It’s been a long time since I’ve maintained an on-line space for myself and/or my musical activities. I’m hoping a blog format should make for a much easier way to keep content updated.
As well as general blogging about stuff that interests me, one of the things I want to use this blog for is communicating the happenings of my streaming Internet radio show decoded_. Yes it’s still going! This will be the place to find updates, play-lists, information, and charts etc.
My Internet radio show decoded_ is on every Monday 8pm-10pm Sydney [AEST] time. Broadcast via http://www.pulseradio.net/
Yes you have to ‘tune’ into the show from the Pulseradio site at a fixed day/time, much like with a programme on FM radio. Yeah, I know, it’s a bit of an outdated concept with all the time/format-shifting, podcasting, downloading stuff around these days. Speaking of podcasts, I will be making some mp3s of previous shows available via this blog, but I would really appreciate your support listening to the show when it’s on. Having listeners will keep it alive!
Pulseradio features a range of DJ-mix/dance music shows from all over the planet, it began in Sydney in the late 1990’s, coming together out of an IRC chat channel, that’s how I got involved too.
decoded_ is produced/presented by me… DJ Dave McCann (absolutley no chance of making this an annonymous blog now huh! hehehe). The show is a 2 hour DJ-mix of music, with a minimum amount of voice-overs (I edit them on after a mix is recorded).
The music I mix up and feature would probably sit amongst the: minimal, tech-house, techno and electro-house styles of electronic dance music, lots of producers and labels from Germany feature mostly these days.
DJ mixing wise, I’m still based on 12″ vinyl records via turntables, but I’m also using mp3s (purchased on-line) as well. As much as I love vinyl, I’ll probably move to using more mp3s in future, it certainly allows me to have fresher music sooner, and there’s a lot of great net-label stuff out there.
A little history… I started weekly broadcasting with Pulseradio in May 2000, over 6 years ago now. I’ve always had a Monday night timeslot. Originally my show was called “TechFunked” featuring lots of energetic, funky, tribal, melodic, percussive techno sounds. I featured many live guest DJs, lots of my DJ friends, and DJs from Sydney’s techno scene. Over the years as I’ve got older and mellowed so too have my tastes in sounds, they’ve also got wider. I realised there wasn’t much ‘tech-funk’ being played on the show anymore, so TechFunked got reborn as decoded_ in July 2005. I took the name from the short-lived Thursday night club that my mates Brad, Ant (who came up with the name) and I did for a while at the Burdekin hotel.
There’s been a lot of technical changes over the years with Pulseradio, moving from 16k mono mp3 streams via dial-up modems, to 64k mono mp3 streams via broadband, broadcasting live from our homes (all over the planet) to a Shoutcast server, to now Pulseradio offering 128k stereo mp3, Windows Media, and Real Audio streams.
We used to have a lot of fun interracting with listeners via an IRC chat channel during our live streaming shows, giving shout-outs and playing particular tracks/artists as it was requested, but sadly that got left behind when Pulseradio changed to the pre-recorded/uploaded show format we have now, the plus being Pulseradio now has much higher audio quality streaming, multiple streaming formats, and better quaility control.
Another big change in the Pulseradio history, happened earlier this year when Partysan http://www.partysan.com.au/ took over operations of Pulseradio from the original founders. There’s a great new website, but as it’s still coming together we DJ/show presenters have lost all our on-line text based communication channels with our listeners/site visitors. There’s currently no forums, or show track-listings on the site. So… you’ll find it all here from now on.
Cheers Dave