It's 2006 now on the East Coast, so happy new year! I didn't get very many songs posted. mp3 blogging is not like dj'ing. Slow work. More semi-abandoned rhythm tracks:
"Tesla's Tribe" [mp3 removed]. From Reaktor, specifically a drum sequencer called Scenario II, just spat out today, another sparingly tweaked preset. I added the electronic buzz and '80s snare and cowbell samples from the Drat Fink Archive. Might ultimately fade this in or out of something else.
"Eternal Hiphop" [mp3 removed]. A pattern from the Electribe Rmkii rhythm synth played ad infinitum. Digital signal processing but analog filtered to add some exciting panning.
Both of these are very cool and are good examples of doing more with less. They're engaging and somehow manage not to be boring (at least to me) even though they have no melody, song structure, or classic harmonic content. The interest comes from the texture and sound itself. I'm starting to think I prefer electronic music when it sounds more like Robbie the Robot and less like Mick, Keith, & Ron.
This is the sort of thing I find myself listening to when I'm programming...
Thanks, G.K. FWIW "Eternal Hiphop" got like a gig of traffic in the last 2 days. I was wondering--what do think of these mp3 robot sites? Are they scooping up your x-eleven tunes? Are you blocking them? I'm keeping an eye on my stats to make sure it doesn't get out of hand, but I can't make up my mind if the "exposure" is bad or good.
The mp3 robot sites are interesting and the x-eleven songs certainly get more listens than they would without them. I think people find my stuff by mistake 99% of the time, though. The songs I get the most hits on are ones that have common sounding titles "burn it up" or "do you like the way i feel?" I doubt I'm getting any new fans from these sites. I'm certainly not getting much website traffic or many Concho music purchases from them; people get the x-eleven song and that's the end of the relationship. I imagine people just use the mp3 robots to get the latest Eminem or Ludacris single without paying for it.
It's interesting to think about how our relationship to music has changed; when I was a kid, you had a few albums that you played over and over and over. "The Wall", "Moving Pictures", etc... You learned every lyric and note and really paid attention to the music. I wonder if that is still happening now that a billion mp3 files are just a mouse click away and everyone with a copy of Reason is making records. Sometimes I worry that we're not actually listening to anything anymore; we hear 30 seconds of a song once and then move on to the next thing. This is, of course, what our corporate overlords desire most: consumers that quickly grow bored with their purchases and pony up for the next gewgaw. I'm sure my great-grandparents said the same thing when phonographs became popular and you could have music in the house without learning how to play it on the piano (seriously, that's how music was distributed around 1900 -- in sheet form!) Maybe I'm just getting old...
Yeah, arguably the phono revolution was a bigger revolution than the digital revolution. It's all good IMHO. I think the music you study music intensely at an earlier age happens because *everything's* absorbed more intensely at an early age. Zappa had a vinyl records of Edgar Varese, listened to them over and over and used chalk marks to identify good passages to play aloud when his friends came over. That kind of nerdy focus will never go away. Cory Arcangel is younger than us and learned the "Eruption" guitar solo note for note, as a teen. Kids with Reason will find some wack way to use the software that we never dreamed of. Like Juan Atkins et al with the 808. A lot of that Brazilian "funk carioca" music is using Playstation samples--it's great stuff, very creative and brash!
Going back to an earlier discussion we had, about loudness in music: You were saying you thought people had been conditioned not to like things that were quieter, with a greater dynamic range. When I DJ'd a few years ago I came to a different conclusion, which was that the records of the '00s had the advantage over '80s records of 20 years of discoveries in recording technology and acoustic science. And maybe that a certain type of music had evolved to cut through crowd noise. I might not disagree that people in clubs, etc have gotten louder and ruder, but I wouldn't say they were necessarily worse listeners just because they can't hear Gary Numan over the chitchat but can hear a digitally mastered electroclash record or whatever.
