Greetings and welcome to my page of additional information for the UCAS personal statement. I made this page in order to include my music tracks. I also include a link to various DJ mixes I have made as well as more information about my Virtual DVS Turntable project. All tracks are original creations by me apart from some used vocal samples.
Phantom FM station ID sample. Phantom FM was a community radio station in the 1990's in Lancaster, UK. I made a station ID sample for them which was used live on air (see next entry). "Back in 1999 the Lancaster airwaves were assaulted with some actual good music. Phantom 107 launched the radio and DJ career of Agent J and what would come to be Groovement many years later. Shout to the Phantom, wherever you are now.", quoted from here. Here's another mention of Phantom FM ... "University saw me join the line up on pirate radio station Phantom FM over in Lancaster", quoted from here.
WIP ... Mixes currently at an Archive.org net label but in my old name. Currently all being renamed and moved to my personal site which will possibly use this player.
Virtual DVS Turntable Project
As I have not got a pair of physical vinyl turntables at the moment I became frustrated at not being able to use timecode vinyl to control digital music tracks. I found DJ software to be very limited in the way it can allow manipulation of tracks in the same way a turntable can (speed ups, slow downs, spinbacks, scratching, turntablism and so forth). So I started to create a virtual turntable in the 3D rendering software Blender. Blender also has a game engine which is integrated into it. Working from around 2016 I managed to link the movement of a virtual platter to the pitch of the audio (here is the original development forum thread).
In this early demonstration of the software I show the basic principal of the design ...
In the current version of the project I am now using timecode audio from the freely available Serato timecode CD audio. The audio output from the project is fed to Mixxx (DJ mixing software) which sees the input just as it would a normal timecode input from a vinyl control record or CD. The pitch control is also functional and the platter is now controllable using the mouse. I now also have a proper technics 1210 model. So the project is basically a virtual DVS (Digital Vinyl Control) system. Of course nothing can perfectly replace a real turntable but I've found the sound is very close. Also for studios or mixing booths that don't have space for two full vinyl turntables this approach could allow the DJ to still have access to deck effects and turntablism using minimal space (a laptop).
I am continuing to develop this project for my own purposes but have wondered if it could be turned into a commercial project one day.