Jikkenteki

Just took a listen. Psy-ish elements and sounds in DnB is nothing new really (although I haven't listened to any new DnB in years). DnB artists like Gridlok used to be fans of some of the earlier psy-sounds and common elements appear here and there. Still, it is nice to hear people playing with the idea more. As for your track, there are some good ideas there. Three things, however, stood out as areas you might want to look into. One was simply timing related. There are a number of notes in both the acidy lead and some of the drum beats that are obviously out of time. I understand the idea of "broken beats" but broken beats rarely equals out of time beats (this is the most noticable in the parts appearing around 1:30) so if it were my track I'd consider adjusting those hits. The second and third issues are somewhat related. While the sounds you do have are generally decent, there isn't a lot of sonic variation in the track as a whole and almost the entire track focuses on one synth patch doing a few different parts. This leads to the second problem of the track seeming to have very little or very slow development. To my ears many sections either need to be shorter, or more stuff needs to be added in and taken out to keep the ear interested and change the feeling of "space" in the track and to avoid it becoming a one dimensional track. As for things you could try, some more variation in supporting percussion loops and some more work with pads might go a long way in creating even more interest (at least in as far as making the kind of track I would envision). You might consider occassionally taking the parts that the acid patch is playing and dropping them into completely different synth patches at time for more variations. Some of the parts feel (to me) like they might go on a bit too long and shortening those up (in some cases even cutting the number of times a loop repeats in half) might really help in the development of the track and add to the energy, as you do have a number of changes going on, they just seem to be spaced out a bit far as it currently arranged. To address a problem many newer (and a lot of not so new) artists have for a moment. What seems like might be going on here is a problem many artists have, which is an inablilty to "kill your children". That is to say you write a part or sound or whatever you really like and you end up dwelling on it too long (the acid lines seems to be the "child" in this track), where as more often than not using said part half as much is probably better for the track. Or you spend too much time trying to get a part that isn't working into something that is "ok" and then you become too attached to it to cut it due to all the work. My tracks took a major turn for the better years ago when I developed the ablity to spend several hours working on a part and then be able to ruthlessly delete that part entirely (in my case, almost universally after deleting such a part, about ten minutes later I will usually end up with something new that is a 100 times better. Such are the rewards for musical ruthlessness). We all often get too attached to parts, either because they we like them too much, or we have spend too much time on them, and in either case we end up using something we shouldn't, or using something we should use but too much, because we have become too emotionally attached to it. With that said, don't take all this personally, I kind ended up using your post to address some issues I see a lot of artists having in their earlier years (I still have such problems myself and I've been writing music in one form or another for 20 years now). To get back to your track, there are some good parts here and the second half of the track seems to flow a little more smoothly. I think with some triming of the fat and the addition of some new flavors, the track could be even better, and isn't the idea to make the best possible track you can? For what it's worth, Jikkenteki

For background stuff Absynth is an obvious choice (I like it for bass as well). Another good option (if you're on windows) is the various synths by H.G. Fortune. He's been updating them a lot lately so I am a bit behind, but he has free versions of some of them and even those are quite usable. http://www.hgf-synthesizer.de/ I tend to like to add a lot of stereo delays to may pad ground so and do a lot of automation (well in my case, usually live turning) of various knobs to keep some "motion" in the sound and keep things interesting for the ears.

There are a number of ways you can do such sliding effects, but the "glide" (some synths may use a different name for the same thing) method is probably the most common. As an example I whipped this crappy little loop up HERE. Maybe not the best sounding example, but you get the point. Generally speaking the key to to have your notes overlapping some as in this picture. Using the glide control method, if your notes don't overlap they will sound out normally, but if the tail of one overlaps another it will slide up or down to the next note. I used Albino in this example (controls located on the bottom right) You'll generally want single or mono voices here. Then mess with your glide settings until you get something you like. Hopefully that is at least a little helpful

This question wasn't aimed at me, but for my part as an artist that mostly gives his stuff away these days, is that I simply think and write in "albums" the only "singles" I ever come up with tend to be one off things with other artists, something written to try out a new piece of gear, or the first track or two after finishing an album when I haven't found a proper directiong that I want to go in yet. Again, this is probably my more "traditional" musical roots coming though, but for me writing the journey of album is everything.

