Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on May 12, 2021 21:31:15 GMT
Many of you would be aware of sampling in the role of the electronic dance music explosion in the late 80s. The vid below shows sampling technique using a Commodore Amiga. This affordable revelation along with other computers like the Atari ST meant that budding producers could make tracks at home and didn't need access to studios and their very expensive equipment. Interesting stuff if you like electronic music.
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Nightfly
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Post by Nightfly on May 14, 2021 19:43:10 GMT
Many of you would be aware of sampling in the role of the electronic dance music explosion in the late 80s. The vid below shows sampling technique using a Commodore Amiga. This affordable revelation along with other computers like the Atari ST meant that budding producers could make tracks at home and didn't need access to studios and their very expensive equipment. Interesting stuff if you like electronic music. Nice find ! Back in 1995 I was planning to buy my first home computer and almost went for an Atari ST to dabble in music production as they were still way ahead of PCs up until then. Suddenly PCs caught up during that year so went with a 486 with a Soundblaster 32 card (which cost £195 in addition to the PC). Within 18 months you could get the SB64 card upgrade for £15 at a computer fair ! Amazing to think you can do so much more these days with an Iphone and a £5 music app.
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on May 14, 2021 22:39:01 GMT
The price of good PCs in the late 80s to mid 90s period was astronomical. Some were on par with the price of early colour tv's I would say. This would no doubt be as inaccessible as the studio sampling gear for many in those days. I always wondered how some great electronic music was made in the late 80 early 90s especially some of the limited run underground stuff. I had assumed a lot of it was done on old scraps of tech from the 80s which had become more affordable on the secondhand market. But It seems the Amiga and the ST were really popular and had a far bigger role in the scene, at least in creating demos to try to get signed by a label.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on May 15, 2021 9:56:26 GMT
I remember the ST coming out in the 80s.
At the time I had a ZX spectrum 48k (rubber keys) and was just about to 'upgrade' to the massive 128K machine when a mate at school got the ST for christmas - I was amazed at the graphics on it.
Fast forward to the 90s, while working in Theatre; ALL of the musical directors who'd come in for various shows swore by Atari STs, the Midi Capabilities etc. By this time, they had devices to link them to trigger machines etc. I was amazed that given the explosion of music tech during the mid-late 80s, the ST was still the standard tool.
We had an Amiga at school, alongside 20 odd BBC Micros of various types. I never understood how to use the Amiga sadly.
At the expensive end of sampling you had the Fairlight, which in 1980, cost about £30,000 - that came with a computer (I think was commodore based) keyboard, VDU and light pen screen, and also had a built in Sampler & Sequencer.
A lot of 80s hits were knocked up on this beast.
The Acid generation brought up all the cheap analogue synths & drum machines and turned them into cult status - a £20 synth would (these days) fetch £1000's.
I "acquired" a MOOG "Rogue" analogue synth, for £100. When it arrived, it rolled up in two carrier bags and a cardboard box and needed putting back together - to find 1/2 of it was missing. Luckily, it had the Case and Keys complete.
It took me 3 years to re-build, re-wire and re-do the PCBs, but I still have it (can't play it for toffee). Just needs calibrating - I don't have a proper Oscilloscope to do it.
Back to the computer thing - a lot of the early software did what it said on the tin, was stable and reliable - easy to use and would explain why many still cherish it.
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Nightfly
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Post by Nightfly on May 15, 2021 11:49:05 GMT
Fast forward to the 90s, while working in Theatre; ALL of the musical directors who'd come in for various shows swore by Atari STs, the Midi Capabilities etc.
By this time, they had devices to link them to trigger machines etc. I was amazed that given the explosion of music tech during the mid-late 80s, the ST was still the standard tool. In the early 90s, a girlfriend at the time insisted on dragging me along to a pantomime every year. The first year, there was a full band of musicians in the orchestra pit. The year after - no musicians, just a musical director with a keyboard, a rack of gear and an Atari ST. Apart from one song played live on the keyboard which relied on improvisation, every other song was just a keypress on the Atari. Billy Pearce, the star, even asked the audience for applause "for the boys in the band" at the end, tongue placed firmly in cheek !
