. founded march 12, 1995 _| : _____ t r a x w e e k l y # 106 ______________ |___| _ _______/ /\___________________________ / ____________/ /\__\ _ _______/____/_____________________________ / / _________ \/__/ ______\ \_____________________________ / / / `_ . .~ \____\/ _ __ ___ / / / _____ . _ \ __ ___ _/__/\ / / / / /\ _ The Music Scene Newsletter __ __\__\/ _/__/ / ____/ /__\_________________________________ _____ ___ _ / /\/ /___ __________ _ ______ _ ___ \/ /\ / / /____/ \ \ / /\ / __/\ / /\ \ \ / \ /____/ / / \ / \/ /_ \___/___/ \ \_/___/ / \_/ / / \ ___\ / /_/ /______/\/ \ /______/\/ \ /_____/ // \ \ / / / \ / / \ \ \ \_\ \ \ \_\ \ //____/\____\/ / / / / / \______\/ \______\/ \_____\/ \ \ \ \ / / / / \____\/\____\ / / / / _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ / / / /__/ w /\___/ /\___/ e /\___/ /\__ / l /\___/ /\____/ / / __/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/________/ / __\ \____\ e \____\ \____\ k \ ___\ \____\ y \__________/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/WW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | TraxWeekly Issue #106 | Release date: 25 Jul 1997 | Subscribers: 951 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ]--[Introduction]------------------------------------------------------------[ Welcome to TraxWeekly #106! This week features a huge article by Andrew J. Bibby on the concept of "groove" in music, followed by some techniques for tracking in articles by Bojan Landekic and Airon. Music Contest 5 is now in the first phase of judging. All of you who registered to be judges should have recieved your voting assignments in email. ***Be sure to read the judging guidelines on the MC5 website!*** The deadline for phase one is August 4, 1997. Comments or questions should be directed to gd@hornet.org. Until next week (or maybe the week after)! =) Gene Wie (Psibelius) TraxWeekly Publishing gwie@csusm.edu ]--[Contents]----------------------------------------------------------------[ ________ _________________________________________________________________ / ____/_/ __/ \ __/ / _____/ \ __/ __/ ___/_ < \____\ \ \\ \ \\____ __/ __/_\ \ \\____ \_____ \__ \ \ \ \\ \ \ww\ \\ \\ \ \ \ \ \_ _\________\________\\___\____\ \_____\\_______\\___\____\ \_____\_______\ Letters and Feedback 1. Letter from KXmode 2. Letter from Exxon General Articles 3. Groove - what it be?..........................Bibby 4. The Use of the Samples........................Bojan Landekic 5. A Little Panning..............................Airon Advertisements JOTD Website ViperMAX Sound Card Closing Distribution Subscription/Contribution Information TraxWeekly Staff Sheet ]--[Letters and Feedback]----------------------------------------------------[ --[1. Letter from KXmode]----------------------------------------------------- From randrew@primenet.comSat Jul 5 23:38:55 1997 Date: Sat, 5 Jul 1997 16:27:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Ryan Allen To: Gene Wie Subject: Traxweekly Submission > Hmmm, that two articles in TW #103 on different RealAudio topics those two articles would be by myself (actually a letter letting everyone know about Groove Radio's livefeed) and Mental Floss (POTS). > Imagine an Internet radio station that broadcasts live once a week (surely > the broadcasts are archived so that you'll never miss it :), playing the one problem. Money. Most people don't have the money to fork over to rent the realaudio server equipment needed to broadcast a weekly #traxnet (as you so precisely put it) livefeed. Unless Mental Floss can, since your friend let you borrow the realaudio server for POTS. How about it? :) > newest really good tracked music, in between discussing tracking topics, > and once a month there'd be a theme broadcast, focusing either on special > styles of music (from ballads to gabba), music groups or even special > broadcasts playing music from just one special tracker (only really good > ones ofcoz :)) I think that something like that would help people to find all excellent ideas. I'm sure someone would give there soul to do this kind of thing, but when you think of time, money and relative whatnots something like becomes a momumental undertaking. Hell, radio DJs get paid money to do what they do. Granted there are a few induviduals that "hack" into radio airwaves via the "Pump Up the Volume" syndrome but for the most part it's a hell of a time to do a project like this with no financial backing. I'm sure Mental Floss felt drained? > the really awesome tracks (since there's no *****'s at Hornet anymore), and > maybe it would even help to raise the interest of "out-of-scene" people in > this part of the Net... there is a rating system in place now which i think personally is a lot better than the previous system. If voting gives people power, then power to the people. Now every song uploaded to hornet is voted on by many ppl in the scene, then say four or five induviduals at hornet. The broader range of tastes is a lot easier on the palette. And the chances of a newer tracker receiving a fairer rating is a bit more realistic. > BTW: My favourite netradio station at the moment is Club IMusic > (http://club.imusic.com/) also playing things like the Prodigy ("The thanx for the address... i'll be sure to check them out, although i'm personally getting sick and tired of Prodigy's "Breath". Anyone agree? :) . . k X m o d e ^ a c i d ACiD productions ....:.............:..... : pHluid . reMorse!ascii : : randrew@primenet.com : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --[2. Letter from Exxon]------------------------------------------------------ Well, people, you really disappoint me!!! I had hoped that at least a few people would support me with that TraxRadio thing, the only one who mailed me was LaLa. He came to me with a lot of interesting ideas (Thanx dude!!). One I really liked and want to announce right here is the launch of the great "TraxRadio-Signationcompo": A radiostation needs a catching melody for start, end and for jingles in between. At first I had thought of a chippie remix of PM's "Atomic Playboys", but a tune composed especially for TraxRadio would be a lot more original... So what I search for is a little piece of music with really catchy melody of about 30 seconds, which then loops nicely so it can be faded out or talked over it and it should be instrumental of course, although most tracked music is. Send your contributions to: exxon@bigfoot.com !! And, as pointed out at the beginning of this article, I need some more helpers for such a project. I think the idea of an internet radio station should be nice for every single tracker on earth, so why not help building it up a little?? I surely won't make it a one-man-show, so if you are interested in doing little reporter-stories on the Tracker scene, putting together playlists for special theme broadcasts, interviewing trackers or if you have any other great ideas to brainstorm about, don't hesitate, mail me !! - ExxoN / TraxRadio - - exxon@bigfoot.com - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ]--[General Articles]--------------------------------------------------------[ --[3. Groove - what it be?]------------------------------------------[bibby]-- Groove; now there's a truly interesting subject. Hours and hours I'll spend just listening to tracker music. Some of it grooves, some doesn't. I'm not quite sure if I could assign a percentage to determine which is greater, but it also goes along with how much tracker music is 'good' and how much is 'poor'. I was compelled to look it up in the dictionary. -groove: a narrow furrow or channel; a situation or activity to which one is especially well suited; niche. (also)- groovy: pleasing, deeply satisfying [from slang term 'in the groove'] To the side of the definition lies a few sample illustrations. One shows a straight profile of a screw with a thin arrow pointed inbetween two of the many rises along the shaft. The depiction of gears appears just next to the screw, with a thin arrow pointing between two of the teeth. The third and final 'groove' illustration is that of a household window opened halfway, a thin arrow pointing to the tracks along the side that keep the window in place. Now, its hard enough to try to unravel this abstract concept into words and place it in the form of an article, but it's going to take the abstractness of your artistic minds to put it back together and apply it to the music you compose and listen to. Music grooves, there is no denying that. So first, I should state that the word 'groove', when associated with music, is most often understood to be like hip-hop or funk, ect. Now I would think that this unintentional synonym was entered into common use because the relaxed feel and pleasant nature of that part of the musical spectrum happened to groove a lot better than other music. The truth of the matter is, country music grooves. Punk rock grooves. Rave grooves. They're all just different grooves. Ourselves personally might not fit into these grooves, and therefore we don't tend to like that kind of music. (Here's a funny sidenote of use:) The guitar player I live with was cut out for jazz from day one. But a drummer friend of ours that graduated from high school 2 years before us, who was also autistic and very sound sensitive, asked him to be in his punk band. My friend, Zack, accepted, figuring he had nothing to lose. He learned about 3 hours of music in a weekend; it was REAL easy, but that isn't the point of punk music, is it? Anyway the point of this sidenote is I'll never forget the look on his face when our drummer friend told him that he couldn't groove. His astoundment is permanently etched in my brain. He couldn't play punk to save his life. I mean, he knew the music fine and nailed all the chords, but the 'edge' that makes punk so distinctive wasn't there. It didn't feel right at all. Zack is just too relaxed of a player. When I think back to that incident, I remember our director back in high school telling our jazz band (ranked 5th in the state) that the purpose of the whole band is to sound like one. It has to flow in one direction with the same intentions. So when that punk band started playing, it dug a groove (this also creates the term where a player applies himself more in the feel, known