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TraxWeekly Issue 053
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founded march 12, 1995 _| : _____ t r a x w e e k l y # 53
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- | TraxWeekly Issue #53 | Release date: 04-04-96 | Subscribers: 554 | -
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Welcome to TraxWeekly #53.
We have a small issue for you this week, featuring a review of a music
disk: "Attraction" by Perisoft of Capacala. Catspaw has a short piece
concerning the attitude and perspective of "outsiders" on the music scene.
We close with an article from Mellow-D discussing innovative and creative
methods to create samples.
Spring break has been great, hasn't it? I haven't done anything of
note in the entire last week, and my best bet is neither has the writing
staff. =) Until next time!
Gene Wie (Psibelius)
TraxWeekly Publishing
gwie@owl.csusm.edu
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General Articles
1. Review? of "Attraction".......................Psibelius
2. "Real Music"..................................Catspaw
3. Blur Religion Experiments.....................Mellow-D
Group Columns
4. Explizit
Closing
Distribution
Subscription/Contribution Information
TraxWeekly Staff Sheet
/-[General Articles]--------------------------------------------------------
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--[1. Review? of 'Attraction']---------------------------------[Psibelius]--
Our beloved friend Perisoft =) recently released a music disk entitled,
"Attraction," for the group Capacala. "Attraction" features six songs,
all of which are tracked and released in Impulse Tracker's .IT format.
Version 1.05 of Impulse Tracker, as well as its module compressor is
included. Please note that the songs need to be uncompressed using
mmuncmp.exe if you do not want to load the TSR. Also, despite Peri's hard
work at whipping up some nice colors and interface, I would suggest
using a clean copy of IT without the crazy colors and funky fonts to listen
to the music. =)
Before advancing to the actual review, I'd like all of you to note: My
comments on each individual song are fairly general and don't offer much
insight on every single line and pattern. That's because: 1. I'm lazy, and
I don't think you want to be bored with every little petty detail; 2. If
you think you'll enjoy some of the songs after reading my comments, you'll
download the musicdisk and make your own judgements.
-----
Peri's first song is titled "10." Wow. Amazingly, it uses exactly one
sample (guitar I think). This is actually one of the better tunes on this
entire disk. A slow, mellow, tune with clean chords and progressions.
Sometimes, simpler is better.
We go to Peri's entry for The Trackering next, titled "That's life." I
like the use of noise effects in the beginning, and the bass line is quite
moving. The song then went a tad off the wall for my tastes, but the
flute solo saved it. "Perisoft style" would be the best way to describe
this piece. The drums are overkill.
"Living here" is the third song on this disk, and I have little to say.
Since I don't like this style of music (noise?), I can't give any decent
comments on it, except: ugh!
"Posterize" is the fourth song on "Attraction" and begins with an
ambient feel. Things take off at pattern 11, and the transition from the
slow and mysterious into "Perisoft style" is excellent. The drums balance
nicely with the rest of the instrumentation in this piece.
Perisoft's fifth song is my personal favorite, although I don't like the
name. =) "Slice it" comes complete with the usual noise effects, and some
cool piano work. Also, I think that combining the sixth song, "Slightly"
along with this one would be excellent too, since they blend nicely. Just
play one right after the other. =)
The final number, "Tek hed" seems a bit too mushed together in some parts.
Granted, voluminous and textured music is nice, but there's just *too
much*. Again, I don't like this style, so, no other comments.
-----
Here's my real opinion: Perisoft has come a LONG, LONG way from his days
back in VeXT (early 94) and Epinicion (94-95). After listening to these
songs, I would have to say that "Attraction" is a disk worth picking up,
especially to hear "10," "Posterize," and "Slice it." I'm quite amazed at
the progress Peri's made in the last two years, and I hope some of you will
forget some of the prejudices you've held against him and listen to some of
his music again. Don't get me wrong. Everything's not perfect. "Living
Here" is one of the songs on this disk I'd flush in a second. But regard-
less of whether I like it or not, there is actual MUSIC here that is worth
listening to and appreciating.
For those of you wanting a number score: 81.0587642876487657285, which is
like a B- or something like that.
