Norwescon 46 Thursday Dance: Fandom Mash with DJ Wüdi

It’s the Thursday night dance! On our first evening venturing Into the Wylde, who knows what manner of fantastical beings we will encounter… or we will be? Mix-and-match from whatever outfits you brought for the weekend to create mashup costumes, or wear something to represent your fandom(s), and come down and dance to a mix of dance tracks across eras, convention favorites, and all manner of mashups and oddities, all brought to you by DJ Wüdi!

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Year 50 Day 207

Screenshot of my DJ broadcast stream. I'm in the center, wearing headphones and looking up. Behind my head is an audio waveform; to either side of my head are album covers as if they were on physical turntables. A green border near the edges of the frame includes my DJ Wüdi name and my social media addresses (djwudi on Twitch, Mixcloud, and Facebook). Behind me is a sci-fi cityscape. Text on the lower part of the screen says 'Difficult Listening Hour 2023.11.25 Who knows? No plan. Just getting back in practice. Now playing: The Chemical Brothers: Where Do I Begin (Copycat)'.

Day 207: In a few months I’ll again be DJing the Thursday night dance at Norwescon 46, so to make sure I’m not entirely rusty when I set up that evening, it’s time for me to start practicing again. Whenever I do this, I broadcast to Twitch, and so this is what I look like when I’m streaming. Obviously, it’s very serious business.

I’m actually rather proud of the look I came up with some time ago, after a few rounds of tweaking and playing with ideas.

The “turntables” to either side of my head display the art for whatever track is playing (and they rotate as if they were physical turntables), and the audio waveforms behind my head are the waveforms of the playing tracks; deck A (the left side) on the top, and deck B below. Those elements are all pulled from the UI of DJay Pro, the DJ software I use.

The sci-fi cityscape behind me is actually a video clip. I have a small library of interesting looping video backgrounds that I can choose from.

The text in the bottom third is pulled from a text file that I keep open on my screen; as I’m mixing, I take a quick moment to update the text file with the name of whatever track I’m playing at the moment. I think there are ways to automatically pull that info from DJay, but I’ve never quite liked the look of the ones I’ve seen, and this works for me.

The caricature of me on the lower right was drawn for me a number of years ago by Sharii Chankhamma. In the original, I’m wearing an “NSFW” t-shirt; for streaming, I’ve created a small library of shirt designs that randomly update every 15 seconds.

Today’s mix is now available on my Mixcloud page if you’d like to give it a listen, along with many, many hours of other mixes I’ve uploaded in the past. And more will come — I may not do this every week, but I will need to make sure to get some more practice in over the coming months, so I’ll be popping up from time to time.

Why Don’t You Get A Job-La-Di, Cecilia? (Simon & Garfunkel vs. The Beatles vs. The Offspring)

This is one I’ve had bouncing around in my head for years, knowing it was ridiculous, but all three songs are so similar that I had to give it a shot. Now you get to suffer too! ;)

Download: DJ Wüdi – Why Don’t You Get A Job-La-Di, Cecilia? (2.7 MB .mp3)

Highline College 2023 Student Employee of the Year Celebration

Pre- and post-ceremony background music for the 2023 Student Employee of the Year celebration at Highline College. Much poppier than my usual style, heavily (and welcomely) influenced by suggestions provided to me beforehand by the organizing committee. Thanks to the SEotY committee for inviting me to help with the event!

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