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Nightfly
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Post by Nightfly on May 15, 2021 12:03:07 GMT
The price of good PCs in the late 80s to mid 90s period was astronomical. Some were on par with the price of early colour tv's I would say. This would no doubt be as inaccessible as the studio sampling gear for many in those days. I always wondered how some great electronic music was made in the late 80 early 90s especially some of the limited run underground stuff. I had assumed a lot of it was done on old scraps of tech from the 80s which had become more affordable on the secondhand market. But It seems the Amiga and the ST were really popular and had a far bigger role in the scene, at least in creating demos to try to get signed by a label. I think the real breakthrough (well, for really bad amateur musicians like me anyway) was the move from using computers to trigger hardware to PCs being able to handle soundpacks and samples within the computer. When I bought my first PC the sales guy said "You want to mess with music and samples...ooo you'll need a HDD of at least 250mb for that!". Within a year HDD prices dropped and I remember strolling into the local computer warehouse with pride and announcing "I'd like one of your 2GB drives, please !" I think the use of midi programming from Amigas and Ataris probably dates back quite a while. I recall hearing Liza Minelli talking about the recording of "Losing My Mind" with The Pet Shop Boys. She turned up at the studio looking forward to hanging out with all the musicians and just found a computer linked to gear with just Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe who had already programmed the backing track ready to play when she got there.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on May 15, 2021 12:45:59 GMT
The price of good PCs in the late 80s to mid 90s period was astronomical. Some were on par with the price of early colour tv's I would say. This would no doubt be as inaccessible as the studio sampling gear for many in those days. I always wondered how some great electronic music was made in the late 80 early 90s especially some of the limited run underground stuff. I had assumed a lot of it was done on old scraps of tech from the 80s which had become more affordable on the secondhand market. But It seems the Amiga and the ST were really popular and had a far bigger role in the scene, at least in creating demos to try to get signed by a label. I think the real breakthrough (well, for really bad amateur musicians like me anyway) was the move from using computers to trigger hardware to PCs being able to handle soundpacks and samples within the computer. When I bought my first PC the sales guy said "You want to mess with music and samples...ooo you'll need a HDD of at least 250mb for that!". Within a year HDD prices dropped and I remember strolling into the local computer warehouse with pride and announcing "I'd like one of your 2GB drives, please !" I think the use of midi programming from Amigas and Ataris probably dates back quite a while. I recall hearing Liza Minelli talking about the recording of "Losing My Mind" with The Pet Shop Boys. She turned up at the studio looking forward to hanging out with all the musicians and just found a computer linked to gear with just Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe who had already programmed the backing track ready to play when she got there.
While I was working in Theatre - all of the musicals had an orchestra pit of Musicians. The Musicians Union were pretty big on that. Though - there was one Pantomime where the band members were reduced from 4 members to 3 members and some backing tracks done on an ST. The next year - they were back to 4 musicians.
Sidetracking - most pantomimes these days are "packaged"; so a production of Aladdin will have Set, Props and the like available, along with a version of the script and songs and is licenced.
The music is then provided on backing tracks. For me - all that dilutes the magic of the show.
Stock Aitken & Waterman would have all of their tracks pre-made long before any artist was dragged in to sing their part.
On the HDD thing. I do a lot of video work - mainly restoration work in my spare time.
When I first swapped from Sellotape, Scissors, Magnifying glass and a reel of 16mm film to a PC - I was using a 386.... To render out a short 15sec clip, about 300pixels wide would take something like 6 hours - and things such as MPEG2 didn't exist. You had to render to AVI for best results - which is lossless, uncompressed and broadcast quality. A 386 with a 100Mb HDD and a few megs of ram was only every going to struggle with that.
I know people who were (possibly still are) into electronic music production, a lot of them used to make up masses of tracks and drop them in during sets in Nightclubs to test response. This worked well for a chap called Rob Webster - AKA "Boywunda" who ended up with a Top 10 hit under the name as Progress Presents, where he sampled the strings from a Madonna track (Papa Don't Preach).
The track was knocked up in his home studio, in a council flat above mine and my partners when we lived in Derby - this was 1998-1999.
He did most of that on a 1st Gen Pentium, using "Acid" (the software), Rebirth, Recycle (to make the sample clips), Cool Edit for the Multitracking & Mix, and I think Cubase VST was involved to tie it all together - as he used to rave about it.
He did another track that was never released - due to legal reasons. This used samples from a Police Interview Tape - which came from someone he knew - who had been arrested & questioned (not by Regan or Mr Hunt) over some cash that vanished from a safe at a Nightclub. Incidentally, the "someone he knew" was never charged or convicted!
That music scene certainly isn't mine - but the technology and how easy it is to produce does amaze me.
I've seen a lot of bands use Midi Triggers, on drum pads and the like - to fire various computers or samplers. I saw a Depeche Mode Tribute band in 2019 - they used a rack of what looked like Tea Trays - which were wired as triggers to fire a sampler.
Not far off what Kraftwerk were up to in the 70s.
