First Night

>Actually, I make *all* of my own beats using various means.
Everything from Recycle to software drum-machines. Over the years
(since 97), when I want to do something simple with music, I'll sit
and make drum rhythms, and so I've amassed many gigs of beats this
way.

Excellent. Sounds like you have quite a collection... err so when are you going to start all over at 24bit (and once again with all future audio standards?); just kidding.. ;)

>This is why I think we need some more groove oriented tunes getting
made (a personal goal among many).

Yes, I certainly am quite interested in rhythm; that is why I gravitated towards techno DJing instead of trance/house/jungle, etc. I can't wait to create a set of records with varying meters where creative overlaying and juxtaposition will be necessary to move from one to the next instead of just a 4 on the floor gig.

>I'm an archiving obsessive. Learned the lessons long ago. Yes - I
think that was when I first walked through "The Bill Gates of Hell".

Speaking of '97 and the above I was reminded of my time before becoming involved in electronic music production when I just had my guitar and a Dr. Rhythm... Old school Bossa Nova baby... then again, maybe not.. I only had a Pentium166 and the standard Soundblaster of the day (I had to borrow a second sound card for the one track I took multiple takes on as they were half duplex back then); oh yeah a Digitech RP-12 or something like that. I wished I had the software I have now, but then again things wouldn't have been the same. I constantly struggled with the inability of not being able to record and not having anyone to play with; nothing written down.. I recorded a few things, but I believe at one point my hard drive became unreadable and I lost it all. I just remembered about this one tape I dubbed with one guitar track for a car ride and I still had it tucked away. I mastered it from the tape today; this is the only thing that survived from '94-'97 for me. I didn't have a way to do overdubs, so each part was recorded in full, so creating something really complicated was too difficult to lay out in one take.. Thought I would share this in the spirit of Sethares and Monz guitar recordings; though it is not microtonal:

http://catharsis.egregious.net/tracks/first_night.mp3

I now have 150gigs spread across 3 hard drives and mucho space on a server. I learned my lesson!

Joseph said:
>Since we were speaking of Cage and such like...
Has anybody here thought about the fact that we now are experiencing
a new "silence??" At least *I* am.
It's the constant sound of computers humming.
I'm assuming other people are around this as much as *I* am.
It seems to be the new "silence..." ??

You are coming around to the popular microsound area now. This is an idea that area has started to run with for the last 8-10 years; worship of the glitch (and lots of inflated egos; I had to jump ship on that area a few months ago). See the computer music journal article from Kim Cascone, http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Computer-Music-Journal/Documents/cmjlib/index.html basically the article just drops a bunch of names without going into much detail. Interesting and good music is coming from that area, but I don't like how it turned into a solidified "movement".

There apparently is also a CD out in the last year with a bunch of takes on Silence 4'33 from well silence; to full on digital noise.

Anyway...
--Mike

Egregious
"Spiritual renewal through music for those outside the heard."
http://www.egregious.net/