[Loki]

Hey guys - I put a virtual CD of my music up on my site. It's 13 songs that I did over the past two years. Please check them out if you like melodic electronica and tell me what you think of it ...

You'll find them in the music section of my site.

Thanks

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DigitalIllustrationOutpost - http://www.vigilante.net/~loki

[Nex]

*downloading and getting a pen n some paper, hehe*

[Spitfire]

Downloading right now... might make a good background for working. At least, thats my experience with electronica.

[Spitfire]

Nice server by the way! 55kb/sec...

[mantis]

Loki amazing artwork matches your amazing music. Great job, practically pro stuff. Although I noticed a few beat pauses out of place. "blue water boy" is my favorite song.

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Arpan . B
[email protected]
www.stikik.com/koma
Halo 9 Studios

[Kraken]

music is good
server is better

100K/sec +
very nice.

[psi burn]

hey loki i realy like those songs you make. im working on my webdesign company's site currently, and we really need some background music for it. do you think you could possible make one or two 10 second tracks for us? i'd really appreciate it, and of course you'd get all the credit :] just a nice technoish, looping beat

if you feel like doing it, tell me :]

[Loki]

Hey - thanks guys!

Coll that you like that stuff. "Blue Water Boy" is one of my favourites too - I made it inspired by freediving in Hawaii. In my good days over there I could reach 80 feet (~28 m) with one breath ... I was totally into it so I made this song.

psi - I'd love to do it, but got no time unfortunately ...

Thanks again

[Fred Flick Stone]

Wow Loki, multiversed. I love the music. Did you grow up learning music or did you just start messing around. I feel like I can produce music, I have my own music playing in my head all the time, but I dont have the musical skills yet.
Is it transferable? I tried to see if I could download it but wasn't able to. I love listening to that stuff when I am designing. Really puts you in a good surreal moment.

Excellent...

[Fred Flick Stone]

Nex, Loki, Immi,-anyone, Beuler.....beuler...

Have a question. My friend Josh Davis is impossible to get ahold of now that he is ultra superstar(DJ Shadow)...not to mention he would probably remember me like remembering last weeks quiz answers since I haven't spoken or skated with him in a very long time, but I am a big trip hop fan. I am also a big classical fan. I have been wanting to do a composition with a famous sweet, like mahler's 7th symphony, but add an under tone beat to it, trippy interludes, and unique trippy solos using the symphonic instruments, so they don't sound too unique to the rest of the peice. Actually get some horn players to do their own modern off takes of the selection being altered, and fuse it back in in a very trip hop sort of way. I envision it starting off sounding very authentic, and as it goes, heads would perk up as if, what the hell was that, but it sounded so sweet, and never lost a beat with the peice as a whole. I know this sounds a bit grand, but is there a way of doing this? Maybe myself if I have to to get a sample for someone to take me seriously with this project. I have always wanted to fuse age groups and generation gaps with strange blends and twists, and a lot of people today are doing it with all sorts of cool stuff, especially that macintosh wood mirror.

Amazing stuff, but to the point, does this sound like a challenge that is worth investing some time in, with regards to doing it on my own, or getting one of you, or someone you know to compose this? Or if I do it, is their a program that is user friendly I can learn to do this with?

Thanks for your time, and I like this off the topic topic...

[psi burn]

lol fred, your bueler inference was hilarious, i loved that part of the movie. Ben Stein is the most boring guy to listen to =]

[Nex]

nice idead fred,

unfortunately I don't have maler's 7th at home right now so I cannot say much about this particular piece, I am more into Beethoven and Tschaikowsky. But I tried something like you suggested in some way before...

It's quite hard to make what you suggested sound somehow like the original composition (besides programming i mean) because you would most probably have to make it with synthesizers and midi arrangements (unless you have a few good friends in an orchestra)
and orchester instruments are almost always sounding unnatural and strange when they are played from a sampler.

With a good soundcard, Cubase VST or any other sequencer and if necessary a good hardware-recording-compatible harddrive and a master midi keyboard (could be even one of those small 3-octave computer keyboards that you get quite cheap from yamaha) it would be possible to compose the piece.

Then you could visit someone with (or borrow) a really good sampler sound module and render your midi tracks to wave tracks.
Add some additional real instruments for solos or something to it, then mix it down.

For this project however you will need some music theory since classical music is hard to read.

