. founded march 12, 1995 _| : _____ t r a x w e e k l y # 90 ______________ |___| _ _______/ /\___________________________ / ____________/ /\__\ _ _______/____/_____________________________ / / _________ \/__/ ______\ \_____________________________ / / / `_ . .~ \____\/ _ __ ___ / / / _____ . _ \ __ ___ _/__/\ / / / / /\ _ The Music Scene Newsletter __ __\__\/ _/__/ / ____/ /__\_________________________________ _____ ___ _ / /\/ /___ __________ _ ______ _ ___ \/ /\ / / /____/ \ \ / /\ / __/\ / /\ \ \ / \ /____/ / / \ / \/ /_ \___/___/ \ \_/___/ / \_/ / / \ ___\ / /_/ /______/\/ \ /______/\/ \ /_____/ // \ \ / / / \ / / \ \ \ \_\ \ \ \_\ \ //____/\____\/ / / / / / \______\/ \______\/ \_____\/ \ \ \ \ / / / / \____\/\____\ / / / / _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ / / / /__/ w /\___/ /\___/ e /\___/ /\__ / l /\___/ /\____/ / / __/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/________/ / __\ \____\ e \____\ \____\ k \ ___\ \____\ y \__________/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/WW ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | TraxWeekly Issue #90 | Release date: 06 Mar 1997 | Subscribers: 929 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- /-[Introduction]------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ Welcome to TraxWeekly #90, and yet another really small issue. That's not too hot, considering that this publication turns two years old on the twelvth! For two whole years (imagine that!), TraxWeekly has been supplying almost a thousand people with loads of music scene related (and unrelated) material. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty proud we've managed to get this far. Note to all the people who have changed addresses and now have TraxWeekly bouncing: I will have your old addresses unsubscribed within the next week. Also, I really don't have enough time to keep running this newsletter anymore. If anyone out there in the scene is willing to keep TraxWeekly alive and releasing, please contact me. With work and school, I am rapidly running out of time to continue putting this publication together, and I really don't want to see it end anytime soon. Please, only email me if you are serious about keeping TW running. Regards, and celebrate! 1000+ subscribers and two years in the running! Gene Wie (Psibelius) TraxWeekly Publishing gwie@csusm.edu /-[Contents]---------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ ________ _________________________________________________________________ / ____/_/ __/ \ __/ / _____/ \ __/ __/ ___/_ < \____\ \ \\ \ \\____ __/ __/_\ \ \\____ \_____ \__ \ \ \ \\ \ \ww\ \\ \\ \ \ \ \ \_ _\________\________\\___\____\ \_____\\_______\\___\____\ \_____\_______\ General Articles 1. The Art of Sampling................................Euji Acha 2. Interview with Cosmic/RR...........................Pizza Head Closing Distribution Subscription/Contribution Information TraxWeekly Staff Sheet /-[General Articles]-------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ --[1. The Art of Sampling]-------------------------------------[Euji Acha]-- The Art of Sampling part I - La courbure de l'espace-temps (?) Hello there ! I'm Euji Acha, I track trance for now a while, and I recently received e-mails about (my) samples and sampling in general. Maybe, I have few tricks to give... Before we start This article was written for beginners, I've tried to be easily under- -standable, and the most important to me, I've tried to explain why some "rules" have to be respected. I start from the beginning, but I assume that you are familiar with computers. I - What do I need to sample ? To sample you don't need a sampler, you need a computer, a sound card and of course some programs. Samplers are used in MIDI music, not in tracked music. Let's start with the computer. A 486 with 8 Mb is, to me, the minimum since you will handle large amounts of data. When I say 'minimum', I mean 'if you have this configuration, that will work fine'. Don't worry, you don't need a Pentium MMX 200 with 64 Mb of SDRAM. :) Some people will tell you that 4 Mb is enough to compose tracked music. I agree, but it's not for editing waves because most of the programs we will use run under Windows, and Windows is known for being a RAM killer.:( Now, a very important point : the sound card. In fact, you have to choice between a Sound Blaster (SB) and a Gravis UltraSound (GUS). Warning, it is highly possible that the sound card wich was given with your computer is a 'SB 16 compatible'. That's not a SB 16, and I advise you to buy a new card. My present choice will be a SB 64, because I'm used to work on Sound Blaster cards, but it lacks the GUS' hardware mixing... Anyway, whatever the sound card you buy, extend its memory to 1 Mb. (if the sound card does not have its own memory, like the SB 16, forget it :) ) A last thing about the sound card, it's useless