music - tm

"SidBeats 2" [mp3 removed]

Another straight-up rhythm track done with the kit I made sampling percussion sounds from the Sidstation synth.

This is a bit more on the noize tip. The weird flanging sounds are done with Reaktor plug-ins, but all the original, underlying sounds were made with the Commodore 64 sound chip.

It was interesting to learn all the ways the various Sid users who made the original patches created kick, snare, hat, and tom sounds just using waveforms.

After working with hardware and software drum synthesizers for a while I'm coming to have a different understanding of Simon Reynold's "beats as fonts" analogy.

It is especially clear when you look at the waveforms depicted graphically in a sampler: the kick and snare, say, each have their own characteristic shape but everyone "draws" them slightly differently. They really are like alphabet letters, and when combined to form musical "sentences" they can have a completely different character/vibe/feel/aura from one kit to the next.

"SidBeats" [mp3 removed]

Straight-up rhythm track done with the kit I made sampling percussion sounds from the Sidstation synth. This is basically a demo; I tried to use all of the samples. The hissing artifacts are noises made by the Sid chip. You have to pay money to get that dirty sound now.

"Trig Functions (Beats)" [mp3 removed]

In addition to the lead instrument sounds and bass heard in the Sidstation "solo" a couple of posts back, I sampled a range of the percussion noises the synth makes and built a (surprisingly acoustic-y sounding, or at least non 8-Bit) drumkit that can be played in a sampler. This track is the "solo" plus those drums.

Update: This is work in progress. The beats were a sequence written independently of the main tune and dropped into the grid after saying a short prayer to see what would happen. Things are working in the middle but the downbeat takes too long to come in. Will write a new rhythm for the intro and repost.

Update 2: revised and reposted

"Trig Functions (Solo)" [mp3 removed]

Done with the sounds made with the Elektron Sidstation synthesizer, which incorporates the Commodore 64 computer's original sound chip (from the '80s) and has some added programming such as LFOs and possibly wavetables and envelopes that are not in the chip proper. Am still working on a version with a drumkit made with Sid sounds--this is a cappella. I also added some reverb--this was almost all done in Cubase so it's about the opposite of live playing.