Thursday 30 October 2008

BBC Radiophonic Workshop - A Retrospective

The Radiophonic Workshop has got to be one of the most wonderful of all the BBC's creations. Essentially, they locked a variety of nutcase jazz musicians and engineers in some dank underground office along with an assortment of random electronics and tape machines.

Occasionally they would use the inevitably bizarre output as TV background music, sound effects or even theme tunes - the Dr Who theme being the most well known. They carried on happily until synthesisers and samplers got invented at which point they decided that making children cry had become too easy and called it a day.


There is far too much to say about them to fit it all in a blog so if you want to know more have a butchers at their wikipedia page or you can check out an awesome documentary called 'Alchemists of Sound' which I have taken the trouble to upload.

Well anyway, they are re-releasing what I assume is a greatest hits of the 'shop and they aren't fucking about either. Its a double CD with 68 tracks on disc 1 and 39 on disc 2 - blimey.

Its due for release on the 3rd of November and you can pre-order it now from
amazon.

Carl Craig. At Cité de la Musique,



1. Darkness 00:08:18
2. Transition #1 00:01:12
3. At les 00:08:17
4. Dominas 00:10:54
5. Desire 00:07:37
6. Recomposed 00:09:57
7. Technology 00:08:24
8. Bis 1: The Melody 00:05:35
9. Credits 00:00:32

Monday 27 October 2008

Top Gear

I have often wondered , is all that vintage analogue equipment that people bang on about in Sound On Sound magazine really all that good?

Well last week I was lucky enough to get my hands on a priceless Neve console from the early 80's and find out. The answer is yes, it really fucking is.

The desk had built in EQ and Dynamics that made all the plug-ins I have sound like toys. Even without any processing there was absolutely no audible desk noise whatsoever which is a first for an analogue desk that iI have used.

Of course good skills make great sounding tunes regardless of the tools used, but there is little doubt in my mind that a certain amount of the expensive sound you hear on pop records comes from the expensive equipment used.

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Digital DJing Developments Part 1

The people that make Ableton Live and the people that make Serato Scratch have released a joint statement announcing they are to combine their powers to create something new and amazing. This has got many a forum buzzing with the most people of the opinion that the child of this unlikely marriage will be healthy and strong. Im reserving my judgement until I see what they come up with but I am very intreagued.

For the benefit of those that arent familar with either product...

Ableton Live is essentially a loop sequencer. You can have as many tracks as you like and can put FX on each one. So when djing with it, you can mix as many tunes together as you like, can mess with them with FX, loop bits of them up and generally have a grand old time. There are gadgets to control the software with, but its still a case of knob twiddling, button pushing and fader sliding ie its not very much like traditional djing. It does all the beat-matching (getting tunes in time) itself and has been the luddites poster boy for everything thats wrong with the new world.

Serato Scratch is a clever gadget that turns a pair of turntables into a remote control for your computer. Traditionalists love this one as it means they can steal music off the internet like everyone else but dont have to learn any new skills and can contiune to feel really clever with their manual beatmatching - Hurray!

And now for some pointless speculation....

This has caught my interest not just beacuse its 'big news' but also because the partners make such different software. Perhaps I just have no vision but this all seems a bit wierd.

How a pair of turntables is going to be usefull for Ableton users apart adding the ability to scratch tracks is beyond me. Ableton users probably cant scratch and are unlikely to buy a deck and mixer just to add a bit of wicky wicky wah to their sets.

Serato could easily bolt FX channels onto their existing software without a huge amount of trouble. Controlling FX with a turntable could be interesting but again they ought not to need Abletons help implementing it. Turntablists may well want to loop up their scratches and samples to build up new tracks and ableton would come in very handy indeed. They are of course already at it and have been for some time.

To conclude the specutation, I dont really have a fucking clue what they are going to come up with but im sure it will be lovely.

Incidentally there is a new version of Native Instrument's DJing software out, this one is called Traktor Pro. I don't have a copy yet so you will have to make do with NI's guff for the time being. When I do, i will write a review of it and Ableton Live (DDD pt2).

Please do add to my specualtion...comments are open!

Friday 17 October 2008

Hand Cream & Poppers

Im writing this blog on an apple macintosh laptop in a coffee shop whilst drinking a Macchiato. Frankly i might as well just get a fucking man-bag too. This is a new low. The Macchiato tastes like shit incidentally, but the cunts wouldn't sell me a cuppa tea so in lieu of that i got the silliest drink on the menu. Well not quite, i bottled out of getting 'Spiced Chai with Marshmallows and extra soy'. Next time i am going ask for tap water and see how long i can sit in their shop before they ask me to leave.

Thursday 16 October 2008

The Need for an Internet Non-Proliferation Treaty

Life was easy in 2006. There was only one superpower in Internet music – www.myspace.com. It had everything a musician could need: web hosting, a tidy player which told you how many times your track had been played, a blog and ways of communicating with your audience. It could even propel you to fame and fortune after all if it could happen to Lilly Allen and Kate Nash why not you?

Alas if you weren’t a fat bird with a mockney accent the dream quickly soured. The site was overwhelmed with spam from other musicians, the page designs were terrible and traffic evaporated after FaceBook took over the online proletariats narcissistic needs (yes I really do love that word).

This only changed so much however. Musicians still needed a virtual display cabinet for their wares but now they wanted a shop and delivery service too. MySpace didn’t really adapt, and into the void there rushed a gaggle/pod/flock of new websites.

