august contest - GOSSIP

[RustedMonkey]

RustedMonkey - Would have fitted nicely on HotM. Drums are bit too far in the background, vocal might have sounded clearer, it drowns a bit in the guitar sound

What is HotM?

Completely agree about the drums and vocals. I have a tough time getting vocals to sound good when they are heavily distorted and competing with distorted guitars.

[pHz]

pHz - Cool funky breaks, with a nice bunch of sound mangling - sounds like Meat Beat Manifesto. Kewl

well for my sins i dont really know meat beat manifesto (other than the name) ... but im assuming thats a GOOD thing

slainte rob

[Kriminal]

pHz - Cool funky breaks, with a nice bunch of sound mangling - sounds like Meat Beat Manifesto. Kewl

well for my sins i dont really know meat beat manifesto (other than the name) ... but im assuming thats a GOOD thing

slainte rob

MBM rule doooooooooooooooooood

[You™]

For my 1500th post, here's a meditation on Vurt's silence - where I do little more than guide the computer.

Vurt, I have a serious question. Why did you bother to encode nothing at 128 Kbps stereo? You could have got away with the smallest MP3/lowest bitrate in the world and it wouldn't have affected the program content. It might have even messed-up the pure silence with strange artifacts inherent in the codec. That was an opportunity missed. Now I know you might say, "Well you're an idiot for taking this seriously" or, "The point is that it is silent, innit!" But I was thinking your piece fits nicely with some ideas I've had about algorithmic composition, DSP (not Duncan!) and codecs. So in yet another heroic effort to look busy at the office whilst doing nothing useful, I submit my remix/cover of your version of Silence which I made on lunch break.

I converted your song to a WAV with Audacity, then into two BMP images of the left and right channels with Bitmaps & Waves. They looked like dandruff on the office manager's dark blazer. I did audio conversions of the images back to WAVs just to see what I had. A lot of noise! Then I took the images I made into Photoshop and de-noised them with Dust and Scratches and used Levels to normalize the whole image. By this point they looked like big noisy gradients from black at the top to white on the bottom. I brought the images back to Bitmaps & Waves and converted them back to WAVs using the "musical" settings in both positive and negative. Finally, I brought the results back into Audacity, paired the left and right channels, did some further noise reduction on the loudest WAVs, faded the beginnings and ends, and mixed 3 of the 4 stereo tracks into this:

Silence = f(x +y + z)

Finally a real "ambivalent soundscape!" ...Thanks Duncan.

BTW, both Audacity and Bitmaps & Waves are free, easy to use and make a nice addition to to almost any company (or personal) computer.

Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Bitmaps & Waves
http://www.webcenter.ru/~vsoft/BitmapPlayer.htm

[pHz]

10 fux sake boy

come on - even you can count that high ...

Ok, here goes, in no other order than the way i typed them....

great - now i have to do some maths when counting up - all that averages means and median stuff - bastard

pHz - Candy Bullet (shame its all loops)

i quite agree - but its pretty much a bit of throwaway fluff and thats the nature of the beast (live4) to some extent ... and id say the split was still about 50 / 50 between found / bought loops and home-rolled ones ... once the new lappie arrives i should have the grunt (i f**king hope so with a 3.2 CPU and a gig of RAM !!! ) to run a few VSTi alongside the audio in live ... my poor 850 struggles a bit with live4 even just running 9 channels of audio and a few effects !!!

anyways ... thanks for the vote dave !!!

slainte rob

[ianweb123]

..and thanks from me for my vote..



Damn, now that means that i have got to vote so that I'm not DQed

[Secretions]

[*]Secretions - Nice EBMish track. I think that in the middle part the "L,R,R" vocal is a tad too, um, repetitive but overall there's enough variation, with good combination of sounds

Hehe. I think I should feel proud that I managed to make something that not only clocks in at under two minutes, but also manages to be too repetitive in such a short time. ;p

[Guitarjeff]

Thanks for the vote Kriminal!

It's going to be hard to narrow it down to 10 this month. I have about 25 that I'm choosing from right now. I have my first 3 or 4 for sure, but it gets much harder after that.......

I guess The eternal question is, do I vote for things I like, but have a problem or 2 over things that are really well done, but I don't care for, or vice versa?

[Mo Verdigast]

For my 1500th post, here's a meditation on Vurt's silence - where I do little more than guide the computer.

Vurt, I have a serious question. Why did you bother to encode nothing at 128 Kbps stereo? You could have got away with the smallest MP3/lowest bitrate in the world and it wouldn't have affected the program content. It might have even messed-up the pure silence with strange artifacts inherent in the codec. That was an opportunity missed. Now I know you might say, "Well you're an idiot for taking this seriously" or, "The point is that it is silent, innit!" But I was thinking your piece fits nicely with some ideas I've had about algorithmic composition, DSP (not Duncan!) and codecs. So in yet another heroic effort to look busy at the office whilst doing nothing useful, I submit my remix/cover of your version of Silence which I made on lunch break.

