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TraxWeekly Issue 074
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founded march 12, 1995 _| : _____ t r a x w e e k l y # 74
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| TraxWeekly Issue #74 | Release date: 18 Oct. 1996 | Subscribers: 881 |
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/-[Introduction]------------------------------------------------------------
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In the vast world of introductions, this one is no different.
Like many other introductions, it is briefly scanned by a small but
growing majority of individuals who represent a correspondingly small but
growing hobby which in time will redefine the concept we call music.
We have a few tidbits for you this week. Spieg's article completely
cracked me up when it arrived in the mail last week; I know you'll enjoy
it. =) Greg Heo has been nice enough to restart the TW 'serious issues'
cycle with a contribution on musical theory. And my friend Cyrus was
gracious enough to send me a humorous little ditty (forwarded a zillion
times from zillions of other sources, of course) that I figured contained
a good enougn revelation for us #trax-ers. =)
#trax = cool, #trax = fun. If someone has some really earth-shaking
news, please send it on in. As always, group columns are always welcome.
May your drives be always full of snow and little green men.
Gene Wie (Psibelius)
TraxWeekly Publishing
gwie@csusm.edu
/-[Contents]----------------------------------------------------------------
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General Articles
1. The State of the Scene........................Psibelius
2. Motherboard Sampling..........................Spieg
3. Introduction to Musical Theory................Greg Heo
4. Knowledge, Money, and Power...................???
Group Columns
1. Grey
2. Skyjump Team
Closing
Distribution
Subscription/Contribution Information
TraxWeekly Staff Sheet
/-[General Articles]--------------------------------------------------------
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--[1. The State of the Scene]----------------------------------[Psibelius]--
"TraxWeekly sure has been small these past few weeks." "Gee, why is
TraxWeekly so *small?*" Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer a few decent
articles each week, then have a bloated 64k file full of ascii garbage and
advertisements. I mean, after all, this IS a music newsletter. In
connection with #trax, we've got to be able to cover at least *something*
useful to the musicians of the scene. Saves disk space and upload time
too. Time being a commodity that I'm lacking a bit these days...
b0b's #trax page is pretty awesome. For those of you who haven't checked
out the 'people' section there yet, there's space to enter your own bio,
as well as list all your cool releases for dedicated fans to download.
While you're at it, you can mail b0b a really bad, grainy, jpeg picture of
yourself to put on the page, so the whole world can see what you look like.
I just ran through it last night, and I'd have to say, the best pictures
belong to Zodiak, Trissy, and Mr. Unabomber (I wish I remembered who this
was, 'cause the pic was great. NOTE: TW in no way supports the activites
or beliefs of the Unabomber. This reference was made towards the photo in
place of a #trax member's real photo, which has been deemed "funny" and/or
"humorous" =). Check it out at http://www.spaz.com/trax/.
They "final" version of Jeffrey Lim's Impulse Tracker, v2.06 is now out.
Those of you who don't have it yet can get it from ftp.cdrom.com in the
directory /pub/demos/incoming/music/programs/it206.zip. Enjoy Jeff's new
song too. =)
A: The "cereal" killer.
If you got that last part, you win a prize. Email me.
Gene Wie (Psibelius)
gwie@csusm.edu
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--[2. Motherboard sampling]----------------------------------------[Spieg]--
Since the hot topic of late is sampling, I just thought I'd pop in
to let you all know of this real fun trick me and my roommate learned
a few nights ago. I am the proud (?) owner of one of those funky
motherboards with the SB16 (vibra) onboard. Also, I, of course, own a
GUS... The SB picks up on all sorts of noise from the computer, and
often times I'd (with little results) try to get that noise down to
a minimum. Well, for a change, I decided to ramp up the volume...
a *LOT*. So much in fact that you could hear, what we came to the
conclusion to be, the actual noise of the CPU doing its work. Different
keystrokes made different noises, and running different apps yielded a
whole host of odd, and interesting samples. The neat thing was that
one thing would make the same sound, no matter what i was doing...
I.E., the mouse would always sound like a little race car from an
old Intellivision game I used to be so fond of... Lest I even mention
the sounds a pc makes when loading windows... It sounds like you are
torturing your CPU... At any rate. While most of the noises I made
were just that, noise, I found I could 'jam' with the different inputs
available to me and get some interesting stuff. Working a mouse, a
joystick and a keyboard all at once, I was able to actually 'track' a
song on the noise from my CPU. Welp... I just thought I'd let you all
know about this marvelous discovery. Try it sometime when you're in the
mood from some noise, it is quite an experience actually *hearing* your
computer do its work. Enjoy. @)
Spieg / [Radical.Rhythms]
spieg@wiley.csh.rit.edu
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--[3. Introduction to Musical Theory]---------------------------[Greg Heo]--
__preface__
In this article (and possible subsequent ones...) I hope to explore the
musical side of tracking. I'll admit, I'm not an experienced tracker so
don't expect a technical tracking tutorial or anything.
