DJ Hardy

First things first, I’ll be DJing at the Frost Winter Electronic Music Festival along with Steve Aoki, Infected Mushroom, Ecotek and Marty Party on January 28th at the Royal Oak Music Theater! Check out the flyer below and get your tickets here.  It’s general admission, so be sure to get there ASAP.

Now, on to some tax talk.

If you are like most DJs, you will be filing taxes as a Sole Proprietor – A sole proprietor is someone who owns an unincorporated business by himself or herself. First question you may ask is why pay taxes if you are getting paid under the table? Because it’s the right thing to do! If that doesn’t convince you, then consider the fact that no legitimate bank will give you a mortgage to buy a house or a significant auto loan to buy a car unless the tax returns you have been filing show your income to be high enough. Another reason to pay taxes on your income is to contribute to your social security account.

Having said that, here are some tips:

You will need a 1040 form with a schedule C (business profit/loss worksheet) to file your taxes. These forms can be downloaded from the IRS website. Make sure you save all your invoices, contracts, and receipts for big purchases and expenses. My suggestion is to get a credit card with 0% (or the lowest available) interest rate and no annual fees so you can use it for all your purchases. That will make it significantly easier to track all your transactions.

Revenue

-All incoming income from every gig you did this year. Remember…checks are easy to trace with the help of your bank. You should maintain a log of cash payments received in a spreadsheet or sign up for a free account with http://mint.com (highly recommended personal finance management tool)
-Cash from sales of old equipment, rentals, etc.

Expenses
-All expenses for equipment and related items (your digital camera is a legitimate business expense if you use it for gigs). You can itemize most of these things in one year or over a period of up to five years. [See below for more info on depreciation.]
-Part of your rent/mortgage payments proportionate to the percentage of your square footage that is used strictly for DJ-related business. (home studio/office space)
-Part of your cell phone bill if that is used to conduct DJ-related business.
-Your mileage to/from the gigs, and parking fees.
-A percentage of your car payments for the car that is used to conduct your DJ business
-Food/Beverage expenses during your gigs and meetings with potential clients.
-Training/Networking expo fees. (NC&B, Mobile Expo, NAMM, etc.)
-Equipment rentals
-Marketing: Website domain and hosting, Business cards, banners, Google/facebook ads
-Record pool dues, iTunes purchases, etc.

Depreciation

Depreciation when it comes to taxes/accounting is not the same as depreciation of monetary value on something like your car. Here is a good link explaining how to calculate depreciation on your purchases: http://biztaxlaw.about.com/od/depreciation101/f/calculatedeprec.htm I like to deduct major purchases like speakers, turntables, mixers, laptops, etc. over 3-5 years when doing my taxes. Stuff like headphones, needles, cds, dvds, vinyl, etc. are things you replace/buy almost every year and so it may be more suitable to claim the full depreciation for these items in a single year. There are benefits to this, depending on your specific situation.

These are the few things I’ve learned over the years while filing as a sole proprietor who also has another career with a steady paycheck. If you have specific questions, be sure to post them in the comments below and I will answer to the best of my ability. I highly suggest using a reputable company like H&R Block or an e-file application to do your taxes. Electronic transfers will mean faster returns.

I’ve been meaning to post new music for a while now, but just haven’t had the time. I’m in the middle of a busy stretch of 6 Halloween shows in a 5-day span, which is very exciting and exhausting at the same time. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and if you get a chance be sure to catch me at Necto this Thursday/Saturday or at The Hills Bar on Friday! One of the Halloween gigs was a private club party last night for the Greek students at University of Michigan. I recorded my set and here it is for your listening pleasure:

DJ Hardy – House/Electro/Dance – October 27th, 2010

Speaking of Halloween, here are 3 of my edits for your spooky sets this weekend:

Psycho Theme

Exorcist Theme

Dr Funkenstein

And I would like to invite you to my birthday celebration on November 20th at Necto Nightclub with me and DJ Bandoma (Orange County, CA) on the tables! This night is going to have great music and even better people!

New Club Mix

This is my early night set from last Thurday’s Labor-Day Weekend White Party. A little different than everything else I’ve been putting out lately, but I love indie/dance music. Keep an open mind and enjoy some music you most-likely haven’t heard before, but are gonna want to hear again. I haven’t had the time to put a track list together, but some of the artists on this include:

Treasure Fingers
Justice
Kelis
Three Six Mafia
Surkin
French Horn Rebellion
Miike Snow
FM
Kid Cudi
Shabba Ranks
Lil jon
Honorebel
Earth Wind and Fire

Check it out here:

Necto – September 2, 2010

The flyer pretty much says it all, but I do hope to see a lot of you at this show! I believe the tickets will be on sale this Friday, but only 300 are left due to the overflow from last week’s sold-out Aoki show.

DJ Hardy + Steve Aoki - October 5th, 2010

In case you have any doubts, this is what went down last week:

Steve Aoki at Necto Nightclub in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 3) from dj hardy on Vimeo.

New Club Edits

Hyper Crush – Ayo (DJ Hardy Edit)

Hyper Crush – Ayo (DJ Hardy Hype Edit)

Hyper Crush- Ayo (DJ Godfather Remix – DJ Hardy Edit)

Stromae – Alors On Danse (DJ Hardy x Alvaro Bootleg)

Kelis – Scream (DJ Hardy x LA Riots Bootleg)

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – Garden

I had the pleasure of attending a Steve Aoki show last night at Necto Nightclub, my weekly Thurs/Saturday night residency. Aoki put on a great show as expected and I was able to capture a few clips:

Steve Aoki at Necto Nightclub in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 3) from dj hardy on Vimeo.

