beardstep

Electronic music genres are clearly a bit of a mess. Over the years, the names keep changing and the genres seem to multiply and get more narrowly defined. When the definitions are so specific that changing the timing of your snare catapults your song into a different genre, things have gone a bit wrong. Its great that styles of music evolve and change, but the compulsion to give every style it's own name seems a bit pointless.

I can see the point of genres to distinguish between very different types of music. For example, if someone bought a CD thinking it was Classical, and when they played it at home it turned out to be Rock, they would be justifiably disappointed. But if someone buys a CD thinking it is Dubstep, and then is disappointed when they get home and find out it is 2-Step, then they are probably being a bit too specific in their tastes. Infact, even being able to tell the difference between those two genres is probably a bad sign (or am I just getting old?).

The imaginary genre Beardstep has apparently arisen as a reaction to this. Well, to be honest, unraveling the exact etymology of the word is beyond me - it seems to have been in use for some years, but to me, its emergence seems like a despairing reaction to genre nonsense. But the name does have a nice ring to it, so over at the watmm-ekt forums, the same discussions that spawned the 'Deep Sea Creatures' compilation (see previous post) also spawned a 'This Is Beardstep' compilation.

The idea was to submit tracks that to define the Beardstep sound. What was the sound? No-one could say. But I sat down and thought about beards and then tried to make a 'warm' and 'fuzzy' track. Here is the result:

hirsute harmony by koanotic - 3:53 (7.1 Mb)

(I was also going to try and make it sound 'scratchy', but that bit didn't work out)

Other people also submitted their idea of what Beardstep should be, and the complete compilation is now available as a free Net Release from Analogue Wings Records:

This Is Beardstep by Various Artists

01. Zephyr Nova - F**k tha Razor (Stroke tha Beard)
02. Adjective - Fulvous Wren
03. Johnny Moss - Beard Dub
04. Mike - Dark Locust
05. Lights Set North - Channel
06. Koanotic - Hirsute Harmony
07. Nizu - Demoxinil Shaves the Day
08. Johnny Moss - I'm Never Gonna Get Caught Shaving Whilst You're In my Life, Girl
09. Braintree - Beardstep
10. Mike - Juliet Must Die
11. Beneboi - Smooth
12. Thisket - Odyssey
13. Chris Moss Acid - Beard On

Download ZIP of all tracks (78 Meg)

Considering none of us knew what Beardstep was supposed to sound like, the resulting compilation is surprisingly cohesive, with lots of warm analogue sounds. The tracks by Zephyr Nova and Braintree stand out to me, with Lights Set North's and Beneboi's contributions also getting a lot of praise over on the forums.

I'm hoping we can do volume 2 compilation at some point, perhaps called 'Now Thats What I Call Beardstep', but don't hold your breath.

asio for laptop soundcards

I recently hit a problem with the sound output on my laptop, and a utility called Asio4all came to my rescue.

Read on ...My laptop has a built in soundcard (Yamaha AC-XG) but as far as my music software is concerned, it only has a crappy MME driver and a slightly less crappy DX driver. So when I first got the laptop I also got an M-Audio Audiophile USB. This gave me a nice low-latency ASIO driver.

This was OK while I was on Windows XP SP1, but in the autumn I finally had to upgrade to SP2. The Audiophile USB seemed to work OK at first, but then I found that it was randomly cutting out (sound would just completely stop) after about an hour of use (weirdly, the cut outs often seemed to coincide with the laptop's cooling fan stopping). I tried various versions of the Audiophile drivers, old and new, but it didn't help. Other people seem to have had similar problems. I always knew XP SP2 would get me somehow.

I considered buying another USB sound device, and searching around I found someone recommending Asio4all.

Asio4all is a generic freeware ASIO driver for WDM audio devices. Which means, most built-in laptop soundcards. It works via some clever software-based voodoo (WDM Kernel-Streaming or something) and although it doesn't work with all setups, its developer says is works for 5 out of 6 laptop/soundcard/software combinations.