It all depends on the person and where they are at at that particular moment. Interestingly I basically went the complete opposite direction, with my first several years in electronic music being on the fly live "jamming" as it were with various synths and boxes and then eventually finding the more traditional "tracking" sort of method works better for me. That said probably 70% of my writing process is still "live" with me performing most of the parts in some way or another (this goes for leads, pads, percussion and even knob tweaking) so the end result has been kind of a mix of both worlds. Lots of "live/improv" writing which is then placed in a more standard production environment. That said, regardless of what you do, it is useful for step outside of your comfort zone every once in awhile and try something new (which for me lately if going over to Live to write a track instead of in Cubase).

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I still have well over 500 copies of this CD I need to move out of the my closet (along with another 700 some copies of Mainspring Motion). If you are still interested in buying it and have paypal, drop me a PM and we can work something out. Otherwise enjoy it off of Ektoplazm, either way works for me. I'm honestly surprised that this album seems, if anything, to be becoming more popular as time goes by as it was mostly ignored when it first came out, most releases disappear after about 6 weeks and the music I make generally assumes some intelligence on the listeners part and most definitely isn't aimed at the "let's get bombed and party" crowd. Anyways, that people seem to be connecting with this makes all the work that went into making it worthwhile. Thanks everyone

I DID buy Cubase 4 the other day, but I did that only because I had skipped 4 entirely and then bought it when 5 was announced so I could sneak both in under the free grace period upgrade for 5. Works out fairly well in the monetary scheme of things.

Cubase 5 arrived yesterday. Now I just need to find the time to try it out.

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Just made the call for my 2 free upgrades to Cubase 5 so I should have some new goodies to play with soon. :posford:

A couple of artists at a party a few years back decided that the most logical pronunciation was "Chicken Turkey" Close enough I guess.

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What do you expect from a guy who was basically a professional guitarist first. I suspect this is one of those things that people who haven't spent years and years studying and playing an actual instrument perhaps can't wrap their heads around so well, but the pull of blending your computer music skills with your live instrument ones is a strong, and I feel completely natural one to anyone who has actually played an instrument first. Then again I have guitars in my work too so maybe I'm just biased, but I say who the f*** cares what you use, as long as it is good music. All b.s. of "oh my god, he's using a guitar so it is crap" without even hearing one damn note is a bit rediculous especially considering the guy's had guitars in just about all of his albums in one form or another. Oh wait, this is psy trance where the only real instruments allowed are didgeridoos, or one of a hand full of "ethnic" percussion instruments. Sorry, nothing to see here folks, move along, move along...

Cynic - Traced In Air

A box with two copies of Cubase 4 arrived at my door today finally. Even better with how I timed my upgrades I should get two copies of Cubase 5 for free as well (plus shipping of course, but I'm not complaining).

Distribution can often be a problem, but at risk of sounding simply like a bitter artist and label guy, we tried in good faith for nearly five years to get something going with them to no avail. Maybe the low stocking numbers of some releases are not on purpose directly for their part, but from first hand experience Psyshop has some seriously weak support and business practices for both customers and labels. When we started PAR-2 we tried for well over three years to establish some kind of sales relationship with them and never once received any sort of response. No "sorry we aren't interested", no "we prefer to work directly with distributors", no "sorry, no new labels" nothing but dead silence. Finally on the build up to the release of Mainspring Motion, where we had spent a fairly serious chunk of cash on advertising in free trance mags they were distributing they suddenly replied with a "Sure we are interested, send us some promo copies". Copies sent. A couple of weeks pass with no word so I contact them again to which they claim "We never got them" so I send another set of promos of our releases to that point. This time months pass, no response to any attempt at contact to see if they arrived. Finally they did reply with basically another one line email saying again "never got them" with an additional "but not interested anyway". Now it seems like they, understandably to some degree, prefer to work with major distribution companies, but if this is indeed the case, just flat out say so like a number of other shops politely informed us was the case, rather than just ignoring any and all contact unless it suddenly sounds like their might be some money behind it. Anyways, between all this and some kind of shady things they have done with a couple of my orders as a customer in the past, Psyshop has long since earned the number one place on my personal list of worst shops on the internet as far as service is concerned. Saiko Sounds, on the other hand, as always been the model of good business, both as a customer and a label. Quick friendly contact, helpful with questions, etc.

