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This file has expired and is no longer available here. The owner of the topic can re-upload the file, or post a link to an off-site file. <BR><BR><a name="planetz-tag"></a>Genre: My<BR> <a name="planetz-tag"></a>Uses: Prisma Absynth Kontakt<BR> copyright © 2003 Christian Werner<BR> _____________________________________<BR><BR> Many bad sounds in front of many arpeggios, pads and Syns with filter work, hold together by a flute in the canyon and dance drums.
I don´t know what a genre this is ElectroDanceTrance(?), it´s simply my genre I think. Please let me know what you think I never made such a track before.

Enjoy!

nice track Chris, nice 'bad' sounds

Just my view:
you could call this ambient, just I would say the mainbeat is a bit too powerrock or something.
Elec drums combined with big reverb...don't no, wouldn't be my choice.
I think it would be cooler to take a thin sounding 'aristocratic' loop, kept almost dry in the (big) mix.
For space in the drums I then would prefer playing a bit with delays.
However the filtering plus delays on the other (?) loop is great, like in your previous song.
cheerz

edit: you're working damn fast btw...

edit2: I would definitely choose for a fat (still nicely mixed-in) bassdrum, to give contrast and earthfeeling to the sky above it
_________________
Let There Be Music!



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2003-07-08 15:20 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2003-07-08 15:23 ]</font>

Wonderful rich textures Chris. You're on a roll now.
Everything flows and moves - not a boring moment.
Your sound/instrument selection is very inspiring and the programing is top notch. What is the tempo? is it about 80BPM?
The only thing I would think about changing is the drum track - love the filtered drum sections - but not so much the reverbed beat that comes in 3/4 through.
I agree with Hubird, you need an earth for your sky

Yes, another lovely feel to this. And I too have a comment about the drums: the loop in the first half is too harsh, thin and predictable - sounds like something from a loop library. Later the high thin is swapped for a something more solid, but also just sounds like a simple loop. I'd much prefer something a little moreunique, longer loop and quirky.

The rest of the track has such an emotional and interesting texture and feel that I think the drums do not do enough to help.

Also, I thought some "real world ambience" would go nicely - country sounds or perhaps some distant talking since to me the music has such a beautiful mood an extra "human touch" would be nice.

Although I mostly write criticism, in fact I like the track very much

Thank you very much for your help in that new style of music I make at the moment, I really need it.

Earthfeeling for the sky is a nice describtion.
This track plays in 160bpm and the drums in half time.
I was very undecided what drums I should take for this track. You know this is my biggest gap and I never "learned" to program drums from the scratch, this part of rythmic work is terrible for me.
I hate it to draw notes or place dots, sometimes I choose a good drum kit and play the notes with my keyboard for every drum instruments, I hate it.
It is more time-consuming than the work of the other elements of a song.

So I used drum loops on this track only, few variations and some multilens(animated filter delay) on the breaks by a mixer automation with Cubase.
You know opening and closing the knob at the right time.

I have to jump over my shadow and take the time to make some long own played and chosen drums. How do you work on your drum tracks? Maybe somebody can make a workshop?

The most inspiring drum instruments come with Reaktor and maybe I explore the library or go for the CW modular, my Drumix?

The things flow well for me the last days and at the moment I have enough time to work out the ideas I have, that´s why I´am so fast, Huub.

Spirit, the idea to use some envirometal sounds and speech things are great, I have a good collection of nature sounds I will give it a try.
I want critic otherwise, how we should learn and get better with our work?
I´am glad that you like this track, beside the drums and thanks you again for your
support. I´ll do a remix after Kraftwerk is worked out.

Cheers

Hey Chris - I wouldn't burry yourself in learning how to program drums to replace using loops. They go hand in hand. There are a million things you can do with loops and programed drums together. Lots of nice tricks.