to buy a daughter-board such as a Wave Blaster or a Korg, those cards are intended for MIDI music. (and if you want to compose in MIDI, a Roland or a Yamaha is a better choice) Well, now that you've got a computer with a sound card, you need a program to sample. I advise you to use Cool Edit (exists in Win 3.1 & 95 version), it offers a lot of usefull effects, and is able to generate sounds. Cool Edit is a shareware program, you should be able to find it over the Internet. I use Fast Tracker II, if you don't, the manipulations wich are done under FT2 could be done with Cool Edit (or Velvet Studio, wich is a good tracker indeed...) II - How to sample ? a - Connecting the source to your sound card We must look at what you want to sample from. Remember that the less you have elements between the source and the recorder, the best it is. It implies that you must try to connect directly the source to your sound card. For example if you want to record the sound from a tape, connect your tape player directly to your soundcard's line-in. If you want to record a CD, the best is to use a CD dumper, but if you can't, connect your CD-player directly to your soundcard's line-in too. There is also the problem of recording from MIDI instruments. Try to connect the concerned instrument to your soundcard, but it is often impossible. In that case, connect your MIDI mixing table directly to your soundcard. Also avoir long cables, I mean cables longer than 5 m. b- Volume control Now, your source is connected to the soundcard, what have you to do ? We must set the volume of the source and the recorder. If you can set the volume of your source (MIDI mixing table for example), you must be very careful, if the volume is too loud, you'll have an overdriven sound. What is an overdriven sound ? Well, it's simple, your soundcard is able to record up to a maximum amplitude. If the amplitude of the source is greater than this maximum, there is data loss. Believe me, an over- -driven sound is ugly ! But how to set the best level ? If your soundcard has an AGC (automatic gain control), there's no problem, activate it. If it doesn't, you have to set the volume of your source in order to have the loudest part at 0 db. (wich is the maximum signal for a CD too) In the editor's window, your wave musn't touch the top or the bottom of the frame. To be precise, the ideal is that the maximum amplitude of the wave just touch the top or the bottom of the frame, but you will have this result in normalizing the sample. Of course, do not set the volume too low, you will have data loss too. AGC really makes things easier ! :) Even if you want an overdriven sound, respect the above rule, you'll obtain the effect thanks to post-editing. We'll discuss about advanced fx's another day. Anyhow, in most cases, you can't set the source volume, if you record from a tape or a CD, it's "pure line-in", most common player have no volume control. If they have, it must generally be set to the maximum. (for example on my CD player the volume control was implemented for amplifier without remote control) I think you know enough about volume setting for now, let's sample ! c - Sampling quality First, launch your wave editor. Choose "new" in the menu, you will have a dialog box asking for the sampling rate, the number of bits, etc. Choose 44,100 Hz - 16 bits - mono. Why 44,100 Hz ? The Human ear can listen sounds up to 22,000 Hz, but digital recording requieres to use sampling rate twice greater than the maximum frequency you want to sample. If you want to record all the frequencies a human can hear, you must sample at 44,100 Hz. You must also know that a shrill tone is an high frequency wave, and that a bass tone is a low frequency wave. In theory, bass tones don't requiere to be sample at 44,100 Hz. For example, if your tone is a 200 Hz wave, you should sample it at 400 Hz. In practice, your bass tone always have some shrill tones that interfer with it. To sum up, sample at 44,100 Hz ! If you consider that your final sample is too big, downsample it to 22,050 Hz. Frequencies under 22,050 Hz are not recommanded. What is the difference between 8 bits & 16 bits ? The number of bits is the resolution of the sample. I think that the best way to understand the difference between 8 bits & 16 bits is to record a high, clear and quiet sound. Record it a 44,100 Hz - 16 bits - mono. Listen to it, if you have a good card, and if it's connect to a HiFi set, you can't hear a difference. (except the stereo) Now convert it to 8 bits. Listen to it... Argh ! Did you hear the fzzzz ? You should also know that all transformations you made on 16 bits waves give better results than on 8 bits wave. If for a question of size, you don't want to use 16 bits sample (yes, 16 bits samples are twice larger than 8 bits samples), I advise you to work in 16 bits, save you work in .WAV format for possible future