Well look at it this way. The standard way to record electric guitar has always been guitar to preamp to amp to speak to mic to tape/digital. Simply put, your basic guitar amp contains two parts, first is the preamp. The preamp manipulates the sound coming from your guitar to give you the tone you want via things like eq, distortion, etc. Then the sound passes into the "amp" proper which basically supplies the volume (it is an amplifier after all) which then passes into your speakers (sometimes one's preamp/amp can be a separate unit (often called a head) from your speakers (often call a cabinet). Your speakers also radically color your guitar's tone. Once you have this all the way you want it, you mic it (which is another art unto itself) and record. Take any one of these steps out and it sounds like crap. Now the problem with this for home recording is that this tends to be expensive and loud and the acoustic environment at your home probably isn't all that great. Direct recording can overcome some of these issues, but with some major adjustments needed to recover a vaguely realistic tone. With direct recording you have to bypass the "amp" stage as sending a few hundred watts of power into your mixer or audio interface is not something you want to do. You can record like this directly from the preamp but it will give you that famous direct "buzzing bees" sound. In recent years a number of alternate products have hit the market that "model" the sound of amplifiers and their speaker cabinets to give you a proper sound. Sansamp was once of the first I recall seeing back in the day. The line 6 pod above is another example. There is a massive range in sound quality in these units and a lot of the more realisticaly priced units for most people aren't really worth it sound-wise in my opinion, especially when distortion comes into play. On the plus side a lot of them can be purchased fairly cheaply used and if you are doing electronic music a realistic amp sound might not be what you want (think of a lot of Trent Reznor's guitar tones in NIN, utterly unrealistic from an amp tone point of view, but works in that context). My own current system now removes all of that and I use entirely software based modeling. Many audio interfaces now have direct guitar inputs which I run into Cubase and then run through either Native Instruments Guitar Rig software, or one of IK Multimedia's Amplitude series plug ins. Computer modeling has gotten to the point where I see most of these amp modeling hardware units are kind of useless (at least the ones I have owned, some of which were well regarded), although I'm sure they will continue long into the future due to the more analog minded guitar purists out there who must have knobs and a hardware unit. Now the only problem with this is that your Audiophile USB doesn't have a proper guitar input. That said with the price of many direct recording units, you could just as easily get another audio interface that does work for direct guitar recording for the same price if not less. For example something like THIS or any other similar product.

I've recorded tons of audio on cubase with no problem, who ever told you it isn't good for audio either doesn't know what doing or doesn't know what they are talking about. The audiophile USB shown isn't ideal for recording guitar unless you have an outboard preamp and amp simulator which you'd run through your 1/4" input(s) Alternately you can use a software based one, but recording will sound like a bee until you run it through the software.

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Many of those companies will not work with individual artists or even individual labels and instead will only work with digital distribution companies that represent a large number of labels, much like the traditional distributor in the cd realm. Labels have to got through these companies, which costs them money, and, especially in psy, the number of sales is so small that for some smaller labels the chance that they don't recover those initial costs is very real. As one Japanese label owner I was talking to about the issue with said "all that work for enough money to maybe buy lunch a couple times a year?... no thanks"

I recall seeing an Astral Projection video and a Green Nuns video on MTV very late at night in the US back in the early/mid 90's.

Coupled with massive distribution to many "mainstream" music chain stores where they won't have as much competition with other "psy" releases that are stuck in the usual distribution channels and don't have a prayer of getting into major shops on a regular basis.