as 'digging in'), when Zack didn't fit the groove, it undermined everything that the band was trying to do, ... to feel like one. So naturally, they fired him. Back to tracking- tracking is an interesting musical art, not just for its close ties with computer science, sampling techniques, direct use of waveforms and envelopes, but for the fact that of the whole and complete compositions that are the product of tracking, about 98% of them are done by a single person, giving that individual the full power to control the direction of the song. But still, when tracking a song, each sample or instrument (or group of samples) could easily be considered a 'player'. In fact that's how I think when I track, because one instrument (or the trackings of that instrument) could very well not fit or completely undermine the groove. Hope this has been making sense so far, cuz I'm not sure. I always use example to back up what I say whenever I can, so I'll start breaking those out in a bit. Now I've argued this point with many people for a long time, and just about every drummer I've worked with has been in full agreement, the heart of the groove, is in the bass. So not only is the bass responsible for the 'fundamental frequencies' that determine key and the root note of the chord, the bass is responsible for the very feeling and flow of the tune. Drums come second, with the obligation to accent beats 2 and 4 and has control over dynamic levels. I'd say a song really grooves when all the instruments are truly as one, but it all starts with the bass and drums. Without a foundation the building will fall. Now some proof that in order to groove all you need is a bass. .. -Bleeding Sun - an .it by Vincent Voois At first, just repeat the first pattern over and over again. The first two chords, bass note included, hit on beats 1 and 3 , but the 3rd chord hits on the & of 4. - This is really all you need. We're groovin' already. Bass can groove all by itself. (Now hold up, & of 4? we all understand off-beats, don't we?) Well just like everything else in this world of ours, a beat has two sides. A 'downbeat' is right on the beat. Count 1,2,3,4. These are the downbeats, if you were tapping your foot the your favorite mod, all these would appear, ... .. yep, when your foot was down. But now pay attention to when your foot came up. Could this be called the 'upbeat'? Yep, you can all it up, off, mid, whatever as long as it's understood that that's what you're talking about. Music teachers will generally tell you to call these off-beats "and" (&), so that it's easy to insert them in your count. Now count: |: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & :| (a couple of times. tap yer foot. Any numbers when the foot is down, '&' when the foot is up. This is also the count on a straight 8ths hihat pattern and such, 8 hits in a measure. Remember Zack? He once tried to tell me that in reggae, the guitar would play on beats 2 and 4, but once again, he's wrong. In reggae and ska (2 very closely related styles) The guitar would play only on the offbeats. One good way to find the groove is, if the beat is consistent, try to line up the snare hits on 2 and 4. (most styles now incorporate a snare hit on 2 and 4, but in swing, it's done with the closing of the hihat). *K_Muffld.xm , "Muffled Drums" by Lord Pegasus / Kosmic is a great example of this. Keyboard chords on the offbeats over a reggae-ish style. I'll list all the songs I mention at the end. Back to 'Bleeding Sun', In only the 1st pattern of the song the groove is dug, now it's up to everyone else (the instruments I mean) to fit in it. The 1st bar (1st 4 beats) begins on the 1st two downbeats, very straight, but the 2nd bar is all off, and then goes back. So the groove of this song is really built of a repetitious pattern over 2 bars, (..leads me to believe that things like this make dancers count to 8 instead of 4) Let me mark where the chords would attack: Eb6 Dmin7 Gmin7 Gmin9 | | | | up | & & & & | & & & & | down | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | (2nd time subs Eb6 for Cmin7, which is only a change of bass note) Sure beats the hell out of squaring them off to hit on 1,3,1,3. When the drums come in, they make an interesting fit. Find a well established pattern, I think pattern 01 will do fine. Now mute all the channels but the bass (05) and the drums (18 & 19) Now usually, The bassdrum pattern would try to accent the bassline, and I really wish it, would've played with the bass at the 4th bar of the pattern. Instead, it sounds to me like the bass and drums are still in a agreement though, by covering the holes left by the other. When the bass isn't busy, that's when the kick drum is. An interesting move. It still grooves, but it feels more like friends helping each other out than players thinking with one mind. Now drums have another interesting obligation, and that's to setup the next phrase. Generally they bring an entrance with them to help carry the song to that next layer of intensity, whereas a bass is only asked kindly to hit on 1 of the next bar. You often see this in hip-hop tunes of all kinds, with a drum track. They'll