If I played two operas to you side by side, and told you the names of the composers, I'll bet I could play you a third track by one of the composers and you could pick out who it was almost instantly. This was a big revelation to me in my understanding of classical music and jazz. You don't have to be a total fanatic to understand some basic indiviudual artistic tendencies and expressions. I really, honestly don't think most jungle music has much artistic commitment to individuality or convention-breaking. Because of this, it really does "all sound the same" sometimes. There's variations on quality within the formula, but rarely do the artists leave the formula. Jungle is more formulaic than pop.
Pop:
Use your guitars to make a riff with a hook to it.
Write several simple rhyming verses.
Play riff over and over and sing the words using this formula:
verse/verse/chorus/verse/verse/chorus/bridge/verse/chorus/chorus
Insert drums according to taste. Model after Ringo.
Jungle:
Get three breakbeats from a zero-g record. Call them Breakbeat 1, Breakbeat 2, and Breakbeat 3. Make sure they are all 140bpm, not a bpm more or less.
Using three bass notes, insert bass hits between beats on the three breaks. You are practically done now.
Get a cool sample from a movie or a cartoon or even from a non-jungle record.. Repo Man is good. Something which refers to freeing your mind or something is also good.
Warning: If you use a diva, you will be called "soft".
Extra credit: Make one cool sound on a freind's synth.
Combine :
BB1/BB1/BB2/BB1/BB1/BB2/BB3/BB1/BB2/BB2
Play the movie sample or the synth sound sometimes.
-Chris Fahey (oversimplifyng to be cute)
-----Original Message-----
From: pHile [SMTP:PHIL@argonaut.com]
Surely this is just a variant on the 'It all sounds the same'
argument, which is deeply rooted in your listening context. To me,
italian opera all sounds the same, but this is obviously not true
for (most if not all) italian opera fans. Of course ths isn't to say
I don't like italian opera, just that I haven't listened to that
much.