male presenter: i want to welcomerana june today to google new york. rana is known as the ipad dj. but we invited her here today becauseher stories are so much deeper than that. she started off as a developer and through good decisions and risks she's kind of evolved intoher current role as an ipad dj. she played ted a few nights ago so we just thought it was a greatmatch to get out the geek crowd and have her come downand talk at google.
so without further ado, rana june. rana june: thank you. it's such a pleasure to be heretalking to you guys because lately i play a lot of shows where, it's like in a nightclub or whatever. but really my roots are more onthe analytics and engineering side. and, and, so i just want to tell youa little bit about who i am and i guess why i'm the ipad djand maybe a professional dj isn't. so i grew up in virginia andsteve case was my neighbor.
so i've been using kind of this newgeneration of web if you will for, for my whole life. and my school, elementary schoolactually beta tested aim. it was like really cool to seehow that whole community now, the dc area is really, has created a lotof the products that we use nowadays. but i thought thati wanted to go into politics. and i went down that path and i actually worked doing political lobbyingand grass roots stuff for a couple years. and i realized very quicklythat that's not for me.
but if you could take those same principlesof getting communities together and communications and really just gatheringpeople who are like-minded together, if you applied that to business, you could call that communications; and suddenly now people aren'tso mad at you. [laughs] and so i decided to kindof shift roles a little bit. and so i, i started a couple companies and i realized that there was this amazingopportunity to help entrepreneurs in the dc area learn how to take their products to market.
because there's all the aollayoffs were happening and there were all these brilliantengineers running around with like 50,000 dollars in severanceand they all had ideas for start-ups. and this was in the early 2000's. and so people, they just didn't know how to, how to take those ideas and help otherpeople understand what they were building. and i, i started this company and i got like five clients in three weeksor something like that. and a few weeks later,
i basically got acquired[laughs] and so that was reallyshort-lived endeavor for me. but i got a talent acquisition kind of thingwith a venture fund in new york, in dc i mean. and so what happened was i was forcedto think about all these different verticals. i was thrust into learning how totake all those messages to market. and it was 13 different companiesoperating under a keiretsu model. so each company within our fund was basicallythere to help support the other companies. and i mean, i'm sitting here like,oh, my god. i know nothing about telecomm.
i know nothing about infrastructure. i know nothing about any of these things. but i had to learn. so a few years later, fast forward to 2007and the iphone comes out. and i am geeking out beyond belief because i was like this is a--this is a huge paradigm shift and i was really excited about it and none of mycolleagues were really sharing that enthusiasm. except for one of my partnersand we were both kind of, we had ja+ilbroken in our phones
and we realized there was this wholedevelopment community forming and that there was a great opportunity to builda company around what was happening there; so this kind of like justan idea or whatever. but then in, on june 1st, 2008,we actually created the company. we decided to leave the fundand start this business and 41 days later,we'd actually built the product. so on day one of the app stores launch,we had a product in the market. and so i have data from day one aboutapplication usage, patterns, behaviors, all that stuff.
and again, comingfrom an analytical background, it's kind of the way my brain works, i started to really understand how people were gonna start incorporatingthese devices into their daily lives. and this is the first iteration;at that point, it was the 3g. but the 2nd version of the phoneso it was very early on; so fast forward now a 1000 days later. we have 10 billion application downloads. so it's amazing to seehow quickly this has all changed.
but that book that's on your,on your chairs right now i decided last year to write a bookabout the first 500 days of the and kind of look back and seewhat had happened prior to that in terms of other people's attemptsto reach the mobile consumer and sort of where those things had,had fallen short. and then also what apple had done well and tell stories of different developers andformer apple employees and all of that. so, i don't know if any of you guys know aboutwhat the process for writing a book is. but you submit it.
you work really hard and then you submit it and then you have to just basically sit aroundand wait and that's really boring. [laughs] so my background as a musicianis actually, it's-- it's not that new. i was sort of playing musicwhen i was six and i played piano, violin. viola was my main instrumentand i was pretty good at viola. and i picked up guitar at age 15. and i also learned aboutcomputer recording at 15 around the same time that i startedto get into electronic music. so it was a really amazingpoint of intersection there.