I am very experimentation happy so maybe I could help you with that small demo or sample to show others what you mean.
Just drop me a line or post here some closer specifications on what you imagine if you want to give it a try.

Cya


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- Nex

http://on.to/nex

[Typhon]

I hit 209k/sec on that sucka. Good stuff Loki, I've only been through a few songs, but some professional quality sounds I'm hearing. I'm sorry, I didn't really read much on the page... are you planning on releasing an album any time soon? Keep it up.

[Loki]

Wow - never thought so many people would like it!

Fred: I never learned how to play an instrument, but had the urge to make music for a long time.
One day I said to myself "That's it - I have to do it!"
So I started making music on the Amiga, with a program called 'Soundtracker'.
After moving to America, I stopped but the urge grew bigger again, til, one day, I bought a keyboard (Alesis Quadrasynth) and hooked it up to my PC with a cheap Midi-adapter. Did a couple of little songs and saw a cool little rackmount synth at a friend's place. Got that one too, then I got a mixer, etc. etc. - basically, I put a lot of my overtime-money from Digital Domain into my gear, hehe.
When I was in Hawaii I had a whole room dedicated to my studio - and loved it! That's where I made the bulk of music that you were listening too.
So - if you have the urge - go for it! Start small, be humble and expand as you need to. I can only recommend to start simply, because learning how to work a complete studio at once is a bit tough, especially when you do it as a hobby.

nex: glad you like it.

02 - the slow beat in the beginning - never noticed that it doesn't loop correctly, haha, but you're right.
The drumbeat in the main part is a loop, spliced up in 'ReCycle', jungled up and underlaid with drums from a Alesis DM5 - the only drummodule I use (except the sampler).

04 - yeah, one of my favs too. A friend of mine played the flute on it and when I listened to what he played, I asked him "Did you even listen to the song?" - but after some pitchbending and picking out the good chunks, it added a very nice flavour!

05 - that beat was taken from a CD containing 70's porn music from a flick called "Vampyros Lesbos". I hacked it up, put a little bit of filter over it, punched it up and programmed it in double speed. Was good fun doing that one.

Yeah - the '4 on the floor' stuff was done with my friend Don, who's a house freak. I personally can't stand house (except BT or stuff like that). But I think numer 10 is quite a nice goa-track. If you listen carefully, you'll notice a Commodore 64 drumloop in there, haha.

Oh, Fred, if you're interested in getting more info on how to get started, get in touch with me - if you have the time, you're welcome to come by and check out my little setup.




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DigitalIllustrationOutpost - http://www.vigilante.net/~loki

[Francis]

That stuff rocks man. I'm listening to it right now as I work. What are the voice samples on track 2? It sounds like some of the stuff in the theme music for "lain," but I'm not sure. I'm sure they sampled it from
elsewhere too.

Anyway, cool cool stuff.

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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[Loki]

Thanks Francis!

Haha ... the voicesamples are more or less 'homemade'. It's the Macintosh voice-synthesis with the "Whisper" selection. It sounds really eerie - so I decided to use it. The crying chick is from a hq-soundcollection I borrowed (and returned after a day) from Square. That collection must have cost around $2000 and was amazing ...

[ozenzo]

Finally a thread where I have some expertise!!
Hey Loki -very moody stuff , very interesting. I'm curious is this stuff that you hear in your head, or do you just noodle around for a while until you come up with something? Since you didn't really learn an instrument, if you were interested in learning more without taking lessons for any particular instrument, you might want to take music theory. It will teach you the ins and outs of note relationships, harmony, rhythm, ear training...ect. ....it will help you to get your ideas out a little easier....and you can apply all that stuff to any instrument you may want to play. Knowing it has helped me learn almost any instrument I decide to pick up, fairly quickly ( the main ones being guitar, piano, bass)but that's only a suggestion on where you or anyone could go if they were interested.

A lot of your music strikes me as very techno sounding with a symphonic quality to it....you can definitely dance to most of it which is always good.The only crit I would have is that most of it is very repetitive, which happens a lot with programmed music.Some one who did this really well was Joe Satriani on some of his earliest records(Not of this earth, Surfing with the alien)mostely programmed drums, and Sinead did a lot with looped stuff that was great.

There a plenty of programs out there to use to make music with out a whole lot of music knowledge just to name a few:
Fruityloops, acid, you can download samples and throw them into those programs and just go crazy
There are a boat load of digital audio programs out there, and they just keep getting better and better.