And for those of you who think this review is a serious one: Well, it is
and it isn't. I just want to point out to all of you that reviewing music
is one of the most annoying tasks in our entire music scene today. I
think I've just summed up what a lot of us "reviewers" really think. But
in the interest of making the process look more technical and "educated,"
we add all sorts of discussions about tone, balance, and phrasing which
are a matter of opinion when it comes to most tracked songs. I detest long
reviews. I also detest * to ***** reviews. One gives too much info, one
to little info. TW reviewers are trying to present something in between,
and believe me, it's a struggle. HORNET doesn't have a much a choice.
With a small staff and hundreds of songs arriving every day, attemtping to
do anything but put a * on a song increases the workload tenfold.
-----
Peri, thanks for being my guinea pig here, for me to rant and rave about
the problems about "ratings" and the dedicated people who do their duty by
reviewing, regardless of negative feedback.
I encourage all of you to visit ftp.cdrom.com /demos/incoming/music/disks
and grab cc_attr*.*!
Until next time!
-psib [traxweekly]
gwie@owl.csusm.edu
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--[2. "Real" Music]----------------------------------------------[Catspaw]--
For those of you who never get off #trax, there does exist a world outside
of our happy little demoscene... and it is a world largely ignorant of
concepts that we take for granted. On a local computer bulletin board,
there is a section in the public registry where each of us can list things
about ourselves, and one of those fields is "Instrument Played". Personal
information, to get to know people. So, in the interests of furthering
global understanding, I put in that field "Impulse Tracker".
I got some really interesting responses.
A discussion started up at one point, where I had about half a dozen people
asking me what that meant. After I'd explained the basic concept of tracked
music in module-derived formats, one rather enlightened fellow took it upon
himself as the godsent of creation to explain to me why what I did was not
truly "real" music.
Excuse me? Rewind that.
Yes, you heard me correctly. Tracked music, according to your friend and
mine, is not "really" music. Trackers aren't "really" musicians. At best,
we're substandard composers who are falling back on technology for lack of
talent. Really. The argument went something like this. (I'm editing this
for the sake of brevity, and removing a lot of unrelated spam from other
people.) I've also changed the name of the skeptic in order to protect him
from an even more public lynching. :>
Catspaw: Uhh... pardon? "Real" music? By what definition?
Skeptic: Well, you don't play an instrument. your not really performing
this music, your just typing this in on your puter.
CP: And your point is? The tracking program is an instrument like any other.
I define an instrument as a tool which you use to create music, to put
into sound what you've got in your head. By your definition, anyone who
programs or sequences music in a synth or studio isn't producing "real"
music either. You've just eliminated Kitaro, Vangelis, or for that
matter any given techno or industrial group in the world.
SK: well vangelis is a composer though .. the difference is that they can
all play instruments. You've said that you can't. If you didn't have
your computer you wouldn't be able to make anything.
CP: What the hell does any of that have to do with whether or not what I'm
making is music? You've got a really limited view on what an
"instrument" is.
CP: And of course I wouldn't be able to make anything without my computer.
Try taking away a guitar or piano from someone who can only play that
instrument, and see how effective they are at playing music.
SK: no cause an instrument is something like a guitar or drums, or a
trumpet .. you don't need a computer or anything to play those. I've
heard music on the puter and it doesn't sound real.
SK: they can still write down the notes and play them later when they do
have that instrument... you couldn't make music without the samples of
those instruments.
CP: Horsesh--. An instrument is *anything* that you use to make music. This
could be a pair of branches beating on a log, or a Korg, or a set of
Scottish bagpipes. By your logic, any given synth keyboard isn't an
instrument either--they're computers too.
CP: Who said a tracker couldn't write down the notes for later? Frequently
we *have* to, because we don't all live in front of our computers.
SK: well a keyboard is just like a piano .. and like I said, you couldn't
make any music without sampling a real instrument ..
CP: Most tracking programs have the computer keyboard set up to simulate
a piano keyboard. Next stupid analogy, please?
