I'm back online !

Three months since my last online activity...

I apologize to all my friends and members of the Open Dub Foundation, but I had some personal issues preventing me to be active online. Lot of things happened during this times, the Versionist community has changed to a new platform (loosing some members, and for sure a part of his soul) and a new collaboration website for reggae musician is open and seems to grow fast (ReggaeDubwise.com).

Lot of mails are unread in my inbox, so it's gonna took time to answer to each people that had send me a message during this time, please let me 1 or 2 week to answer to everyones.

There is to a lot of stuff to do with the records and the Open Dub Foundation :
- Replace all bad link from the old Versionist platform
- Select tracks and publish the new ODF compilation
- Publish new ODF projects
- Publish a tutorial for the Open Dub Virtual Conference
- Organize next Open Dub Virtual Conference
- Mix new riddims and start production on the Almighty Dub Records

So I'm actually starting some of this tasks, and reconnecting with friends and the online reggae-dub community.

Thanks to all friends for them support during theses hard times !

Riddim Community ?

Since 2002 I'm an active member of the Versionist website, at begin I was only sending my tracks but since 1 or 2 years I'm too an active user of the forum. Using this website I had met virtually a lot of fantastic reggae-dub producer from around the whole world, and the Murcia gathering was the ultimate experience for me.

The history of Versionist is really complicated cause the website was owned by different people. At the begin, the creator of Versionist was a musician and a pure reggae lover that was happy to give to worldwide reggae musician a nice platform to exchange music, ideas, ...

Today it's a bit different, Versionist was bought by someone that enjoy reggae music but that don't want only host the website for the community, he do that too for commercial purpose cause he had bought and invested money in the Versionist website. The owner isn't active inside the community making a separation between him and the members.

This wasn't a problem until the website was running with same features, but today the website is moving to an other platform, fortunately the owner asked to members what they think about different possible platform, and some constructive debate occured to find best platform.

Now the community start splitting, cause it's seems that the Versionist website going to contain some paying service to enable member host track and use bandwidth. The main power of the old platform was to enable anyone to upload full song without restriction, and some members (including me) don't want to loose that.

Due to this difference of opinion, I first made a demo website to show to all that the community can run himself the platform, and few days ago my friend Irish Moss started a new community called Reggae Dubwise to give members the choice.

Both community are based on the same platform with some minor technical difference, but the main difference come from a philosophical point of view (way of managing/owning the community) and the way both websites going to earn money.

So where is my family ?
I don't want to loose friends/relationships during this migration ...

I think lot of members from Versionist would agree with Irish Moss and let it run the community the way he build Reggae Dubwise, but the fact is that it's impossible for us (the community) to buy the domain name due to his expensive price.

Seems we need to be ready to change our community name, and Irish Moss's Reggae Dubwise initiative sounds good to me (nuff respect to him for this fantastic initiative, he had spend time and money to start this really powerful website).

By the way both websites can run in parallel, concurrence is good in industry, hope it's going to be the case for online community.

Thinking about gathering, I just ask myself why we call them using a website name ... why not calling them 'Online Reggae Dub Community Gathering' (or another name that don't rely to any organization/website), going to be simpler for everyone, and as far as I know the online reggae dub community isn't split we are all sharing same interests.

ODVC 20080302

The last virtual conference was a total success, thanks to all who have participate, with a duration of approximately 45min the show had run without network failure, thanks to NetroMedia free broadcast service for that.

Next one is planned 6 April at 7pm (GMT) and as requested by a listener, I will try to do a little workshop after the show to explain how I use my controller and how the controller is linked to the PC software.

The conference was recorded, I just finished upload materials on youtube, enjoy:
ODVC_20080302 #01 - Endless Fighting Dub
ODVC_20080302 #02 - Tolerance Dub
ODVC_20080302 #03 - Unfreeze Dub
ODVC_20080302 #04 - Opening Connection Dub
ODVC_20080302 #05 - Drum Song Dub
ODVC_20080302 #06 - Murcianists Dub

Don't know exactly how many people was attending to the conference (cause I now use a dedicated server, not streaming to everyone directly with my PC, not enough bandwidth for that), but I estimate near 10 users based on feedback I got, don't hesitate to join us for the next one.



I'm gonna made a tutorial to explain how to stream from PC and run virtual conference, hope Don Fe will be able to do a session for the next one.

Conference managment running

I've just spend theses last days coding a whole infrastructure to let ODF members managing virtual conference online.

Registered users can now:
- Edit his availability schedule
- View others availability schedule
- Edit his streaming URL and active it when broadcasting

Anybody visiting the foundation website can now view and listen in live the active open dub virtual conference (if one running of course), join the chat room and talk with everyone else viewing/running the virtual conference.

A first public ODVC is planned this Sunday at 7pm (GMT) more info in the dedicated section:
http://open.reggae-dub.com/odvc

Next to all theses improvements, a new project was added to the foundation; 'Murcianists' is dedicated to all people that made the Murcia gathering possible, don't hesitate to download it and make your own version !

Murcia Versionist Gathering

I just arrived in Switzerland yesterday after had spend some times with versionist bredrens.

This gathering was a fantastic opportunity to meet versionist members, and to share musical knowledge together. We spend first days jamming together, doing irations and enjoying the nice place where we was staying together.

Then Saturday was the day of the show, an amazing show, the venues was full of spanish reggae-dub-head ready to shake their body and enjoy good music.

Many thanks to Don Fe for his big investment and the great organization !

The show was really good, sound system by I-Rebel and the VISS German crew, Luciano with El Bib doing some roots tunes, then we had the pleasure to enjoy The Manor with YaBass doing some toasting peformance on pure dubwise tune... and finally a really impressive show from 'Zacheous Jackson with Dubheart' (one of best show I ever seen, just after Burning Spear's one).

Inside the 'Versionist Mansion':

You can find more info on the Murcia Versionist Gathering thread.

ODVC 20080131

Here is a video shot from the open dub virtual conference done yesterday, special thanks to KayaGardens (Thomas) to have made test with me.

Was able to do a session with 4 clients (has done first test with 3) at same time without so much lag, but need to do a compromise between image quality/fluidity/sound. Using broadcasting technology, number of clients limit is high.

I privileged fluidity and sound, during session I recorded a full track, here is the result, quality is exactly same as if you was watching the conference in live.

This was done as a try out to test technology for streaming, was able to use VLC but without a stream compatible with an other player than VLC, so I used the Windows Media Encoder.

Recorded at home, I haven't Internet access at studio, so the mix is done using digital stuff (MIDI interface controlling PC), doesn't sound same as mixing in studio !

Next step is to build a good infrastructure on ODF to make able anybody join the conference, and give possibility to member to start their own.

New contents for the foundation

I uploaded yesterday a new project on the Open Dub Foundation, this project is based on the 'Drum Song' riddim used to record vocal from 'The Gladiators' some time ago.
Feel free to download the project and do a remix !

I still working on the Open Dub Conference project, actually trying to write a license to avoid any issue while organizing 'real' conference, and building a whole infrastructure to easily start running virtual ones.

Hope to be able to run weekly conference soon, first with only one dubmaster (at same time) streaming his performance to other, and then perhaps start doing live collaboration.