I have to continue working on some new material, not ready yet, but looking at the waveforms, it’s not good. See image to the right. I think this is actually very common for anyone producing material, and letting a limiter do its job. The output is not clipping, but look at the top parts with flat cuts, the limiter in action.

In real life, this kind of sound works, but sound very compact, somewhat massive and also dull at the same time, no variations. This happens easily when too much material is mixed together at the same time. For example, multiple drum loops, with dynamically active low-end, could produce this result.

Remember that dance music, one aspect of it, is really moving air back and forth. If the air does not move, this dynamic part is missing.

There are workarounds, like high pass filters to remove energy from the low end, very good eq:ing across the lines, or just restrict the cases where overlapping instruments cause this. Or then just use less material.

Another simple way is just to take down the volume levels the same amount across all the tracks. It seems that the limiters and other mastering tools could do a better job if the original input is not so hot. In Logic this is easy, in Ableton Live it’s not as fun, as you can’t select multiple volume sliders, and one controls the others, as in Logic. You could also group together tracks into one specific track, let’s say all the drums are re-routed into one track, and by one volume control you could set the balance.

Here’s by the way an example of a good sound wave format, this was a reference track (not mine) I listened to, and especially looked at the wave forms. When doing this, find a track that has similar characteristics you want to achieve, and then learn how it’s done. It’s quite fine to do backwards engineering with music productions.

Anyway, in this case you could see that the top peaks do not look like linear roof tops. There’s some breathing room between the pulsating drum/bass lines, and that’s good for many purposes: air is moving with big speakers, when doing MP3 compression the result sounds more airy, and in general the final production is not so massive, but still works well on both the dance floor, as well as on the iPod.

Ok, I started to chop the ten tracks for the compilation mix into small clip sections in Ableton Live. Even after a couple of minutes it made sense. This mix, when ready, will be better than a mix with tracks lined up from beginning to end — as I could mix and match clips, even from more than two tracks, to make something new.

It just has to be one of those live takes, or I will do multiple ones, and select the most interesting out.

Basically, what I’m doing is to load in the original 16-bit WAV file, make sure the warping is fine, then hit command-D to duplicate the track and make various loop parts for individual clips, starting from the beginning. When that part is done, I just hit duplicate again, and move the loop point to the next interesting section. This all is saved into a self-contained project, but if I want to I could also export the individual clips per track into separate projects. I might do that later, for Live DJ purposes.

I have my own cryptic way to label the clips, I usually means intro, Part one and Part two is various main parts, and they have sub-labels. The empty parts are marked as a starting E, ends with End. I make sub-labels with more info, such as I - drums only. This way I know that this section has drums only, so it could be used with other clips from other tracks that don’t have drums, for instant mixing purposes.

I also noticed that by using certain sections I could make instance minimalism! Or then using specific other sections it would sound like progressive electro. Nice, less work.

I’m not too strict on the labeling format, as long as the labels make sense.

OK, two done, eight more to go tonight.

I’m just now working on mixing together the first ten tracks from PlanetoidPark releases, the reason is that I was told that it’s good to provide as part of an forthcoming label collection also a mix with the material. So those who want individual parts could get them, and those who want to get it all as a mix, could purchase it. So it makes sense.

It’s both fun and annoyance going through old material — why didn’t I do that, and how was that done, but best to keep the sound as it was, and not tinker at this point of time.

Anyway, I did a normal mix of the tracks up to 50 minutes, and it was OK, but reminded me of a radio program from beginning to end. I didn’t add any loops and other odd productions, just using the original material.

Tomorrow I will have a new ear, and actually chop the ten tracks into small clips, and then do a real live session mixing and matching together parts. This would be the other extreme end, instead of doing a secure mix, it could just be anything.

After that I need to make a decision, should I release a controlled mix of the material, or this live lets-see-what-happens mix? It will be interesting. If the live-crazy mix works out, I would rather use that one, as after all it’s like a new track rather than using existing tracks one after another… So that’s my dilemma for this week.

