Weekly Rundown:: Week of March 19th, 2024

Weekly Rundown
Written By Reed Dailey
 

Dive into the latest Weekly Rundown with Reed Dailey (@ReedDailey) as he shares his journey to the milestone 150th episode of the Dailey Blend Podcast. Reed reflects on the evolution of recording DJ sets from the early 2000s to today's cutting-edge DJ studio software. Discover the creative process behind his EDM mix, the challenges faced, and the joy of curating themed sets for future episodes.

Reed also gives a shout-out to Idris Elba's new hit with Defected Records, predicts it as the summer anthem, and revisits the timeless 'In Search of Sunrise' series, pondering a special mix inspired by its evolution. Plus, get a sneak peek into "Negronis with Greg" and the exciting launch of Tuesday Night Negronis (TNN) – complete with a Facebook group and upcoming merch.

On the cocktail front, Reed highlights the "Deer Diary" from The Whistler's 15th anniversary book and shares his passion for the simplicity of their recipes. Transitioning to the Friday Top Five newsletter, Reed offers a personal glimpse into his eclectic interests, from food and music to movies and books.

Lastly, we discuss operational excellence with the updated Weekly Planning Playbook, sharing insights on time management and task estimation. If you're in Chicago, don't miss the chance to join him for a game watch—just slide into his DMs.

Tune in, get inspired, and join the conversation – whether it's music, mixology, or mastering your week, the Dailey Blend Show has you covered. Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, and keep up with us on Instagram (@DaileyBlend). Catch the full episode and more at DaileyBlend.com. See you at the next game. Watch@ReedDaile, and until then, keep blending with us!

📋 Episode Chapters

  • (00:00) Welcome back to the Daily Blend show with Reed Daily

  • (00:49) It's been almost six months since I started recording the Daily Blend podcast

  • (07:05) Edm: I've been focusing a lot of rock music lately

  • (09:58) Tuesday night, Negronis with Greg is coming back with new content

  • (12:32) Daily Blend has transitioned from a post to a newsletter

Listen and subscribe to the show on the following platforms.

As always, you can get this episode and all previous episodes on such great platforms as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, and Anchor. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and have all the episodes downloaded automatically to your device. #DaileyBlendShow

Across Dailey Blend

  • Music Monday

    • This week, we are featuring multi-talent actors, musicians, and DJ Idris Elba, aka IDRIS. Check out his new single for DEFECTED Records - Linked Here

    • Check out all past Music Monday features - Linked Here

  • Throwback Thursday

    • This week we are continuing with our 6th release in the Tiesto ‘In Search of Sunrise’ series - Linked Here

    • Check out past ‘In Search of Sunrise Mixes’ - Linked Here

    • Check out all past Throwback Thursday features - Linked Here

Drink With Greg & Negronis with Greg

    • Book of the Week

      • Spirited: A Cocktail Recipe Book that Takes You on a Journey Around the World - Linked Here

    • Drink of the Week

      • We've been really into The Whistler's 15th-anniversary cocktail book lately. It's a small pocketbook with pictures, ingredients, and short stories, and we like it. This week's drink of the week is the Dear Diary, created by the co-founder of The Whistler, Billy Helmkamp, back in 2017. Drink Linked Here

    • Podcast Channels

      • Check out all things from the Drink With Greg Podcast - Linked Here

      • Check out all things from the Negronis With Greg Podcast - Linked Here

    • Connect Online (DWG & NWG)

 
Drink with Greg - Banner Horizontal
Blog Post Title One
 

Friday’s Top Five (Now a Newsletter)

  • A Recap From Last Week

    • Each week in our ‘Friday Top Five’ segment, we feature five things we thought were interesting, notable, or culturally significant. Last week we covered Apps to boost productivity, prompts to enhance wellbeing, books to inspire, coloring books to decompress, and gear for the adventure ahead.

    • Friday Top Five Archives are Linked Here

  • Subscribe to the ‘Dailey Blend Newsletter’

Tools & Toolkits - Life Optimization (Working Title)

Weekly Planning Playbook

The Dailey Blend's Tools & Toolkits - Life Optimization - Weekly Planning Playbook is a comprehensive resource designed to empower individuals to optimize their lives through efficient planning and strategic organization. This playbook offers a weekly curated selection of tools and methodologies to enhance productivity, goal-setting, and overall well-being.