I converted your song to a WAV with Audacity, then into two BMP images of the left and right channels with Bitmaps & Waves. They looked like dandruff on the office manager's dark blazer. I did audio conversions of the images back to WAVs just to see what I had. A lot of noise! Then I took the images I made into Photoshop and de-noised them with Dust and Scratches and used Levels to normalize the whole image. By this point they looked like big noisy gradients from black at the top to white on the bottom. I brought the images back to Bitmaps & Waves and converted them back to WAVs using the "musical" settings in both positive and negative. Finally, I brought the results back into Audacity, paired the left and right channels, did some further noise reduction on the loudest WAVs, faded the beginnings and ends, and mixed 3 of the 4 stereo tracks into this:

Silence = f(x +y + z)

Finally a real "ambivalent soundscape!" ...Thanks Duncan.

BTW, both Audacity and Bitmaps & Waves are free, easy to use and make a nice addition to to almost any company (or personal) computer.

Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Bitmaps & Waves
http://www.webcenter.ru/~vsoft/BitmapPlayer.htm

I am genuinely impressed! While vurt's piece is a nice old joke, your work actually evokes the feeling of silence. Nice!

And congrats on your 1500th post. A survivor of KVR!

[Sepheritoh]

Why is everybody making it so f@ck'n difficult for us this month. There were just too many entries that were all very good. I casted my votes & sorry for such a long list of HM's. I guess at any other time I go through them again any of those in the HM list might have made it into the votes - so close was it and difficult to choose.

Krim, thanks for the vote. You make my day

[freeztar]

Last batch of reviews:

AndrewSimon - Awesome intro. The kick seems dull to me, but all the other instrumentation is lively. This was a good listen.

Patrick9 - I didn't really enjoy this too much, but it does have some nice parts. I like the instrumental breakaway, and would have prefered this to be an instrumental peice overall.

astanine - With some lyrics and a bit more dynamics, this could be a good 80's song. Good arrangement.

RayS - I like the groove, but it becomes too ambient for me when it doesn't go anywhere. I also would prefer to hear a real guitar or another synth, but I like the flange on the guit.

Secretions - Ouch, those frequencies hurt. I like the arrangement, but I couldn't get deep into the song to review it because the high frequencies were giving me serious ear fatigue.

Garret - Good stuff. The vibes seem to jump to the background a lot. I'd like to hear them more throughout the peice. A tiny bit of reverb over the whole mix might help bring the different parts together. I really dig this overall.

windchillFactor - I like the mood you are setting, but imo there is too much going on. The vocals are way too low in the mix for me to understand anything you are saying. Interesting tune.

peppy197 - Intersting sounds and composition. With this one, it's hard to tell if the mix issues I hear are issues at all. Regardless, this was interesting to listen to.

Mo Verdigast - Nice sounds, except for the harsh synth down the middle. This is a nice song to zone out to as I did a few times while listening to it (in a good way ).

sttjelle - Nice build up, but almost too generic. The chanting is nice, but should be more upfront and powerful imo. Nice drum sounds on the outro!

Wilkoryte - I was thinking about doing a blues song with some friends and this gets me in the mood. Straight forward blues with no hidden agenda. The mix is good, but too clean for such dirty blues.

Tancos - You should write mp3 children's books . This could almost be a Zappa song . Poor Billy!

DrApostropheX - Man you really got a soulful voice . The horns are nice and you get a nice big sound towards the end. Don't care for the quick fade out.

pHz - I dig it. A little too "pushy" for me, but I really like some of those samples and the way you used them.

RustedMonkey - Cool. The intro is nice and I like the samples. The merge into the vocal part could be more powerful and dramatic.

Yagushi - What? I don't even know how I would classify this, maybe video game prog or something. It almost blew me off my seat at the beginning . I could do without the vocals.

utm - I know it says funk, but I can't help getting into a disco shuffle (it's the drums I guess). I like the new guitar at the end, why did you wait so long to bring it in? I dig it, it got me moving.

Vurt - I've listened to it three times already and it just keeps getting better and better. At first I though it was a cover of Beethoven's Eleventh.

jdickens - I like it. It's not overdone and conveys what it needs to. This is a helpful listen for me because I'm trying to write some music for a couple of friends in massage school. This would be great rubdown music.

sdunn1110 - I like the theme. The theremin is sweet. The mix needs some work imo and some of the instruments sound too GM to me. Cool tune overall.

jens - This is well done, but it didn't do much for me. I like the sounds and arrangement. Maybe bringing the guitar in earlier would help.


Great job to everyone, this month was AWESOME!
Now it's time to vote

[farlukar]

What is HotM?

Guess what

Been listening to the new Ministry CD for the last week.

Even your title would fit right in!

well for my sins i dont really know meat beat manifesto (other than the name) ... but im assuming thats a GOOD thing

Better start listening some of it then!
But yes, that's a Good Thing™

Hehe. I think I should feel proud that I managed to make something that not only clocks in at under two minutes, but also manages to be too repetitive in such a short time. ;p

Ah never mind, I'm just bored real quick

[AndreasE]

Sepheritoh, thanks for the #5 voting.

[You™]

well for my sins i dont really know meat beat manifesto (other than the name) ... but im assuming thats a GOOD thing

Better start listening some of it then!
But yes, that's a Good Thing™

At least check out his studio... It's a lot nicer than mine. But I do have SHADO 2 Mobile by my monitor.

[pHz]

bloody hell ... i had one of those as a kid

way cool ...

slainte rob