All Cheese - track done with 11 instances of Triple Cheese

[a-type]

If anyone is interested, here is a simple little track done entirely in Triple Cheese. 11 instances! All the percussion is Triple Cheese too.

What a great little synth. It can take such a beating. I used to swear by it.. now I have Zebra though.. so I doubt the Cheese will be getting much love anymore. Why Cheese when you can Zebra!

The only effects here are channel EQs, external bus delay, and a bitcrusher on the percussion to crisp it up a bit.

"Moonbase" on Soundcloud

Shame about the clicks and pops though. Seems to be an issue with some tracks on Soundcloud. Ah well.. it's a free service. Beggars can't be choosers.

Anyway hope you guys like the track. A tribute to the greatest free synth out there. (Actually I can't say that anymore, now that Zebralette is free!)

[Sendy]

I played with TC for several sessions but, despite the fact that it's as good as it can be, I found the sounds to be of limited value. Perhaps it's because I already had Zebra . I think comb synthesis certainly tends towards the cheezy, but that may just be because I'm not very good at it (I handle the comb filters in Zebra like hot potatoes!).

I liked your track, though I *was* getting heavy chiptune vibes from it so that might explain it. I think I'd like it more if you voiced it in chip style, though. Percussion is very effective. The section after the B-section seemed a bit samey towards the end, though.

[Bronto Scorpio]

Awesome track! I didn't know that TP is that flexible
Makes me want to try it again!
Really well done!

Cheers
Dennis

[Sendy]

You've inspired me to have another little play with TC and I'm getting some great pad sounds out of it now... Perhaps I've improved my cheese sculpting prowess?

[a-type]

Thanks for the comments.

@Sendy

The Zebra combs are BAD ASS in comparison to Triple Cheese's. But Cheese has such a distinctive flavour to it (pun intended), it's capable of quite a lot provided you don't expect it to shock you with something outside of its scope, if you get my meaning.

I hear you regarding things getting a bit "samey" towards the end. The story of my music life! Actually this was the last track that I wrote with Logic, just because of this reason. I was finding that Logic makes it far too easy to just repeat bits and pieces from earlier in the track to quickly finish the song when you've lost creative momentum. I'm switching to Renoise (getting back to my roots!) so although changing out the tools may not solve the creative problem, the more linear approach of music making which the tracker paradigm encourages will hopefully force me to develop things a bit better.

@Bronto

Thanks Bronto, and thanks also for your follow on Soundcloud. As I wrote above, the Cheese is not exactly "flexible", but its world is larger than you might first think.

[mcnoone]

Sounds good.
Nice video game tones too.

[Krakatau]

So this is suppose to be a cheesy tune ?



- nice work, both in comp and sound design because i assume you're the creator of the presets you use in this song...

[3ee]

Very nice micro energetic feel to it.. catchy and cute melodies as well..+ it sorta' reminds me of classic Nintendo games I used to play!
The only thing I dislike a bit is the sharp hi-hat sound.
Cheers,
3ee

[a-type]

@mcnoone Thanks!

@Krakatau Yes, all the patches are my own. I'm one of those masochistic types who feels it's cheating to be using other people's patches (which of course it isn't.. I guess sound design is just too much fun).

@3ee Good point about those hihats. You're right.. they are a bit too shrill. This track could really benefit from a professional mastering job I think.

Thanks very much for the comments.

[Sendy]

It's not masochistic, it's wanting to make the music yours right down to the level of individual fibres . Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating, because I haven't created the synths myself like in Max or Reaktor. But then, if I like a preset enough, I'll go ahead and use it. I paid for it, so may as well make the most of it.

I can actually remember way back when I used to just load presets and gingerly turn a few knobs and hope for the best...

Incidentally, Renoise is amazing! I have it as well though oddly, despite cutting my teeth on trackers and swearing by them for making 'spastic beats' and stuff, I've been finding it hard to get back into it. I guess I think too much 'horizontal' now and not enough 'vertical'. The funny thing is, a lot of people say they hear the tracker influence anyway, so maybe my mind is sort of 'diagonal'

I'm looking forwards to hear what you do in Renoise.

[Gonga]

Shame about the clicks and pops though. Seems to be an issue with some tracks on Soundcloud. Ah well.. it's a free service. Beggars can't be choosers.

Great little track with a distinctive aroma!

Have you tried uploading higher bitrates or wav files? That solved my problems. I upload 320mbps. Just be aware if you enable downloading that they will get the higher bit rate of the original, rather than the downsampled 128mbps of the player.

[a-type]

@Sendy The tendency to want to use your own presets is a bit contradictory for someone raised on tracker, isn't it. I mean, back in the day it was all about pulling samples from other people's mods.. although that could have been because few people had the resources to actually sample hardware synths into the Amiga.

Regarding Renoise and Logic: Interesting that people hear a "tracker influence" in your music. Do you arrange your music by section? Or do you arrange it by piecing together musical phrases? Tracker interfaces force music to be broken down into complete musical sections (a tracker pattern), whereas the traditional DAW sequencers encourage music to be broken into individual phrases and parts. Whilst it's possible to do it either way in either interface, this basic difference surely would have some effect (albeit minute) on the song writing process. That's why I'm curious about how you arrange your music. Or perhaps it's not the linearity of your music which people feel has a "tracker influence".

