So have there been any Ableton Live Sex jokes yet?

[Johnny-come-lately]

Don’t have reason yet to keep up with enough posts around here just yet to actually know. Seems like an obvious joke to me. Can’t wait to see what the package art is going to look like.

[STRATEGY_510]

I keep hearing about this, what's a Sasha?


STRATEGY

[marky]

Maybe that's why it's taking so long to get it released. Maybe they got all the artwork done, looked at it when it came back and went ... "ooooohhhhh nooooooo"

[Sales Dude McBoob]

Like my user name? Figured it was appropriate as I don’t own nor ever tried Live as I don’t own a computer that can handle it, that and because the only reason that I even know about Live is because of the notorious Sasha. How's that for honesty?

Tell us more, Johnny. How did you arrive in this place?

[Johnny-come-lately]

Sure, I don’t mind a little, actually long, introduction.
My cousin was a professional mobile DJ when he was in his teens which means that I was not even in my teens yet when I decided that what I wanted to be when I grew up was to be a professional DJ. Sadly, I must admit that it wasn’t seeing my cousin work a crowd nor was it his musical selection as I really didn’t care for much of what he was playing but that what did it for me was when I went down into his basement and saw his whole setup in all of its glory. Guess that would be vanity because I was so turned on by two turntables, a decent sized mixer, crates of records, racks of lights and stacks of speakers that I think I wet my self, or got wood, can’t remember which. Unfortunately I only dreamed about it for many years but never pursued it, as I couldn’t afford to.
Fast-forward to 1992 when raves started happening in my local area. I was in collage at the time enjoying partying my ass off and was in summer break. My friends and I stumbled across our first rave, which was really the first big rave in the area. My friends were not really into it although they had fun and went to more but electronic music wasn’t really there thing and the largely gay gathering seemed to be a little bit of a put off for them. We were friends not because of like interest in music or politics but really for only one reason and that was because we went to the same high school together and were all drug addicts that had kind of gravitated toward each other in an effort to always stay high. I on the other hand was already into electronic music and had been since as long as I could remember as Abba was probably the first group, not just one song on the radio kind of thing, that I can really remember liking though in the mid eighty’s it had turned into Depeche Mode, The Cure, Howard Jones… and though I am not gay I had no problem with it and didn’t think much about it as a good friend of mine who lived down the street from me had a brother who had come out at a young age and over the course of hanging out with him and his brother I found that I liked his brother as a person and what he did sexually with others who consented was none of my business.
Well, This fantastic summer filled with Cool World, Basic Instinct, loads of drugs and alcohol and more often than not weekend raves came to an end and school started back up. About three weeks into this Fall Semester and I was done. I wanted more rave culture. I dropped out of collage and moved to Dallas as it had a much bigger rave scene than where I lived and grew up. Unfortunately the Dallas rave scene died right after I arrived there. The Dallas rave scene was like that back then, and might still be to this very day, it was either hot or it was cold.
Though the rave scene sucked in Dallas at first I still had a few good record stores to choose from with my favorite being Oaklawn Records. It was probably 1994 when I purchased a Stress compilation from there that was showcasing some of Sasha’s, Dave Seaman’s and John Digweeds work. That got me looking into what they were doing as I liked what I heard. Then came the first Renaissance mix CD’s in 1995 or so and I was really impressed. I have been into them ever since. I gave my brother the Renaissance mix CD’s as well and he has always been into them as well and I could be wrong about this but he might of actually been the one who told me about Ableton Live after learning about it from a generic e-mail sent out by Sasha/his people though I might have actually received the e-mail myself though I don’t believe that I was on his mailing list at the time. My brother knew that I had been looking for things to progress beyond turntables and CD’s and that I was planning on working with digital files and my own musical creations in the future and if I recall correctly he was the one who told me about it.
I have not worked as a DJ in a very long time thus I was completely out of the loop on things and it took a generic e-mail and my brother to enlighten me on the current state of things. I have been and still am investigating getting back into DJing although I don’t have any ambitions other than enjoying it and teaching what I know to my daughter. Not sure if I will use Ableton or Tracktor but will admit that I am leaning toward Ableton while not trying to appease the current company as I like to think independently.
My signature came about because I had been lurking here for some time, around six months, and had seen that some around here at the time felt like which version of Ableton Live you started with showed what a trend setter you were and not just some Johnny-come-lately and that Sasha was pretty much hated by the vocal majority and that the mere mention of his name could send a thread into a tail spin so when I joined I thought it appropriate to use this user name and to be honest about why I was even here and let it be known that I was not one of those out of touch personality’s that had joined an internet forum to live out an alter ego or to try and fit in while going against who I am. I don’t consider myself to be cool. I don’t look down upon others who don’t share my same interest. I could care little about what others believe and if it is in accordance with what I believe. I am a very proud American while also considering myself a citizen of planet earth and if anything my peers would consider me to be a family man, businessman or an environmentalist, not a musician.
Currently I hope to get back into DJing soon but considering that I thought that it was going to happen this summer and that this is now obviously not going to be the case I am not sure when and if it will happen. Like most I have several other things occupying my time and financially my wife and I are more concerned about trying to build an Earthship for the second time than we are in spending money on my passion for DJing. When the day comes that I do get back into DJing I look forward and hope for help in doing so from a community such as this as I will need it. I don't want this help to come from people because I tried to fit in or make myself appear to be something that I am not and hopefully it will come from mutual respect and from a true love for music and mixing. Hopefully through honesty this will happen.