CP: Look, I'm sick of this. I couldn't make music without sampling other
instruments? Ever look in the sample credits section of a tracked song?
Go look inside an album cover of any commercial band; most of them list
off the companies who made their instruments. It's the same thing, get
it? You think those bands could've made their music without the company
or person who made their instrument? Pull your head out.
SK: no no no .. its not the same. it takes years of training and a lot of
talent to learn to play an instrument .. computer music doesn't take
any of that talent.
CP: Oh the hell it doesn't. You have no clue that the hell you're spewing
about. Look, here's the acid test, my friend. Let's meet for coffee.
I'll bring you a cassette tape on which I've recorded a bunch of
obscure commercial songs, and a handful of tracked songs. You tell me
which ones are tracked, and I might listen a little longer.
<At this point SK exited the teleconference and logged off>
CP: That's what I thought.
My conclusion: What the hell? Music is not something you can definitively
put a finger on and declare that a thing is not. It doesn't matter whether
you use a trombone, FT2, ST3, IT, or for that matter if you play Vivaldi on
water glasses with a kitchen spoon. If there's somebody out there who
enjoys listening to it, be it you or the world at large, then guess what:
it's music, by the only definition that matters--yours.
And I have yet to see a flute with New Note Actions or pan positions. :>
Catspaw / Rat
catspaw@eskimo.com
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--[3. Blur Religion Experiments]--------------------------------[Mellow-D]--
After experimenting with quite a new field for me, making Blur Religion and
discovering new depths of myself, I decided to whip up into a TW article
what I found. This article will mainly go into sampling, tracking tips, and
mixing musical styles.
I started Blur Religion (BR) basically a couple weeks before it was
released. Somehow I had a great inspiration at that time, and it was all
pretty much triggered by Octoque's song Ars Moriendi (which prompted me to
do gum.flex.tide, which prompted me to do the rest of the stuff on the
disk), and The Orb, Front 242, and Underworld. I started experimenting
with unusual stuff for me - sampling the radio, sampling CDs, and even
sampling myself on a microphone.
The microphone stuff became quite interesting - I would just 'beat box' my
way through to my effects processor which would add a 350ms delay (to
create an extremely groovy loop), a large flange and a reverb. I would
then cut up the loop (or sometimes, just use the loop as itself), start
tracking the song by using the loop and building up on that. Imagine a
umh-umh-tsihh-tsih-ka-tsika-umh-tsihh-tsi-ka (a hip hopish beat) :) loop
made with your mouth (try doing manual (oral) filters!) and add a flange
to that. WOW.
Some extremely groovy samples I found just surfing on the radio. I would
set up my effects processor (you should get one, even a cheesy one is
cheap!) to add a slight flange and a reverb, then just browse the channels,
ready to sample in FT2. I'd perhaps go to an english speaking channel and
sample a conversation and grab stuff like "well, I don't really like this
kind of stuff anymore, it's not my bag man, but it was jolly nice to hear
it all again!" or "it really makes you think about god" (from a religious
convo - look for my next disk :). Any kind of a speech sample will sound
cool, for example when you create fuckedupness with it by playing it an
octave (or two!) too low.
Tracking experiments I did were using the AWESOME swing F06/F02/F04/F02
(pos1, pos2, pos3, pos4, then all again) speed combination (discovered by
Basehead), mixing that with my oral beat (heh) and some usually un-swinged
musical styles. Now add any kind of long sound, use the volume or A
command (FT2) to make it go along the lines of the drumbeat, for example.
Get BR and see what I did :)
Voila, you got yourself something that sounds quite groovy, quite weird,
and quite like Blur Religion :)
Now let's say you're a tremendeous dub fan, as well as a big industrial
fan. Like me. You want to make something with both in it: what I'm making
for my next disk is take a dub beat (reggae kinda rhythm), an overdriven
sine wave, so it sounds and is distorted (remember to think REGGAE or DUB
when you make your bass line! do not make this part industrial, heavy, or
whatever), sample ANYTHING AT ALL from the radio, anything at all from any
CD (even with chords, no matter what), and let yourself randomize yourself
on the microphone. Do some awesome leads with your mouth (seriously!), try
some hihats, snares, bassdrums, anything at all will go into a 'different'
song. The radio part will most probably inspire you A LOT and you will
create an awesome song. Don't forget to overdrive the samples. :)
So that pretty much sums it up - let me check myself.. I've gone through
the beats, the radio, the oral stuff, the CD's, hmm. Always remember this:
Don't try to imitate others. At all. If you need to, go smoke a few joints
and get high, then sit in front of the tracker and turn your logic thinking
off. THEN track.