See this posting at filter27. Tony Wilson was one of those important movers and shakers in this electronic music business. His gutsy approach to release tracks and promote artists, as well as be influential in starting the big club scene in England is something to honor. There’s something amazing about people like Tony Wilson, who just did things to see what the outcome would really be.

The movie 24 Hour Party People was sometimes over the top, but it’s worth watching just to get the feeling of how things happened and the state of mind during that period.

I was listening to the dedication mix this morning, and it was indeed interesting to take a historical trip through the very early days of electronic dance music, and especially compare it with the material done today. Boy, I didn’t remember that the clap sound was so up-front mixed at that time period. Or that the influences between fast hip-hop and electro dance music cross-pollinated, mostly thanks to Artur Baker, another influential electronic music producer.

Anyway, I salute to the person who was influential in giving us Blue Monday, and much more.

A friend sent me this link to YouTube, and I won’t embed it, just the link, it’s here.

Anyway, this video has been watched over a million times! Now that YouTube is opening up the ad revenue sharing for videos, it actually means that it’s one of the first times in history that music videos could generate revenue.

Anyway, if you go down that route, you need to think in terms of generating clicks, that means music videos about pets, children, goofing, and doing silly tricks — watch America’s Funniest Home Videos or similar TV programs for inspiration. Or if you don’t get inspired by this, even if you could make money, I understand you…

I don’t think this music video will create millions of hits, unfortunately. But it was fun making it with my sons. I should make more of those — but the biggest obstacle for me is to figure out a cool idea behind the video, something odd and interesting, style what Beck is doing. Anything else just looks so stereotype today.

This is one of those ‘nice-to-know’ features in Ableton Live. When I start a new project, it’s very common for me to drag the same plugins to multiple tracks, such as AUHighpass filters, with the same starting point cutoff frequencies. Yes, I could use a template, but I always forget about it.

Anyway, instead of always dragging the plug-in from the live devices browser, and select it and define the cutoff frequency, start with one plug-in instance. After that, select it and option-drag it to the next track where you want the same plug-in with the same settings. Continue until you have all the tracks populated with the same plugin settings you wanted. That should save you some time.

Same if you have a nice plug-in setup on one track, option-drag it to another track as a separate copy.

It takes a while to learn how to really program specific synths, especially as you need get a very deep understanding of the synthesis model. The classical synth model of a generator, filters, envelopes and so on could be grasped, but when you get into the world of additive synthesis, FM, and more esoteric models, it takes a lot of brain power, and especially time, to learn how to program such systems.

Enter the morphing interfaces. The basic idea is that you map four specific parameters to four sections, and move around in this x/y space, and this way — from existing parameters — you could generate brand new sounds. Zebra 2 has this model.

Tonight I also tried out the morphing system in Native Instrument’s FM8, it’s even more wild, you have four different patches, and you could take parts from each one and morph a new sound with a certain spread of parameters you could define. It’s hard to describe it without doing it yourself, but you could really quickly get very interesting FM-based sounds this way.

These morphing interfaces are also good not just for studio use, also for live situations, with a controller you could really create brand new sounds on the spot while playing live.

One of the many headaches most of us label owners have is the issue of releasing material that will stick around for a very long time. With this I mean that the material is not something that sounds fresh today.

It’s very easy to fall into this trap — you want to sound the same as everyone else, for example electro is a big thing just now, so let’s kick start a couple of crummy software synths with a saw oscillator and a nasty filter, and get the job done.

Or, let’s look at an example of an album that has stood the test of time, and is still fresh: David Bowie’s Heroes. When it came out, most of us just scratched our heads, what’s this thing, it was odd, totally unexpected, weird. But the album is still interesting after all these years. Another opposite are any of those ‘Best of Trance’ records, if you listen to the tracks today you just feel sad about all the effort going into something that is today digital fodder.

It’s really tough, you want to release unexpected and interesting material, but the audience is maybe not ready, or they actually finally enjoy it years after you retired, or even died. Or then you go with the latest trend from Berlin, London, or let’s say Auckland just to spread the trends out. Then you are part of the pack and you sell and get attention, but soon later you are just forgotten.

