. founded march 12, 1995 _| : _____ t r a x w e e k l y # 74 ______________ |___| _ _______/ /\___________________________ / ____________/ /\__\ _ _______/____/_____________________________ / / _________ \/__/ ______\ \_____________________________ / / / `_ . .~ \____\/ _ __ ___ / / / _____ . _ \ __ ___ _/__/\ / / / / /\ _ The Music Scene Newsletter __ __\__\/ _/__/ / ____/ /__\_________________________________ _____ ___ _ / /\/ /___ __________ _ ______ _ ___ \/ /\ / / /____/ \ \ / /\ / __/\ / /\ \ \ / \ /____/ / / \ / \/ /_ \___/___/ \ \_/___/ / \_/ / / \ ___\ / /_/ /______/\/ \ /______/\/ \ /_____/ // \ \ / / / \ / / \ \ \ \_\ \ \ \_\ \ //____/\____\/ / / / / / \______\/ \______\/ \_____\/ \ \ \ \ / / / / \____\/\____\ / / / / _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ / / / /__/ w /\___/ /\___/ e /\___/ /\__ / l /\___/ /\____/ / / __/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/________/ / __\ \____\ e \____\ \____\ k \ ___\ \____\ y \__________/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/WW ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | TraxWeekly Issue #74 | Release date: 18 Oct. 1996 | Subscribers: 881 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- /-[Introduction]------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ In the vast world of introductions, this one is no different. Like many other introductions, it is briefly scanned by a small but growing majority of individuals who represent a correspondingly small but growing hobby which in time will redefine the concept we call music. We have a few tidbits for you this week. Spieg's article completely cracked me up when it arrived in the mail last week; I know you'll enjoy it. =) Greg Heo has been nice enough to restart the TW 'serious issues' cycle with a contribution on musical theory. And my friend Cyrus was gracious enough to send me a humorous little ditty (forwarded a zillion times from zillions of other sources, of course) that I figured contained a good enougn revelation for us #trax-ers. =) #trax = cool, #trax = fun. If someone has some really earth-shaking news, please send it on in. As always, group columns are always welcome. May your drives be always full of snow and little green men. Gene Wie (Psibelius) TraxWeekly Publishing gwie@csusm.edu /-[Contents]---------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ ________ _________________________________________________________________ / ____/_/ __/ \ __/ / _____/ \ __/ __/ ___/_ < \____\ \ \\ \ \\____ __/ __/_\ \ \\____ \_____ \__ \ \ \ \\ \ \ww\ \\ \\ \ \ \ \ \_ _\________\________\\___\____\ \_____\\_______\\___\____\ \_____\_______\ General Articles 1. The State of the Scene........................Psibelius 2. Motherboard Sampling..........................Spieg 3. Introduction to Musical Theory................Greg Heo 4. Knowledge, Money, and Power...................??? Group Columns 1. Grey 2. Skyjump Team Closing Distribution Subscription/Contribution Information TraxWeekly Staff Sheet /-[General Articles]-------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ --[1. The State of the Scene]----------------------------------[Psibelius]-- "TraxWeekly sure has been small these past few weeks." "Gee, why is TraxWeekly so *small?*" Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer a few decent articles each week, then have a bloated 64k file full of ascii garbage and advertisements. I mean, after all, this IS a music newsletter. In connection with #trax, we've got to be able to cover at least *something* useful to the musicians of the scene. Saves disk space and upload time too. Time being a commodity that I'm lacking a bit these days... b0b's #trax page is pretty awesome. For those of you who haven't checked out the 'people' section there yet, there's space to enter your own bio, as well as list all your cool releases for dedicated fans to download. While you're at it, you can mail b0b a really bad, grainy, jpeg picture of yourself to put on the page, so the whole world can see what you look like. I just ran through it last night, and I'd have to say, the best pictures belong to Zodiak, Trissy, and Mr. Unabomber (I wish I remembered who this was, 'cause the pic was great. NOTE: TW in no way supports the activites or beliefs of the Unabomber. This reference was made towards the photo in place of a #trax member's real photo, which has been deemed "funny" and/or "humorous" =). Check it out at http://www.spaz.com/trax/. They "final" version of Jeffrey Lim's Impulse Tracker, v2.06 is now out. Those of you who don't have it yet can get it from ftp.cdrom.com in the directory /pub/demos/incoming/music/programs/it206.zip. Enjoy Jeff's new song too. =) A: The "cereal" killer. If you got that last part, you win a prize. Email me. Gene Wie (Psibelius) gwie@csusm.