take it away but won't give it back on 1 very often , generally on 4 with the snare hit of the & of 3. Just thought I'd mention that. Now the function of a 'rhythm section' (usually consisting of bass, drums, piano, and/or guitar) is not provide chord structure and keep the feel for a soloist, a horn line, or vocalist, ect., so in order to do this, they all have to lock into the groove together and play as one. There's a part in this song where the piano decides that he no longer wants to hit that 3rd chord on the & of 4 , he'd rather wait until 1. Granted it's only an 8th later, but it catches my ear, and during that 8th, the bass note and the leftover chord don't match. Guitars and pianos can get away with things like that most of the time, they have a considerable amount of freedom for being rhythm players. If the bass hit that chord on 1 instead of the & of 4 after it being played like that for that long, I'd probably fall out of my chair. Let's see more on these upbeats .. . *Pn_cncpt.it , "Conception" by pinion / pHluid. (think its on ph-0297.zip) anyway, when the deep sine-bass comes in (ptrn 16), start that foot a'tappin and check out where those bass notes hit. They keep bouncing back and forth from the 'on' and 'off'. Plus it's a killer tune. Now more on agreement- - Martian Girl - a wonderful .xm by radix / groove(!) This tune is the greatest, although I have to say that I've downloaded nothing else by the group called 'groove', or any of radix's other groups, but I will shortly. I would have trouble recalling when else I've heard such bass and drum agreement. If you mute all channels but 1-3, and listen through the song for awhile, you can hear that nothing is thought by one that isn't completely understood by the other. An interesting part of the groove implements less accent of the 2nd and 4th beats , and also less accent of 1! Many times, the bass note on beat 1 is the 7th (G) that slides up to the true root (A) and re-establishes itself with a snare hit, which lies one 16th ahead of 2.. . I've found radix to play on the 16ths more than the 8ths. If you can cut a 4-count into 8ths, you can easily cut it again, but I wouldnÆt suggest trying to count 16ths with this song. This one you just gotta go with, it's much easier to let it move you than dissect it. You can't get too scientific and mathematical, you gotta have faith in the groove. In this song, though, there's even more agreement than I had initially hoped. The piano fits right in. The guitar harmonics take a different rhythmic approach, but of the four instruments typically found in a rhythm section, this one has the most licensee to be flighty, plus the chord has already been laid down by the bass and added onto by a string sample. I especially love the rhythm played by what I can only describe as a keyboard instrument starting at pattern 14; it matches what is played by the bass and drums beautifully. With groove, it's all good so long as everyone does it together. *wrong.xm , "wrong way home" by hunz / analogue ; another really tight rhythm section (piano, bass and drums) only a much tighter feel than the relaxed, martian groove. Just about every movement by one is matched by the other two in some way. It also turns out that radix is in affiliation with another group dedicated to helping and teaching trackers more about music and better tracking. "The Zen of Tracking" is what it's called. The addy where it is located at http://falcon.invincible.com/~jerm/newcomers.html, which is put up by Introspective. That's a new group (as of this year) which includes Smash/NOI SE, Screamager/Kosmic, Radix/TooManyGroupsToMention, and JRice/Landslide ... This page is nice and I suggest you check it out. Tell them bibby sent ya'(maybe I can get a job or something...) To be honest, I can't begin to explain why I decided to write this article, (other than the fact that I said I would in my last one) There are so many examples of good groove in mods today, and I didn't want to drag out any just to say that it didn't. Good feel is what most trackers are looking for in determining if their song is all right. There are many styles that can be easily tracked without any knowledge of chord structure and progression, as long as it grooves. Groove I don't think can be taught either, you just gotta find it. I ran out of things to say already, but I guess I did okay considering I didn't know what to talk about in the first place. -songs discussed- however little some were: Bleeding Sun Vincent Voois bleedsun.it Muffled Drums Lord Pegasus / Kosmic k_muffld.xm Conception pinion / pHluid pn_cncpt.it Martian Girl radix / groove mars.xm wrong way home hunz / analogue wrong.xm Until next time. Please mail me with any comments, suggestions, or ideas. I've gotten a lot of mail since I've been doing articles, and I re: quickly. So feel free! Gotta joke for you, too. Q. "How many guitar players does it take to screw in a light bulb?" ---------- A. "..usually about five, but the bass player has to show them how first!" Gotta another! Q. "What's the quickest way to turn down a guitar player?" ---------- A. "Put a sheet of music in front of him!" I love guitar player jokes. bibby / pHluid / TW bibby@juno.com (text only) sfb@magicnet.net (for tunes!