and so here i was,i was in college. and i was pretending to listen to lectures but really i was making beats on mymath book or power book at the time. and so when i built my career in business, i'd always had a studio in my house but it just never had an opportunity tobecome something that i actually pursued. and so i turned the book in and i thought, well, i have a few months nowwhere i don't really have much going on. so why don't i just go to guitar centerand just buy a bunch of gear
and just get myself back up to speedwith what's going on in this space? and so i went and i spent like 4000 bucksbuying midi-controllers and ableton, logic; got all the tools, all the plug-ins. and i sat down at my computer and i was likewhat am i going to do with all this stuff? it was really overwhelming just becauseyou have so many possibilities and it's just, it can be a little bit cumbersome. so that was really interesting time because i had those little experimentsa week before the launch of the ipad. so i was already kind of thinkingabout music and how to,
how to take these new paradigmsand incorporate them. and i was looking at things like the lemurwhich is a touch screen controller and there were some really amazing thingshappening with iphones controlling laptops. and so when i was sitting in line,i actually, i live close by. i went to the meat packing districtapple store at 2:00 in the morning because [laughs] why not? so i'm sitting there andthere's nobody else in line. and i guess something just clickedand i realized, oh my god. i can fuse what i know about mobile.
and i can fuse what i know about music. and maybe there's something i can do inthe middle of those two passions of mine?" so i raced home and the reason that i havetwo ipads is actually also a funny story. i had preordered my ipad and allof my friends on twitter were like, "steve wozniak's in line with us". "everything's awesome."'"everyone's in line." and i thought, "'damn it.i'm missing out. i gotta go." so i like actually leapt outof bed and went to sit in line. so [laughs] now i had two ipads, right?
so i get home and i start kindof messing around with them. and i just, i discoverthat there were, there were some really incredibleinstruments that had been built that were specifically around the--the notion of using a touch interface. and the problem that i facedat the time was that i was using beta software ormaybe even alpha software. all these apps had not been testedon the actual device yet because the developers at the timedidn't have, didn't have the access to, to the ipad to test on.
so i had the buggiest, worst experience and that'swhy i incorporated the dj mixer. it wasn't originally my intention. i actually just wanted to have two tablets. and then i realized that this was actuallya real hindrance to my ability to perform. so this is how, this is the genesisof this set up. and to give you a little bit of colorinto what's happened since then, i made a video and put it up on youtube andgot almost a million views in two weeks. so suddenly, this girlwho's like a data geek
is now the face of touch screenmobile music making. and i had to again learn very quicklyhow to incorporate all the-- all of my background and then also keep pushingthe boundaries of what's possible with, with just two touch screen interfacesand no computer as you can see. i'm not; this is the processingpower that i have. so these are my kids,alpha and beta. [laughs] and i hope with ipad 2 i don'thave the same problems but i, i basically figured out a way to hack a versionof ableton live which is very popular,
it's called a 'da'. but in music, it's like an interface fora lot dj's use it for live performance. and so what i've done is i've created, like the set i'm going to play for youprobably took me about 30 hours to make. it's not an easy process. when i play shows that are 3 hours long, it takes me weeks and monthsto make the sets because everything is done by handand it's, it's frustrating. but i think that at this point,
i've played 90 shows since last april for over 100,000 people andevery day i learn something new. and again, coming backto the beginning of the talk. i mean i'm so excited to sit with you guys because i really feel like everyonein this room can help me think about what the future of this is. because i think about this in the context of, 'yeah, it's great. i'm making music on an ipad.
but what does it really mean?' well, when i was a child, playing music was my favoritepart of the day. and my niece is 12. and she doesn't havea music program in her school. so what if with a tablet, a child can learn a chord progression on a piano. or they can learn rhythmor they can learn music theory. so if you can, if you can take this out beyondjust the fact that i'm an ipad dj which i didn't even name myself that.