Fred- that sounds like a great idea, but you would need someone who could orchestrate it for you. What you do is you get your basic ideas down whether it be on a four-track recorder, or on your computer, then you can get an orchestrator to arrange it for the instuments that you want.Or you could work with a friend and sing the part to them and they could write them out or play them for you. I liked what Zappa did with his rock band and the London symphony Orchestra, it's a very big mixture of stuff I don't know if you like that sort of stuff.....another artist who worked with some orchestra players, that I thought was great, was Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet....umm... the Juliet letters was the name of the cd.Now, he couldn't read or write music when he started working with them, he would just play parts on guitar or piano, but throughout the process he learned to read and write music and he started with scribled melodies to intricate parts written out for each instrument to their surprise, but what can I say Elvis is king....oops there I go, talking about music and this is an art forum, that's about right though, just a different form of art.

In case anyone is interested I teach music theory, and guitar. I have done that for 10 years now.....I've been playing guitar for 14 years . Any questions are welcome if I can help in any way let me know.


Loki thanks for sharing your art(all of it) with us!!

[Francis]

Oz, I for one don't mind the off topic music tangent that this thread is about. I'm also a guitar player, been playing for about 15 years (stopping to eat, poop, sleep, draw, etc.) and I played violin for several years before that.

Wonder what you thought of the recent Metallica/SF Symphony teamup. Would have been interesting if they had played some classical stuff as well, but I guess that wasn't what that gig was about.

Actually, I'd be curious as to how many other closet musicians there are here.

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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[ozenzo]

Wow!! you've been playing longer than me!!
I didn't actually hear any of it, although I heard about it, I did see a few clips on mtv, but I never watch the idiot tube long enough to really find out about that kind of stuf. I usaully hear it from students, but I agree it would have been nice to here them do some classical pieces!! I just thought of another guy who did most of his record on computer....Shawn Lane....he's like an undergreound guitar idol......and he plays keys just as well as guitar, the guy is phenomenal...his record might be hard to get though it's called Powers of Ten...on warner Bros.....hold on .....it's out of print although he has some stuff out that I just ordered at amazon.com........I'm sure it will be good. It's a shame you guys live on the other side of the US we could get together and do some jamming!! now that would be very cool!!

[Jeezus]

i'm very big on guitar playing. my idol - jason becker.

[Nex]

okay listened to all of your tracks now.

Let me say that this is really professionaly sounding material.
You obviously use very good equipment.
You have a very good feeling for arrangements and sound implementation.

Did you program all the drums or did you use already prerecorded loops?

Track 2's beginning drumloop seems to have a small looping error. I really like the breakbeats in this tune by the way. What drum machine did you use on that?

It sounds like Jungle Funk used the same drum machine on their new CD (if you know them.. music from the Bounty commercial, recorded in Austria btw)

I really like track 04.. sounds a bit like NIN or Kevin Moore partially.

track 05 has really a great beat too like it very much.

I don't like the techno ones with bassdrum on 1 and 3 that much though.. maybe thats my personal taste but they seem to pull it down for me a bit.

Well all in all I dig your music. I am not very trigger happy with compliments on music normally but you really approached this professionally and it sounds like that.

I am working on a similar project for some time. Combining breakbeats, Jazz-styles and electronic with real instruments (Bass / Fretless Bass / E - Guitar ). Its not that far however to present it. I am seriously lacking good equiptment, hell the stuff is expensive and so I have to try to make it with my 4-Track recorder and my computer..

I drifted a bit away from topic i guess

Do you play any instruments? (realtime I mean) It sound like you know a bit about theory.

great work Loki I hope you will bring out some new stuff soon.

maybe you are interrested on a cooperation sometime on a music track. I am sure it would be fun

Cya


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- Nex

http://on.to/nex

[This message has been edited by Nex (edited August 02, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Nex (edited August 02, 2000).]

[Nex]

ozenzo: Did you have formal training - like Berklee or something ?

If it would not be so damn expensive I would have gone there years ago.

btw if your schedule is not too tight I would like to ask you some technique-music related stuff, maybe mail you sometime.

