Welcome to this week’s IAAO email.

When I first opened IAAO I had these massive visions of grandeur. The plan was to open multiple sites covering various genres of music. The first one of course was oldskool, dedicated to the rave scene and slightly beyond and to a certain degree, real oldskool stuff from the 80’s etc. The second being Trance, which as you know is now open (www.its-all-about-trance.com for those that aren’t sure) which covers Trance and progressive old and new. Then in time I was going to start opening others dedicated to House, Techno and who knows what else, the possibilities were endless really.

I mentioned late last year that the domain had been bought for the House site and that it would make its big debut sometime in the first half of 2011. After much consideration on my part and to a degree some folks I was having a quick chat too last week, I have decided to shelve the plan for the House site and to shelve any plans I had for the others I was thinking of.

Running two sites is not a massive job (I have good help and Oldskool runs itself without any messing around really) it’s pretty straight forward to do upgrades and add mods or styles to the site. These don’t really take up much time, a couple of hours at most when an upgrade is released. But during a conversation with someone last week, we were in agreement that running a site doesn’t take up too much time, what does take up your time is being part of the site and being a member just like everyone else. There are sites out there where the owners hardly ever get down and dirty with the members and instead choose to sit on their thrones watching the world go by. I could never be like that as I would feel I’d be missing out on what makes a site great, and that’s interaction with the members and joining in on the laughs and banter everyone has.

So running Oldskool and to a certain degree Trance (It’s mainly for the passion of that style of music) takes up a lot of time, so for me to open up more sites would be quite silly. To be honest, House isn’t something I’m passionate about and Techno is the same. What would be the point of owning a site you have no real interest in other than showing that you have a collection of web sites that you own? That’s all it would be really. I don’t think it would be fair to the future members of House and Techno because in a way I would be like one of those owners who sit on a thrown and watches over it.

So for those that were looking forward to the House site and the Techno site, I’m sorry for letting you down, but it would just not be worth doing it. I can tell you that I have no plans to add any kind of House section to Oldskool or any kind of Techno section either to compensate for not opening separate sites.

As for my passion of Oldskool, well, that will be covered in next week’s email.

A few of you are aware that I’ve been playing around with Ableton Live this week and I decided to purchase the full programme. As some of you know I like to do megamixes (like Jive Bunny) and the software I was using to do this just wasn’t giving me the tight enough results I craved (although the ones I have done are very good if I do say so myself) so I tried Ableton as I know a few big name DJ’s use this for cutting up tracks, remixing and producing mash-up’s with fantastic results.

My first impressions of the programme are positive ones (I tried it a few years ago and give up at the first hurdle) but it is very complicated, although anything is if you haven’t used it before. So I have been following the lessons to the wire and getting use to the programme and what it can do. During the trial I did learn how to warp a track on my own, which was quite a eureka moment I must say. Anyway, I have bumped the old Ableton thread I started last year which you can find here: Ableton

Another member has decided to take the plunge and start their own Blog. Euphoria has written his first one and you can find it here: New year, New start? doubtful...... - Blogs - Its All About Oldskool Forum

Are you still buying Vinyl? If so, let us know what you have recently purchased here: Recently Purchased Vinyl Thread

Are you buying MP3’s? if so, let us know you recent purchases here: Recently Purchased MP3s Thread

Have you seen any insane films recently? Or are you into the more obscure and extreme cinema? Then join in this thread: http://www.its-all-about-oldskool.co...ane-films-864/

Have a great week,

China