IDM Mailing Archive

chall@leonardo.net writes:

quoted 5 lines I could lurk and wait in the bushes for insight into this question,

> I could lurk and wait in the bushes for insight into this question, > or just ask it. Being a non-DJ type, but a big fan, I listen to the > likes of FSOL, Ae, Soma, etc. These folks apparently use those DAT > machines and samplers to distort(change) the sounds to create new > music(noise).

just to clarify - a DAT machine is just a tape recorder. it doesn't do much more than a normal cassette deck. (although it sounds way better of course).

quoted 2 lines What is the procedure? Sample, change, create a melody, then replace

> What is the procedure? Sample, change, create a melody, then replace > with the new sound sample? I know, I'm confused too!

i have a ton of tools at my disposal. each one is like a paint on the artist's palette... you can mildly alter the sound (flange, chorus) or completely weed-whack it into something else (waveshaper, wrap, time/pitch bend) my sampler has a huge range of possibilities... LFOs, envelopes, algorithms galore. i also have outboard effects boxes that can do interesting stuff to sound. less immediate but more "deep" are software packages like SonicWorx, HyperPrism and MetaSynth. these can do completely crazed things to sound but require a little more time invested up front. once you learn your tools and what they can do to sounds, you get to work creating music. the actual writing process varies (of course) from individual to individual. sometimes it starts with a concept (i want to write a pretty song that will have ethereal vocals on top) or a sound (wonder what it would sound like if i took that jazz break and slowed it way down) or an attitude (i can't believe talentless dorks like <insert favorite luser here> are so popular, think i'll do something in his style only much much better to show the world how misguided it is). or maybe it will be just plain sound exploration. "let's get a simple jungle break going and try complicating it with this piece of gear to see what happens." once you take the first step you just repeat with each additional layer. usually i just get like 20-30 tracks of stuff going until i find combinations that are interesting and go together well enough to make a song. that usually gets me through 1 or 2 minutes of music. then i either try adding more stuff or find that i really only like one little loop out of that 1 or 2 minutes, so i take the loop out and build an entirely new thing around that. 808 state had a great technique that i use from time to time called "the hidden sample." basically sample a beat or a bar or two off a record and start building stuff around it. then remove the original sample. hope that helped. -- Jon Drukman jsd@gamespot.com SpotMedia Communications ...I was an infinitely hot and dense dot...

On Mon, 2 Jun 1997, Random Junk wrote:

quoted 3 lines just to clarify - a DAT machine is just a tape recorder. it doesn't

> just to clarify - a DAT machine is just a tape recorder. it doesn't > do much more than a normal cassette deck. (although it sounds way > better of course).

Not exactly... A DAT is Digital and a regular cassette is Analogue. For the cassette, the sound is recorded by encoding the analogue waveform into to magnetic field created by the magnetic particles in the cassette tape itself. For the DAT, the waveform is first converted into its digital representation then this digital data is recorded as '1's and '0's on the DAT tape (the same way information is recorded on a CD). The DAT sounds better because there is a lot of error-correcting going on in the digital to analogue conversion. Hess -/\= Hess M. Hodge ~/\ hess.hodge@colorado.edu (/\) http://stap.colorado.edu/~hodge

Hess Hodge writes:

quoted 3 lines DAT tape (the same way information is recorded on a CD). The DAT sounds

> DAT tape (the same way information is recorded on a CD). The DAT sounds > better because there is a lot of error-correcting going on in the digital > to analogue conversion.

that is a pretty gross oversimplification. there's lots more than "error correction"... in fact, most of the time error correction doesn't even come into play at all (you can verify that by using a pro DAT which shows you error counts). wow and flutter - cassettes are mechanically pretty unstable. shake your walkman around (while it's playing) and see what happens. dats are threaded like tapes in your VCR and are much more immune to wow & flutter. noise - if the only difference between dat and cassette was the analog/digital thing, you'd be in good shape (after all, mulitrack work for years was done on big analog tapes and that sounded great - even today many people still prefer it to digital). unfortunately there are a combination of factors that make cassette really crappy. the thin width of the tape track and the slow speed of the tape drive are the two biggies. i'm not even sure where hiss comes from, but all that dolby noise reduction crap that just really makes things worse is supposed to cancel it out when in reality it just winds up lopping off your high end. digital is amazingly linear in response all the way from the bottom of its range to the top. if you hear hiss, that's because you put it there when you recorded the tape. there are a lot of reasons why DAT sounds good... "digital" is just one part. the bottom line with today's technology is that it is easier to build a really good sounding sound chain with digital technology at low prices. yes, you can do better than CD and DAT but you gotta spend tons of $$$ to do it. -- Jon Drukman jsd@gamespot.com SpotMedia Communications ...I was an infinitely hot and dense dot...