Have a couple hours to kill this Saturday before the evening revelries? Join my DJ alter-ego for Spüki Tünes with DJ Wüdi on Halloween Afternün!

1 p.m. (Pacific time) on my Twitch channel. Old classics, newer goofiness, and some stuff I just thought would fit in.

Happy May Day

You hear that sound, the rain is coming down
It says there’s a ripeness setting in
The children spin around ’til they crash into the ground
Singing “Welcome Home Forever Once Again”

And when you hear the spirit’s call
There ain’t no use to fight
And if you want to reap tomorrow, you better sow your seed tonight
You better sow your seed tonight

You feel that fire lift your body higher
An old, old dance is growing here
Better kiss me soon while the blossoms are in bloom
Or you might just have to wait another year

And when you hear the spirit’s call
There ain’t no use to fight
And if you want to reap tomorrow, you better sow your seed tonight
You better sow your seed tonight

You feel that beet, come on, move your feet
Old man winter’s dead and gone
There’ll be wiggling of the toes, there’ll be taking off of clothes
There’ll be silly naked dancing on the lawn

And when you hear the spirit’s call
There ain’t no use to fight
And if you want to reap tomorrow, you better sow your seed tonight
You better sow your seed tonight

— Jason Webley, “May Day”

Use Your Phone as a Webcam with EpocCam

Need a webcam? Want to hook up a second webcam for multi-cam streaming? EpocCam from Kinoni lets you connect your phone to your computer as a second video input!

It works either wirelessly over WiFi or with a direct USB cable connection for lower latency.

I’ve only played with the iPhone version, but there looks to be an Android version as well, and they should both work with either Mac or PC computers. It’s slightly fiddly to set up, but I got it working:

  1. Install the EpocCam app on your phone.
  2. Install the driver from Kinoni’s website on your computer.
  3. Reboot.
  4. Launch the EpocCam app on your phone. It’ll show a “connecting” screen.
  5. Launch whatever app you want to use the video input.
  6. Go into the video settings and choose EpocCam as a source.
  7. Magic!

There’s a non-zero probability that I may be using this setup as part of my weekly DJ livestreaming on Twitch on Saturday mornings. Just saying. :)

DJ Wüdi on Twitch

DJing on Twitch

I tried a little experiment this morning with DJing live to my Twitch channel, and I don’t think it went terribly badly…so I’m thinking I may do this on a semi-regular basis.

Background: Like many, many people…I used to be a DJ. ;) Lately I’ve been missing it, so this is a way for me to start practicing again. I have no visions of getting back into clubs or anything along those lines (though it’s always a fun fantasy), but this should at least help scratch the itch a little bit.

I’m using djay Pro 2 and a Pioneer DDJ-400 mixer, and figured out how to use OBS (with some assistance from Loopback to route the audio stream from djay to OBS so I wasn’t just broadcasting whatever my computer’s internal mic could pick up) to stream to Twitch. I’m also recording the video and audio output locally, and will upload those to my YouTube and MixCloud accounts within a few days after broadcasting.

Here’s the video for my first attempt (the audio kicks in at about 45 seconds).

And here’s the audio on MixCloud.

In the future, I’ll figure out how to keep the Twitch chat channel up on a second screen so I can take requests as well (on the off chance people actually stop by to watch and listen live).

It’s an experiment, and I’m not sure how long I’ll keep doing it, but for now, at least, it should be fun to play with.

Out for the Seattle Symphony’s performance of Handel’s Messiah. The last time I was at a performance of the Messiah, it was as part of the choir, along with both parents (also in the choir) and my brother (in the orchestra). It’ll be nice to be in the audience with Prairie for this performance!

An Old Music Meme Revisited

For no particular reason (and certainly no good reason), resurrecting a silly little meme from a few years ago

Some silly pointless statistics on my iTunes music library:

Best-Selling Singles of All Time

Archie Henderson on Twitter:

I am a music historian, and with @AdrianRMG I have researched the best-selling single of every decade all the way back to 14,000BC. Here’s a thread:

This is a really amazing piece of musical historical research, and I strongly recommend going all the way through the thread. The snippets he was able to track down are incredible.