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Testing The Waters (ambient/downbeat)
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| Sykonee |
I didn't think I'd get back into doing this, but in recent years it seems the art of the 'mixtape' is growing popular again (the Back To Mine series has probably significantly helped). After listening to Booka Shade's DJ Kicks offering, I was convinced: building sets in the traditional club method has grown passe, and you can flirt across genres and tempos so long as you maintain a semblance of flow throughout. This method is highly appealing to those who prefer sharing music with others but feel restricted by the set-in-stone structures of typical DJ mixes. Er, one of which is I, heh.
I decided to test the waters of such sets here. This is something I whipped up in an afternoon, with very little forethought going into which songs I'd use beyond a vague idea of how I wanted to start it. Aside from that, most of these tracks were considered on the fly before I placed them into the mix, and runs an agreeable 60 minutes from start to finish. As for what I used to arrange this with, it's a completely ghetto program I've had collecting dust in the backwoods of my laptop, allowing only track placement and edits of either end of a track. That's it. No pitch control, no crossfade, no looping. It's about as close to actually using a tape deck to make a mix tape as it gets with a computer program!
Despite this, comments and critiques are most welcome. If folks figure there might be some potential in me making more of these (and I'll by no means limit myself to just this style of music either; I've got oodles of genres I can play with) let me know, as I'd love to share what I got with others. (and, er, if anyone could recommend a better, easy, and, um, free program I could arrange these in, much obliged)
Anyhow, enough preamble. Here's the mix:
[[ LINK REMOVED ]]
Track List:
1. Sun Electric - Love 2 Love
2. Mimoid - Tree Of The Sun, Tree Of The Moon (edit)
3. Enya - Boadicea
4. Alter Ego - Undersea Girl
5. Banco de Gaia - Shanti (Black Mountain Mix)
6. The Future Sound Of London - Vit Drowning
7. The Higher Intelligence Agency - Solid Motion (Black Hole Mix)
8. Cypher 7 - Nothing Lasts
9. Sandoz - White Darkness
10. Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy (Odd Nodsam Remix)
11. Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Safeway Cart |
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| Magadansky |
| Gonna check this out! Looks interesting. I will write what I think when I hear it (it will be probably tomorrow since now I am a bit too tired). :) |
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| Spacey Orange |
downloading...
i use traktor v. 1.03 :). shouldn't be too hard to find. |
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| Sykonee |
Ooh! Thoughts from some of TA's ambient experts.:D
I completely forgot about Traktor. I recall an old roommate of mine using it long ago, and it looked promising. Definitely have to seek that out.:) |
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| Magadansky |
| Hey Sykonee, enjoyed this one a lot. Was listening to it while studying and it made it (the studying) a lot more enjoyable than it actually was :D . The transitions weren't good but the tracks themselves were selected fine and there was no problem with the mood. :) Looking forward to hear more from you! :) |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| I must say, this is a lovely little set. I'm always a bit suspicious of ambient sets but this one has a consistent moood throughout and every track is strong enough to prevent it ever falling into "wallpaper music" mode. |
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| Sykonee |
Fair responses.:)
Yeah, I knew the transitions wouldn't be the best due to the limited software I had available, which is why I concentrated more on tracks and overall tone. I suppose if I'd spent, say, five days rather than five hours on this, I'd be able to find some tunes that melded better together for a more cohesive set, but I decided to limit myself on this first go, for a very specific reason.
Mainly, the more one over-plans with the arts -especially music- the potential to lose the spontaneity of the human soul grows larger. By more-or-less freewheeling into this with little pre-planning and presenting as is, I feel it gives a better representation of where my instincts guide me rather than laboring endlessly trying to create The Perfect Set. |
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| Sykonee |
| quote: | | oh and check this out. i finally realized where this sample on this comes from. |
Heh. That sounds more like a cover, and a really bad one at that, to be honest.
But the original Enya version is one of my favorite little guilty pleasures. Folks are so used her New Age pop stuff from the early 90s and on that it's often forgotten that she did some rather darker stuff in the mid-80s. |
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| micko |
Thanks for sharing
great stuff |
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