good techno music?

Bringing great composers to their knees isn't quite how I'd put it. What I'd say is imagine if people like Bach and Rachmaninov had access to all the wonderful things we have for synthesis, sampling, audio signal processing and all the rest of it. Just imagine what they could create then.

The music is not generated by a computer. The computer is USED to generate the music. With this sort of music you can be extremely precise.

Take tuning for example, an orchestra of decent professional musicians will be able to play with excellent tuning - all the instruments will be close enough to being exactly in tune that they might as well be. With synthesis, you can do that too. But not only that, you can also set sounds to be just the right amount OUT of tune to create desired effects, such as increasing and decreasing frequency of beats between to waves slightly out of tune with each other. You have complete control over the sounds. And it doesn't stop at exact degrees of tuning or loudness, but timbre as a whole, - ie envelope, spectrum, modulation and spatial qualities.

Perhaps you dismiss it because it doesn't sound like it's played on real instruments. Well of course it's not going to sound like real instruments. What would be the point of going to all that trouble to create something you could just as easily do by writing a score for an orchestra? The whole point of it is to make something new and different.

I think the problem you're facing is that which trips everyone up at some point or another, and that is trying to analyse one form of music by the values of another. It's the same as saying that Tchaikovsky's music is really crap jazz because there's no improvisation in it, or that the guitarist John Williams is crap because you can't headbang to it, or that Frank Sinatra is a useless MC because he's always behind the beat and doesn't spur you on energitically.

Also trance, techno and all the rest of it are like any other genres, in that the music played on the radio, the stuff that you hear all the time without going any to any trouble to find is alway the cheap and nasty commercial manufactured stuff that gives the genre a bad name. This is true of every genre. I'm afraid if you really want to get to know it you'll have to go and look for the good stuff yourself, and take an active interest.

Incidentally, three chords and someone having a good old rant is EXACTLY how I'd describe Techno too. But not trance or house. Classical music is all about the notes. Trance and house are all about creating new sounds the stimulate the mind, but of course the notes have to be done properly for it to work. Rock is very much about the sounds too, but in Rock music the sounds don't have to be all that diverse, they just have to be there in the right way and provide a platform for the singer and lead guitarist to express themselves. Jazz is like this too, except it's in the notes themselves through which the performers express their emotions, and so it's not as direct, and it also shares a lot with classical music in that the creativity within the notes is the most important thing, often more important than it sometimes is in classical music. Hip-hop is all about rhythms and energy, with plenty of elements of jazz in there still, (but you wouldn't know it from the scheidt you hear on the radio which really doesn't do hip-hop justice and gives all forms of music that include rap a bad name).

I could go on all day I suppose.

But next time you hear a trance track, think about how it's made. Do you think someone just switched a computer on, ran a programme, set a few parameters and pressed play? EVERY single little sound you hear in a piece of Trance has been carefully constructed individually. In synthesis based music you're not just writing the score, but you're defining the sounds of all the instruments as well. Admittedly some people do a much better job of this than others, but then that's why you've got to look for the good stuff yourself.

 

And just as an after thought. If you're entirely against technology being used to make music, then you can rule out, say, Evanescence for example. The amount of processing on that voice is extremely apparant and it just would not be the same without it. The basic tone quality is there in an unprocessed sound, and it's a nice enough voice as it is, but then you can also here auto-tune (a processor for audio signals which put sounds exactly in tune by quantising the frequencies to discreet values), and a shedload of artificial reverberation. Pretty much any pop song by a boy-band or girl-band or a solo singer like Ms Spears or Mr Timberlake, will have even more of this processing in it. Have you noticed that a lot of these singers put very little energy into the singing. It's faded up in the mix so you can hear it at the fore-front but the singer him/herself doesn't really sing very powerfully - it's often more like a stage whisper. Auto-tune is used to add artificial ornaments to the voice, as well as just changing the tuning. The vocals are heavily compressed so the dynamic range is very limitied to make the vocals sound really artificial. It really is a sham - it leads people to believe that these people actually sing like this. You could take anyone's voice and make them sound like anyone else these days. This is a complete con.

In synthesis based music you don't have this at all - you know what you're getting as all the sounds are created from scratch. Then in a good piece of trance with a vocal added, yes I'm sure they'll tweak the tuning a bit, but they won't change the timbre much. They will of course add artificial reverberation, not so much to make the vocals sound better (although this does have that effect), but to make the acoustic sounds have the same spatial quality as the synthesised sounds so that they match and blend better. It's a much more honest way of doing things.

 

I'm not a christian, but I think telling people to go to hell for their opinion is not a nice thing.

I won't argue with you about which music I like, I don't think it'll be a very good discussion... especially with me being pretty stubborn and you telling people to go to hell... by the way, i dislike Ferry Corsten and Paul van Dyk as well... Deep Dish have surprised me with a few great tunes. And I'm not the kind of guy who dislikes things because they're popular, that's ignorant... I like Manu Chao, Coldplay and even some of Ushers early work (although the latter may have got more to do with memories...)

 

Great response Sax...

If only I could find some of Frank Zappa's opinions on this subject... and I think I'd be curious to find out what Mozart would think if he heard one of Zappa's symphonies...

