General Music Chat

Hey guys just looking for a bit of feedback from the other side of the pond for a change. If you click on my profile you will hear a wee excerpt from an album i have been gigging with in the uk. Although I am predominently a synth player I do not use a computer in any stage of my recordings. I play in real time and record the old fashioned way (pressing the red button and going for it lol). I know a lot of you guys are guitar orientated so my stuff may not be to your taste, but will be interesting to hear your comments. Cheers Ian

I'm gonna try and not be offended that you think I can't appreciate elec music... love chem bros! (guitarist here)
listening now: so do you do the filters on the fly and everything like the chem bros do? I love this kind of stuff.
def some pink floyd influence here... with intterupt by kids playing...
love the pads leading out of that part.(trk4)
if you are playing that little square wave part that is fast in real time you have some damn fit fingers! I think you need something in there to bring it down to earth... like the contrast of elect guitars or some other type of instrument there.
ps i think part 4 and 5 are almost the sm

They sound similar because track 4 had to be chopped to fit in the 5min free upload that we have. Track 5 is actually the tail end of track 4 leading into track 5. This explanation is getting difficult lol. The square wave sound was played into an Alesis synth then latched to play over and over using the midi timing from my master synth to keep all other synths in time. My fingers are no where near fast enough to play at that speed continuously lol. Regarding the filters the main filters in that particular track were manipulated in real time, but quite often depending on what synth the filters can be preprogramed.

I don't mean to preach the gospel of collab, but have you ever thought of going over there? it's a cool site... with too few keyboardests(if that's a word). you can post yer work and have ppul add stuff too it... then at the end of the year they pick the best of the best and cut a cd(pro qty). they also try to sell yer stuff for ya!
www dot musicianscollaboration dot com in case yer interested.
-you def have some nice stuff here, keep up the good work.

Cheers MrMike I will check out that site.

Hi Mike, just listen to your tracks, sounds pretty good. I like the fact that you played your parts. I feel the same way, I try not to use midi, but sometimes for clients when there in a hurry. I'll check back to see if you have any new ones in the future.

Cheers Chris from Canada.

Cheers Chris, I have not used a computer in my music since 1995 and that was just a lowly 1meg atari running pro24. Being a synth player most people over here assume I have done everything via computer, so I have always made a point of not using them. I know this places limitations on what can be done but at least it is a fairly unique approach these days and allows for a more organic less clinical sound.
Must say I was expecting a bit more constructive input from the land of apple pie, bring back SDavis all is forgiven, we miss you lol regards "sir discotheque".

hehehehe davis hehehehe.
ok, you are silly cause you used a computer on this and every other piece of music that had a synth on it... what do you think is in that box????plus you admitted using i'ts built in sequencer to triger those lil riffs.... liar liar pants on fire. Look at the korg triton.... has processor, ram, a motherboard... etc., but I get what you were getting at. arpeggiators are were the precurser to midi recordings.
and another thing... bethoven didn't play all the instruments he wrote for... how is that any different?
It's like the sample argument... I had a friend that said: "i don't believe in sampling... it's wrong... "
-my counter point would be that all keyboards sample. at what point does it become more of a sample and less of a performance? a pad is a sample and a performance... ok I'll stop my mad ravings of a electronic lunitic.

All this ethical navel gazing is part of the growing pains of the electronic age, I think. I would bet every age had its controversial developments that were anxiously embraced by some, and reviled by the conservatives. Sampling is no different. The part that remains the same is - can you make music?

Interesting trivia when it came to some of the "Masters" -

* Beethoven indeed did not play MOST of the instruments he wrote for. He would have "first readings" by players to see if there were some impossible passages he wrote and could edit them.

* Chopin, it is largely agreed, probably was incapable of mastering his more demanding piano pieces. In fact, he really didn't like public performance much at all. The few times he actually did perform, he chose to play his simpler, slower etudes and preludes. So who performed his flashier pieces in public? Why, his virtuoso friend - Franz Liszt.

* The saxophone wasn't introduced into the symphony until the work of German composer Richard Wagner. Many thought it to be a brutish, unsophisticated instrument and thought it would spell the end of the symphony as performance ensemble. So controversial was this, and other Wagnerian experiments that a critic who heard the opening night of one of his operas wrote in a German newspaper that "Herr Wagner has written an opus that sounds very much like someone threw a bomb into the orchestra pit."

Well there's more, but you get the drift. Every innovation or new age in music is met with fear or skepticism by those who think they are preserving "real music".

good cal irminsul... perhaps you adn davis had more in common than you thought(history buffs). So true for rap. I think it is the savior of poetry in music. here me out. throwing away the std rhyme scheme... for a much more complex set. you hear phonetic rhyme, you hear them break rhyme routine... not a giant rap fan here... but I respect it for what it is... innovation.
btw was i right about the answer being anarchy in the uk?