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --[4. The Use of Samples]-----------------------------------[Bojan Landekic]-- I was reading the MC5 (music contest 5, check out www.hornet.org) newsletter when I came across this: >- Two important issues: sample ripping and extended samples (i.e. drumloops, > guitar riffs, etc.). Don't go overboard penalizing for ripped samples. A > good judge will often spot an obvious sample rip (Purple Motion, Necros, > Lizardking, etc. have distinctive samples). If the sample has been > overused, feel free to reflect that negatively, but you should penalize > little, if any, if a sample is used in a fashion unlike the original > composer's. Now this really bothers me, as ALL my samples are from Basehead. I just noticed it now, and it's a pure coincidence, but they are all from Basehead, so my song will be marked down tremendosly if judges follow this rule. And why is it wrong to use other people's sample? I mean why create another high quality sample, if what I need already exists? No reason! But if the only reason one is using somebody else's sample is because there's nothing else, not because it's a good sample, THAN they should be penalized. I dunno, I just wish somebody would tell me what's wrong with using other people's samples. I do create my own samples, but only if I want something in particular or if a specific "instrument" I have in mind doesn't exist. What am I supposed to do? Make my own samples that sound the same as the ones I'm using now just so I'm not penalized?????? (-: > As far as extended samples go, if a sample set is overly reliant on loops, > the entry should be marked down in this category. However, an extended Another weird one. I'm probably doing something nobody else is, or maybe everyone's already doing what I do with my drumloops, who knows, but I also have a problem with this point. See I loop ALL my drum loops, except I loop them at certain points. Hey you could use this for "IT tip of the week", seeing as you guys don't have it any more (why not?). Anyhow, since I use IT to it's full extent, I use NNAs as well as DTCs (if you don't know what they are, NNAs control how the current instrument behaves when an instrument is played in the same channel (continue, fade, off, cut), and DTCs control how the current instrument behaves when it is played in it's own channel (fade, off, continue)). One effect I do with my drumloop is to ping-pong it all the way, set DTC to FADE, set NNA to continue, set fade value (press F4) to 32, and play the drumloop in the same channel at rows 00, 16, 32, 48 (or something like that). In rows 16 and 48, I use the S72 effect to set NNA to note fade for only THIS NOTE This gives me a small "backbeat" in between 2 points of a pattern... Sounds groovy (-: I've noticed not many ITs use the instruments to their full extent, so here's a tip for this week. It deals with echoing a voice sample (or any sample for that matter) in 1 physical channel, utilising as many virtual channels as you want. But be ware, that the more channels you use, the more CPU power any tracker takes to mix it in real time.... Keep that in mind. The only time you would go overboard with this is if you are doing a mix for a CD (in which case you would have payed your little fee to Jeff). ------[ Voice Echoing Using 1 Physical Channel ]--------- * Step 1: If your voice sample is not looped, skip this part: Set the volume envelope, so that the volume is at fullest for the duration of the speaking portion, and so that it fades down to silence during the loop portion (ie... if you have a sample that says "I AM GOD" and you have the word "GOD" set to loop, then make sure your volume envelope has sufficiently long distance between ticks 0 and 1 to cover the saying of "I AM GOD" once, tick x (being 2, or 3, or 4...etc) should be at volume 0!! Volume Envelope: I AM GOD GOD GOD GOD v 100 +-------------+ o \ l + u \ m \ e 0 + 0 1 2 3 tick number (sorry for the bad ascii, but I hope you get how to set it, if not lemme know) * Step 2: Do this regardless of sample looping For those who are unfamiliar with effects, here's a short ditty on them. The S8x is used for panning (S80 being left, S88 being as most thought the center and S8F being the left). S91 is the surround pan. Well, I like to use the Xnn effect. the X00 is left, XFF is right, and X88 is more in the center than S88 is. This is why we will be using the Xnn effect (you can use Snn, it's your choice). Set NNA to continue, set DTC (duplicate type check) to Disabled. Now track these in one channel: 00 C-5 01 64 X88 <--- Center pan 01 C-5 01 24 S91 <--- Surround 02 C-5 01 12 X00 <--- Left pan 03 C-5 01 12 XFF <--- Right pan 04 C-5 01 08 X30 <--- Center-Left Pan 05 C-5 01 08 XCF <--- Center-Right Pan 01 being the instrument you are using, replace it with the number of your voice instrument's number. Okay, that gives you an awesome effect. But to make it better, push all rows after the surround echo down 1 row so that the left pan starts at row 03, right pan at 