modifications, and then save it to your tracker's format in 8 bits. Personally, I use 16 bits samples in my modules. (that's why they are BIG :( ) Technical tip : if you have a 44,100 Hz - 16 bits sample, and if you want to convert it to a 22,050 Hz - 8 bits sample, change the frequency first, then the resolution. You will have a better quality. Technical tip : if your source is bad, I mean, if your original sound is bad, because old, or because it isn't right recorded, (in classic music for example, the way the CD has been recorded is important), it is not necessary to maintain a high quality, you can convert your sample to 22,050 Hz - 8 bits, you won't hear the difference. BUT, keep the original 44,100 Hz - 16 bits version, you may need it in the future. It is also clever to change the sample rate if you used a low pass filter. For example, if you removed all the sounds over 15,000 Hz, change the sample rate to 30,000 Hz, it *should* be ok. (according you have good hardware and good software) We will study filters, I promise. ;) d - Sampling (simply :) ) Get ready to sample that is, set your player just a split second before what you want to record. What you want to record should be enough clear and isolated. Press record in the editor, play the sound, when finished, stop it and stop recording. If you record from a MIDI instrument, record, play the note, and stop recording when you can't hear anything from the speakers. It could be a good idea to sample different octaves of the same instr- -ument, that will improve the quality of your modules. Before doing anything, save it to the uncompressed .WAV format. Do not use ADPCM or another compression method, you will have quality loss. I ask you to save now in order to prevent you from commit a suicide if you make an unrecoverable error with the sample. :) Technical tip : If you want to record an instrument from a song, there are few things you should keep in mind. First, it is a better to find the moment in the song when the instrument is played alone. I know it's obvious, but that's important. When you find a good moment, sample 1 s before and 1 s after. Then, you'll have to fade and cut some parts of the sound, that's the next topic... III - First corrections Well, our new sample contains too much data, there are blank before and after the sound, and there certainly are sounds you don't want to have. First select the blanks and delete them. Play it. Is it ok ? If not, choose the part of the song you want to keep and delete everything but this part. Ah ! The sample is less large now ! But... Work isn't over yet. We'll make the final adjustement in Fast Tracker II. Anyway, normalize your sample at 100 %, whatever its destiny will... Normalizing, will amplify the sound to the maximum it is possible to do without data loss. Also set the DC bias adjustement to 0 %, this will center the wave on the zero volt line. Save your sample to uncompressed .WAV format (you can delete the file later, but for the moment keep a .WAV version of your sample). Now, save it to the .PCM format, but with a .SMP extension, that's the format FT II use. (There's also .IFF, but I use .SMP) Quit Windows and launch FT II. Do not launch FT II from Windows ! Load the sample, go to the sample editor, choose 16 bits (do not convert data !), and you'll have your sample loaded. IV - Final adjustments a - Non-looped samples Consider you work as almost achieved ! Select a small part at the end of the sample and fade it _to_ zero. Select a small part at the beginning and fate it _from_ zero. A sample wich starts and ends with zero volume won't click. The click effect is created by brusque differences of amplitude. To avoid this differences, just fade in & out the sound. (you may also have click in using the sample offset effect on a sample) Listen to it... You may have fade too much data, if so, reload the sound and start over. If your sample sounds great, without clicks, you've got a brand new sample ready to use ! To be honest, if your sample sounds great, you're a lucky one, since there is often a lot of work requiered to obtain great samples. But, in a technical point of view, your sample is ready to play. My goal, was to show you the basic rules of sampling. Next time, we will learn how to obtain great samples. So, your sound is ready, but remember that you have the instruments paramaters to set up. Unfortunatly, that's not the topic. :) (maybe in a future article ?) b - Looped samples Yup ! That's the hard and boring part ! It's essential that your sample is long enough to be looped, because short samples aren't horrorshow to loop. There are exceptions of course, but we won't consider exceptions. Sample than can be looped are mainly strings, choirs, voices, synthetic waves, etc. You can also obtain a reverb effect in looping some short samples, but I won't talk about this, I don't want to confuse you. Great