Again, if you release exactly what you want, and you don’t care, expect comments such as ‘this sounds old/weird/unconventional’, or ‘this is not exactly what we expected’, and a variation of these topics.

Oh, just make interesting music and don’t worry about fitting into the crowd. Don’t stay between the lines!

I wanted to write a song about Boltzmann brains – an odd topic — and needed odd sounds. It’s been a while since I last used Absynth, and the natural inclination when making strange sounds is indeed to first use this remarkable software synth.

And yes indeed, it’s not just odd spectral sounds you get, also odd sounding bass lines, as well as even rhytmic patterns that are not from your standard drum machine setup.

The thing I’m usually struggling with Absynth sounds is that they are so right in the high end, so many harmonics — even with taking down some of the track levels, it still cuts through.

As for the track, it didn’t take long to compose and finalize. This was one of those cases where I did the composition in Logic, and exported 24-bit AIFF files out to Ableton Live, and then reassembled it in a mix-like environment in about one hour. I still need to do a proper mastering and final check-down.

The other technique worth mentioning when exporting from Logic to Live is that I then use the re-pitch mode if I key in the exact same BPM as in Logic. This means that the quality is very much the same, no warping artifacts. I also do this with the drum loops exported.

As for the release, I doubt this could be released as an underground dance track, it’s 120bpm, and has too much oddities happening. Anyway, another reason I have the podcast channel in place to release material that can’t be released through normal channels, anyway. Meanwhile, check out about Boltzmann brains and see what the cosmologists are struggling with just now…

I started to place information in the links section of this web site with links to various resources I consult on a daily basis. To start with I will add various podcasts I’m listening to.

I’m really into podcasting nowadays, of many reasons. Think of it as radio but much, much better. It’s not tied to a certain time, so I need to open up the radio or net stream, it downloads when it’s available. Also, new episodes will show up in iTunes over time. I could drag these to any media player (i.e. iPod) I use, or then just play it on the computer, or even burn a CD if I need to. And the extended podcasting format makes it possible to embed images and links, so if those are available, I could find more information about artists this way.

I’ve been listening to the Resident Advisor podcast to soon six months, and it’s a very good program. Each podcast has a producer/DJ doing a mix with very contemporary music, and the quality so far has been very good, where good for me is an intriguing mix — not how well someone blends together two tracks, or using overplayed tracks, that’s boring for me.

Examples of recent Resident Advisor podcasts I’ve listened to is Dixon (funky, funky!), Vince Watson (well, trance is alive after all), Chateu Fligth (hurrah for those who experiment), Hector (what a surprise), and many others.

It’s odd that the way I’ve noticed this site has more traffic is that I’m getting more spam postings nowadays, 10-20 a day. Akismet in WordPress (a default plugin, anyone should activate it) catches them all, so it’s not really a big deal.

I do have hooks in place inside Google Analytics to track all the rest of the incoming traffic, as well as a fun WordPress plug-in called Live that shows in real time incoming requests.

Anyway, the other reason I’m writing this is that due to the spam issues commenting is configured so that that first time someone is placing a comment, it is placed into a moderation queue. The second time — if the first comment was approved — you could write comments and they immediately show up. I only delete spam-based comments, anything else OK. So feel free to leave comments - I really appreciate reading them (as well as others), and it’s one of the charms with blog systems.

Something that I think Ableton Live 6.0 is somewhat weak with just now is exporting of stems for remixing purposes. All you could do just now is to export whole tracks, and with the high resolution, a six minute single track becomes 60-80Mb. If you add this together with 16+ tracks, using yousendit or a similar service is impossible — you need to send a DVD to the remixer.

What I have to do just now is to freeze MIDI tracks, and then from the freeze tracks in the Project Freeze folder yank out the needed smaller parts and in turn export those as stems. In Logic, you could just select a region and export it, very handy.