i was actually given that name so it stuck. but i kind of, i really think it's biggerthan just playing dance music. and so i'm going to play a short setfor you guys. and then afterwards feel freeto ask me questions. and it's just really a pleasure to be here. thank you. [applause] male presenter: in about, i don't knowfive or six minutes into the set, if anyone wants to just queue up over here,
and we can kind of walk people overhere a little bit and escort them off, and get another group. for anyone who wants to get a closer look. [music fades up] [music gets louder] ♪ reached the city steps tonight, ♪ ♪ following the power lines, power lines, ♪ ♪ met a man bar side, ♪ ♪ with eclipses for eyes. ♪ and you tell yourself, you don't let them touch.
did i say too much? did i say enough? i don't know silvia,i don't know, silvia. ♪ [music] reached the city steps tonight. following the power lines, met a man bar side with eclipses for eyes. and you tell yourselfyou won't let them touch.
i don't know. silvia. silvia. -via, -via, -via, -via [rhythmic music] tell me lies. ♪ [rhythmic music] ah, ah, ah, ah, ooo,ooo,ooo ah, ah, ah, ah, ooo,ooo,ooo "we can fight our desires, ooo, ooo
but when we start making fires we get ever so hot ooo, ooo whether we like it or not they say we can love who we trust, ooo, ooo but what is love without lust? two hearts and accurate devotion, ooo, ooo what are feelings without emotion? i'm goin' in for the kill, i'm doin' it for a thrill, i'm hopin' you'll understand
and not let go of my hand. and not let go of my hand." i hang my hopes out on the line will they be ready for you in time? if you leave them out too long, ooo, ooo they'll be withered by the sun. full stops and exclamation marks, ooo, ooo, my words stumble before i start. how far can you send emotions?
ooo, ooo. can this bridge cross the ocean? we can fight our desires ooo, ooo when we start making fires we get ever so hot ooo, ooo whether we like it or not. they say we can love who we trust ooo, ooo oh, what is love without lust? two hearts and accurate devotion ooo, ooo
what are feelings without emotions? i'm goin' in for the kill, i'm doin' it for a thrill, oh, i'm hopin' you'll understand i'm goin' in for the kill, i'm doin' it for a thrill, ♪ [music] oh i'm hopin' you'll understand ♪ and not let go of my hand. ♪ ['hand' reverberates 50 times]
♪ i need another story ♪ ♪ something to get off my chest ♪ ♪ my life gets kinda boring, boring ♪ ♪ need something that i can confess ♪ ♪ 'til all my sleeves are stained red. ♪ ♪ from all the truth that i've said, ♪ ♪ come by it honestly i swear. ♪ ♪ thought you saw me wink, no i've been on the brink, so ♪ ♪ tell me what you want to hear ♪
♪ something that were like those years ♪ ♪ i'm sick of all the insincere ♪ ♪ so i'm gonna give my secrets away. ♪ ♪ this time don't need another perfect line, ♪ ♪ don't care if critics ever jump in line ♪ ♪ i'm gonna give all my secrets away. ♪ [music crescendo] ♪ my god, amazing that we got this far ♪ ♪ it's like we're chasing all those stars ♪
♪ who's driving shiny big black cars? ♪ ♪ and every day i see the news,all the problems we could solve ♪ ♪ and when a situation arises,just write it into an album. ♪ ♪ seen it straight to go ♪ ♪ but i don't really like my flow, no, so ♪ ♪ tell me what you want to hear, ♪ ♪ something that were like those years. ♪ ♪ so i'm going to give all my secrets away. ♪ ♪ this time don't need another perfect line. ♪
♪ i'm gonna give all my secrets away ♪ ♪ ooh, ♪ [music] ♪ tell me what you want to hear. ♪ ♪ tell me what you want to hear. ♪ ♪ tell me what you want ♪ ♪ tell me what you ♪ [music] ♪ what's the worst thingthat could happen to you? ♪
♪ take a chance tonightand try something new. ♪ ♪ you're getting boring. ♪ ♪ you're all so boring. ♪ ♪ and i don't recognizethe zombie you've turned into. ♪ ♪ don't worry 'cause tonight i got you. ♪ ♪ you can take a seat like you normally do. ♪ ♪ i'm about to let you see ♪ ♪ this is what'll happenif you ain't giving your girl what she needs. ♪ ["needs" repeat]
[music changes to techno beat] male presenter: awesome. so before i forget, i definitely wantto thank the great google sound crew for helping put all this together. [applause] thanks to kate clouston for helpingput all this together as well. so, i don't know if you want to talka little bit more or take some questions. rana june: sure male presenter: we definitelyhave time for some questions.