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --[2. Motherboard sampling]----------------------------------------[Spieg]-- Since the hot topic of late is sampling, I just thought I'd pop in to let you all know of this real fun trick me and my roommate learned a few nights ago. I am the proud (?) owner of one of those funky motherboards with the SB16 (vibra) onboard. Also, I, of course, own a GUS... The SB picks up on all sorts of noise from the computer, and often times I'd (with little results) try to get that noise down to a minimum. Well, for a change, I decided to ramp up the volume... a *LOT*. So much in fact that you could hear, what we came to the conclusion to be, the actual noise of the CPU doing its work. Different keystrokes made different noises, and running different apps yielded a whole host of odd, and interesting samples. The neat thing was that one thing would make the same sound, no matter what i was doing... I.E., the mouse would always sound like a little race car from an old Intellivision game I used to be so fond of... Lest I even mention the sounds a pc makes when loading windows... It sounds like you are torturing your CPU... At any rate. While most of the noises I made were just that, noise, I found I could 'jam' with the different inputs available to me and get some interesting stuff. Working a mouse, a joystick and a keyboard all at once, I was able to actually 'track' a song on the noise from my CPU. Welp... I just thought I'd let you all know about this marvelous discovery. Try it sometime when you're in the mood from some noise, it is quite an experience actually *hearing* your computer do its work. Enjoy. @) Spieg / [Radical.Rhythms] spieg@wiley.csh.rit.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --[3. Introduction to Musical Theory]---------------------------[Greg Heo]-- __preface__ In this article (and possible subsequent ones...) I hope to explore the musical side of tracking. I'll admit, I'm not an experienced tracker so don't expect a technical tracking tutorial or anything. This article is pretty 'beginner-ish', and aimed at people who have had either some or absolutely no theory experience. If you're not in this category, then you'll probably find this article a bit boring. __the elements__ No, not the chemical elements. Elements of music. More specifically, melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, tone colour, texture, and form. These elements are present in any and every song. At least that's what my music teacher is always telling me. So let's go through them... __melody__ This is the part of the song you remember. You whistle it and hum it after you've heard it. Technically, it's the "organized and logical variation of pitch and time." Most of the melodies you hear are in steps; it moves C-D-E-F-G and so forth. I don't mean the entire song is just a scale, but 80% of the pitch movement is like this. Listen closely to a tracked song or one on the radio...you'll be surprised at how much of the melody is moving in single notes. __harmony__ While melody is the 'horizontal' aspect of music, harmony can be describes as the 'vertical' aspect. There are two main types of harmonies, note-by-note and chords. An example of note-by-note harmony can be found with the song 'twinkle twinkle little star' C C G G A A G twin - kle twin - kle li - ttle star There's the melody. With n-b-n harmony added, it looks like this: C C G G A A G C C E E F F E twin - kle twin - kle li - ttle star Chord theory could take up an entire article, so I'll just skip over that for now. __rhythm__ A lot of people think 'percussion' immediately after hearing the word rhythm. Remember the "organized