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It's 2006 now on the East Coast, so happy new year! I didn't get very many songs posted. mp3 blogging is not like dj'ing. Slow work. More semi-abandoned rhythm tracks:
"Tesla's Tribe" [mp3 removed]. From Reaktor, specifically a drum sequencer called Scenario II, just spat out today, another sparingly tweaked preset. I added the electronic buzz and '80s snare and cowbell samples from the Drat Fink Archive. Might ultimately fade this in or out of something else.
"Eternal Hiphop" [mp3 removed]. A pattern from the Electribe Rmkii rhythm synth played ad infinitum. Digital signal processing but analog filtered to add some exciting panning.
- tom moody 1-01-2006 8:00 am
Both of these are very cool and are good examples of doing more with less. They're engaging and somehow manage not to be boring (at least to me) even though they have no melody, song structure, or classic harmonic content. The interest comes from the texture and sound itself. I'm starting to think I prefer electronic music when it sounds more like Robbie the Robot and less like Mick, Keith, & Ron.
This is the sort of thing I find myself listening to when I'm programming...
- G.K. Wicker (guest) 1-05-2006 12:03 am
Thanks, G.K. FWIW "Eternal Hiphop" got like a gig of traffic in the last 2 days. I was wondering--what do think of these mp3 robot sites? Are they scooping up your x-eleven tunes? Are you blocking them? I'm keeping an eye on my stats to make sure it doesn't get out of hand, but I can't make up my mind if the "exposure" is bad or good.
- tom moody 1-05-2006 6:54 pm
The mp3 robot sites are interesting and the x-eleven songs certainly get more listens than they would without them. I think people find my stuff by mistake 99% of the time, though. The songs I get the most hits on are ones that have common sounding titles "burn it up" or "do you like the way i feel?" I doubt I'm getting any new fans from these sites. I'm certainly not getting much website traffic or many Concho music purchases from them; people get the x-eleven song and that's the end of the relationship. I imagine people just use the mp3 robots to get the latest Eminem or Ludacris single without paying for it.
It's interesting to think about how our relationship to music has changed; when I was a kid, you had a few albums that you played over and over and over. "The Wall", "Moving Pictures", etc... You learned every lyric and note and really paid attention to the music. I wonder if that is still happening now that a billion mp3 files are just a mouse click away and everyone with a copy of Reason is making records. Sometimes I worry that we're not actually listening to anything anymore; we hear 30 seconds of a song once and then move on to the next thing. This is, of course, what our corporate overlords desire most: consumers that quickly grow bored with their purchases and pony up for the next gewgaw. I'm sure my great-grandparents said the same thing when phonographs became popular and you could have music in the house without learning how to play it on the piano (seriously, that's how music was distributed around 1900 -- in sheet form!) Maybe I'm just getting old...
- G.K. Wicker (guest) 1-05-2006 8:19 pm
Yeah, arguably the phono revolution was a bigger revolution than the digital revolution. It's all good IMHO. I think the music you study music intensely at an earlier age happens because *everything's* absorbed more intensely at an early age. Zappa had a vinyl records of Edgar Varese, listened to them over and over and used chalk marks to identify good passages to play aloud when his friends came over. That kind of nerdy focus will never go away. Cory Arcangel is younger than us and learned the "Eruption" guitar solo note for note, as a teen. Kids with Reason will find some wack way to use the software that we never dreamed of. Like Juan Atkins et al with the 808. A lot of that Brazilian "funk carioca" music is using Playstation samples--it's great stuff, very creative and brash!
Going back to an earlier discussion we had, about loudness in music: You were saying you thought people had been conditioned not to like things that were quieter, with a greater dynamic range. When I DJ'd a few years ago I came to a different conclusion, which was that the records of the '00s had the advantage over '80s records of 20 years of discoveries in recording technology and acoustic science. And maybe that a certain type of music had evolved to cut through crowd noise. I might not disagree that people in clubs, etc have gotten louder and ruder, but I wouldn't say they were necessarily worse listeners just because they can't hear Gary Numan over the chitchat but can hear a digitally mastered electroclash record or whatever.
- tom moody 1-07-2006 9:54 am