This article is pretty 'beginner-ish', and aimed at people who have had
either some or absolutely no theory experience. If you're not in this
category, then you'll probably find this article a bit boring.
__the elements__
No, not the chemical elements. Elements of music. More specifically,
melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, tone colour, texture, and form. These
elements are present in any and every song. At least that's what my
music teacher is always telling me. So let's go through them...
__melody__
This is the part of the song you remember. You whistle it and hum it
after you've heard it. Technically, it's the "organized and logical
variation of pitch and time." Most of the melodies you hear are in
steps; it moves C-D-E-F-G and so forth. I don't mean the entire song is
just a scale, but 80% of the pitch movement is like this. Listen closely
to a tracked song or one on the radio...you'll be surprised at how much
of the melody is moving in single notes.
__harmony__
While melody is the 'horizontal' aspect of music, harmony can be
describes as the 'vertical' aspect. There are two main types of
harmonies, note-by-note and chords. An example of note-by-note harmony
can be found with the song 'twinkle twinkle little star'
C C G G A A G
twin - kle twin - kle li - ttle star
There's the melody. With n-b-n harmony added, it looks like this:
C C G G A A G
C C E E F F E
twin - kle twin - kle li - ttle star
Chord theory could take up an entire article, so I'll just skip over that
for now.
__rhythm__
A lot of people think 'percussion' immediately after hearing the word
rhythm. Remember the "organized and logical movement" from the section
on melody? That's rhythm. Try playing any song, but hold the short notes
long and the long ones short. Sound like a completly new song?
Rhythm can be further divided into two sections: metre and tempo.
Metre is the way we count out the rhythm. If you've played an
instrument, this is the time signature. I'd say about 90% of the music
on the radio is in 4/4 time...meaning you can count out four beats to
the music, with the first beat being the 'strong' one. Listening to
a fast march? Probably counted in two. Waltzes in three, and so on.
Duple metre refers to songs counted in 2, 4, 8, and so forth. Triple
metre refers to songs in 3, 6, and 12.
Tempo is the musical term for speed. In the tracker world, speed is
controlled by frames and 'tempo'. The number of frames per row is set at
a default of 06 (this is the Axx command), and the tempo is at a default
of 125 (the Txx command). I'd recommend reading Catspaw's articles in
TW #58 and #59 for a more in-depth look into frames and tempo.
__closing__
So there you have the first three elements of music. Hopefully I'll
cover the other four which are about 99 times more interesting.
Greg Heo
river@io.org
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--[4. Knowledge, Money and Power]--------------------------------[Unknown]--
This was forwarded to me by my friend Cyrus (caliamad@uci.edu) the other
day. After sitting in Combinatoric Math for two weeks, I'm already
flipping out. Why is everything so abstract and hard to understand? I'd
rather be doing calculus! In any case, enjoy the following theory: =)
-----
After applying some simple algebra to some trite phrases and cliches
a new understanding can be reached of the secret to wealth and success.
Here it goes.
Knowledge is Power
Time is Money
and as every engineer knows, Power is Work over Time.
So, substituting algebraic equations for these time worn bits of
wisdom,
we get:
K = P (1)
T = M (2)
P = W/T (3)
Now, do a few simple substitutions:
Put W/T in for P in equation (1), which yields:
K = W/T (4)
Put M in for T into equation (4), which yields:
K = W/M (5).
Now we've got something. Expanding back into English, we get:
Knowledge equals Work over Money.
What this MEANS is that:
1. The More You Know, the More Work You Do, and
2. The More You Know, the Less Money You Make.
Solving for Money, we get:
M = W/K (6)
Money equals Work Over Knowledge.
From equation (6) we see that Money approaches infinity as Knowledge
approaches 0, regardless of the Work done.
What THIS MEANS is:
The More you Make, the Less you Know.
Solving for Work, we get
W = M x K (7)
Work equals Money times Knowledge
From equation (7) we see that Work approaches 0 as Knowledge
approaches 0.
What THIS MEANS is:
The stupid rich do little or no work.
Working out the socioeconomic implications of this breakthrough is
left as an exercise for the reader.