04..etc. Now you are saying that uses up 6 virtual channels... Yup, true, but you don't have to use them all. Think about it. Take out surround, center-left, center-right, andright pan, erase those rows, and you are left with a center pan and a left pan in one physical channel while using 2 virtual channels (FT2 users would have to use 2 channels and not able to use those 2 channels until the sample is over) 00 C-5 01 64 X88 <--- Center pan 01 C-5 01 12 X00 <--- Left pan Or you are saying you want more...? Heheh, just ADD extra lines like these (but remember, not everybody has a P2-200, some like me are tracking on a 386, and that only allows for 40 channels to be mixed in real time, so be careful how much you use): 06 C-5 01 08 X50 <--- Center-Left/2 Pan 07 C-5 01 08 XAF <--- Center-Right/2 Pan 08 C-5 01 08 X70 <--- Center-Left/3 Pan 09 C-5 01 08 X9F <--- Center-Right/3 Pan ...etc It's really up to you how many "echos" you use. But remember, this makes one thing easy. You want the same echo somewhere else? You guessed it, just copy that one single block anywhere else and it'll work. Hell you can even copy it to the channel along side it, and offset it one row, but that's pointless (-:...A good thing to do is to copy it to another place, and just change the values and volumes a bit. Oh and the volumes I used above there, you can use others just remember this: Main voice - 100%, surround - 30%, the rest should be humming around the volume of surround, but lower. It all depends what type of echo you want. The really cool thing about this, besides the fact that you use 1 channel which makes it easy to see your music while tracking, is the fact that after the rows with notes, you can put more notes on that channel WITHOUT affecting the currently playing instruments.... Cool eh? (ie. you can put a drum right after the voices and it'll play the voices and the drum without a problem) I hope I introducted you to a new way of thinking about instruments and tracking. I also hope it will help you make more of your music sound realistic. If I get good response from people, I could tell you a whole lot more about other uses of NNAs that you never thought possible (or just tracking in general). If you are still unclear, drop me a line at fire@globalserve.net and I'll be sure to help you out. Oh and no, you will not find my stuff on Hornet, as I have yet to finish a song I deem good (also I'm waiting for the brand-spanking new rating system we heard about in DemoNews to go online ).... Anyway, JUST TRACK IT (-:... See ya all after the MC5 deadline, Bojan Landekic fire@globalserve.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --[5. A Little Panning]----------------------------------------------[Airon]-- Ever sat there and smoked some brain cells over what panning data to put into the command ? I'm talking Impulsetracker here now. The panning command sits in the volume column ... so that means ... uhhm ... from 0 to 64 ... damn! I wanted to have X38 in the volume column to free space for a sample offset or delay command. Don't you hate having to translate between the two datas of the Xyy command and that green stuff in the volume column ? I do folks and here's your chart for easy reading : VOLUME COLUMN PANNING OUTER RING - 32 _ _ 32 80 30 - 78 88 - 34 28 - 70 90 - 36 26 - 68 98 - 38 24 - 60 A0 - 40 22 - 58 A8 - 42 20 - 50 B0 - 44 INNER RING - Xyy command PANNING 18 - 48 B8 - 46 16 - 40 C0 - 48 14 - 38 C8 - 50 12 - 30 D0 - 52 10 - 28 D8 - 54 08 - 20 E0 - 56 06 - 18 E8 - 58 04 - 10 F0 - 60 02 - 08 F8 - 62 00 - 00 FF - 64 This should ease the use of these two ways of panning with commands. Cheerio from an English guy Tony (Airon / Phase^D musician, Phase^D Webmaster) http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~airou/phd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ]--[Advertisements]----------------------------------------------------------[ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "It's the best thing since roofing singles!" "It's what keeps everything from happening all at once!" "It slices, it dices, it's turns your stomach!" ...What is this extraordinary muse? Why The Official JOTD Website ofcourse ... JOTD is an acronym for "jokes of the day". the site is the official site to one of the largest JOTD daily lists out there. the list, itself, has over a 1100 members from 18 different countries. Key features of the website include (but aren't limited to): * humorous realaudio feeds * Daily JOTDs' * a HUGE JOTD Archive http://www.primenet.com/~randrew/jotd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ViperMAX is the same level as AWE64 Gold (US$179), the suggested retail price of ViperMAX is US$169 (pl. refer to unofficial web site), but we can offer FOB Taiwan US$65/ea. based on minimum order of 100 pcs. I represent a Canadian company with factory in Taiwan, and I am also in charge of International business. Our products are all wavetable sound cards, and we are standing at the the level as Roland or Yamaha, but we are more famous in PC applicaitons. This can be proved from composers worldwidely, they are composing PC digital music all based on our Gravis