Hello Patrick! I can see, what you mean by the funky bassline waiting to happen. I could think of one or two. But I think this style of music is too minmalistic and in that much to long for me. I'm not really into the strongly repetitive kind of music. If you like, I can still play one or two basslines and send them to you, with a few notes, so you can build them in. Kindly yours Julien

In my opinion, the most audible influence upon Shirkey's oeuvre is that of Dunning & Kruger.

On 30/10/2010, Philipp Überbacher <hollunder(a)lavabit.com> wrote: > Excerpts from Patrick Shirkey's message of 2010-10-26 08:06:43 +0200: >> Hi, >> >> I have uploaded a new mix I have done last night and this morning >> inspired >> by Halloween weekend 2010 in Sydney, Australia and in particular Stacey >> Pullen's excellent set. If you listen closely you may hear the >> influence. >> >> It's a long player - 808 MB - 65mins - flac, 48Khz, stereo >> >> http://djcj.org/audio/kotau/Abundance-Ambient-Psy-Trance-DJ_Kotau_Session_2… >> >> Recorded on a quad core Intel 3Ghz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 12, using ardour3 >> for >> multitracking, AMS for the pulsating bassline and Hydrogen for the drum >> sequencing. >> >> Designed to be played loud and immersively, and preferably with a large >> blast of dopamines to the brain. >> >> I think it could be enhanced with a seriously funky bassline. If anyone >> wants to take a stab at it, that would be cool wid me. It's definitely >> in >> there just about bursting to get out. >> >> >> >> >> Cheers. >> >> -- >> Patrick Shirkey >> Boost Hardware Ltd. >> >> "ZPE is not about creating something from nothing: It is about using >> the >> zero point of a wave as a means to transform other forms of potential >> energy like magnetic flux, heat, or particle spin into usable energy in >> such a way that entropy appears to be reversed." > > Hi Patrick. > In the spirit of bad press is better than no press, here's my feedback: > I put the song on and after a while felt an urge to sing. Given my less > than stellar reputation as singer I'm not sure whether it's a good sign. > Then I went grocery shopping, came back, and it felt like I hadn't > missed anything. > > In other, more blunt and direct words, even highly repetitive is a > misnomer. To my ears it's just boring, unmusical and annoying. > > Who am I to criticize? Anything I've done is hardly any better, but I > know that the music I am able to and like to create is not the kind of > music people would want to listen to, myself included. This is not > supposed to discourage you, it's just another point of view. >

Excerpts from Patrick Shirkey's message of 2010-10-31 12:35:54 +0100: I'm glad you don't take it the wrong way. The main reason why I wrote it was the general lack of feedback you had received. I do like some uneasy music as well, but a rather different kind, and only about once a month. I'm more on the noisy side of things, I love Maurizio Bianchi's "River of water of life" for example. Well, last time I posted music on a ML it killed the thread, and next time you can smash me into the ground if you want to ;)

<pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com> wrote: That's good, because I can't possibly imagine what you lead you think that this would make sense for a polyphonic/multitrack. Normalize is very useful for (say) creating sample loops/libraries so that everything is at a standard level. But you would *never* *ever* use it to export a mix.

On Mon, Nov 01, 2010 at 09:47:15AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote: Which seems to confirm that the normalisation is not applied to the mixed signal (which would require two passes or a lot of storage), but probably on individual regions or tracks. The option just should not be available on a dialog that leads to exporting anything else but individual tracks or parts of them. Ciao,

On Mon, Nov 01, 2010 at 04:15:28PM +0100, Benjamin Freitag wrote: It's still not clear what exactly is happening if you export 'the mix' i.e. the output of the master strip, including all plugin processing, automation, etc. This signal normally is not recorded, there are no peak files for it. The only way to find the peak value in that case is to perform the entire process. And only then this output can be normalised, either by using a stored copy of the output or by doing everything again.