Now, most of my productions are already smaller AIFF or WAV files exported from Logic, so it should not be a big deal, but if you use MIDI in Ableton Live, then you need to worry about this. I’m also exporting the MIDI for the remixers, as that could be handy for remixing purposes.

Anyway, if someone know of a better trick how to export partial stems, sections of Live, let me know. Meanwhile, let’s hope that Live 7 has export of selected regions…

Ok, here’s the first episode of the new BioWaves podcast series. The idea behind this series is to present really excellent music from net labels, and also play unsigned tracks from various producers.

Click here to get info how to subscribe to the podcast series, and there’s more general information available there.

This is a brand new enterprise, so feedback highly appreciated! Place comments below, or email me. Also, surprise me and recommend anything interesting from net labels and music that is not signed by labels, I’m looking for music that is interesting and different, let’s say someone wants to become the Frank Zappa of electronic music, if so contact me!

BioWaves 001 Track Listing:

1. Clarke Cassidy - Mind One [Stratospheric]
2. DNCN - No 2 Upstairs (Paul Louth’s Tranceathon Remix) [4Four]
3. Martin Donath - Foresight [Stadtgruen]
4. Miroslav - Huge Black Force [Binary Science]
5. Mr. Lee Division - Streets Plant [Binary Science]
6. Holle64 - On Time [Holle64]
7. Digitalis - China Hope [Thinner]
8. The Poison Control Centre - Ardoyne [pertin-nce]

Download
Download by right-clicking (Mac users, control-click) on this link.

I just checked out SoundSnap, and created an account, as well as uploaded a bunch of sound samples to this place.

Basically it’s very similar to Flickr, but it’s sound related. You could download all kinds of sound effects, loops, single-shot instruments for samples and so on. And you could also upload your material, as long as you own the copyrights for that material.

Just read the fine print carefully, basically if someone else is using your material, you will not be compensated for this. Then again, it’s nice to be altruistic and give material for others, anyway. Usually, what I do with such sites is that if I use material from such sites, I also contribute, to keep the karmic balance, or even better, make it on the plus side.

One issue with similar sites is to maintain the quality, as the more its open, the more less quality material will be present at such sites. Then again, Flickr seems to work just fine, based on the tools there, so you could find really good quality material based on user feedback placed on entries.

We live in a really interesting post-modern world, where even high-quality sound samples are now available for everyone. It will most definitely increase the amount of music published, and I don’t think we are so far away any longer from the state where every consumer could make their own music — the truth is not so far away, already.

I might ruff some feathers out there by this posting — if so, apologies to start with.

I would think that most of us dealing with electronic music — sooner or later — will drown in emails coming from totally unexpected sources, mailing lists we never subscribed to, for example. And a huge majority of those has to do with promoting either tracks or events.

Same with mailing lists and forums, after a while, more and more of the postings are related to promotion of some kind, rather than interesting information. Or those of us that have MySpace accounts, we provide friend access, and after a while most of the postings are promotions of some kind.

Now, I wonder, most of that will just make the reader annoyed, and that’s usually the opposite of successful marketing. I would think that most of us would only like to get such information if we really requested it.

This is the reason I’m not using any private mailing lists or pushing promos over mailing lists, or push promos to other accounts MySpace. There are some exceptions to this, but it’s mostly to do with announcing free content — everyone wants free stuff. Or then working for the good of electronic music, again it most likely has to do with something non-commercial and free in nature.

Anyway, there’s a very good technology that turns it all back to the consumer side, and that’s the use of RSS feeds. If someone wants to know more about what’s going on, they make a deliberate choice to subscribe to a feed, and then they get the material. Or, then just trust the consumers to find your information via net searches, or by visiting your sites.

It might be that such a solution reaches less eyeballs, but at least such a marketing style does not annoy those poor eyeballs drowning in promotion material.

If anyone is tired of such marketing strategies, just unsubscribe from such mailing lists, or let them know that this is not working. It’s very similar to spam, and nobody likes spam (or I would hope so).