and logical movement" from the section on melody? That's rhythm. Try playing any song, but hold the short notes long and the long ones short. Sound like a completly new song? Rhythm can be further divided into two sections: metre and tempo. Metre is the way we count out the rhythm. If you've played an instrument, this is the time signature. I'd say about 90% of the music on the radio is in 4/4 time...meaning you can count out four beats to the music, with the first beat being the 'strong' one. Listening to a fast march? Probably counted in two. Waltzes in three, and so on. Duple metre refers to songs counted in 2, 4, 8, and so forth. Triple metre refers to songs in 3, 6, and 12. Tempo is the musical term for speed. In the tracker world, speed is controlled by frames and 'tempo'. The number of frames per row is set at a default of 06 (this is the Axx command), and the tempo is at a default of 125 (the Txx command). I'd recommend reading Catspaw's articles in TW #58 and #59 for a more in-depth look into frames and tempo. __closing__ So there you have the first three elements of music. Hopefully I'll cover the other four which are about 99 times more interesting. Greg Heo river@io.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --[4. Knowledge, Money and Power]--------------------------------[Unknown]-- This was forwarded to me by my friend Cyrus (caliamad@uci.edu) the other day. After sitting in Combinatoric Math for two weeks, I'm already flipping out. Why is everything so abstract and hard to understand? I'd rather be doing calculus! In any case, enjoy the following theory: =) ----- After applying some simple algebra to some trite phrases and cliches a new understanding can be reached of the secret to wealth and success. Here it goes. Knowledge is Power Time is Money and as every engineer knows, Power is Work over Time. So, substituting algebraic equations for these time worn bits of wisdom, we get: K = P (1) T = M (2) P = W/T (3) Now, do a few simple substitutions: Put W/T in for P in equation (1), which yields: K = W/T (4) Put M in for T into equation (4), which yields: K = W/M (5). Now we've got something. Expanding back into English, we get: Knowledge equals Work over Money. What this MEANS is that: 1. The More You Know, the More Work You Do, and 2. The More You Know, the Less Money You Make. Solving for Money, we get: M = W/K (6) Money equals Work Over Knowledge. From equation (6) we see that Money approaches infinity as Knowledge approaches 0, regardless of the Work done. What THIS MEANS is: The More you Make, the Less you Know. Solving for Work, we get W = M x K (7) Work equals Money times Knowledge From equation (7) we see that Work approaches 0 as Knowledge approaches 0. What THIS MEANS is: The stupid rich do little or no work. Working out the socioeconomic implications of this breakthrough is left as an exercise for the reader. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- /-[Group Columns]----------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ --[5. Grey]----------------------------------------------------------------- g r e y music grey, a small group of musicians, has existed since march 1996. only now have i gotten around to writing this little plug for us. :) there's not much to grey; that's the point of it. simplicity, we believe, is a virtue... not necessarily in music itself, but in the process of dist- ribution that is so much a part of our scene. grey has no limit on style or anything of that sort; we're all about music, and that's all we're about. currently, grey consists of me (ryan, NOT ryan cramer), skie, gblues, luvk, imager, qporcupine, hunz, and cd. usually, you can find one or more of us on irc at any given point in time (especially cd, who likes to idle for days on #trax =>). if you want to take a look at some of our music, check out our web page at http://bcn.net/~skie/grey/ or ftp site at ftp://ftp.fm.org/pub/music/grey. so go get acquainted with this slowly-producing group; it'll be well worth your while. (btw, some interesting grey trivia: we were the first group to release an .it file, i believe... fear us! =>) -- ryan sprott / grey 96 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --[6. Skyjump