To the collective artists known as Skulltunes :

[boris s]

you don't understand what i mean...

i do my own music! i am not one from those who cuts finished loops together, a kick over that and thats it. NO!

i use only a loop to put it under my track that it sounds "full", you know?

the percussions, leads, rythms and so on i do myself! mike can confirm it because we produce many things together.

do you think glenn wilson is cheap because he uses loops and sample cds?!? i don't. the result is important!

boris

[eyes without a face]

this is a very good idea and congrats to mark for asking the skulltunes posse to explain the loops. seems it was all a misunderstanding hey?!!

can anyone help me on where to get these sample CD's?

[MARKEG]

yeah sure. but for gods sake please do what we're saying here and change them into your own.. hehe..

time and space is a good place to start

ps we've been discussing this way of working over in the production forum for the last 6 months at length - where the hell have you bin m8?!

[gunjack]

yeah. BE CREATIVE and dont use loops the exact same way they are provided. 8)

[MARKEG]

yeah that surely is the moral of this little story.

[death on a stick]

well Mark, maybe I'm overestimating people then. You mean people spend ages and ages on processing loops, but still manage to make tracks that sound like thousands of others? Now that is really lame!! I thought it was knocked up in no time, you're telling me people actually have to work at sounding unoriginal??? That it requires effort to put together the nth track of percussive sound + kick + hi-hat ==> filter up ==> ride in ==> ride out ==> breakdown, bla bla bla. Those clips that deafmosaic linked to were, to put it nicely, not worth making any fuss about, let alone threats of violence, boycotts or that sort of thing. It's just formulaic fodder.

I've already said I've nothing against sampling. Also I've not heard your stuff, or this Sven fella in any fullness, but from what I've heard of the processes involved it's no wonder people are sounding the same. It's dance music by numbers (I won't say techno as it isn't techno as far as I'm concerned - see my post on the old primate thread for clarification), however long you spend altering a sample. Samples can be used without any processing and editing and still be made to sound original and interesting.

This may seem a militant stance, but take it as an indication of my dislike for lazy sounding music. It's like a disease, and the more people that do it, the harder it will be to find the good flesh in amongst the tumours.

[MARKEG]

well we have to agree to disagree. i truly believe chrissi and i make music that sounds unique and exciting and different. sven does the same. i don't think he uses loops at all though actually. sure it's in that 'dancefloor' category so is probably what you call 'techno by numbers' but this is what i love making. love listening to and i certainly dont copy anyone. i just make music that makes me dance, scrunch my face up and have a near heart attack and do it in a way that involves mangling up loops. you don't. fair enough. there is no arguement here. it's a difference in taste that your using as the basis to your argument here....

'Samples can be used without any processing and editing and still be made to sound original and interesting.' - ermmm....how do you do that exactly without sound like you've nicked the sample?

[miromiric.]

boris, you say you use loops to make your tracks "full".
i ask you this - why do you make music?
do you make it to sound "full" or you make it cause u have it inside?
producing the sound is something most beautiful in this crazy world, you just have to let out what u have in your hear and mind - this is art, my friend, art of transforming an abstract or concrete idea into sound, in this case. and this idea has to be yours only, genuine. every sound should have it`s meaning, all constructing a solidification of your philosophy. things aren`t always on consciousness level, but that doesn`t matter. what matter is that you are honest to yourself.

one question for all of you here - if you could never achieve to make your sound "full" without using loops, would you start using them and, hence, start releasing records? :arrow:

[Greg Silver]

sorry, i´m a little bit late in this discussion, but i got an appointment.

first of all something to deafmosaic:
in a german board, boris and me DID apologize, we never used CONSCIOUSLY a loop, which has already been used in another record. the loops we were blamed for are from a record we have never possessed. i promise. there was a real loop-rip of one of sven´s records from another artist (3 loops in one track!!!) also and sven huddled it together. now sven and we are friends again,we phoned about 1hr and all the differences are cleared.
another thing is dj amok. and it isn´t of interest for me, if he is an artist from you, too. he is only a friend of sven, not directly affected in any way and called me and boris "motherf...", "dick suckers" and lots more and spread this over the boards. sorry, this is definitely NOT objective and we pull our consequences out of that.
i´m not angry about any of your statements, but please do a difference between objective discussions and insults. would you accept them? i don´t think so.

to all the others: i hope the statements of mike, boris and me did explain the most. i think we get the conclusion, that we all have to take care of our sounds, spend as much energy as we can to form our own styles and be creative and most of all respect each other. this is the only way up, the rest is just a fall off.

