About the And The Groove Remains Production Team
Founded in 1984 as a DJ collective at the radio and television city of the Netherlands, Hilversum. Blending songs into a seamless mix was something new in those days. There was no access to information about the techniques behind it. DJ’s had to discover for themselves how to mix. The ATGR Production Team was established as an exchange for (re-mix) techniques and the sharing/distribution of remixes and mixtapes the members created. When the computer made it’s entrance to the DJ and music production world the team was happy to embrace this new tool. Evolving from the Commodore Vic-20, C64 and Amiga the Apple Macintosh became the platform of choice. Most mixing was done using Technics SL1200MK2 turntables and a Dateq GPM8 mixer, both still in use. When Denon introduced a CD player with pitch control and a single cue that responded fast enough to be usable for mixing a unit was bought.

Fast forward to the begin of this millennium Native instruments released Traktor studio. For the first time there was a computer alternative for creating mixes other then Digital Audio Workstation software which was more geared towards production then mixing. Controllers came to the market and Pioneer introduced the CDJ players which quickly replaced the Technics SL1200 and became the standard in the DJ booth. Other software developers like Serato, Algoriddim and Mixedvibes released their own DJ software.

In the midst of this all was the ATGR Production Team that had chosen Traktor as their DJ platform of choice but quickly found themselves doing preparation tasks like adjusting beat-grids, setting cues and loops at least 3 times on the same track in the various software/collection managers the team used.

There had to be a better way. MixMasterG happens to be a software engineer and gold level Apple Product professional, started to develop small tools to make life a little easier. DJ’s outside the team heard about these tools and wanted to use them as well. Because those tools were for in house usage by the developers things like user friendliness and user error prevention were a low priority.

To make the tools useful for other DJs a considerable amount of development had to be invested in them. The first apps were made available by the end of 2016. These were nothing near the level of sophistication they have reached today but at least they were useful for those who felt adventurous enough to try them.