Happy Halloween!

To celebrate Halloween this year I've done a dance mix (*) of Playing With Knives for your party tape. I've called it Jack Knife.

It's downloadable as a 320bps mp3 from here.

http://soundcloud.com/beat-frequency/jack-knife



(*) I have no idea what a "dance mix" is, but it's loud and it has a beat that people dressed as Frankenstein's monster could dance to. :-)

[i]"I have no idea what a "dance mix" is, but it's loud and it has a beat that people dressed as Frankenstein's monster could dance to. :-)" - Gordon [/i]

Oh, Gordon.. ! ..

[b]This is one of the most truly horrible tracks I have ever listened to![/b] - Yes, it could be good "dance" music for mechanized zombies, but I think even Frankenstein's monster would find it, well, 'limiting'! (even I would find dancing to this, 'limiting' - and thats saying something! ;-)

I love all the music you have done in the past - but this combination is so bizzarely incompatable, so mind-numbingly banal, so.. Nah, I have said enough.

[b]Happy Halloween! ;-)[/b]

Freddy. oooOOOOoooooOOOOOoooOOOOOooo

I am now putting my headphones on, volume turned way up, to purge my brain with some Rachmaninov.. This is a rarely used treatment for when I have been exposed to a music-threatening expierience.

Hahahahahaha! I've been to a few gigs where I felt exactly the same way about the music the DJ was playing for the young people. (*) … So I'll count that as a success. ;-)

The most time consuming part, incidentally, was removing all the dynamics so that it had a constant volume throughout. I have some tools to automate the process - which I usually don't do - but they tend to introduce a lot of clipping too. Judging by some of the pop songs I have examined, proper recording engineers don't perceive clipping as a problem.

(Scarily, my better half bought the most clipped CD ever (http://www.cutestudio.net/data/products/audio/CD_clipping/shame/index.php) - Elephunk by The Black Eyed Peas.)

I do hope that is what you hated about the piece - I put almost as much effort into making it non-repetitive as I did into disguising that fact. The rhythm is built out of three (admittedly similar) loops of different lengths, so only actually repeats itself exactly four and a bit times throughout the piece.



(*) One DJ in particular confided in me afterwards that he was very pleased to have managed to find an hour's worth of programming [b]all with exactly the same beat[/b]. Oy vay.)

[i]"removing all the dynamics so that it had a constant volume throughout"[/i]

Commonly called "normalization" - In the good old days, one did this by controlling the mix, and using analogue compression carefully - and sometimes using tape saturation .. These days, digital normalization can be (and usually is) cranked up to a level which (IMHO) obliterates any subtlety that dynamic variations impart.

[i]"proper recording engineers don't perceive clipping as a problem."[/i]

I disagree - "Old School" engineers took great care, and most certainly regarded clipping as a problem... It IS a 'problem' - But with the majority of recordings being bastardized into MP3, and with Hi-Fi becoming an antique concept, there are few remaining "proper recording engineers" - They are on the endangered species list!



I worked as an engineer in a large London recording studio for 3 years back in the late 70's, and for a cassette production facility in the early 80's, and there was real care taken over giving the consumer the best possible quality sound - We had pride in producing high quality copies, even on Compact cassette .. These cassettes were produced from a 1" master tape in a continuous loop - the tape was frequently replaced so that wear did not cause noticable degradation .. Every 20 cassettes, one was removed and listened to - and I was continually roving 'round the production facility checking the head alignments and adjusting the azimuth for optimum frequency response and balance..

Sadly, those days of care have gone - prices have come down, but quality has come down even more..



[i]"I do hope that is what you hated about the piece"[/i]

Gordon, I hated everything about the piece! Sorry! :-(

To me, I think it is the freedom in your music which ispires and pleases me most.. I an no musicologist, and my following may be nonsense, but here goes.. There are rythmic components introduced by delay / echo, there are chordal structures introduced by mixing of delayed 'notes', there are melodies and harmonies, and they all eminate from a single source which you are controlling... You have, IMO, an astounding ability to morph and create wonderful soundscapes and music which stretch the (my) brain and produce an exciting, enjoyable effect.

