Jikkenteki

Thanks guys. I guess technically calendar wise its been years since the first track that actually made it to the album was finished in Dec 2004, but total it was only actually like a year and a half

Thanks for the comments everyone :) The Long Walk Home is also available at Saiko Sounds any moment here. http://www.saikosounds.com/english/display...ase.asp?id=5872

(posted here since there is way more traffic in this part of the forum) If you are interested in some new tunes for nothing, might I recomment heading over to the following thread here.

OK its give away time once again! As was mentioned HERE, We have an undisclosed number of copies of our newest release, "Jikkenteki - The Long Walk Home" which we are giving away. This time around, much like the last time, you'll have to point your brower to www.par-2.com and answer a few questions. The questions are as follows... 1: What are PAR-2 Productions next two planned releases? 2: What non-PAR-2 Productions release is available in the PAR-2 Online Shop? 3: What group was Symphonics a member of and what track of their's did PAR-2 release? 4: What PAR-2 related website does Katapult really need to finish someday soon? 5: Why should we give you this release? Email your answers to jikkenteki (at) par-2.com. Extra points are awarded for creativity and generally keeping us amused. The deadline for the contest is Tuesday June 20th.

"The Long Walk Home" is now in stock and available at the PAR-2 Productions website ( http://www.par-2.com ). A full 9 days ahead of schedule even... that must be some kind of record in the psy-business world

After bringing us Slum’s pounding release, ELF Music are back with yet another up and coming act from Japan, Drap Drop. These guys have been pooping up on a few compilations here and there and now they get their chance at a full album with Drop Dead Gorgeous. Let’s cut to the chase, jump in and see what we’ve got here… “Drop In” starts us off with a solid intro number. This track focuses on a solid rhythmic base and builds off of ever evolving permutations of that core. There aren’t really any “Amen” style, bring the house down leads here, but there doesn’t really need to be. “Lights Down” starts out a bit darker and smoother. It relies on shifts in the layers to suck the listener rather than having a million mini breaks in each track and centers around a nice little bit of driving synth work. “Funny Isn’t It” lives up to its title with a quirky little bass line. The track is again mostly rhythm based, but there are some nice break-beats in the mid section that I like. Towards the end of the track I end up wishing for some more variation in the bass line and some more in your face synth parts, but the track isn’t bad by any means. “Seven Stars” builds in nicely and has a solid bass line and some interesting synth work. Again the drum work in the break section is fairly nice and Drap Drop seem to be proving themselves to be quite adept at making interesting rhythms. “Memories” is a track I can definitely get into. The bass is of the somewhat funky bend I like, there is a strong lead presence, and at the end it gets positively melodic, (perhaps bordering too much on club prog. trance territory for psy-purists, but this listener likes it). Things are on a high note now and “It’s A Circus” keeps things jumping. As was the case before, this track is effective to this listener by avoided the non-stop 16th note full on bass formula. A little space in the bass territory with a nice hard kick can go a long way, as this track shows. Next up Drap Drop remixes Wrecked Machines here with “Smart Shop”. Working with the Wrecked Machines material here leads to a bit of a denser and deeper soundscape, which I think is a welcome addition here.. “Whatever You Want” starts hard and growly. This one is darker than the previous, no surprise being written with Fullmoon Mondo, one of the darker artists in the Japanese scene. I really like the change this track brings to the album and the banging percussion work is again top notch. “Drop Out” brings us to a close with another full out banging workout. The percussion is once again excellent and the leads good, but again a bit buried in the mix. All and all this album is very varied in style. The production is nice and clean and the percussion work is excellent. However at times I found myself wishing for more variation in the bass department and overall I found the leads to be a bit under-emphasized due to the bass and kick being very up front in the mix most of the time. The later half of the album is quite good and flows well though and I can definitely see Drap Drop as being artists with a future, All and all a solid first album for these guys on ELF Music.