Team]--------------------------------------------------------- ,g##g_ gg ,gg ~gg pg* ;ga gg pp [ggc ggp [ggggg, M#"4#@ #@ ,@#" 7#a ,#@ l#9 #@ BB [##@ ]##B [#44@#@ ]#L E# #@,@#" @@ #B l#9 #@ BB [#QB [#BB [# 7# ##ga, #@W#X \#y#@ l#9 #@ BB [#[#_QBBB [# _A# `@###g ###@@ Q#@ l#9 #@ BB [#]#C#@BB [#####@ __ "@#a ##"\#G ]#L __ l#9 #@ BB [# #N#CBB [#"""" I#a )#L #@ QB, ]#L ]#L [#? #@ W@ [# M##'BB [# `##ggMB #@ `#@ ]#L ##g@M Y#@g##@ [# f#B BB [# `@#B@" #@ Y#* ]#L `@#@" 9###" [# +#@ UB [# ggggggg pgggggg ,gg gggc ggp (TM) [###### BB####@ 6#@ [##@ ,##B #@ BB____, /#"#@ [#I# QBBB ------------------- #@ B#####9 W@ V#_ [#)#8#@BB | Since 1994 | #@ BB j#@g&#G [# #N#CBB ------------------- #@ BB &#####@ [# MB#^BB E-MAIL: #@ BBggggg #@ Y#, [# Q#B BB ssetti@inf.unitn.it #@ B#####D I#" `#@ [# l#@ BB Hello from D.J. Skyjump okay, some latest news to you straight from SkYjUMP tEAM (SJT) -------------------------[ New Programs ]-------------------------- 13/10/96 Ramsete CD Player v2.1 ............ Audio CD Player Filename: SKY_CD21.ZIP .... 25k ... by Ramsete --------------------------[ New Tracks ]-------------------------- 07/10/96 Ex-Traemor ........................ Hard/Trance Filename: SKY_XTRM.ZIP ... 88k ... by SperMaster 09/10/96 Undetermineted Feeling Remix ...... TripHop Filename: SKY_UFRX.ZIP .. 346k ... by Riders 09/10/96 Analog Cloud #1 ................... Acid Filename: SKY_ANC1.ZIP ... 88k ... by SmiL 14/10/96 Uncle Tana is Getting Slouching ... Ethno-Ambient Filename: SKY_UNCL.ZIP... 1011k .. by Aphex Grab it From our WWW Page : http://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/skyjump-team/ or from the ftp sites : sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl /pub/music/groups/SKYJUMP-TEAM ftp.cdrom.com /pub/incoming/music/.... See You Later D.J. Skyjump ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- /-[Closing]----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ TraxWeekly is available via FTP from: ftp.cdrom.com /demos/incoming/info (new issues) ftp.cdrom.com /demos/info/traxw/ (back issues) To subscribe, send mail to: listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za and put in the message body: subscribe trax-weekly [name] (NOT address) To unsubscribe, mail same and: unsubscribe trax-weekly (in message body) Contributions for TraxWeekly must be formatted for *76* columns, must have a space preceding each line, and have some measure of journalistic value. Please avoid the use of high ascii characters, profanity, and subjects not proper for public discussion. Contributions should be mailed as plain ascii text or filemailed (MIME/UUE only) to: gwie@csusm.edu before 11:00pm PST (North America) every Thursday. TraxWeekly is released over the listserver and ftp.cdrom.com every Friday at 10:00am PST (North America). TraxWeekly does not discriminate based on age, gender, race, political preferences, religious preferences, or eliteness. The staff can be reached at the following: Editor: Psibelius (Gene Wie)..............gwie@csusm.edu Staff: Atlantic (Barry Freeman)..........atlantic@arcos.org Benjamin Krause...................orogork@cs.tu-berlin.de DennisC (Dennis Courtney).........dennisc@community.net Fred (Fred Fredricks).............fred@paracom.com Kal Zakath (John Townsend)........jtownsen@sescva.esc.edu Kleitus (Seth Katzman)............skatzman@global2000.net Mage (Glen Dwayne Warner).........gdwarner@cvn70b.vinson.navy.mil Mick Rippon.......................rip@hunterlink.net.au Trifixion.........................trifix@orion.polaristel.net Zinc (Justin Ray).................rays@direct.ca Reporter: IOR (Jesse Rothenberg)............jroth@csusm.edu Graphic Contributors: Cruel Creator . Stezotehic . Squidgalator2 . White Wizard TraxWeekly is a HORNET affiliation. Copyright (c)1995,1996 - TraxWeekly Publishing, All Rights Reserved. /-[END]--------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ :: ::: : . ..... ..............................:::.................:.... ::: : :::: : .::::. .:::::.:::. ..:::: :::: : :: :: ::: .:: :: :: WW:::: : ::. :: ::: .:: :: .:: :::: : :::.::. ::: .:: .:: .:::::... :: :::.. ... ..: ... ..:::::::::::::::: .:: .::::::: :::::::: ::::::.. ::: ::: ::: : until next week! =) .. ... .. ....... ............... .................:..... .. . :