Focusing on practicality and effectiveness, it equips users with strategies to streamline tasks, prioritize objectives, and maintain a healthy work-life balance. From time management techniques to habit formation strategies, the playbook serves as a dynamic guide for individuals seeking to maximize their potential and achieve their personal and professional aspirations.

Click the button below to get a copy of the ‘Weekly Planning Playbook’ and kick your Monday off right by getting a jump start Sunday Night!

 

Connect Online

And, as always, please give me feedback on X, formerly Twitter @DaileyBlend or Instagram @DaileyBlend. What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Which features were your favorite? Please let me know, and don’t forget to put #FridayTop5 at the end so I can find it. Enjoy the week, and catch you next week with the Dailey Blend Show weekly Rundown.

Transcription - Dailey Blend Show Updates Website, Launches Video

Host Reed Dailey (IG & X - @ReedDailey): This is the weekly rundown segment of the Daily Blend Show

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Dailey Blend show with me, Reed Dailey. If you're new around here, this is the weekly rundown, and we are on March 19, 2024. And I'm excited about this show for several reasons. But before I jump into it, I want to remind you that we are available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. If you're a social guy, and I certainly am, check us out on Instagram and X at Daileyblend. That's Daileyblend. And with all that said, let's jump into the show.

It's been almost six months since I started recording the Dailey Blend podcast.

So it's been almost six months since I've been talking about recording the Dailey Blend podcast, which is my house music podcast, also by sort of the same name, the same sort of title brand, Dailey Blend. And I just kept on debating it. It was such a big milestone for me as someone who's been recording DJ sets since, I think, back in 2002 or 2003. And, back then, it was a whole lot more frustrating. So it was either recording them with Serato and trying to get them into a computer or some just terrible tape recorder, or, I'm just like, thinking back to being in my apartment in Queens and trying to record and just thinking of how many times I just gave up. Because you'd get, like, halfway through and the computer would glitch or run out of memory, or the promise of this little tape recorder or MP3 recorder that could hook up to Serato or your turntables out would work, and it just wouldn't. So, moving into episode 150, I'm a person who always believes in technology and kind of advancements. And so I tried to use, or I didn't try. I did use, the new DJ studio software, which I got exposed to thanks to a YouTube video from laidback Root Luke. I reached out to the DJ studio team. I'm, actually in the process of reviewing it. So I've gotten my sort of first review of that, software out, and I've got a couple more that I'm going to do both video and then just sort of text based reviews because I'm a huge fan of it. And so what I did is I went through and I originally was going to do three mixes. I was going to do sort of a down-tempo, deep house mix. I was going to do sort of like a funky mix, and then I was going to do like a big EDM room mix. And I recorded the first two mixes, the EDM, and then the sort of funky house. And I didn't love either mix. And once again, this was kind of like a big milestone. So I wanted to be a great mix. And then I tried again on the EDM, mix with like a second one, and I just didn't love it. And so I walked away from the project for about six weeks. And then one weekend it was raining here in Chicago and I said, you know what? I don't have anything to do. It's pretty quiet around the house. Why don't I jump into it? So I went through and used, I think I used Chachi bt to look up all the famous artwork, or not artwork, all the famous EDM songs each year and sort of used it as a baseline. And then thanks to sites like Spotify and mostly YouTube that did a really good job of making recommendations. I was able to find a lot of the hits that I loved and just sort of forgot about them. And then I found this great site called Diesel or Dizzer. Dizzer. I'll find it in the show notes. And it had basically huge playlists. And so I found some eDm, playlist on that website and I think it had like 400 songs. And so I ended up going through all of them. I think I whittled it down to roughly 75. And I think the mix ended up with 41, 42 songs. And that was sort of the basis of it. I recorded the mix twice through, the DJ studios app. The first one was good, not great. The second one sort of I changed the flow a little bit. I think what really tripped up me and sort of the software a little bit was the fact that I was doing a lot of, dubstep mixes in there and that sort of like offbeat. It just sometimes makes it hard. Anyway, I am super proud that, I've been doing this for years. And, I just want to say thanks to everyone who's listened to the podcast over the years. I, want to thank my brother, actually, for helping rename it. I think it was called something else originally. When I came out years ago, I think I was also just doing these under read Dailey. And I certainly do those mixes still now. But, just happy to do this EDM mix. I'm m going to be working on sort of more themed mixes. I'm finding a lot of joy in thinking through kind of different themes. So next dailey blend, sort of 151 to 154. It's just going to be kind of like straight mixes. And then I think I'm going to do like a funky house mix for 155. I'm not sure, but let me know in the notes what you think, what you want. in terms of that series, I think combination of the fact that I have now DJ studio at my disposal and that just helps with the sort of organization structure of the mix. And then I bring it over to Ableton or I've got the new xdjrx three from Pioneer, which just allows me to throw everything on a thumb drive and makes DJing fun again. So between those both solutions, you're going to see a lot more music coming out from me. both, in terms of the Dailey Blend Sunday sessions and even my own read, Dailey music projects. Don't forget to check out that podcast over on Apple Podcast. It is not available on Spotify due to licensing constraints that Spotify blocks most DJ mixes. But you can definitely found it on Soundcloud, or over on my, YouTube channel for read Dailey music as well as Dailey blend podcast. All right, so that felt great to kind of talk through that. Say that project is kind of like done and beyond past me now.

