In the summer of 2010, my friend and DJ from Vancouver, Jared Chartrand, came up with an interesting idea -  Why not use the power of internal mixing mode of TRAKTOR to make a collaborative EDM mix? To mix asynchronously so-to-speak. Thus the ‘A-SYNC project’ was born.

The plan was as follows: One DJ could make a mix at a set tempo, and write down queue points where 16-32-64 bar loops would be dropped – leaving room for a 2nd DJ to mix in another track, loop, or play with effects. The first DJ would record their mix, upload it to webspace/FTP, the 2nd DJ could then download it, GRID it in TRAKTOR and use the QUEUE reference points provided by the first DJ to do whatever they wanted with the mix. When the first DJ mixes ended, the 2nd DJ would then keep mixing, to fill up the 1 to 1.5 hour mix.

At the time he mentioned it I wasn’t in the head space to be  recording gigs at home because of regular live gigs which I was recording and sharing. Even if I wasn’t doing a lot of gigs, I (like a lot of people) sometimes procrastinate when it comes to recording mixes at home, so we never ended up  starting the project until November of 2010.

For our first mix we focused on house/techno variants so we’ve got deep house, tech-house to more bangin’ techno towards the end of the first 40 minutes mixed by me. Jared’s follows a similar variety of genre tags in his mix which spans the last 50 minutes of the mix.  Throughout the first 40 minutes, Jared comes in with a few loops and tracks from his own collection, that’s where the beauty of this project lies, collaborative mixing. It’s similar to what Speedy J and Chris Liebing were doing with their COLABS 3000 tour in 2010 with dual traktor setups for their live gigs, only me and Jared are separated by 3 provinces, so used the power of broadband internet to digitally collaborate.

As a new(ish) DJ with only about 2 years of experience, I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to participate in this creative mixing project with Jared, who has fantastic taste in tunes, is a great DJ, technically humbling, and all around great guy :D

The embedded link is below, you can download the mix from this link HERE.

You can download more of Jared’s mixes, and read more about him via his home page. His full soundcloud page is HERE.

I don’t have my ‘owen’ page, but you can read my other ramblings on mixhard.ca or download any of my available mixes via my mixhard FTP space HERE.