[death on a stick]

'Samples can be used without any processing and editing and still be made to sound original and interesting.' - ermmm....how do you do that exactly without sound like you've nicked the sample?

Just use some imagination, that's all. Everything need not go 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234.

i truly believe chrissi and i make music that sounds unique and exciting and different. sven does the same

any online clips I can listen to? preferably more revealing than the 7 second bite deafmosaic linked to.

[MARKEG]

oh god... here comes minimal miro. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Buttman]

No wonder techno has stagnated when people stick to all these loop formulas.

This thread is just sad.

[MARKEG]

> Just use some imagination, that's all. Everything need not go 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234.

death. i know this. i listen to all sorts of techno/music/shit but i enjoy making 1234 1234 techno. i enjoy playing it and i enjoy listening to it. why is your taste better than my 1234?

cummon ppl does anyone know of any links to our stuff that you can pm to death?

[death on a stick]

why is your taste better than my 1234?

eh? you asked me how it was possible to use a blatant sample in a way that sounded original. While I didn't give explicit instructions on how to do so (there are none, rules don't apply, that's what causes stagnation), I don't see where you got that inference from.

To be a little clearer then, by "Everything need not go 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234" what I meant was that with a little creative sequencing you can shift the emphasis of any sound, be it sampled or not, so that it is not just the same format as the original sound with your own kick underneath it. I've sampled world famous and very popular tunes, big long segments of them, and people have still not recognised them until I explained how it was done.

[Buttman]

By the way... What difference would it make if the Skulltunes gang actually DID sample Patrik Skoog etc.? I mean, they are not the originators either are they?

[MARKEG]

> To be a little clearer then, by "Everything need not go 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234" what I meant was that with a little creative sequencing you can shift the emphasis of any sound, be it sampled or not, so that it is not just the same format as the original sound with your own kick underneath it. I've sampled world famous and very popular tunes, big long segments of them, and people have still not recognised them until I explained how it was done.

mate this is precisely what i was saying. i don't understand why you'll brought this up. it's exactly what we do. change start points, end points, change eq... be creative. it's just what i was saying. but don't stick with the same sample from a sample cd.

[MARKEG]

> By the way... What difference would it make if the Skulltunes gang actually DID sample Patrik Skoog etc.? I mean, they are not the originators either are they?

Interesting point. But then imagine if everyone used a 909 or an 808. ahemmm.. hold on. they do. Oh sod it then. Jeff Mills didnt write Waveform III - Roland did.

Let's not go down this route butty :) :lol: :lol: :lol:

[miromiric.]

'Samples can be used without any processing and editing and still be made to sound original and interesting.' - ermmm....how do you do that exactly without sound like you've nicked the sample?

i tend not to change my samples to much. they are usually samples of things from my enviroment, noizes, machines, voices; i just want to preserve that touch of reality.

i think a lot of music has directing the dead end, repeating itself over and over and over again. we should go out on the streets, take our little microphones and dats and record our reality. in this way you can truly be a spokesman of modern time, exactly what Techno is.

[Buttman]

> By the way... What difference would it make if the Skulltunes gang actually DID sample Patrik Skoog etc.? I mean, they are not the originators either are they?

Interesting point. But then imagine if everyone used a 909 or an 808. ahemmm.. hold on. they do. Oh sod it then. Jeff Mills didnt write Waveform III - Roland did.

Let's not go down this route butty :) :lol: :lol: :lol:

You have a point but you still program the 909. There are no ready made arrangements it it (as far as I know).

Making good sounds is easy, arranging them in a good way is hard.

I quote my boy Grovskopa:
"When I want to play with loops I go spin.
When I want to make music I make music."


*Going down the route*

[MARKEG]

making good loops is easy. arranging them in a creative and original way is hard.

someone give me one good reason why working with midi is better than working with loops and midi. someone tell me why working with loops is not just as creative as working with a bunch of pre programmed synths/drum machines where you only twiddle a few nobs to get different sounds.

with loops you twiddle eq.. apply filters. chop them up. paste them together. arrange them differently. create your own thing.

with midi you change the vco twiddle with the vcf. arrange notes. create your own thing.

it's all the same. grrrrr...

this is really making me mad. :x if you haven't messed with loops creatively or found a way to do it please dont tell me that your way is better.

use both worlds - both technologies - and take the sound forward.