But the last piece killed everything I like about your music.. Like putting a wild bird in a cage, or putting God into religeon. You contained something which cannot be contained and remain 'alive' in a shell of 'normality' - "engineering" this "shell" by using multiple loops or whatever made no difference, because it was, is, and evermore shall be, an artificial shell.

Fred.

Thank you, Fred. I have been telling people for the best part of four years that it's OK to tell me they don't like any of my music and why, but until now nobody has. It's much more useful than positive but uninformative feedback, nice as that is.

Interestingly, I've also had some very positive feedback about this recording. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. :-)

Also, I agree with you 100% about engineering standards. I was being sarcastic when I said about it not bothering "proper" engineers.

We do seem to differ on terminology. I understand normalisation to mean amplifying the entire piece so that the loudest part is as loud as the recording medium will support. What you described is what I think of as compression.

[i]Fred said, "with Hi-Fi becoming an antique concept, there are few remaining "proper recording engineers" - They are on the endangered species list!"[/i]

Amen to that, brother. IMO, it (Hi-Fi) ended at the beginning of the digital era in the early '80's.

[i]Fred said, "Yes, it could be good "dance" music for mechanized zombies, but I think even Frankenstein's monster would find it, well, 'limiting'!"[/i]

By today's standards, to be real "dance music", it would need to have a beat closer to 140 BPM and a hard, thumping bass drum beat.

As someone who likes some of that aweful dance music, I think this piece is really not all that bad. (That's considering I haven't spent nearly as much time listening to and analyzing Gordon's catalog as some others may have - almost none actually. Perhaps someday I will.) You're right...the beat is a little slow for a real "dance" piece, but it could work for a room full of drunken zombies.

FWIW, I think it's 120BPM - at least that was what I had GarageBand set to to make the synthetic components lock in with the 1 second delay I had put the theremin through. That's GarageBand's default, so I guess it's common in pop music.

And it's definitely dance music because I pressed the "swing" button. LOL.

[i]"We do seem to differ on terminology. I understand normalisation to mean amplifying the entire piece so that the loudest part is as loud as the recording medium will support. What you described is what I think of as compression." - Gordon [/i]

You are right - Normalization is simply adjusting amplitude of the entire piece so that the peak levels stay within the amplitude accepted by the medium.. This, on its own, does not alter the reletive dynamics of the piece.

Where it becomes something 'more' than 'normalization' is when the process is effectively run multiple times selectively 'normalizing' specific frequency bands, and then recombining these parts into an overall normalised composite.. This does 'compress' the track - I have done this manually, but I believe there are apps which automate the process.

[i]"Interestingly, I've also had some very positive feedback about this recording. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. :-)" - Gordon [/i]

Im pleased some folks like it! -- Imagine how dull conversation here and (particularly) on LevNet would be if we all liked the same music! ;-).. There is absolutely no such thing as an absolute when it comes to musical taste! ;0).

I do not get inspired my most music in the 'dance' genre, and probably hate more music in this genre than in any other genre (with possible exception of C+W, where I probably hate more than 70%), so I am naturally 'tilted' towards disliking your latest, I suppose. I also think that my reaction may be a bit more extreme because I like the original much more - I often find this - I have a piece of music I love, it is embedded in my 'soul' - I can 'play' it in my head, and 'hear' every note and harmonic (even if I last actually heard it 10 years ago)... If someone then releases a horrible bastardized dance version of this piece, I sometimes go nearly anaphalactic when I hear this -

Fred.

Yea...120 BPM is good for an up-tempo piece. "Modern" dance is generally just a bit faster.

[i]"And it's definitely dance music because I pressed the "swing" button. LOL."[/i]

Good one Gordon. I did say, "By today's standards" though. These days, if you asked most people under forty if they like "swing", they'd probably be thinking of the two lengths of chain and a seat on the jungle gym in their back yard.

I found this handy list of BPM by genre:

Hip hop & trip hop: 70 - 120
Minimal: 110 - 130 or 140
Dubstep: 140
Hardstyle: 145 - 155
Drum 'n Bass: 165 - 170
Hardcore: 175 - 200
Speedcore: 250 - 440
Splittercore: 500 - 700
Extratone: 900 - 1000 and up


We're getting old...