept me running around for a while. That was that Winamp stores this information in a different location on Windows Vista than it does on XP. On Vista, Winamp stores the gen_ml.ini file that contains the queries in
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Winamp\Plugins on XP, it looks for this file in:
C:\Program Files\Winamp\PluginsSo, not knowing this, and therefore assuming that the location is the same in Vista as it was in XP, I copied the files to the XP location on Vista. Of course, Winamp did not display my smart views. But after some head-scratching I saved a new search on the new copy of Winamp, and then looked throughout the hard drive for its text. I found that search text in the C:\Users location. So, I copied my original gen_ml.ini file over the one in C:\Users, and this made my smart views visible in the new version of Winamp.
December 25th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
01:38 AM: Added the following CDs to the Tommy’s Tunes music library:
* Fred Astaire: Golden Greats (three disc box set)
Also, Richard and Garrett report that all lighting checks out okay as well as the speakers and the rest of the sound equipment. So, I guess it’s up to me to be sure that the DJ computers are working well this week. This is going to be a great gig.
December 29th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
11:40 PM: Added the following CDs from Promo Only to the library:
* EADFF: 2009-12-03
December 30th, 2009 at 11:53 am
12:30 PM: Added the following CDs from Promo Only to the library
* Mainstream Radio: 2010-01
01:30 PM: Synced the drives that would sync. One of them failed. I’m investigating the problem per the Hard Drive Failure: 2009-12-30 project.
December 31st, 2009 at 12:09 pm
02:05 PM: Performed final checks on the laptop computer I’ll be taking tonight. Both drives (the primary and the backup) work fine.
I’ll have 59553 songs with me this evening; should be enough to satisfy most requests.
January 1st, 2010 at 8:56 am
The playlist used at this gig last night can be viewed here.
The gig was a big success and its wrapup you can read here.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I added the following songs to the library, which were actually requests that I received during this gig but did not have:
* Kiss & Tell by Selena Gomez & The Scene
* Naturally by Selena Gomez & The Scene
* Party On The Moon by Vanessa Hudgens
I purchased these tunes from Amazon.com during the Internet Shopping Trip today
This now concludes this gig project, as all associated business has been finished. Watch for gigs in the future.