rana june: awesome. well again, i mean, i'll be the firstto say that this wasn't perfect. it has problems but it's entertaining as hell. so i think that's one of the thingsthat's really important to me as a musician and kind of, i'm veering more into the--the artist's realm now than in the analytic space just nowadays. and one thing that is really important to me iswhen i see my favorite electronic musicians, i'm like 'dude are you checkingyour e-mail right now or are you playing music right nowbecause i can't really tell
and i think this really injects a lot of creativity and an audio andvisual connection with an audience. so i'm sure you guys can imagine likewhen i play for 5 or 6,000 people, it's crazy. because i can like bring people up on stageand i can swing the ipads around. i can, you've never seena dj pick up a turntable. so this is definitely, it's just, it's forcing people to thinkabout electronic music in a different way because one of the things that makeselectronics so interesting for composers is that you have unlimitedprocessing power, right?
like the human mind can't doas much as a computer can. but what you lose is that nowyou have a machine, right? but if you have an organic touch manipulatingsound that's processed by a computer, that's super exciting. especially for someone like me and--and so i really hope this is the beginning. and it hasn't even been a yearthat i've been doing this. so i hope when i come back andplay for you guys this time next year, it'll be like crazy. we'll have infrared andwe'll have like all this crazy stuff.
so i really welcome,if you guys have questions, please. like i would love to talk to you guys. come.there's the mic. male #1: do you sell your loops? rana june: oh, that's a great question. so, okay. well, you know, i'm in the companyof friends, right? so here's what happened to me. i started doing this and everyone's like, wtf?
and then they were like, no,that's actually very cool. so i have just been commissionedfor my first two remixes and so i'm really kind of demonstratingwhat i am doing as a producer now a lot more than everand that's really what i am. i'm a producer and dj is not the right word. but people, when you say, ipaddj to anyone,like walking around in times square, they can understand what i'm doing. and so it's really, like from a marketingstandpoint or whatever, it gets me in the door a lot easierthan if i was like,
i'm a producer who uses touch computer.' i don't know, like it doesn't make a lot of sense. my mom understandswhat an ipad dj might be. so i think as i start to doa lot more production work and people know what my sound is, i have a really distinct sound , theni will probably make my own app. because one of the things that's beenreally tough for me and this is; that's why it's a great question. when i started doing this,
i made a decision on day one that i wasn't, even though i could just fire up x codeand write something; it's like i didn't want anyone to saythat i was using the ipad because i was trying to sell something. i really do believe in this platform. i really do believe in what this means. and so i wanted to just removethat level of doubt. so i only use apps that are availablein the app store. when i make my loops, when i do everything,everything's only done on the, on the ipad.
it's all done with readily available software;nothing proprietary. however, as you guys can see,it's kind of clunky for me. i'm making this fit my work flowand not the other way around. and that's not ideal when you're a professionalentertainer or whatever and you're like, oh my god. is my thing gonna crash? so i-- i just, now that so much timehas gone by, i think it might be time for meto start doing that and of course, it will come preloadedwith loops and kind of.
i'll probably do tutorials about how i'vefigured out how to make this work. but that's the beauty of it, right? if i hand this ipad to you with my set, you'll probably figure out a different wayto perform it than i do and that's what's so beautiful about it'cause it's so personal. but i mean it's just, it's, i'm kind of in thisstrange position because people are like, they find it hard to believe that i couldbe the girl on the cover of that book but then also the girl with red hair. i mean, i think you guys probablyget that better than anybody.