There really are a fuckload of people offering similar services and it’s a pain. If the title lead you to think that this blog would form some kind of impassioned plea for life, love and unity with a smattering of conspiracy theories, I am sorry. It’s just a review of some of the websites I have used to whore my music. This is all written from a musician’s perspective – get in touch if you have any thoughts as a listener.

There are three new serious sites that I have identified: iMeem, SoundCloud and BandCamp. I have been using all of them and here is what I have found so far.

iMeem:
TwinMotion Page

Player:


Its dreadful, your URL (the thing you type into the box at the top of your internet) is a random jumble of numbers, the background interface is shocking and the traffic is composed entirely of approximately 30 -50 lost young teenagers scrabbling around for goodness knows what (AIDS probably, at least if the Daily Mail is to be trusted). The flash player is okay but its not enough, don’t waste your time with this crap site. The worst crime for me is putting ‘i’ in front of any product name. Nature gifted you an imagination capable of almost anything, so fucking use it.

SoundCloud:
TwinMotion Page

Player:


SoundCloud looks rather promising, it has a slick interface, no adverts, a customisable flash player and very detailed statistics. ZOMG! I CAN HAS SOUNDCLART PLZ? Not so fast, it costs money now. This site rocked when it was in beta but now it’s fully launched it costs money to join and not a small amount either – 80 odd quid per year. There is a free account, which offers 5 track uploads per month and very limited statistics.

Your page cannot be customised at all and there's no blog/news facility so it’s only really a host. That’s good thing for me, I don’t need another blog or yet another website, what I do need is web space and bandwidth for my tracks and widgets to get my music around the internet. You can see some of the widgets on this page; I have a setlist ready to play at the bottom, and a dropbox thing for people to send me music via SoundClouds servers on the right.

The player itself is fantastic, it has timed comments and little links on the top right corner. You can set this link to a site where the track can be purchased (the tune above is linked to juno - an online record shop) or allow the track to be downloaded. There is no limit on track length so this is a great way for djs to distribute mix sets.

It’s still the Internet though - like hell am I paying for anything, soon as my trial expires I will be downgrading to the free account.

BandCamp.mu:
TwinMotion Page

Player:







The Getaway by TwinMotion

This is an interesting operation as it does a bit more than your common garden hosting and flash player site. These people allow you to sell your music too so long as you have a PayPal account. There’s a few options too, sell top audio quality tracks for a price you set or sell top audio quality tracks for a price your buyer sets ala Radiohead (expect if you don’t have a worldwide fan base of devotees like Radiohead do, you are going to get fuck all) and you also have the option to give away a low quality version too.

To make all this work they insist you upload a full fat .wav file (these are the moulds that MP3’s are cast from). It’s a long haul, bearable if it’s just a tune getting uploaded, but an album would really take all day.

Pages can be customised to an extent – you can have a banner and a picture. Great, no more amateur designers fucking up the Internet with their tasteless and half arsed pages like MySpace encouraged.

The flash player is rather funky too; you can display artwork or some cool little visualizations. The statistics are broken down in a clever fashion with plays separated into full plays, partial plays and skips which will give you an idea of which tracks people are really into.

I really like this site, despite the creators being nauseatingly Californian. They say its going to be kept free or charge, and free of adverts as it will be funded by taking a cut of all tracks sold on the site. Its a nice idea and i hope it works out. The only real issue is the name BandCamp which for a certain generation will always be associated with the misuse of flutes. If you can get past this then its a fantastic service.

MySpace:
TwinMotion Page

While traffic has dropped significantly since arseface turned up, it’s still far busier than the 3 upstarts. The player is shit and cannot be embedded in other sites (yet) and there are no statistics at all.

It is, however, possible to have the best of both words – get a MySpace page and then embed it with track players from other site. This way you can still benefit from all the traffic on MySpace, without having to suffer the crappy player. If you wanted to be really sneaky, you could even get yourself a regular page, fill it with tracks and never again have to hear ‘this user does not accept requests from bands’.

Conclusions:
  • MySpace is still the best way to get your music heard by lots of people.
  • Get a SoundCloud and or BandCamp account to use their funky players.
  • Avoid iMeem.
  • Its essential for websites to be composed of two words with the space omitted for extra funk.

Wednesday 15 October 2008

Merkage

Whatever happened to the expression 'Merkage Merkage'!? If you dont know what im talking about, it was something that youths used to say alot and it meant many things. If you are interested, the 'Urban Dictionary' has more information. The basic internet translation would be 'pwned' i suppose. You don't hear it so much these days. Not much point 'merking' a person when you can just shoot/stab them.

Corruption of the English language aside, a true talent who markets himself as Merka has released a new album and its fucking wonderful. Its rammed full of proper breakbeats and tangible music. Don't get me wrong, i love techno too, but 'real' instruments will always be special.

For the time being its available only from Chew The Fat's website but i should imagine it will be on beatport/dj download and whatnot soon enough. Its well worth buying it from CTF however, they are a great record label who nuture new talent and are very deserving of your financial support.

In the beginning...

...there was the internet. At first a vacuum of opportunity, second a haven for all things unsavoury (I am obviously not talking about Danish pastries), third a pit of broken dreams and/or rich quick schemes and finally a home for self publicising narcissistic twats.

If you cant beat em - join em. So here i am. I really can’t bring myself to get an Arseface account so this will have to do. In this blog i am going to talk about my music related news (self-publicity) and all the stuff I like and have been doing (narcissism).

I intend to update this blog at least once a week. For the benefit of the logically challenged this means: "NEW POSTS EV3RY 7 DAYZ BUT SuMT!Me5 MORE LOL".

I hope you enjoy reading it but if you don’t, fuck off and 'poke' someone you fancy but know full well you will never shag.