UltraSound sound card. (http://www.gravis.com) UltraSound Extreme is the same as ViperMAX, we use two model names to distinguish between brand name and OEM products. ViperMAX is an OEM product,. Creative Lab started its business from FM sound card, and this kind of sound card can be purchased FOB US$7 from Taiwan or HK now. Creative does not have any good wavetable sound card in its product line, even AWE32 or AWE64 is not good enough. AWE64 only provides 30 digital channels, but CL claimed it is 32. AWE64 uses the same EMU8000 chip as AWE32, plus software wavetable to generate another 32-voice. Yes, we also can make ViperMAX-128, software wavetable is simple. Most people are familiar with MIDI, a standard in computer music. But ViperMAX is not only excellent in playing MIDI, it is also the best in playing MOD. MOD music is very famous in Europe, it came from Amiga, and is true digital audio, most Amiga-fans know about MOD music very well. MOD musics sounds far more better than MIDI. Over 5,000 rated MOD songs are downloadable from the world's largest MOD web site : ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/music/songs The following information could be interested to you. The best and the excellent MOD composers from the world, such as : Ng Pei Sin, Zane - Singapore, Jason Chong, Mick Rippon - Australia, Scirocco, Leviathan, basehead - USA, Wave - Netherland, Mellow-D - Finland, Necros - USA, Zodiak - Sweden, Torture of Music - Norway & Czech. We are bundling their MOD musics (over 105Mbyte) in new ViperMAX Install CD. All these songs were rated ****+ or ***** on ftp.cdrom.com. Also, many MOD Tracker (Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, Scream Tracker...etc.) and Player (Inertia Player, Cubic Player...etc.) were also included. (Note : Tracker is a program which allow you to compose and playback MOD file, while Player only can playback). If you need the best sound card in the world, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank You and Best Regards, James Hsu / Taipei, Taiwan ---------------------------------- This is a brief introduciton of our sound card. It can be said that Sound Blaster is a standard in FM technology, and UltraSound is a standard in wavetable technology. Our ViperMAX sound card has both features. Synergy is a Canadian company with factory in Taiwan and is an exclusive ODM manufacturer who designs the hardware and produces famous UltraSound PnP wavetable sound cards for Advanced Gravis. Gravis is a public company in Canada, its products are wavetable sound cards and joysticks. UltraSound is becoming a market lead in wavetable technology, because game companies and third parties all over the world are supporting it, but they do not support Creative AWE32, neither do they support Turtle Beach. Why ? because UltraSound had free SDK (Software Development Kit) available since 1992. It is the main reason that UltraSound is always standing at the first place of wavetable sound card technology. ViperMAX is the first UltraSound product which is Sound Blaster Pro hardware compatible. To distinguish it between Gravis' previous wavetable-only sound cards, ViperMAX provides better backward Sound Blaster compatibility. We can say ViperMAX is the best and the easiest install sound card in the world. ViperMAX & UltraSound Advantages : 1. Native Game Supports : ViperMAX wavetable mode - UltraSound, it has over 150 USA PC games natively supported, while Creative AWE64 has few. UltraSound has released its free SDK since 1992, so the game companies can easily build the driver on it, but Creative did not have wavetable product until it purchased EMU in 1994, and lack of SDK support is one the main reason that only few games are natively supporting AWE32 EMU. Games such as DOOM, Raptor, Pinball...etc., are all natively supporting UltraSound. At this mement, PCI sound card does not provide very good DOS games compatibility, so we remains it here. 2. Better MIDI : ViperMAX is using RAM design. The 192 General MIDI instrument patches are stored in hard disk, and need 9Mbytes space. When playing a MIDI file, only patches of the instrument being played are downloaded to ViperMAX on-board RAM. This design can maintain the original sound quality. If using ROM design, 9Mbytes has to be minimized to 1Mbyte (or 2 Mbytes), sound quality will be devided 1/9 of original, and the MIDI quality is fair and not excellent. Other wavetable sound cards, such as ESS, Crystal, Opti, Turtle Beach, Dream...etc., if they were using ROM design, then their MIDI performances are only fair. By the way, play MIDI seems to be the only feature that these wavetable sound cards can do, they do not have game support, nor MOD, nor demos. Again, PCI sound card is using DLS (Downloadable Sound), it means MIDI patches are downloaded onto system RAM. But if 8Mbyte MIDI patches are needed to create a better sound, it also means your Win95 will lose 8Mbyte system RAM. 3. Superior MOD Performance : MOD is a kind of digital music. UltraSound is the best sound card which can play MOD. MOD came from Amiga, its history can go back to 1988. Apple Macintosh also uses MOD as its music