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jimpunk: "Buckyball Bob" [179 KB Quicktime .mov] (1.5 second loop)
originally here as a downloadable .m4v for those little white players that people have.
(the buckyball is by me.)
An excerpt from More Brilliant than the Sun, a 1998 book on music by Kodwo Eshun, was posted on this blog six years ago in March. Here it is again, and it will be reposted yet again in 2013, that's how much I like it:
There are no drum-machines, only rhythm synthesizers programming new intensities from white noise, frequencies, waveforms, altering sampled drum sounds into unrecognizable pitches. The drum-machine has never sounded like drums because it isn't percussion: it's electronic current, synthetic percussion, syncussion. The sampler is at first termed an "emulator," as if it does nothing but imitate existing sounds. Calling the rhythm synthesizer a drum-machine is yet one more example of [r]earview hearing. Every time decelerated media writes about snares, hihats, kickdrums, it faithfully hears backwards. Electro [music] ignores this vain hope of emulating drums, and instead programs rhythms from electricity, rhythmatic intensities which are unrecognizable as drums. There are no snares--just waveforms being altered. There are no bass drums---just attack velocities.Somehow the passion and insight of this writing in response to music that was revolutionary ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, ought to be held onto in the face of overwhelming excess production--the microchip revolution that has probably resulted in more djs than listeners, as represented by the surfeit of grooveboxes in stores and on eBay. What if there were only a few of these left in the world? Someone would be hacking the chips for sure once the factory-intended "unlimited sonic possibilities" had run out. When writing music for machines like this--and it's a hoot, I recommend it, they're cheap used, kind of a latter day harmonica or skiffle pole--I sometimes envision a jaded, overworked "holy man" of a post-apocalyptic tribe that has somehow preserved one of these rarities (plus a generator, amp, and speakers). The tribe engineer is constantly tweaking it, and together they are responsible for keeping people amused and "up" at all events requiring shamanic jubilation such as weddings, funerals, and war rallies.
John McCain defends Bush's strategy. Contrary to media hype, John McCain is not a moderate Republican. He is a war hawk, and wants to kill American soldiers to prop up Bush's vanity and bad judgment.
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"Clip City" [mp3 removed]
I have posted this tune several times--it's kind of my "learner."
This version I'm calling self-"mastered" because I used some compression and reverb plug-ins to give it a fuller sound. I finally took a minute to learn how to use Send effects in Cubase, so I could automate a "wet/dry" parameter on the Sidstation track. Doing so converted that track from mono to stereo (sort of) and added reverb that comes and goes while it's playing. Also, I now know to put the compression "limiter" setting at the Master gain so the sum of all three tracks never goes above -.2 db. D'oh. Each track (drums, Mutated drums, and Sid) has parametric compression that both compresses it and boosts EQ on the mid-level frequencies. [/music diary]