 

Darude-Sandstorm a bit mainstream but still pretty cool

 

I wouldn't call it mainstream. It is crap though.

 

To be honest I'm not a big fan of Mozart. He was clearly a musical genius, but for all the technical cleverness of his music it still sounds very twee and naff and predictable. He uses the simple harmonic language of his time, and yet pads it out with these great big full textures which makes it rather sickly to my ears. The only time this really worked, was in his choral music, as great big choirs singing that sort of harmony has a powerful effect. Really though, of the two, I much prefer Haydn - he really knew how to make it sound light and fun.

Never mind Frank Zappa, I'd like to find out what Mozart thought of the likes of Rachmaninov, or even Beethoven's later stuff. If he'd been exposed to the music of the Romantic period even, he'd have done some great stuff I'm sure. His musical genius is indisputable, it really is second only to Bach's, and I've got a lot of time for Bach because Bach didn't care TOO much about the constraints on what he could write - in fact he got himself into a fair bit of trouble for it, being ahead of his time.

But anyway, yeah, Synthesis is a highly developed art form which requires a good knowledge of electronics, maths and all the rest of it as well as music, so don't knock it please!

 

I know... 18 isn't very good. He's gotten kind of overrated... but I still love his stuff. I like a few things on 18 but I can't handle that over-synthesized stuff.

 

Yeah... but everything is music made by computer today. You'd have to go all the way back to the 40s and 50s when nothing was mixed and everything was pure tube.

 

hmm...on the subject of electronic music... if anyone wants to listen to some stuff i've made myself
www.soundclick.com/volcanictelephone

try listening to twenty five, mole, i movement rapid, and red lamp
i've been told those are my better ones.

 

I had a go at creating some house/trance last summer. A very primitive attempt using a PC, a cracked version of Logic Audio Platinum 4, that couldn't actually process any audio, a Roland XP-10 synth, a cheap microphone from argos (cost about £8 - a cardioid that went straight to stereo minijack) and windows sound recorder. One was a sort of deep house track which I played sax over, and the other was an attempt at trance. Recording quality is piss poor but you can make out the sorts of effects I was trying to achieve. Unfortunately my hosting has been down for some time so I can't make it available for all to hear at the moment, but should anyone be interested I can always send it over the instant messaging client of your choice.

 

The Warp records stuff like Aphex Twin is really great.There's a german label called Ninja Tune records that features fantastic electronic music,although it's very far from techno.Listen to Herbaliser,Jagga Jazzist very groovy stuff with great samples.

 

Good call on the Ninja Tune records, nice stuff from them indeed. I'd also recommend anything on the Hospital and SO:LR labels as well. Very funky, soulful drum and bass. There's some really nice latin stuff coming out of South America right now as well...

 

while were on record labels ill throw oout the name Tinocorp. They make breaks from dub, mambo, latin, halloween, christmas, you name it and its made. Most of their purpose is to make beats and such for Dj's, but their cd's are a fun listen. www.tinocorp.com

 

aphex twin - selected ambient works 85-92
aphex twin - richard d james album

These are great,

I would like some milk from the milkmans wifes tits.

 

Hell fuckin yeah. Venetian snares is crazy. That dude has done way too much acid. Its ragga, which is basically regge that is played to drum and bass. Venetian Snares is great, especially chocolate wheelchair. And amon tobin, hes my hero, as well as squarepusher. To this day, squarepusher remains the best live show i have ever seen. I would also recomend The orb. If you like organic techno, you might wanna try to find a band called the ozric tentacles and/or Tabla beat science. Tbs is made up of zakir hussein on the evercrazy tabla, bill laswell doin some shit, and a couple of djs. Its crazy. Talvin singh is pretty cool too.

 

oh no no no no no i'll tell u the best shit to get started out on

ATB - "marrekech" "fields of love" "underwater world" and really any album of his
Steve Lawler - "love you some more" "plastic love"
MV - live at Honolulu (good set)
deep dish - CLubspace Housessions or any mix of theirs
Gabriel and dresden - live at transphere birthday bash part one
sander kleinenberg/seb fontaine - live at colours
Paul oakenfold - tranceport album or resident
saeed and palash - "phat dope shit"
dj tiesto - "walking on clouds" "air traffic"(3drives)
armin van buuren - "burned with desire" (this is THE most depressing song)
chicane - "saltwater" THIS IS A MUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "don't give up"
faithless - 'insomniac'
cassius - 'the sound of violence(club mix)'
underworld - "dark and long" "born slippy"

i'm forgetting the best one....shite.
wow thats a lot of chunes. i guess us house/trance junkies really wanna spread the music. its good shit.

 

Sorry if I'm repeating - I didn't read all the posts - but I was jamming out to some daft punk in the car today.

 

james holden is awesome. love his promo mix. i haven't heard anything good by carl cox? and just cuz tiesto made it BIGGG duznt mean he's a BRITNEY?!?!?! where'd THAT come from?!?!?! muahahahah. bottom line, all djs have shit trax n good ones.

 

how could i forget Paul van Dyk "nothing but you" and "for an angel"