file. Amiga machine supports four digital channels (or 4 DAC's, Digital to Analog Converter), and this is the reason why most old MOD files are only four channels. Sound Blaster sound cards support two digital channels, if playing MOD, it usually needs a lot of CPU time to combine four channels to two channels, sometimes even sacrifice sound quality. UltraSound supports 32 digital channels in hardware, apparently, it is the MOD composer's best choice. New MOD files such as S3M, ULT, 669, XM, NST, FAR, MTM...etc., they can support up to 32 channels, and the idea all came from UltraSound. Most USA PC games, such as DOOM, Raptor... and European demo groups, such as Future Crew, Sonic, EMF, Dust, Triton...etc. have been composing music using MOD for a long time, and only UltraSound can help their jobs easily done. Over 5,000 rated MOD songs can be found at the world's largest MOD web site : ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/music/songs ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/music/songs/1995/xm/m/misthart.zip ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/music/songs/1996/xm/j/j-kgdsky.zip 4. Best Demo Supports : There are many computer graphics & sound demo shows held in Europe every year, such as Assembly in Finland, Party in Denmark, X'95 and X'96 in Netherland, and The Scene in Singapore. UltraSound has the first place demo supports from these shows, such as UNREAL2(ASM'93, Future Crew), VERSES(ASM'94, EMF), Stars (ASM'95, Nooon), Untitled(Party III, '93, Dust), Caero (Party V, '95, EMF), Pureness (The Scene'95, Waterlogic)...etc.. Some demos might also support SB, but the sound quality is fair. All music from these demos were generated by using MOD, and only UltraSound 32 digital channels can easily make it. This is the reason why UltraSound is becoming a new sound card standard in Demos Group. More demos can be found at the world's largest demo web site : http://www.cdrom.com/pub/demos/hornet/html/hornet.html ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/demos/ ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/demos/1995/n/nooon_st.zip (ASM'95, nooon) ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/demos/1995/p/pureness.zip (The Scene, Waterlogic) ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/demos/1995/f/ftj_ymca.zip (Party V, EMF Caero) ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/demos/1995/o/omc_chop.zip 5. Price/Performance : Performance of ViperMAX is superior than AWE64 Value or the same as AWE64 Gold, but its price is far below them. FOB Taiwan US$65/ea. based on Q'ty of 1,000 pcs. ViperMAX has native game supports in wavetable, better MIDI and superior MOD performance, furthermore, lots of demos are coming out from Europe every year, ViperMAX is surely the best sound card in the world. Your best choice is : --- ViperMAX --- Information and applications of UltraSound can be found at worldwide Web sites : Advanced Gravis Computer : http://www.gravis.com/ Hornet Demo Page : World's largest Demos and MODs site. http://www.cdrom/pub/demos/hornet/html/hornet.html Walnut Creek : The world's largest MOD, S3M, XM...etc. site. More than 5,000 rated songs inside. http://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/music/ Walnut Creek : The world's largest Demo site. More than 1,000 rated demos inside. http://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/demos/ MAZ Home Page : Very complete source of MODs, tools, trackers, etc. http://www.th-zwickau.de/~maz/ Philistiniphony : MODs, tips, WAVs, samples, links. http://www.ozemail.com.au/~barretts/ EtherReal Productions : MODs, links, nice MOD primer. http://home.interlynx.net/~rwerner/ether/EtherReal.html MODs : A distinctive collection of hand-picked MODs. http://www.watson.org/mods/ MODspeak : MODs, lots of links to other MOD sites. http://www.webkiosk.com/flatrich/modspek2.html Aminet : An incredible number of MODs. Stored in Lharc format. http://ftp.wustl.edu/~aminet/dirs/tree_mods.html Five Musicians : Necros, Basehead, Mellow-D, Zodiak and Wave. http://www.fm.org Worldwidely, there are more than 500 web sites which are supporting MOD music. For example, try search "MOD_Music" by using Yahoo, there will be many matches. Go to http://miso.wwa.com/~daf/modring.html to find another 178 MODring web sites. Or goto http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?queue&ring=modring directly. Best Regards, James Hsu http://www.computex.com.tw/synergy http://www.synergy.ca/pctoybox http://www.gravis.com/extreme.htm Unofficial site: http://home.dti.net/domingue/extreme.html (primary) http://www.interport.net/~carlos/extreme.html (mirror) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ]--[Closing]-----------------------------------------------------------------[ TraxWeekly is available via FTP from: ftp.hornet.org /pub/demos/incoming/info/ (new issues) ftp.hornet.org /pub/demos/info/traxweek/1995/ (back issues) /pub/demos/info/traxweek/1996/ /pub/demos/info/traxweek/1997/ TraxWeekly is available via WWW from: www.hornet.org, under section "Information" and subsection "TraxWeekly." 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