It would be quite a faux pas if it didn't work on the mix but on individual tracks instead, but from your description of messed up levels it sounds like it. If you compared the two mixes at the same level and they sounded different, then A3 messed up.

Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-11-02 13:02:59 +0100: There's no such file showing up in this thread for me, but yes, it should be rather easy to do it in a more technical way as well. In addition, both Sakari and Paul should know what actually happens in A3.

On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 21:45 -0700, Patrick Shirkey wrote: I just downloaded the start of both original FLAC files (to about 1:40), exported to wavs and matched their gains, swapped the polarity of one, and presto: a combined signal at < -120dB. There are no differences in the mixes except overall level. So this proves two things: 1. You did nothing but switched normalization (at least for the part I tested) between the mixes. 2. Normalization works as expected: it only adds gain. Whatever differences you are hearing between the mixes is all in your playback system.

On Sun, 2010-11-07 at 03:37 -0800, Patrick Shirkey wrote: The subtlety of the differences is < -120dB. This is what the test just proved beyond any doubt (if in doubt, read DSP basics). The difference is inaudible and is created only by the imperfections of floating point calculations (you always loose some precision when operating on floating point numbers). The difference you hear is caused by your playback system (maybe the soundcard?) distorting at higher playback levels. Or, if you are monitoring the two mixes at different overall volumes, the difference can be attributed at least in part to how the human hearing is non-linear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contours You might even be imagining the differences. Don't be offended, it's really easy to hear differences between two things when you're looking for (expecting to hear) a difference. This is has been researched and documented countless times. We all suffer from that, nobody is exempt. In your shoes, I'd measure the playback system and try to pinpoint the part which is causing the distortion. If you tweak your mix to sound good with the distortion your current system exhibits, the mix will not sound like that anywhere else. So to make your mix sound good everywhere, you have to have a clean setup as a reference. (Note the word measure: this is the only way to get any sort of objective results. )

On Sun, 2010-11-07 at 03:37 -0800, Patrick Shirkey wrote: The subtlety of the differences is < -120dB. This is what the test just proved beyond any doubt (if in doubt, read DSP basics). The difference is inaudible and is created only by the imperfections of floating point calculations (you always loose some precision when operating on floating point numbers). The difference you hear is caused by your playback system (maybe the soundcard?) distorting at higher playback levels. Or, if you are monitoring the two mixes at different overall volumes, the difference can be attributed at least in part to how the human hearing is non-linear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contours You might even be imagining the differences. Don't be offended, it's really easy to hear differences between two things when you're looking for (expecting to hear) a difference. This is has been researched and documented countless times. We all suffer from that, nobody is exempt. In your shoes, I'd measure the playback system and try to pinpoint the part which is causing the distortion. If you tweak your mix to sound good with the distortion your current system exhibits, the mix will not sound like that anywhere else. So to make your mix sound good everywhere, you have to have a clean setup as a reference. (Note the word measure: this is the only way to get any sort of objective results. )

On Sun, Nov 07, 2010 at 02:52:57PM -0800, Patrick Shirkey wrote: You don't need very good speakers to do this. In fact it's more difficult the better your gear is. Most probably you have some distortion when playing back high (digital) levels. This could be your sound card, or anything after it in the signal chain. If it's your sound card, the reason could be too high analog gains (set either by the mixer app, or by HW controls), or just the card being crap. It's easy to test, and resolving this issue would clear up at least part of the fog.

Patrick Shirkey wrote: Wouldn't say meditative. The spoken word sound is too interruptive and distracting for that. Also, the repetitive "1950's UFO sound effect" sounds don't seem to fit that idea, either.

I do wonder what it might be like listening to a full Ambisonic version of it, on a real Ambisonic sound rig.

Thanks for the OGG file, I wouldn't have listened again if I'd had to do another 700MB download. It sounds like a soundtrack for a bad 1970's psychedelic/art film.

More interesting than the first version of it, but I think I've heard enough to decide that ambient-psy-trance isn't for me.