Amiga Samplers: Budget dance music in 1990 [video]
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"Aaaand we're out of memory."
Explains why samples tended to be really short .. and also why some artists (or their labels) did make the investment in studio time & the professionals who knew how to take this tech to the next level.
I worked in a 24-track studio in London in the early 90s where dance music was recorded, mixed, and remixed by The KLF and Nomad, among others, as well as soundtracks by Hans Zimmer, who owned the studio. There was a small army of people who not only knew the studio hardware (the board, Moog, compressors, gates, etc.) but also Cubase, sequencers, and other software, which was quite expensive but utterly necessary to crank out the hits played on the radio and the remixes that were preferred in the clubs.
My recollection is that even back then, the capital outlay required wasn't egregious. I recall a friend setting up a space with second-hand pro mixing board, amps, mics, etc all for around $10-15K in initial expense. And all sourced on various internet forums. Of course, today the mac book pro alone may set you back $5K+!
Other big costs at the professional level included hardware gates, compressors, tape machines (2 inch analog IIRC), the software (Cubase) and the Macs with the memory and storage required to run it, and staff -- a few engineers and manager employed by the studio and the hired guns brought in for specific tasks.
I was just listening to "Justified & Ancient," one of The KLF's hits from 1991/1992. I don't think it would have been possible to do a song like that (and the remixes) with the Amiga and other low-cost home gear of that era. It's really complex and layered, and Jimmy Cauty and the people he worked with were really pushing the capabilities of the software and studio hardware they had at their disposal. Check out these two mixes of that song:
They shifted key with some very complex backing harmonies to make the two versions. It's possible they did that in the studio with singers, but I suspect that was probably done at the console, with hardware and software handling the shift. It would save a lot of time (and money) applying tech for that use case.
Of course, nowadays it is like you said -- the bedroom/home studio model followed by Billie Eilish and her brother and practically every other up-and-coming artist.
The technology shift is very liberating, and opens up music to a much wider range of artists, but there's something lost, as well. A really powerful documentary about this trend was made by Dave Grohl some years back about Sound City in L.A. and the Neve console that powered recordings by Neil Young, RATM, Tom Petty, and more. Details: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173823162/dave-grohl-finds-mu...
It's a different vibe, that's for sure. I could go on for days about the technical differences, analog 2-inch tape versus a to d converters and so on. Analog synths, effect boxes now replaced by VST plug-ins.
But I thinkt the biggest difference is really more on the human level. It used to be an enterprise that by its very nature required multiple people to be working together. Now, music is a largely solitary endeavor. Back when, you started playing with your friends in the garage, and if you move to the next level you recorded in the studio together. Now you put together a demo on your Mac, throw it out into the world, and if it goes viral you get to do it again.
Different times.
I was a studio engineer the same time as you, predominantly in a studio in Sheffield. I was blessed for the fact that the studio had an epic live room, fabulous collection of mics and outboard, including some mental compressors from Tubetech and E.A.R. - all recorded to 2 inch via a Neve that we had dismantled from its previous home in CTV and rebuilt and installed over the course of a month or two.
Around the time I moved on, Logic Audio was really coming into its own, particularly the plugins available. I remember seeing an AC30 plugin (we used to have a lovely AC30 in the flesh) so I figured "this will be *", but it wasn't - times they were a'changing :)
I was a little sad because I loved the all the moving parts and collective effort/experience that it took to build a record, and watching it all disappear inside a box seemed to steal some of the magic. That of course is just the opinion of a tech guy - for the guys on the other side of the glass, it has been a game changer democratising access to making records. (Not that it stopped some people at the time - I remember the massive A&R bun fight over Gomez when they appeared - they very shrewdly managed to get an excellent deal, together with advance and then promptly went back into the tiny studio they recorded the demos in and put that out - it did sound great to be fair)
Sort of back on topic - never got near Amigas. Before Macs becoming ubiquitous it was all Atari STs ...
I run Ableton Live 9 and Logic Pro along with all of my normal software instruments and effects on a 2009 Macbook Pro that was given to me for free. Upgraded to an SSD and 8GB of RAM and it runs nearly just as well as on my 2013 Macbook Pro - which I would use but the keyboard has started to go out.
My point is you could just buy a used MacBook or a lower end MacBook for far, far less than 5k.
On the flip side of that I have a synthesizer that has increased in value five fold since I bought it in 2007.
I had an electronic music studio from around 1997 to early 00s, which over the years has cost a lot of money. I sold it all off at a massive loss in the end (A Yamaha Promix 1 mixer was gone for 70 quid for example) and years later moved to a software only world. Back then the gear was necessary. When I sold it it seems an unnecessary luxury. Still miss it though.