Steve Aoki at Necto Nightclub in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 2) from dj hardy on Vimeo.

Steve Aoki at Necto Nightclub in Ann Arbor, Michigan from dj hardy on Vimeo.

I highly recommend going to one of his shows if you ever get a chance. Lots of energy, crowd-participation and some exclusive music you won’t hear anywhere else!

UPDATE: Please use the donate button below and a copy of the template will be sent to you.

If you are like most people, you were a little disappointed with the features – or a lack thereof – with the new iPad that was released earlier this month. I felt the same way, and didn’t give any serious consideration to buying it. However, once I realized the potential of using the iPad as a touch-screen MIDI controller, I decided to try one out. So I picked one out about 3 weeks ago and within 3 days I had an app called ‘TouchOSC’ running as my main MIDI controller for Scratch Live. Here are the screen shots of 3 pages I’m using:

First image includes 5 cue points, 5 auto-loops, 2 loop-rolls, a ‘jump-to-loop’, instant double, and load button for each side. The middle includes library browsing and a button to add track selections to your prepare list. I picked these features and design to fit my needs. Its safe to say this will be different from one person to the next, because we all have our unique preferences for features within Scratch Live.

The second image includes options to control any 6 audio effects available in Scratch Live. Everything here is pretty self-explanatory. On a some-what unrelated note, the audio effects are synced with the effects in VSL in 2.0! Pretty awesome.

Similar to the image above this, I assigned the controls on the 3rd page to select video effects and transitions. I also assigned the faders for video control.

Here’s a brief video of me using the iPad to control Scratch Live:

Here’s a brief tutorial about how to set-up this up on your iPad – or iPhone/iPod Touch if you choose:

1. Download an application called ‘TouchOSC’ on your device. ($4.99)

2. Download the TouchOSC Editor – touchosc-editor-1.2-osx.zip

3. Download my template for TouchOSC (for the iPad only) – http://iknowhardy.com/Share/DJHARDY-SERATO.touchosc

4. Open that template in TouchOSC Editor, and sync it to your iPad. To do this:

-Select the ‘Sync’ button in TouchOSC Editor

-Open TouchOSC and go to the Layout menu

-Under Add, you will see TouchOSC Editor listed as a host.

-Select this and and your new layout will be available in TouchOSC

5. Download an application called Osculator on your computer: http://www.osculator.net/download/

This is the app that converts the signal sent by TouchOSC (Open Sound Control) into a MIDI signal. Keep in mind that Osculator is shareware, but unless you donate the minimum of $19 (I suggest the full $39), you will get a pop-up message every few minutes asking you to donate and when this happens, there is no signal being sent to Scratch LIve. So…make sure you donate at least $19 and you will get an activation code.

6. Use my template for Osculator to save yourself some trouble: Serato-DJHARDY (Right-click, save to your desktop  and open the file in Osculator). You will need to have this file open every time for Serato to recognize commands from your iPad.

7. Open Scratch Live and make a new MIDI template. Assign these controls as you would with any MIDI controller.

If you have any questions, please post in the comments section below so the answers will be visible to anyone else with the same questions.

And on a barely related note, here’s a little video about ‘ToneTable’, an application for iPhone/iPod Touch being developed by Inklen. It will be available for the iPad in the near future!

-Hardy

Are you a person who is exposed to loud music or loud noise? If you are, this may be of interest to you.

I’ve averaged anywhere from 100-170 shows per year since I started DJing professionally. At each show, I’m exposed to loud music for three to five hours. Even if you are not a working DJ or musician, you are subjected to damaging loud noise in day-to-day life. Simple tasks such as vacuuming your house, trimming your lawn or operating a laundry washer/dryer are traumatic enough to cause hearing damage.

There are two main types of non-genetic hearing loss – conductive and sensorineural – that can occur in individuals. In most cases, it is not reversible. There are exceptions to this rule, especially if there are timely measure taken by an Otolaryngologist. But just like many other health issues, prevention is more effective than any treatment when it comes to hearing loss amongst adults.

I recently had an audiogram done by a professional audiologist at the University of Michigan Audiology department. It’s usually a pain-free and short appointment where your hearing is tested in a sound-proof booth at various frequencies. Many places will also include a word-recognition test to along with a regular hearing test that includes various frequencies. I was fortunate that even after all this exposure, my hearing is relatively intact. Here is a snapshot of my results, so you can see what your results should look like:

The next step for me was to ensure that I don’t allow my ears to suffer any more damage. So I chose to purchase a pair of custom-fit musician ear plugs. These ear plugs use different frequencies (-9, -15, -21 and -25 db are some of the options available) to restrict the amount of sound that reaches your ears. They are made from an impression/mold of your ear, which is usually taken by an audiologist. A pair of these plugs will typically cost you about $150, but that price may vary depending on the type of products you choose. And the visit to audiologist may or may not be included as a part of the cost, depending on the clinic where you purchase these plugs.

Here is a picture of the impression (in my ear!), the ear-plug itself, and the filters you attach to the plugs:

I’d like to note that you can have a pretty normal conversation with people even with these plugs in your ears. I used a pair for about a year and half until I somehow managed to lose one of the plugs last April. They feel really comfortable since they are designed to fit the exact shape of your ear.

I hope that this information was helpful to you guys. If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments or contact me directly.

Have a great weekend!

-Hardy

Join me for Paparazzi- and Mardi Gras-themed parties at Necto Nightclub!!!

Thanks for checking out my site. Have a look around the website and be sure to download my live mixes.