i mean you can be creativeand technical at the same time and it actually makes both sides better. does that answer your question? sorry.long answer. male #2: so this is somewhat farfetched; electronic music in the 70's and 80'sespecially in europe. musicians built a lot of their own instruments because they didn't exist andthey didn't do what they wanted. what do you think is missing from theplatform to enable people to do that?
rana june: knobs.[laughter] seriously, i was praying. i was watching the announcementfor ipad 2 and i was like, please be a usb port because if i couldhave some element of hardware control, like this mixer is, you guys see. i don't touch it. it's just here as a redundancy. but i'm a big fan of circuit bending. like i've been, i've been messing with speakand spell since i was a teenager.
that's so fun. and that's the thing. i listen to alltecher. i listen to kraftwerk. i love what those guys do thatis so unique and different and i think the challenge here is thatyou have apple sandbox, right? but if you look in the stk, you'll see there are certain things thatyou should technically be able to do but you will get rejectedif you try and do that.
and i was saying like sevenor eight months ago that there was definitely goingto be garageband on the ipad because it just doesn't make sensefor them not to do it considering what they werewithholding from developers. but what i thought wasvery surprising is that like there are certain hardwaredevelopers and manufacturers that have created these amazing controllers where you can put an iphone inside akeyboard or an ipad inside a keyboard. and now the ipad or the iphoneserves as the brain.
and it's just triggering midior whatever and that's great. it's like moving in the right direction. so when i can have a 49-key workstation and it saves everything to my garagebandsession and i've got eight tracks going. and then i can connect that or sync itwith my logic instance at home and compose something on a planeand finish it at home in the studio. that's really cool. we're just not there yet. and so for me, that's, it's kind of like,oh my god.
i have five billion answersto that question because it's, i mean the most frustrating thingabout this to me is that i know if i'm at home onmy tricked out mac book pro, the thing that i'm trying to dothat is taking me six hours, literally six hours, would take me like 3 1/2 minutes to do. so those kinds of frustrations, i think that's why you're not seeinga lot of ipad dj's out there. because it's really a frustratingexperience to even--
to just do the most rudimentary things and-- but like i said, it's a labor of lovebecause i really do think, once everything catches up withwhat you can do on a laptop, this will be so much more valuablethan that experience will be. male #3: so to follow that up, we might have some android developers hereinterested in what's missing from that. rana june: show yourselves.[laughs] male #3: but outside of thatas a follow-up question to, when you were talking earlierabout your workflow,
getting to watch how you work, it seems like there's almostno real need for the dj mixer. you don't use the dj mixer. you just use it to sum the two outputsmore than anything? rana june: yes. male #3: okay.so everything's happening on the ipads. you don't use the dj mixeras a dj mixer at all. rana june: exactly. however, it's one of those thingswhere it's like life insurance.
you keep paying every monthand you're like, why am i paying for this? health insurance, better example. that's how i feel about it because i didmy thing at ted and oh my god. what just happened? my effects aren't working. i'm touching the chaos pad and it's not doinganything and i'm messing up all my transitions. the audience doesn't know. i know.
i had to just literally be like,'i'm gonna reboot this now. let me just make it looklike i'm doing something'. but that's really sucky. so i'd like to, when i dothe more high pressure shows, i'll just put my, this sounds crazybut i think you guys will understand. like why i do this. i'll have an iphone or somethingor like an ipad touch and i'll just randomly play music at 128beats per minute on a loop, whatever. and i don't even care what it is.
but in the event that i might need,if everything just dies, and i just need something just to be playing, i try to do that when i knowthat there's the potential for that kind of catastrophic failure. but its things like that. i mean my problems are so differentthan other people's problems. like, i'll tell you guys an anecdotethat sucked so bad. i played a huge show for a big client of mineand it was like their holiday party, right? so it was all their advertisingclients were there.