I checked this out earlier, but I'm giving it a proper listen in my headphones now. The following suggestions are a basically just what comes to mind as I listen and are based on how I would make a track so take them or leave them as you will. I suspect that this post may come off as negative sounding, but that's not my intent as I think there is some nice potential here and if it was simply just crap, I wouldn't bother writting anything at all. Anyways, lets begin. Overall there are some nice ideas and sounds here. In my headphones the mix sounds fairly balanced, although I'd personally like to see the leads a bit more up front. While this is a solid effort, I keep thinking of the cameraman in Boogie Nights directing the two women in the hottub.... "Well that's technically good, but it lacks passion". I think the leads could benefit from some more automation. The leads are all a of a class of good flowing repeating loops, but I think they could benefit from some serious knob turning automation to keep the subconscious mind interested. I think this is especially important because there aren't any obvious "big melody" leads that are obviously the main hook for the ear, so these looping 16th note leads, I feel, need some more "realtime" feeling tweaking in the filters and such rather than letting them just run more or less on auto-pilot. One thing I feel that definately needs to be fixed are the kick rolls. Whenever they occur they are just too loud. I'm not sure if you compressed the kick and then made a clean sample of that which you are using, or you have the compressor running in realtime on the kick channel, but it almost sounds a bit like the later and the compressor is being overloaded during the rolls (or it could just be too much overlap in the kick samples during the rolls too). Eitherway, I'd try and get that worked out. I usually lower the velocity on my kick rolls to help keep them feeling smooth and to keep them from peaking out. The intro isn't doing much for me (simply because there really isn't one) and I'd have to agree that the 16th note bass is a problem, although not in the same way that Snowball mentions. I personally think the 16th note bass line is a great tool and very effective when used right, but for me, and this is just my opinion based on how I like to make music and the music I enjoy listening to, the 16th note bassline is something that needs to be worked up to. Nothing turns me off as a listener faster than a track that just drops straight into such a bassline and I know when I DJ and am scanning a disc for tracks, and track that starts that way I almost always skip over it. Why you ask? Case by case exceptions granted, its because once you have the bass pumping that hard and fast, there simply isn't anywhere else for it to go. You're running at full speed from square one and building up anything higher than that is very difficult. (also as a DJ I noticed with these types of tracks usually the crowd is into it for about a minute and then they get bored and start to wander off). Now once the track gets going a bit and you have some leads chugging along I think this sort of bass works fine. The bass sound itself is pretty nice in my headphones here and I dig it but for me, the 16th note, same velocity, no variation bassline straight from square one just seems like hitting someone over the head with a hammer for no real useful reason. As I said, I like a lot of the lead ideas and sounds, the bass sounds is fairly good and once things get moving there is a lot of potential here. More than anything I'd take a look at the intro and figure out how to make it a bit more building and dramatic, so that when the hard pumping action begins, its like a release, rather than someone just busting into the room and mowing everyone down from the first sound. Adding some addition percussion loops and variations might be a good idea as well. Anywho keep up the good work

For those of you wanting to preview some full tracks, I'll be cycling various full tracks from the album in and out of my myspace account's media player for the next few weeks. You can check it out here.... http://www.myspace.com/par2jikkenteki

Wrong country....

Thanks for the kind words guys! Keep your eyes on this space. Sometime in the next week we'll be giving away a few copies of the album here for forum members...

PAR-2 Productions announces the release of: Jikkenteki – The Long Walk Home Nearly a year and a half in the making, PAR-2 Productions is proud to bring you our first full artist album by PAR-2’s own Jikkenteki. Covering everything from floating ambient textures to ripping psychedelic trance, “The Long Walk Home” is a two disc concept album that explores the nature of duality in our lives and the world we live in. Inspired by a series of real events, this album explores the full range of human emotions from utter joy to devastating loss and how we can strangely experience many of these conflicting feelings at the same time. Rooted and earthy, yet soaring and majestic, “The Long Walk Home” is a two hour and twenty minute sonic journey of truly epic scale. Jikkenteki – The Long Walk Home (PAR002) Disc 1 - Revelations and Moments of Clarity (Samples: http://www.par-2.com/choons/TLWH/tlwhs1.mp3 ) 1 False Sense Of Security 2 Ambiguity 3 An Angel Takes Flight 4 Chasing Raindrops 5 Warmth In Cold Places Disc 2　– Moving Forward in the Real World (Samples: http://www.par-2.com/choons/TLWH/tlwhs2.mp3 ) 1 Temporary Distractions 2 Automagic 3 Quietly Screaming 4 Days Of The Weak 5 Something New 6 Different Paths 7 Stepping Forward 8 Warmth In Other Places PAR-2 Productions Label and Distributor Available June 20th, 2006 worldwide at: http://www.par-2.com/ contact@par-2.com (Note: We are currently accepting preorders at the PAR-2 online shop which will ship the moment we receive the CDs from the pressing plant)

Not to burst your bubble, but 99% of Drum and Bass is 4/4 too...

The full gear details can be seen HERE The main stuff under the table are a Nord Lead rack, Virus B rack, and Eventide Harmonizer, TC Electronics M-One, plus a few other things that don't get used as much.

