Julien Claassen wrote: Hi Julien Thanks for listening and commenting. I really should have been in bed ages ago (but I've just had an idea or two for where to take it next, yay). I daresay you're an hour in front of me as well! You raise many interesting points and I can't really do justice to them now, so I'll respond properly tomorrow. Best wishes Q

Julien Claassen wrote: Hi again Julian Thanks for listening and I'm glad you like it and thanks for your kind words. It's funny you should mention the Flower Kings, as they are probably the furthest from the bands I had in mind. I've heard a fair amount of their stuff on internet radio and I didn't find them to my taste, hyperpolished modern production, remorselessly upbeat and cheerful. I've always thought that there's a large divide in Scandinavian prog bands, with the upbeat, cheery bands like FK and Moon Safari on one side and the remorselessly gloomy or melancholic bands like Änglagård, Anekdoten, Liquid Scarlet, Sinkadus, White Willow and Wobbler (to name a few, but not all of those are symphonic prog) at the other extreme, with not much in the middle. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the compliment as FK are a talented bunch, just not to my tastes and not what I had in mind, but it's nice to be compared to them all the same! Regarding the harmonies and so on. I was looking for inspiration and picked up a guitar scale book, deliberately looking for "odd" scales in order to try something a bit different and "exotic" (to me at least). I stumbled upon one, which is most odd: it's a major scale but it doesn't sound it and it seems to lend itself to a lot of strange harmonies, especially ones with tritones. I'm no theorist so it's not easy for me to explain, suffice to say that I really liked the sound and it sparked off many ideas (although I've still not used the very first one yet!). It seems to be known by a few different names including double harmonic, Arabic and Byzantine, although Part 4 actually uses the Phrygian dominant apparently -- the same scale but with a flattened 7th. All the Tron sounds are the fantastic GForce M-Tron (and its successor M-Tron Pro) VST instrument. The original just plays one Tron sound at once without any bells and whistles, the Pro allows two tape banks to be layered and also has filter and amp ADSR envelopes, a delay and ensemble effects and so on. Most of the time I just use the sounds as they are without messing about with all the trimmings much. The Pro also has a few instruments looped, but I won't use those for the sake of authenticity. There are loads of tape banks, they even somehow managed to find a few new ones for the Pro and there are samples of related devices like the Chamberlin, Birotron and Optigan as well. The M-Tron Pro with its two layers, envelopes etc is based on the GForce Virtual String Machine, which is samples of the sound generators from analogue string machines like the Eminent, Freeman, Logan, Solina etc -- another lovely VSTi if you're into that sort of thing. If any Tron geeks are interested, I used: the famous Mk II violins, cello, male choir, boys' choir, mixed brass, sound effects bank 2 (for the water, birdsong and tolling church bell at the start of part 3), female choir, double bass, augmented 8 choir and violin orchestra. The drum sounds are an expansion pack for Native Instruments' Battery drum module, called Studio Drums. Although it's designed for Battery the samples are all WAV files that can be used in Hydrogen. There are samples from five different kits, plus three additional large sets of toms, 11 chromatic snares to choose from and so on. I mixed and matched from different ones to build the kit and sound I wanted. About the snare: I compressed it pretty heavily to get the snap and crack that I wanted (in addition to EQ as well) and perhaps I've rather overdone it. I'll have to see whether I can back off the compression to improve the dynamics without losing the sharp crack. Sorry for the overly long reply! Best wishes Q

lanas wrote: I have the two Saga albums on one CD, which I haven't listened to in ages (I must do so), but I never got around to exploring more of their music, thanks for the reminder!

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 3:28 PM, lanas <lanas(a)securenet.net> wrote: I've got a new Saga CD called "The Human Condition" released on InsideOut in May 2009. InsideOut is such a great label. Anyway, I don't remember being really blown away by the new CD when I got it. I'm playing it as I write this. Interesting music but I probably won't go back to it very often. The fast stuff seems more interested in number of notes played. The softer/quieter stuff isn't bad at all though. I've also got the very old Generation 13 CD from 1995. In general I think I like that one better but that's just me. Anyone listening to Sylvan, The Tangent or most especially IQ these days? 'Frequency' is a really great record by my ears. Also if you haven't already checkout The Delawares and Frost. Seems like Spock's Beard is maybe getting close to releasing something after a few dry years... Since you guys brought up Flower Kings earlier how about Agents of Mercy and/or Karmakanic? One band I've wanted to check out but haven't is Breathing Space. Anyone heard them? - Mark