I installed it, and tweaked the settings a bit, and I'm now getting 11ms latency from my laptop soundcard, instead of the 185ms latency I got with the MME one (the DX driver never seemed to work at all). And I don't have some honking great external USB audio interface with separate power supply sitting on my desk. So if you make music on a laptop, I'd recommend trying it.

deep sea creatures

Earlier in the year over on the watmm ekt forum, there was a discussion about what thing or object most represented 'IDM' (or Electronica as I prefer to call it). It's a bit of a running joke over there - watmm-ers are fond of saying 'X is IDM'. But what was the most IDM thing? Was it Cats? Beards? Spaceships? Eventually lots of people got behind 'Deep Sea Creatures' as an answer to the question.

Then someone came up with the idea of a Deep Sea Creatures compilation. People were invited to submit tracks on the theme, and some judges picked their favorites and combined them onto a CD.

Deep Sea Creatures seemed like a very fruitful concept to base music on, so I had a go at making a track. I didn't get picked, but I enjoyed the process of trying to invoke an underwater feel:

photophore

When making this track I was imagining fluorescent deep sea jellyfish and deep dark depths. I wasn't entirely happy with the resulting track - I would have liked to spend longer getting it right but I ran out of time. But there are some elements from the track that I might be able to recycle in future.

Meanwhile the finished compilation is out, and I just received mine in the post. Its actually a really good compilation - the tracks are varied but sit well together. Here's the tracklisting:

Deep Sea Creatures by Various Artists

01. Zephyr Nova - We are the Crab People
02. Newmans - Alvin Submersible
03. Adjective - Don Walsh & Jacques Piccard
04. Between Cathedrals - Subsine
05. Asymmetrical Head - Bear Trap in the Ocean Excerpt 5
06. Braintree - Balling Somewhat in Control
07. Lol Alzado - Benthophelagic Waltz
08. Lucid Rhythms - Aquazone 5
09. Beak - Sea Pen Meets Angler Fish
10. Transient - Fear of the Dark Depths
11. Angent Nerve - Anchor in the Dark
12. Beneboi - Hagfish
13. Awkward - Dead Deep Sea Creature Removal Service

Some of these people are quite well established on the internet electronica scene - Zephyr Nova is on the Metric Style record label and Beak and Transient have released music on the big monotonik net label.

The CD itself is a nicely printed CDR with jewel case and great cover art, and you can get it from Futonic Records for 10 USD. If there's any left out of the 100 they printed.

wrvu nashville

A student radio station in Nashville has been playing some of my tracks after picking them up from SoundClick ... not really a big deal, but one of those nice little things that happens because of the internet from time to time : )

WRVU Mixdown 31/Oct/07

WRVU Mixdown 07/Oct/07

trees and stars

I made this track after thinking about what Philip Glass and some traditional southern African music had in common. Of course the result sounds nothing like either Philip Glass or world music...

trees and stars

I am thinking of making a mini-album of tracks to fit with this one ... but it may take a while ...

schotel ep finished

Four recent tracks of mine bundled together into my second ep:

schotel ep
1. vliegende schotel
2. unafterwards
3. garden
4. carried in your heart

Download ZIP

Things I learnt while making this:
- key changes are handy sometimes
- patterns can play their part even if people aren't aware of them
- turning off the internet can help to get things done

penguin remixed

Back in June and July, Penguin ran the Penguin Remixed competition. They provided 30 samples of poetry and prose from their spoken-work archive, and asked for musical mash-ups.

Hundreds of people entered, and needless to say I didn't win : )

My entry was based on a sample of Rudyard Kipling's 1895 poem 'If-', read by Jeremy Northam. I slowed Jeremy's voice down a bit to fit the mood of the track. It was really interesting to compose music to fit the rhythm and meanings of a poem.

elseif (original)

elseif (instrumental version)

The 12 winning tracks were made into a special 'Penguin Remixed Audiobook' that can be purchased from Audible.co.uk.