Edm: I've been focusing a lot of rock music lately

Let's talk about music Mondays. So with music Mondays, I've been mostly focusing a lot of rock music lately and kind of electronics. And, I was driving in the car and I heard this fantastic trumpet song and I quickly hit the button to see who was the artist and it was Idris, as in Idris Elba. And I was like, okay, perfect. This guy DJs, he is an actor and now he's just crushing it on music production. But this new single he's put out with defected records is just fantastic. I love both the original and the instrumental mix. It's absolutely going to be the sound of the summer for defected. And I'm sure other DJs and labels are going to just really love this track and really promote it. So big fan of that. You can head over to Dailey Blend to have a listen to that. And then from a throwback Thursday standpoint, we just released the 6th, release from tiestos in Search of Sunrise series. It was really interesting. So not only am I a huge fan of this series and bought all the CDs back in the day, but through the effort it was to create these posts, I went ahead and created a playlist on Soundcloud for all the mixes. And I was like working along yesterday and I was like, man, what's this track? And I was like, oh yeah, it's in search of sunrise. I literally had, I think because as the mix series progressed, it went from one CD to two mixed CDs and that's just a ton of music. So I had it almost playing start to finish from the beginning of the day all the way to the end of the day just in the background. And it's just good music to have keep the day moving. It's not too intense, it's not big room Edm, it's not deep house. It's somewhere in between. And I just like jamming to it and working to it. So highly recommend you having a listen. what I think I'm going to do back to my comment of special mixes. I want to do one where I take all of the original songs or my favorite songs across the whole seven, mix series, releases, and go find sort of remixes to those songs and modern interpretations of those and put together a mix of all my favorite sort of tracks. And it'll be interesting to hear how when that series came out, trance was really in the forefront and how that sort of transitioned over time into more deep house and progressive and not electro, because there's no end of that, but just how the sound changed over time. I think you'll probably notice that the BPM dropped a little more focus on bass lines versus synth lines. But, yeah.

Tuesday night Negronis with Greg is coming back with new content

Let me know what your favorite tracks are from the in search of Sunrise Mix, series, as well as which one is your favorite mix in terms of drink with Greg Negronis with Greg. I am fired up because, Greg and I sort of got really busy and we finally said, let's get back on the horse, if you will. And so, we recorded a Negronis with Greg podcast two weeks ago, and we actually recorded a drink with Greg podcast as well. And we had issues with the audio, so we lost that podcast. But, the show must go on in terms of structure. We're sort of switching it up a little bit. you're going to start to see more of the books that we're loving, kind of the cocktail books that we like, coming out more on Mondays. And then we're going to do a little more on some big news, which is TNN, which is Tuesday night Negronis. And it was just sort of saying like, hey, we love Negronis. And, why aren't we showcasing them more on the site? That was the original idea of kind of creating the site. And so TNN is going to be all about showcasing whatever Negroni Greg and I are drinking that week. So we'll do some posts, we'll do some social media content. We're also going to go ahead and create sort of the Facebook group for TNN's for folks to show their favorite negroni drinks. So be on the lookout for some merch, some Facebook groups, and go head over to drink with Greg to check out TnN and all future posts. continuing the theme of working through some of the Whistler book. if you're less familiar, the whistler is, a bar here in Chicago. they just had their 15 year anniversary, and, it's this, like, little pocketbook. I think it was like 15, $16. And I'm just absolutely obsessed with it. It's simple, easy ingredient, cocktails. Cool little picture shows you how the drink should look. And one of the drinks that, really inspired me lately is the deer diary by one of the co founders of the whistler, Billy, helmkemp. And, yeah, you can head over to drink with Greg to have a look at how to make that drink. And, I've also linked to Billy's, social account, so don't forget to give him a follow, send, him a note, and, you know, drink in your, dear diary. And, we love the drink.