@Gonga I can't remember what format I uploaded Moonbase in; I think it might have been AAC 192kbps. I'll try a higher rate next time! Thanks.

[Sendy]

Yes, I can remember when I started on SoundTracker, the program only let you compose with the samples conained in it's library of disks, labelled ST-01 upwards. As I only had 5 of these disks and there was not even rudimentary sample editing, it was a complete preset-fest . It was the advent of VA, and the return to fashion of single cycle waveforms in the mid-to-late 90's (which prior to then had been considered quaint and 'unrealistic'), that got me thinking about sound design and synthesis.

Regarding trackers and composition: for me the biggest thing about tracker format is that of vertical (or in the case of tracker orientation, horizontal) alignment, that is, rhythmic synchronicity. When you're creating parts such as drums, bass and melody in a tracker, you can see all of the note information in context with the other tracks. So if you want to create syncopations, or line up notes or events, or create something like an echo which decays, rises and then turns into a drumroll, it's a lot easier in a tracker. That combined with the limited number of channels encourages you to sort of 'weave' your parts together, which has been a theme of my music ever since. Something Luke Vibert said in an interview that resonated with me: Techno is like everything working together as one sound, a big pounding machine, but our music (IDM/breakbeat/braindance/whatever) is like the sounds are instruments in a band, riffing around eachother and never quite playing the same thing twice (apart from for effect as a musical device).

Of course, it's possible to work like this in a midi-based sequencer and I use these techniques all the time, but I'm not sure I'd be aware of them so much if it weren't for my tracker heritage, and prior to that, my exposure to chiptunes is probably what conditioned me to find that sytle appealing.

There are other points. I do tend to create one section and more or less finish it before I move on to the next. I can't, for example, lay out the arrangement for just the drums and bass, and then go back and add layer after layer to the whole song. That just doesn't seem right to me, because I think knowing exactly how one part sounds really helps knowing what should follow it. I don't even like filling out the rough form of a track, and then going back and adding details, which is how I know a lot of people start.

That said I do go back and change stuff, and add lines and take stuff out, etc. I also tend to create the intro later on in the process, and generally rearrange things as I go on... But my primary way of thinking and composing is in sections, though often I try and disguise that by making them flow into eachother, or change very gradually.

[a-type]

Hey Sendy - very fascinating reading!

Sound Tracker! Oh yes.. I was there too.. and also had the ST-0x floppies! I went Sound Tracker to Noise Tracker to Star Trekker to Protracker, and like a lot of people stayed with Protracker for some time. Then came MED, OctaMED, and finally Bars & Pipes Pro and Music-X once I got some synthesizers and an Akai sampler. Of all those, Protracker was the most usable.. and Music-X is still probably the best MIDI sequencer I've used. It had a really flexible arrange system that effectively allowed you to put any level of pattern regions inside pattern regions, so you could sort of create deeply nested pattern structures for everything in your song, including the entire song structure itself. Pretty damn ahead of its time, Music-X was! The colour scheme was also right out of Tracker culture! None of this eye-friendly low contrast grey crap! Gimme radioactive electric blue and glaring purple!!

As you said, in working with Renoise it instantly strikes me how beneficial it is being able to see all notes being played at any particular time. This makes it much easier to create sort of symbiotic relationships between different musical elements. That's of course totally achievable in a traditional horizontal MIDI sequencer, but it's just so much easier seeing all notes on a single line, rather than squinting at an Arrange page full of horizontal region markers with little dots inside them! Also you can easily drop any instrument trigger into any track anywhere, meaning that you can easily let certain sounds use other sounds' track FX. Don't need to create a whole new track just to give one clap a long-tail reverb.. just trigger a clap instrument in an existing track with reverb and you're good!

Of course the two inherent disadvantages of the tracker interface are viewing chords (as they consume lots of tracks!) and also viewing notes with long sustains. i.e. if you jump to the middle of a pattern, you'll have no idea about what is actually audible at that point. You have to search backwards through the pattern to see what has been triggered.

What sequencer do you primarily use now?

Yeah, I haven't yet arrived at a music writing process I'm comfortable with.. and when I listen with a critical ear to my own music, I think that awkwardness shows. In Logic, I've tried all different orders of proceedings to develop an idea into a track.. and each time the result is either too predictable, too repeditive, or just downright not interesting. As I said above, I don't expect that changing out my software will solve these issues, but Renoise just seems a better fit on all fronts, theoretically, so I'm giving it a shot.

Also I just couldn't get used to Logic's interface. Doing anything in Logic just seemed so cumbersome to me.

Interesting discussions. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[Sendy]

I believe Renoise has a 'sample pickup' option now which means longer sounds WILL play if you start playing the pattern below them. They'll even start in the right place, like if they were audio. I've no idea how that works though, or if it's for all sounds or just things like vocals. Presumably the latter.

I really need to give Renoise another go at some stage! And perhaps post what I've done with it so far...

These days I'm using cubase SX3. I miss my OctaMED days, but ever since I moved to Atari, and then PC, I've been using Cubase, so I'm quite comfortable with it.

Incidentally, I found an archive of all of the ST-xx disks, there were over a hundred, converted to wav format... Let me know if you're interested and I'll dig up the link. I'll get some perverse kind of nostalgia from working some of those classic, crusty old samples into my new tunes