effects could be obtained from original loops, this will be explained another time. (it's hard to be a beginner, isn't it ? ;) ) Listen to your sample and watch the play-line. Loop a part that sounds almost the same from the begining to the end, choose ping-pong loop and listen... If you have no clicks, you won, else you have to modify the begining and/or the end of the loop until you have no clicks. Of course, you musn't feel the loop, it must sound natural ! Looped samples requieres good instruments setting, but find the loop is the hardest to me. Technical tip : As I said before, clicks are generated by differences of amplitude. In other terms, if in a forward loop the beginning has a different amplitude than the end, that will click. The more the difference is great, the more you will hear that click. FT II offers a X-fade utility, but it may give strange results. Anyway, there's no magic formula, even an AKAI sampler with an automatic system to loop samples fails. You just have to test, again and again until you get a satisfacting result. I also advise you to play the looped sample at different octaves to see if it's really fine. What you can try to do, is to put the loop on a 0 V point. (that is an intersection of the wave and the 0 V line) Technical tip : Play few notes with your new sample, if it sounds fine, it's ok, if not, maybe you should modify the loop (if there's one) or add some effects. Sometimes, play with a new sample can give you inspiration, so don't hesitate ! Remember : if you have good samples, you only have an half of what you need to create good music. I can teach you some things about technique, not about art. As I said it, this article was intended for beginners. If you're a beginner, you now know how to sample sounds with few data loss, and how to adapt it to a tracker. You now have to learn how to transform, modify and correct a sound... I'll be pleased to teach you this in another "The Art of Sampling" issue. Last words : you can find good quality samples at ftp.cdrom.com, just have a look in the directory tree. (you may also find some weird music composed by me :) ) If you have questions, comments and/or suggestions about this article, feel free to contact me. Euji Acha Explore my domain at : http://altern.org/eujiacha/WELENG.HTM (still under construction) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --[2. Interview with Cosmic]----------------------------------[Pizza Head]-- Hey welcome to my interview :) This week I got to interview Cosmic, who was one of the reasons that I got me into tracking. His songs were all over the bbs's i called and I decided to download one , one day. That was the first day I started tracking. So here it is, my interview with cosmic Welcome comsic and thanks for doing a interview for TraxWeekly First off, what is your name, age, and where are you from? my realname is matthias ksoll, iam about 26 years old and coming from germany. eww germany cool :) Heh is there a good scene out there? the german scene sucks for the moment. a lot of people laming around and doing nothing except of talking shit. the main problem is, that the artware scene is to public, means everybody can join and contribut hhmm that sucks, what kind of music is popular over there? tracking scene : rave, hardtrance and house of course real scene : only house so theres allot of lame stuff being spread? er dj'n i mean yes - nearly 80% of the released stuff you can nuke because of less quality or no sense behind. rave is out - back to roots - house and 130bpm :) Theres allot of shit being released, and its hard to only get music if its higher then *** because sometimes the reviewers have a different taste of music so you are forced to downlod a bunch of crap or stick with well known artits and sticking with well known artits suck because it stops new artits from being known of i dont think that it is a good way to release stuff and hope to get a lot of *** - you should track musik for your own pleasure and if somebody luvs it to - fine and if not - who cares - its your musik - you need to luv it ! wow i just got a free excel razor in the mail :) im going to go shave my legs right NOW! :) jk :) How much music have you released? good question : i dunno exactly but it should be around 100 tracks (dmf and xm). + my old amiga 4ch stuff. How much music have you not released :) more than i have released :) a lot of tracks didnt pass my own quality controll. control. still 50dmfs in my hold dir :) its good you have quality control , maybe if everyone had that not as much crap wouldnt be released :) what is the tune you feel is the your best accomplishment :) my best tune - rather hard question - i think Son of a bitch and all the remixes. because a lot of my friends luv this track and i dunno why :) heheh :) where can your songs be found? you can leech my tracks at our (radical rhythms) distribution