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/-[Group Columns]-----------------------------------------------------------
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--[5. Grey]-----------------------------------------------------------------
g r e y
music
grey, a small group of musicians, has existed since march 1996. only now
have i gotten around to writing this little plug for us. :)
there's not much to grey; that's the point of it. simplicity, we believe,
is a virtue... not necessarily in music itself, but in the process of dist-
ribution that is so much a part of our scene. grey has no limit on style
or anything of that sort; we're all about music, and that's all we're
about.
currently, grey consists of me (ryan, NOT ryan cramer), skie, gblues, luvk,
imager, qporcupine, hunz, and cd. usually, you can find one or more of us
on irc at any given point in time (especially cd, who likes to idle for
days on #trax =>).
if you want to take a look at some of our music, check out our web page at
http://bcn.net/~skie/grey/ or ftp site at ftp://ftp.fm.org/pub/music/grey.
so go get acquainted with this slowly-producing group; it'll be well worth
your while. (btw, some interesting grey trivia: we were the first group
to release an .it file, i believe... fear us! =>)
-- ryan sprott / grey 96
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--[6. Skyjump Team]---------------------------------------------------------
,g##g_ gg ,gg ~gg pg* ;ga gg pp [ggc ggp [ggggg,
M#"4#@ #@ ,@#" 7#a ,#@ l#9 #@ BB [##@ ]##B [#44@#@
]#L E# #@,@#" @@ #B l#9 #@ BB [#QB [#BB [# 7#
##ga, #@W#X \#y#@ l#9 #@ BB [#[#_QBBB [# _A#
`@###g ###@@ Q#@ l#9 #@ BB [#]#C#@BB [#####@
__ "@#a ##"\#G ]#L __ l#9 #@ BB [# #N#CBB [#""""
I#a )#L #@ QB, ]#L ]#L [#? #@ W@ [# M##'BB [#
`##ggMB #@ `#@ ]#L ##g@M Y#@g##@ [# f#B BB [#
`@#B@" #@ Y#* ]#L `@#@" 9###" [# +#@ UB [#
ggggggg pgggggg ,gg gggc ggp (TM)
[###### BB####@ 6#@ [##@ ,##B
#@ BB____, /#"#@ [#I# QBBB -------------------
#@ B#####9 W@ V#_ [#)#8#@BB | Since 1994 |
#@ BB j#@g&#G [# #N#CBB -------------------
#@ BB &#####@ [# MB#^BB E-MAIL:
#@ BBggggg #@ Y#, [# Q#B BB ssetti@inf.unitn.it
#@ B#####D I#" `#@ [# l#@ BB
Hello from D.J. Skyjump
okay, some latest news to you straight from SkYjUMP tEAM (SJT)
-------------------------[ New Programs ]--------------------------
13/10/96 Ramsete CD Player v2.1 ............ Audio CD Player
Filename: SKY_CD21.ZIP .... 25k ... by Ramsete
--------------------------[ New Tracks ]--------------------------
07/10/96 Ex-Traemor ........................ Hard/Trance
Filename: SKY_XTRM.ZIP ... 88k ... by SperMaster
09/10/96 Undetermineted Feeling Remix ...... TripHop
Filename: SKY_UFRX.ZIP .. 346k ... by Riders
09/10/96 Analog Cloud #1 ................... Acid
Filename: SKY_ANC1.ZIP ... 88k ... by SmiL
14/10/96 Uncle Tana is Getting Slouching ... Ethno-Ambient
Filename: SKY_UNCL.ZIP... 1011k .. by Aphex
Grab it From our WWW Page :
http://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/skyjump-team/
or from the ftp sites :
sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl /pub/music/groups/SKYJUMP-TEAM
ftp.cdrom.com /pub/incoming/music/....
See You Later D.J. Skyjump
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TraxWeekly does not discriminate based on age, gender, race, political
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The staff can be reached at the following:
Editor: Psibelius (Gene Wie)..............gwie@csusm.edu
Staff: Atlantic (Barry Freeman)..........atlantic@arcos.org
Benjamin Krause...................orogork@cs.tu-berlin.de
DennisC (Dennis Courtney).........dennisc@community.net
Fred (Fred Fredricks).............fred@paracom.com
Kal Zakath (John Townsend)........jtownsen@sescva.esc.edu
Kleitus (Seth Katzman)............skatzman@global2000.net
Mage (Glen Dwayne Warner).........gdwarner@cvn70b.vinson.navy.mil
Mick Rippon.......................rip@hunterlink.net.au
Trifixion.........................trifix@orion.polaristel.net
Zinc (Justin Ray).................rays@direct.ca
Reporter: IOR (Jesse Rothenberg)............jroth@csusm.edu
Graphic Contributors:
Cruel Creator . Stezotehic . Squidgalator2 . White Wizard
TraxWeekly is a HORNET affiliation.
Copyright (c)1995,1996 - TraxWeekly Publishing, All Rights Reserved.
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until next week! =)
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