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Nightfly
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Post by Nightfly on May 15, 2021 22:32:45 GMT
I do a lot of video work - mainly restoration work in my spare time. When I first swapped from Sellotape, Scissors, Magnifying glass and a reel of 16mm film to a PC - I was using a 386.... To render out a short 15sec clip, about 300pixels wide would take something like 6 hours - and things such as MPEG2 didn't exist. You had to render to AVI for best results - which is lossless, uncompressed and broadcast quality. A 386 with a 100Mb HDD and a few megs of ram was only every going to struggle with that. Even in the late 90s, working on video capture was a headache - well it was for an ignoramus like me. Someone I knew in America who ran a Rubettes fansite heard about the lead singer Alan Williams appearing on the ID parade feature on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and desperately wanted a copy of the segment from a VHS I recorded. I had to post her an Iomega zip disc which could hold a maximum of 100mb. I think I managed to edit the clip down to 99mb so it would fit on the disc. It took ages to render and crashed several times during the process. This was for a clip that probably only lasted 60-90 seconds. This was about 6 months before CD burners became affordable. Interesting to hear about your mate using Sony Acid. I struggled with midi for years and Acid was probably the first program where I actually managed to produce something listenable. There's a genre of music that has appeared over the last couple of years called "Lo-fi" where people produce computer made music but put heart and soul into making it sound like really old vinyl, together with added scratches and warping. They seem to buy up old analogue hardware like cassette portastudios or old samplers and pass their digitally created music through these to give it an aged sound. Strange stuff !
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on May 16, 2021 8:07:06 GMT
I do a lot of video work - mainly restoration work in my spare time. When I first swapped from Sellotape, Scissors, Magnifying glass and a reel of 16mm film to a PC - I was using a 386.... To render out a short 15sec clip, about 300pixels wide would take something like 6 hours - and things such as MPEG2 didn't exist. You had to render to AVI for best results - which is lossless, uncompressed and broadcast quality. A 386 with a 100Mb HDD and a few megs of ram was only every going to struggle with that. Even in the late 90s, working on video capture was a headache - well it was for an ignoramus like me. Someone I knew in America who ran a Rubettes fansite heard about the lead singer Alan Williams appearing on the ID parade feature on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and desperately wanted a copy of the segment from a VHS I recorded. I had to post her an Iomega zip disc which could hold a maximum of 100mb. I think I managed to edit the clip down to 99mb so it would fit on the disc. It took ages to render and crashed several times during the process. This was for a clip that probably only lasted 60-90 seconds. This was about 6 months before CD burners became affordable. Interesting to hear about your mate using Sony Acid. I struggled with midi for years and Acid was probably the first program where I actually managed to produce something listenable. There's a genre of music that has appeared over the last couple of years called "Lo-fi" where people produce computer made music but put heart and soul into making it sound like really old vinyl, together with added scratches and warping. They seem to buy up old analogue hardware like cassette portastudios or old samplers and pass their digitally created music through these to give it an aged sound. Strange stuff ! Working with Video still is a minefield. A lot of current Hardware can handle video quite well. Though, if you are doing something on an industrial scale, a decent processor, tons of ram and a couple of good HDDs would be a start.
There are that many different formats to output too - MPEG2, MP4, AVI, etc, etc. All have pros and cons - and everyone has a different opinion of what is the best format. The common argument is quality vs filesize. Just how much do you compress and all that blarney.
I used a much older (pre Sony) version of Acid to make up some soundtracks of 1920s Cinema Piano music to accompany some silent B&W film. Compared to what was available at the time, Acid was pretty easy to understand, use and get the results I wanted.
Yes, the Low Fi movement...
I heard a recent interview with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd - and the lengths they went to, to restore Dark Side of the Moon and re-master it in 5.1. He discussed that there are groups of musicians wanting old school Tape Hiss and Noise - and go to great lengths and expense in trying to recreate what they (Pink Floyd) spent months trying to get rid of in 1973... The Transistor Vs Valve Amplifier thing with Guitarists I do understand, as there are significant differences in the two types.
In video - Film Grain, Film Scratches, Colour Tone, Contrast are quite sought after filters as people want to re-create that film look. I filmed an 8mm projector showing about 10 minutes of scratches on black film and use that to overlay. So, you'd just key out the black, leaving the scratches. But it never looks "right" as film is not only scratchy, it's contrasty, and weaves/shakes a little etc.
I think I am a bit of an old fuddy duddy when it comes to this - having spent most of my working life learning different types of Film, light, exposure etc. I find digital images way too clean cut & clinical.
Mind you - Kodak have begun remaking 8mm negative - and quality of it is remarkable. Almost - too good.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on May 16, 2021 13:25:57 GMT
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