Dailey Blend has transitioned from a post to a newsletter

moving from drink with Greg, I, think at this point everyone knows that we've transitioned the Friday top five from a post over to a newsletter. And I had a friend of mine send me a screenshot of the newsletter and just said, hey, of all these years, you've been doing Dailey blend and sort of content. Just happy that you continue to progress this. And I've just been having a lot of fun with the newsletter. I think with Dailey Blend, we're really focused on showcasing fantastic businesses and entrepreneurs. And with the Friday top five, it's a little way of me sort of showcasing a little bit of my eclectic backgrounds and interests and all the stuff that I'm involved with or interested in. And so last week was just one of those prime examples of. I just showcased a bunch of stuff that I was interested in from a food perspective, a music, a movie, books that I'm reading. And it's just a great way to kind of get your weekend started right. from an operational excellence sort of life optimization, I think I'm kind of called that out. That that's still very much a working title. I wanted to highlight that we sort of updated the weekly planning playbook. And so we had originally put this into sort of a standard legal or standard piece of paper, and it just felt very cluttered. So we went from, horizontal to landscape mode, and then we had some issues with how it looked when it was printing so I think we've got it right. I'm actually going to go and print it off today and double check, but, calling it the weekly planning playbook. And I always like to do this on a Sunday night or a Sunday afternoon, and I sort of plan my whole week out. And then every day, I just sort of, at the start of the day and the end of the day, I just have a blue, highlighter if I've completed the task, and a pink highlighter if I didn't. I don't like using red. It just sort of throws me off a little bit. It's too abrasive to me. and so just run through kind of my weekly planner and just see what I'm getting done. And I think one of the things that I want to focus on in the coming weeks is time estimates versus actuals. And I think that's something that's been helping me get better of doing that. So, over time, I start to say, hey, that task, you think it takes 15 minutes? It actually takes 27. Or, hey, you think it takes 30? It actually takes 48. And so better understanding kind of the effort that it takes to do certain tasks so that you can plan your day accordingly. I know I've certainly moved from saying I'm going to do things to time boxing. So when I accept a task, I actually go into my calendar and I block time to actually get that task done. Otherwise, it doesn't get done. And those are just some things that have been helping me sort of win the day, win the week. if you do download the weekly planning playbook, give me some feedback. Love to hear what you think of it and how you're using it. And with that said, I'll be in Chicago this week. gonna be down in the city a couple days. So both Tuesday and Thursday, if you are in Chicago this Thursday, I'm hosting a game watch. So just dm me, hit me up on LinkedIn, hit me up on Instagram X. Come by, for the basketball events. And with that said, thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to, like, follow, subscribe to the show, and we'll catch you on the next episode of the Dailey Blind Show.

 
 
 
 
 

Friday Top Five

You can complement the Weekly Rundown with the Friday Top Five newsletter, where the Dailey Blend team shares things we thought were interesting that you need to know about, tips and tricks to tackle life, and of course, some music to get the weekend started right!

Reed Dailey

Join consultant, music curator, coffee connoisseur, and sneakerhead Reed Dailey as he interviews world-class performers to owner-operators. In the show, he explores how they got their start, how they operate and execute, lessons learned along the way, and what is next for them.

https://ReedDailey.com
Previous

Weekly Rundown:: Week of April 1st, 2024
Next

Weekly Rundown:: Week of March 11th, 2024