sits or at our ftp/www sites. or at my board, that for sure :) which is : http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr ftp://ftp.cyberbox.north.de heh undercover bbs : +49 2323 460094 ok what is your preferred tracker and why? since a couple of months fasttracker - before ft2 it was xtracker and ft2 is somewhere a pt clone. furthermore because of env/pan and a lot of more. best solution for musician on pc (imo) and i really hate the s3m interface. what gives you insparation ? All (wow what a detailed answer) nah, you can get inspiration from your family, friends, tv, skool, other tracks, your feelings, your girlfriend, your boyfriend :). just all the stuff which is around you should give you something that you can give your tracks. musik is a kind of selfrepresentation. what is your newest toon? my newest is my bmp comp contrib : the boy i want (club house) and soon comes Lost at Trancentral EP vol 4 (ambient) is there any thing ud like to say about the song "the boy i want" (hint hint) yes - iam not gay as many people thought :) i have choosen the title because the female vocal says " i want you boy " heh whats is ur favorite book " mitternacht " by dean r. koontz um heh dont know what it is :) o well, do you make your own samples? yes ! i sample a lot (from cd/vinyl/keyboard/) but rip enuff from other mods what smaple editors if any do you use? i use the ft2 sampler, goldwave and cooledit. sometimes rays k2000 sampler whats rays k2000 sampler? rays (rr) kurzweil k2000 synthi. :) ahh k what is your favorite drink coffee !!! heh CAFINNNEE BUZZZ!! :) icetea follows - i hate alcohol in the states theres a new drink called water joe, its water with more caffine in it then coffee i gotta try it :) are you going to any demo partys? hehe when i have time, yes - but since iam working there no muchas time left :( heh i might go to eclipse, but i dont have a job, i could go to work at UPS for 200-250 a week but u work ur ass off :) UPS is a mail place that ships boxes of crap from companies to people :) yeah i know - friend of mine has worked for ups - it sucks :) Do you play any intsrements you mean instruments ? nope - i never learned to play piano .. heh :) just a moment - need some coffee :) * PiZZaHeaD 's theory that most well known trackers learned violen is shattered :) do you know any music theory? Nope - i was always a lamer in music lessons :) :) im signin up for music theory a.p at my school, it'll help me improve ok well i think thats about it is there anything ud like to say to the trax readers? to improve and try to make your songs as good as possible - play it to friends. oh one last thing what kind of sound card do you have? Gravis Ultrasound V2.4 with 16bit daugtherboard cool ok thanks for doing the interview lata no problem i have to thank you for this! why? because i have never been interviewed for traxweekly before heh i had to you were the first guy i saw music from when i started :) i was like how can cosmic release all this stuff?!?! :) ok buh bye :) thanks again ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- /-[Closing]----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ TraxWeekly is available via FTP from: ftp.cdrom.com /demos/incoming/info (new issues) ftp.cdrom.com /demos/info/traxweek/1995/ (back issues) /demos/info/traxweek/1996/ (back issues) /demos/info/traxweek/1997/ (back issues) TraxWeekly W3 is under development by Pinion (pinion@netcom.com) 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 try to avoid the use of high ascii characters, profanity, and above all: use your common sense. Contributions should be mailed as plain ascii text or filemailed to: gwie@csusm.edu before 11:00pm PST (North America) every Wednesday. TraxWeekly is usually released over the listserver and ftp.cdrom.com every Thursday or Friday at 10:00am PST (North America). TraxWeekly does not discriminate based on age, gender, race, political or religious statures and standpoints. 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 Fred (Fred Fredricks).............fred@paracom.com Kal Zakath (John Townsend)........jtownsen@sescva.esc.edu Kleitus (Seth Katzman)............katzms@rpi.edu Mage (Glen Dwayne Warner).........gdwarner@vinson.navy.mil gdwarner@ricochet.net Graphic Contributors: Cruel Creator . Stezotehic . Squidgalator2 . White Wizard TraxWeekly is a HORNET affiliation. Copyright (c)1995,1996,1997 - TraxWeekly Publishing, All Rights Reserved. /-[END]--------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ :: ::: : . ..... ..............................:::.................:.... ::: : :::: : .::::. .:::::.:::. ..:::: :::: : :: :: ::: .:: :: :: WW:::: : ::. :: ::: .:: :: .:: :::: : :::.::. ::: .:: .:: .:::::... :: :::.. ... ..: ... ..:::::::::::::::: .:: .::::::: :::::::: ::::::.. ::: ::: ::: : until next week! =) .. ... .. ....... ............... .................:..... .. . :