This is something I think I'm pretty good at so I'm going to go out on a limb, by saying I'm good at it and also say that I'd be happy to share techniques. A lot of the "tricks" that I use are pretty much sequencer specific tho - well, the details on "how to" are.

I don't know which sequencer you are using - but if you're using Cubase VST - loop manipulation posibilities are almost infinite.

I also think you mentioned that you're using Recycle (jealous) so your options are instantly doubled. Hmmm... what is double x infinity

Just as a quick example - did you know that within Cubase - if you either import a REX file or chop up your own audio loop into , say 16th notes, you can click on any one slice with the "pencil" tool (inside the audio editor) and replace it with a sample file from your hard drive. So, if you love the groove of a rex loop - but don't really like the sounds it plays - just replace them with your own samples. This effectively creates a whole new loop and just maintains the groove.

Further from this - you might like all the sounds a loop plays but just wish the snare had a nice drum-room style reverb on it - well, you can slice up your loop into 16th or 32 right in the arrange window - then just drag each snare hit to another track and apply your reverb or whatever to that track.

Just zoom in (arrange window) set your snap value to either 16 or 32 and hold down "alt" while you snip the first section with the "scissors" tool - the file will be automatically sliced into whatever value you set the snap to.

At other times I use a little sequencer called Muzys to process my loops. It has beat slicing built in. So I just load up any loop or multiple loops, set the tempo and let Muzys slice it up for me - then when I'm finished applying effects or layering - I just export to audio and load it into Cubase.

Muzys is quite a lot more than a beat- slicer tho - you might want to check it out. It runs on PC and Mac and plays nicely with SFP and is a VST/VSTi host as well. http://www.muzys.com. I guess in a way it's very similar tool to Albeton Live - in so far as it is loop, pattern and sequence based and tempo independent... but it also has a nice sampler/synth engine called "The MuZynth" - very cool.

If you want to start programming drums with interesting sounds - there's a VSTi free-be called SR202 - it's become a staple in my setup. Loads and loads of drum kits available. It also has multiple outs - so you can apply effects to each sound as you wish. It also has nice simple filtering and distortion built in.You can get it free from Computer magazine or go and have a look at http://www.muon-software.com

I know you mentioned that you find "drawing" beats in tedious - well, it's still my favourite method - but you could quite easily cycle record over a few bars and add your sounds one at a time, playing them from your keyboard.... use auto quantise or apply groove templates to humanise your results.

Anyway - if there is anything I can help you with - just email me.
cheers and happy looping, slicing and programing
Brett


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: blgrace on 2003-07-09 23:01 ]</font>

agree, and nice loop editing tricks.
The slicing and output splitting is handled also perfectly by the Phatmatic-Pro, other edits like coarse, filtering, amp and enveloppe editing per slice are obvious more easyly than Cubase can.

Musically, I like to say, stay with loops (editing), you get more original (!) drums, better sounding, and a faster creative working proces.
Constructing drums never did me get anywhere, and what's interesting in that anyway if you get more interesting stuff by manipulating loops?
Just one of my 2 cents...

btw Chris, a friend of mine, who likes electro beat, liked the drums, and found them in style...
again an argument to do what you like

Thank you all, yesterday was a bad day. My renter where I have my small studio was arrested . So at the moment I can´t use the internet from my studio, damn.
I have to wait until he is free again.
I can look at mails etc. twice a day maybe, bad times at the moment for me.
Anyway, thanks for your support and I´ll keep you in touch as often I can.
Cu soon...
Huub your friend have a good taste

We get him free!
And all things looks like that I can hold my studio this year, at least.
A small heartattack for me but it´s solved.
To be continued...

for me, this is one of your best tracks lately. it's very powerful and tense. i like it alot!
sound is perfect, as usual...

One of my favourite EM artists is a guy named Andy Pickford from Derby, England.
I thought that this was him in places, and that is all that needs to be said.
This is awesome - perhaps your best track on "Z" to me.
If you ever want to hear Pickford - you know where I live