and i mean they had blown it out. it was in l.a. at this huge venue andi'd had a really lovely day. i had gotten a massage that dayand i was just chillin' in l.a. and the 70 degree weathergot to me in december. and i get to my sound check like super late. i normally do my sound check earlyin the day just in case. [laughs] and so i get there andi checked everything else: i checked power, i checked the cables.
i didn't turn my ipads on until like maybe15 minutes before the show started. so i go and load my looptastic. the provisioning license expired. [audience members chuckle] i'm like, oh, my god. so here i am in xcode trying to fix it. i'm calling the developer who's three hoursin different time zone than me. it's like ten minutes, five minutesbefore the show and i'm like, dude you gotta fix this.i'm freaking out.
and it got resolved like a minutebefore the doors opened but i mean these kinds of frustrations youjust don't anticipate and that's the problem. if you could read a book aboutwhat touring musicians experience, none of my challenges are in there. so it -- [laughs]i've learned a lot. it's really tested me. the fact that i am still doing itis insane to be honest. but that's kind of,i just, it's comfortable. i'm familiar and that's the only thingthat i have control over right now
is that i can get this mixer everywhere i go. and so it just helps me understandwhat i'm doing. that's the other thing too. because these are, i try;i practice like five hours a day total. not just physically performingbut making stuff. i treat it like an instrument, right? so i'm constantly importing new songs orwhatever and doing all this stuff with it and like i have six ipads right nowthat are all kind of synched. it's like okay, so there'sa lot of movement there.
the reason that i use the dj m or whatever, a five channel mixer is that like when i doshows that are longer than an hour, i need to have four ipads. and i was explaining earlier likewhen i do three hour shows, sometimes i'll have all six pluggedin ready to go. and then just helps. it just helps. male #4: i have a couple of questions. well, actually one question.
a couple of comments. first of all, i sort of feel likeit's not truly mobile unless you don't have wiresattached to your gadgets. so have you considered bluetoothaudio for your setup? rana june: bluetooth synched right nowwhich is already for me like a huge gamble. i tried; that was the thing. i'm with you. look. i mean i can roll into my gigwith these in my purse.
like that's how mobile it is on that end. but i do have to deal with this. so i think it's one of those things where, at first what i tried to do was get a third ipadwith there's an app that's really gorgeous, controls surface. i tried doing it all. it just sucks. it's not there yet. maybe, maybe ipad 2 will solvesome of those audio problems.
but for me, i couldn't get it. there was so much latency involved when i was doing things with bluetoothor using wireless of any kind. with this, this is so blasphemous anyways guys. sometimes some of my shows,are there any audio geeks in here? really, the dj gods arelike frowning on me so much because i have an eighth inchcable to an xlr. it's so wrong. and that's kind of the other thing.
i mean it's not like this is good audio signalbut at least it's reliable. so if you know of any way thati can make that work without wires, i would be totally down. male #4: actually i figured you would say youdon't have a good answer for that question. rana june: [laughs] male #4: [laughs] anyway,i can't resist a shameless plug here. rana june: yeah. male #4: so i recently thought upa media bluetooth interface that would be a way for your knobsto talk to your gadgets.
rana june: that's such a--that's such a problem for me. you guys see. sometimes i'll miss something. i'll literally have to loop back 16 bars becausei couldn't move my fingers fast enough. or it says 16 inputs for multi-touch. it doesn't mean it actually works for 16. i don't have 16 fingers anyways. but it's like, if i do four or five thingsat a time, things get screwed up. so having a physical controllerwould be awesome.
male #4: you may hack me soonthough because it works. it works with android and unfortunately steve jobs may notlet you access the api that you need. rana june: do you know what?look. i'll say this no matter where i am. if i could do this on whatever,whatever, i would do it. it just so happens that right nowthis is what's working. i'm really open to ideas herebecause that's the thing. i'm getting to the pointwhere i'm trying to get a little stuck.
'cause there's certain thingsthat i just can't do. so that's the thing you know. i'm really, really open. maybe i'll incorporate one android tablet. and i'll have three or maybe,i'm sure that there's things i can do. it's just a matter of getting that to work. thank you guys, i appreciate it.
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