Here's mine at the moment. I'm in the middle of upgrading my monitors so the ones currently in my studio are pretty small but they get the job done for the time being.

I think one reason for the confusion in terms here is that "modulation" in synthesis is different from "modulation" in music ala the link Death Posture gave us. The second modulation (ala the link) is correct, but not a term that is used so much really. Most musicians, music publications, etc will more commonly refer to what you are discussing in trance as something like "chord changes" or "changing the root (note)", with the root being the tonal center of that passage (almost always the note the bass is playing at that time).

They are "potentially" the same in pure math terms, but in actual usage they are usually different. Most of the differences are hard to explain unless you actually read and use sheet music and work in much more varying tempos than trance does. It is possible to rewrite a 4/4 track as an 8/8 on sheet music, but it gets messy to read, counting it out loud would be a bit faster than you might comfortably be able to say or think and there is generally no real reason to. Generally (but not always) #/8 time signatures are used in slower music or in parts of music where there are some strange measure lengths and change ups (think like the complicated prog. rock/metal working of groups like Dream Theater). At the tempo trance is in #/4 time sigs are the most applicable, almost all of which are 4/4, as is almost all popular Western music (as Otto Matta said, 3/4 is the next most popular).

If you are looking for shuffle Phi and former Phi member Slum's work often has a bit of swing going on. You can usually hear it clearest in the hi-hats.

Doh, Shpongled beat me too it, and much clearer to boot....

Thanks for finding the link for me. As per the other thread.... Straight normal 4/4 http://www.par-2.com/choons/timesig/straight%20fourfour.mp3 Swing 4/4 http://www.par-2.com/choons/timesig/Swing%20fourfour.mp3 Triplet 4/4 http://www.par-2.com/choons/timesig/tripletfourfour.mp3 Straight 3/4 http://www.par-2.com/choons/timesig/straightthreefour.mp3 Leaving swing out of this, you can explain it like this. Numbers=Kick drum (on the beats you count to establish the time sig, one kick is worth a 16th note in duration). b=bass notes at 16th notes (i.e. in standard 4/4 there are 16 16th notes in one measure or 1 16th note is 1 quarter worth of a full beat count) Standard: 4/4 1bbb2bbb3bbb4bbb(repeat) 3/4: 1bbb2bbb3bbb(repeat) 4/4 with 16th note triplets: 1bb2bb3bb4bb(repeat) in a time sig, the bottom number indicated the note value considered 1 "beat" so x/4 means a quarter note is counted as one full beat. The top number is the number of beats in one measure so 4/4 has four quarter notes as one measure(1234 repeat). 3/4 has three quarter notes in one measure (123 repeat), 5/4 has five, etc..... Triplets don't change the beats your count, rather how you count between the beats. Usually in English fine we are going to verbally count out down to 16th notes we say the follow (for standard 16th notes, not triplets)... "One" "e" "and "ah" "Two" "e" "and" "ah" "Three" "e" "and" "ah" "Four" "e" "and" "ah"(repeat) With triplets you usually count by saying... "One" "and" "ah" "Two" "and" "ah" "Three" "and" "ah" "Four" "and" "ah" (repeat) or more comment we just say "Tri" "pu" "let" "Tri" "pu" "let" "Tri" "pu" "let" with the "tri"'s equaling your 1234 beats Clear as mud?

As was discussed in another thread where I posted audio examples. 3/4 (alternatively 6/8) and triplets are NOT the same thing. Several of those tracks are 4/4 triplets (Disco Mushroom for example). Snakey Shaker is 3/4 in the middle.

I haven't picked up Filteria's new one yet, but I suspect you are talking about basically a sort of chord progression in trance tracks. In general most tracks stay on the same root from front to back, but you do get some that shift to other notes in a scale (actual "key changes" are much more unusual in trance). Depending on how the chord change (in the case of psy, usually the change in the root of the bass note) I can see of something could be cheesy, but it could also be very cool. It depends more on the skill of the artist than anything else. In general though I am a fan of the idea of having the bass shift around and not always sit on the root note and very little else for a whole track, but again it depends on the track an what is needed... case by case.

My next release after my album in June will have a trance track that's 30 minutes long. I have a little over 26 minutes of it finished done so far, but you'll have to ask Death Posture if its any good or not as he is one of only three people who've heard it to date....

I mean uvAntam.com. He's basically been changing his name slightly every album recently.

Ubar Tmar has just released a new album, and following the usual trend with him, his music just keeps getting stranger and stranger. Definately one of the more unique artists out there, although I can see a lot of it going over people's heads.

Ubar Tmar - Macrometasomakosmos