-- Mellow-D / Five Musicians
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--[4. Explizit]-------------------------------------------------------------
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Explizit TraxWeekly column issue #14 - April 4, 1996
Hi there!
Explizit is a Dutch group making techno music. For a taste of our songs,
visit our internet-sites:
http://huizen.dds.nl/~explizit (now with awesome HotJava features!)
ftp://tillbm.stu.rpi.edu/explizit/
ftp://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/pub/music/groups/explizit/
As you can see we have a new dir on the SDC server over here in Holland,
this server is gonna be the biggest and dhopest :) music/demo server over
here with a 10Mb connection to the net and heaps of modules...
Thanks to Ray (thr@xs4all.nl) for setting us up.
Our homepage now has a HOTJAVA scroller and, if i may say so, it looks
way cool, totally awesome, etc. If you do have NetScape2 (who doesn't)
you really should visit us. To copy the idea ofcourse :)
New releases in the past week:
E-BTTT A great Trance song by KoM'AH (& Ravana)
FOR SALE. 1 Pentium-75, 16M, 1G2, 2xV34. Fully operational BBS software
included. WHy? BERT HAS JOINED KFMF INSTEAD OF EXPLIZIT! :))))
I really don't want to live any longer! ;] Why Bert, WHY!? You know
i wanted you in my group (spoke to you on Biz).
Just kidding Bert. I heard your (gr8) CHildren remix...and i read that
you joined KFMF. Well good for you! If you ever compose a song that
is just too techno-ish (too techno-ish?!?!) for KFMF at least consider
releasing it with us as a guest-star. :)
The SL1210 compo is coming to an end. Mad Max is bound to win, but things
can still change. The first explizit diskmag is also almost done. Yes,
this is the same diskmag i was blabbering about 3 months ago. It still
isn't released. But i was told code was almost done so i guess anytime
now. Who knows.
Well i'm oudda here. Remember to subscribe to our e-mail distro list
if you think our modules are kewl (...).
Thank you for reading, you can ftp all our releases from:
ftp://tillbm.stu.rpi.edu/explizit/
ftp://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/pub/music/groups/explizit/
For feedback, info and more, visit our homepage:
http://huizen.dds.nl/~explizit
Ch:ilm/Explizit
explizit@dds.nl
(No feedback yet ;-)
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ALL COMMENTS GOOD/BAD AND SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME!
Please contact the TraxWeekly staff at the following addresses:
Editor: Psibelius (Gene Wie).................gwie@owl.csusm.edu
Staff: Atlantic (Barry Freeman).............as566@torfree.net
DennisC (Dennis Courtney)............dennisc@community.net
Kal Zakath (John Townsend)...........jtownsen@sescva.esc.edu
Master of Darkness (Todd Andlar).....as566@torfree.net
Mhoram (John Niespodzianski).........niespodj@neonramp.com
Mick Rippon..........................rip@hunterlink.net.au
Populus (Nicolas Roberge)............nr@qbc.clic.net
Trifixion (Tyler Vagle)..............trifix@northernnet.com
Zinc (Justin Ray)....................rays@direct.ca
Reporter: Island of Reil (Jesse Rothenberg)....jroth@owl.csusm.edu
Graphics: Squidgalator2 (...)..................sq2@sv.net.au
White Wizard (...)...................aac348@agora.ulaval.ca
WWW Page: Dragunov (Nicholas St-Pierre)........dragunov@info.polymtl.ca
TraxWeekly is a HORNET affiliation.
Copyright (c)1995,1996 - TraxWeekly Publishing, All Rights Reserved.
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...traxweekly emag