When I heard Loki's music I had to think of Satriani too, he would like it too I guess

Cya

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- Nex

http://on.to/nex

[ozenzo]

I was never formally taught guitar.
I took private lessons in music theory and composition with Larry Hoffman who taught at Peabady, and Goucher College, record producer, columnist...among other things...
a funny story: when I was taking lessons with Larry, I hadn't really worked on my assignments for that week for what ever reason, so we decided to do a guitar lesson instead of the regular theory. Anyway we were doing some jazz tune working on improvising over some changes, I think the tune was Autum Leaves Larry took a chorus, and when it was my turn to solo I just start going nuts, playing as fast as I could,scale lines, arpeggios, Larry stops playing and says "why the F**K are you playing so many F**king notes?" I couldn't explain why I just said cause I could....haw buddy....Larry went off a tangent about melodic,and rhythmic phrasing, but it was funny. I was pretty young at the time,of course I wouldn't play like that today.( yeah right!!)
I actaully auditioned for Berkely and was given a scholarship, but it wasn't enough to pay for everything, it cost about $18,000 a year if you're out a state and have to live on campus, I didn't have any relatives in Boston so there was no one to stay with at the time so I spent a year looking for ways to pay, getting a job and saving up, so friend of mine who went to Peabody hooked me up with Larry. When I tried to go the next year the cost had went up by $2000....and that was in 1981-82. I didn't need to be in that kind of debt when I got out of school after 4 years that's for sure.

Of course I'm still learning, I still work on it just as hard as I've been working on my art lately. There is always something you don't know, or can learn more about.....that's what make it so interesting.

Jeezus- I too was a big fan of Jason Becker, the stuff he and Marty Freedman did was great, I never heard his solo stuff though. How is he doing do you know? I haven't heard much abaout him recently...I remember he was going to play in...was It David Lee Roth's band and then he wa diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease I think...it's been a long time and I don't listen much to just guitar players anymore.

Nex-sure anytime e-mail me anything I can do to help [email protected]

[Fred Flick Stone]

Oz, nex and loki-thank you for the feed back. I am going to put this idea down on paper so I can make sense of it, then I will shoot it over to you guys. Loki thank you for the invitation. I will most definitely take you up on that offer. I will be exploring Hennessey + Ingalls within the next few weeks, and when I do, I will give you a ring...

[ozenzo]

Another idea for you Fred
Get a keyboard that has a sequencer built into it, most of them have all the orchestral instument sounds sampled in them already, and you could probably get one used fairly cheap. Once you learn how to program into to the sequencer you could put all your Ideas into it, send it out to a recorder and put it on tape, or if you have a midi interface on your computer you could send it over to your computer and put it on disc if you wanted
I have an old ensonique Sq1 and I think compared to most of the other keyboard/sequencers it has the easiest interface to get down your ideas down quickly without having to read a giant manual.
I'll let you know if I think of anything else.

[This message has been edited by ozenzo (edited August 03, 2000).]

[Nex]

I have another kind of funny anecdote according to guitar teachers.

I was in a band a few years ago and our singer's vocal teacher was guitar teacher at G.I.T LA for some time and he also gave bass lessons.

So one day I decided I will give it a try and went there for my first lesson. I had a 5-String bass at that time (with the real low B-string). SO I came there and this guy began tuning my bass and I thought.. why the hell does he take so long to tune that thing?
I later found out that this guy had never in his life played or seen a 5-String bass and so he tuned it up to E - which almost broke the neck of my guitar because of the incredible tension.

Somehow this healed me from going to just SOMEONE to learn to play. It's really hard to find good teachers.

well, we could move this to random musings.. there are plenty of stories that come into my mind right now...

Cya

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- Nex

http://on.to/nex

[balistic]

I make a little techno myself.

Go to http://uuuu.org/enter/talents/ if you're into that kind of thing.

Mostly Detroit-influenced stuff, all done in Impulse Tracker 2.14 and Stomper Ultra ++.



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Brian "balistic" Prince
3D Artist
Eggington Productions

[yoszi]

Ex tracker here. I made 10-15 tunes before i turned to graphics. I still carry the urge to make music, i'm just waiting for better software, faster processors. I'll grab some songs from your site now.

[The Dude]

I downloaded all of the tracks and have
listened several times, very cool.

I just noticed for the first time your use
of audio from Reservoir Dogs in track 8,
fits very well.

Thats a great movie by the way for anyone
who hasn't seen it, you should.

Worthless Facts

[This message has been edited by The Dude (edited August 14, 2000).]

[Loki]

Hey - thanks d u d e!

Yeah ... Reservoir Dogs is a cool - my friend Don and I spent a whole afternoon going through it, picking the juicy bits out ...