Name

DJ ! (pronounced DJ Shift 1)

Alternate Aliases, Identities and Bands

The Silence Xperiment (solo & band), Miyamoto (band), SX Productions, Garden Lane Jam Band, Jimmy Lesondak

Biography

DJ ! (pronounced DJ Shift 1) is a mashup DJ located in Modesto California. He has been DJing for 6 years and started learning the skills of the trade on vinyl records. Since most of the great record stores are in the Bay Area, finding great music on vinyl was a hassle in the Modesto area. Which is where CDs came into the picture, with the internets limitless music abundance, all of the great tracks that couldn't be found on vinyl in the area could be burned to a cd, thus CD players were made part of the gig rack. After getting a laptop years later, the idea of eliminating cds and keeping the digital audio digital became a reality.

By plugging in a MIDI controller to the laptop and running Native Instruments Traktor 3, DJ ! was able to fully control his djing with hardware controlling software.The portability, ease of setup and low overhead made the laptop a key choice in DJ !'s style. Also since now he is a Mashup oriented DJ, all of the music in his genre is ONLY available online.

After reading about Wiimote hacking, DJ ! decided to try some of it himself. After getting the Wiimote to work as a mouse, he booted up Traktor and began playing around with the Wiimote mixing songs on the program. It was upon realizing that it was indeed possible, as it was fun, he began to investigate more into making the Wiimote a dj tool. He began to map the buttons on the Wiimote to letters on the keyboard, then mapping those letters to controls in Traktor. The A button would be set press Play, the left/right would be set to bend the pitch, etc etc. He mapped out 2 Wiimotes with different controls and took a step back. Free from wires, free from standing over a laptop or control unit, he was able to mix perfectly with two Wiimotes. This led to being able to move around freely while still retaining full control over the mix. Nudging the beat slightly back in sync while dancing around, adding stutter effects while pretending to shoot a gun, dancing while mixing! Upon realizing the potential the Wiimotes had, he began to practice djing with them and created the website DJ Wiij , a site dedicated to djing with Wiimotes.

Besides creating DJ Wiij, DJ ! has made an award winning mashup album Q-Unit : Greatest Hits in 2005 and is a part of the remix/dj/mashup duo The Silence Xperiment. He is currently working on a new album and working on a new DJ stage show using Wiimotes to control the DJing as well as lights and video.

Most recently DJ ! has formed a hybrid mashup/dj/show/band, "Miyamoto", with Nick Yonan & Todd Peichote. This band invovles 2 laptops, 6 wiimotes, a guitar, keyboard and live video mixing. The premiere show of the band is August 4th 2007 in Hollywood, CA at Safari Sams. For more information check out www.bootiela.com.