[Sales Dude McBoob]

The 1990's were so different. The idea of a 'rave scene' just seems alien now.

Thanks for going into such great detail. But I must ask you to elaborate again. I must know what an 'Earthship' is.

It's cool that you made the jump from a lurker to a citzen. Don't worry about when you got into Live, or if you don't use it at all.

But- that said- I think you should get a decent pair of DJ headphones and a computer that can handle Live. I can't imagine an Earthship is too terribly expensive, so the wife should understand that a computer upgrade at some point is an inevitable expense. If you can't afford to buy Live right now, download the demo. This way, after your wife + daughter are asleep you can pop on the cans and experiment with DJing with Live using MP3 files. It's really challenging + fun. I'm not a DJ either, but I love to have my occasional late night DJ sets in the headphones with Live to see if I can pull of insane song mixing. There is a lot to learn and unlimited experimentation. Why not, y'know?

Then we can call you DJ Earthship!

[Johnny-come-lately]

Wow, you actually read all of that. Sorry for another long post.

An Earthship is/can be a completely independent (unless propane gas is provided via a tank) off grid, passive solar dwelling made of natural and recycled materials. The exterior walls are thermal mass usually constructed of old automobile tires packed with dirt weighing around 300 pounds each but other methods can be used to achieve great thermal mass as well. Interior walls are often constructed of aluminum cans laid out in a brick pattern with cement completely surrounding each and every can but again drywall or other means can also be used. Both the tires and the cans are usually completely covered up with plaster making for a truly authentic adobe look.
I can’t think of any aspect of the current flaws of modern structures that has not been addressed by an Earthship. Everything is considered and made better for both you and the planet in terms of how you get your power, water, stable temperature, food… and also in how you get rid of your waste. Example being that water is collected from your roof and used some 3 or 4 different times in the house before flushing out your black water/toilet water and growing even more plants and what not with water that plants thrive on because of all of the nutrients now in that water. Something that most people don’t think about and I never really cared to either until I found out about this concept and other forms of sustainable dwellings.
I really got away from DJing after turly learning and finding out more about Earthships more in the mid 90’s. I am obsessive compulsive and got so wrapped up in Earthships that the current state of DJing at the time made it easy for me to step away from it and focus my hard work on it instead. We failed miserably with our first attempt at building one for many, many reasons. We are ready to try again but don’t plan on taking on the burden of doing so on our own again and won’t be looking to make it our primary residence until retirement as we have that covered so a lot less pressure will be on us this time around and this time money will be secured to complete the project before starting the project which wasn’t the case the first time.

I don't plan on not giving Ableton a try until this project is complete as that is unrealistic and would probably make so it never happened. Securing more land now is a priority though.

Here are some links:
http://www.earthship.org/
http://www.earthshipbiotecture.com/
Both are from the same company, which started and evolve the concept, but are slightly different websites. I am guessing that wikipedia and others have definitions of Earthships as well that my be much better than the one I provided or that make more sense if mine didn’t.

Funny thing is that my wife and I are not hippies in any sense of the word and I have been sober for many years. Most people think that this type of thing must be for a bunch of drugged out hippies. Majority of people currently into the concept that are actually living in or building them couldn't be any further from this. Reason may be that it cost as much or more to build one as a conventional home even though it is being built from recycled materials.

[bigbadotis]

dude, these sound like amazing places to live in.

why, oh why, did they have to call them "earthships" though? I know I should be able to look past the name, but I don't think I could ever tell someone I lived in one with a straight face.

It seems like they're making it more new-age hippie than it needs to be. But the concept (and implementation as far as I can tell) is awesome. Short of the name.

[stinky]

Holy runon sentences, Batman!!

[Johnny-come-lately]

Yeah, the name for this type of building could be better than Earthship and yes it makes most people write off the concept and what you are doing right off the bat.
Run-on sentences could probably be considered my specialty. It drives my wife crazy. Often times when I post on an Internet forum I do so in such a hurry that I don’t worry about separating things with paragraphs either, which only makes reading my post even more difficult.
Note to self; a little grammar goes a long way.