Hi Jonathan Thanks for listening and commenting, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Given your background, by organ part I'll assume you're referring to the pipe organ rather than the earlier Hammond ;-) I think Aeolus is one of Linux audio's hidden treasures. I'm not an organist, but to my ears it sounds utterly convincing and being synthesized is so lightweight to use. I have problems with it not always starting the first time (like my classic cars!) but once it does I have so much fun with it. I had to cheat though: after widdling around I had to sequence it in Rosegarden and employ some pretty tortuous midi routing to be able to get two manuals and pedals and played well/strictly enough that that section demanded. Originally I recorded it wet using the in-built reverb in Aeolus, but ended up recording a take completely dry so I had more freedom over the reverb. I use the old technique of two reverbs, to which are sent varying amounts of each track -- one very, very short reverb (or ambience) to glue everything together to sound like they were recorded together, then a longer one for a sense of space, the traditional use of reverb. Using large amounts of the long reverb (large plate HD in TAP Reverberator) made the organ sound great but too distant, not the right amount of presence that I wanted. So instead I gave it it's own 'verb (Cathedral HD) so it stands out a bit more, sounding to be in a different "space" to everything else (bits of Goblin I've heard are like this, you can hear the space the organ was recorded in and it's entirely different to the rest of the band). I did want to give it big dollops of reverb, but I am concerned not to overwhelm the much quieter Odyssey parts. Maybe if I experiment carefully with the amount of reverb to make it bigger but keeping an ear out that it doesn't drown out the synth. I wonder what is likely to be best: just up the wet level, up the wet level whilst shortening the reverb time, or lengthen the reverb time and lower the wet level -- anyone got any suggestions? I have this urge now to go and fire up Amarok and listen to some Yes :D Thanks again, Q Jonathan Gazeley wrote:

Hi, Prog may not be my cup of tea.. but it was very cool stuff, enjoyed it immensely. I understand that it takes a while for you, there's a lot of detail :) I thought it ended a bit abruptly, then I read that there's a piece missing. Do complete it ;) Regards, Robert

fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote: Hi Of course, sorry, how thoughtless of me not to feed back information to you. To be honest, I've always assumed that it due to user error. Starting Aeolus in a terminal (I normally run it from a menu, I assume that makes no difference besides getting more info from the terminal?) it says: Synaptic tells me I have version 0.6.6+2-4 and Stops 0.3.0-1. I'm running Ubuntu Studio 8.04 (downloading 9.10 as I type). If you need more verbose output, you'll have to tell me what to do as I'm still rather newbish in certain areas, even after 5 years of running Linux! And I wish someone had told Triumph and bloody British Leyland back in the 70s that cars aren't supposed to have minds of their own :D Regards Q

David Adler wrote: Thanks for this. I guess I'll have to wait a day or two -- my torrent has suddenly started going very slowly and the main website is taking ages to load, it's obviously getting slammed hard on release day. Cheers Q

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Q <lists(a)quirq.ukfsn.org> wrote: Yes, we've both been around here a while. You are clearly doing good stuff. I am, unfortunately, mostly getting old, very old... :-) Listening to the new Glass Hammer CD "Three Cheers for the Broken-Hearted" tonight as it just arrived in the mail today. More upbeat and slightly less prog-ish than their last couple of CDs, but very nice. Seems a lot of the vocals are *very* processed. Don't know what I think of that yet. Anyone wanting to delve into mastering could have fun listening to this one as it was mastered by Bob Katz himself apparently. He is a very talented guy. It's very cool how you can listen to the song and it sounds good, but if you decide mentally to focus on the bass or drums or keys they are all there standing out. This is a band I wish more people knew about and supported. I buy my GH CDs directly from them online. If someone was looking to buy one consider "Culture of Ascent". I hope you keep up the good work. cheers, Mark

Ken Restivo wrote: Hi Ken Many thanks for listening and commenting, glad you liked it. As I've mentioned earlier, Änglagård are a primary influence on this, plus memories and photos of the Norwegian landscape. Thanks for the fantastic story. I'm not sure which I'm most envious of, having seen the band live, or having a friend with a real live Tron! Ah, no contest, its' got to be seeing Änglagård live. I know it's not supposed to be that good, but I must listen to their live album Buried Alive again, I've not heard it in ages. It's good that they've finally got around to re-issuing their first album (the second is due about now) so that more people can discover their wonderful music. Many thanks Q

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 10:26:02AM -0400, Rob wrote: Good point. He did leave out a couple songs, some of which you mention, but I have a bootleg DVD of the entire show somewhere, and he definitely DID do Riding the Scree, because the keyboardist executed that solo perfectly, with an entire audience full of keyboard players anxiously holding their breath waiting for him to make a mistake, then cheering supportively when he made it all the way through it :-) -ken

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 10:26:02AM -0400, Rob wrote: Ah wait, scratch that, you are correct, Giraffe did NOT do Scree. The moment I saw where an entire audience held their breath through a keyboard solo and then cheered when the keyboard player made it all the way through without screwing it up, was "In the Cage". Sorry, my bad. I'm still a bit young for my memory to be fading and dropping/crossing details, but it is definitely happening. Sorry about that. -ken