One classic comment about a major uk star "97 FUKI*&G tracks in pro tools for his vocal"
Rick Rubin on Metallica circa 2008, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/rick-rubin-my...
If you are interested you should check out artists like Bizzy B (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOMER0TV8UG1nf5OyzsJewQ/vid...) or Pete Cannon (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM_kHAd0Q_tWH7OEyF5hcAg/vid...)
His channel is filled with awesome hardware tracked with MED.
Mods were great. Zero cost beyond the computer, made with public domain tracker software, the music was freely distributed on BBS's (and the web later on). The mod file format was great - small size downloads - note information and sampler instruments were all in one package, typically a couple of hundred kb for the whole song.
You could see exactly how people had put the tunes together, access all the note information/arrangements and samples, and learn from that
Used to love monotonik releases. One thing I liked about tracker days was deconstructing songs to see how it was made. Not as easy to do these days. ReNoise is pretty much the tracker DAW these days. Now that I'm not as broke as before. More gear just less drive to use it. My younger self would of been in heaven with the gear I've got now. Gus was a game changer though back then.
You will need a media player that understand mod file formats to play the majority of the music files on the site. They have recommendations per platform in their FAQ.
or listen to the radio -- https://www.scenesat.com/ or https://scenestream.net/demovibes/
It seemed like time and tech were advancing so fast, and yet art was elusive.
Anyway I'm looking forward to working on another tracker tune soon. Thanks for the link.
"Professional Tracker
written by Hoffman & Daytripper for the Revision 2014 Tracked Music Compo. Put together in ProTracker v2.3d on Amiga.
As it was for the Revision Tracker Music Compo, it is best viewed in XMPlay on the PC with full screen pattern visualiser. Make sure you use the following settings.
No Interpolation. Mono. Mod Mode PT1." https://soundcloud.com/h0ffman/hoffman-daytripper-profession...
Haha, I remember that! The other easter egg I remember from the era was in Budokan. Pong, IIRC.
But the simplicity of being able to so swiftly move notes around in a spreadsheet-type format is something I've never really seen since (outside of trackers themselves at least, and I have used a few modern variants). It's like a piano roll on steroids.
I owe my love of creating music today to the tracker and demoscene of the early 90's, and it's great that it's still alive and well :)
Truly free music.
Here is an excellent overview of MilkyTracker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2s04YYO0Wg
SunVox is also an excellent piece of software for those who like a more modular setup https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/
But it was very exciting to hear other people's work, regardless. Computer music - and it sounded like the stuff I heard in malls and on TV, instead of the synthy chiptune stuff!
Gradually I did start experimenting with composition on trackers and that proved to be another mountain climbed only gradually. Even when I had "the sound," it takes a lot of work to understand how to a bring a song structure beyond a four bar loop, but I would have to say that I learned a fair amount from studying tracker music too. A good success story for source availability.
Happy times.
Venetian Snares Renoise > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGK-EzEa45U
I ended up recouping the costs of the sampler many times over though: the local radio station had a competition of "guess what this song-played-backwards is and win $100". I'd sample the song snippet as they played it, reverse it in a tracker (like in the video where he reverses the reverse cymbal) and get the song... then it was just a matter of being the correct caller - battling mostly against my other friends with our home-made samplers. I won $500 doing that!
[Edit: oh, you mean the computer hardware, not the sampler hardware! My A500 was second-hand, no memory upgrade (grr) - and if my parents got it for me then there's no way it was more than a couple of hundred bucks ;) ]
It cost money, but the next step would have been a rack sampler and probably a mixer which were much more expensive.
Buzz is great software, the modular concept was fantastic. I don't think Oskari has worked on it since 2016 - http://jeskola.net/buzz/beta/files/changelog.txt
It still works though, and there is something of a community - http://forums.jeskola.net/
MilkyTracker is UI compatible with FastTracker 2, Schism Tracker is UI compatible with Impulse Tracker and Scream Tracker.
Renoise is more of a crossover of digital audio workstation with a tracker.
So far, Schism Tracker is more usable I've found, but it feels like running Impulse Tracker in DOSBox, which, granted, it not necessarily a bad thing.
In the end, I may just suck it up and pay for Renoise.
Renoise is the kitchen sink, its probably the most powerful tracker you can get, a bit overwhelming even to someone like me that spent over 10 years every day using them: https://www.renoise.com/
It's multi platform tracker with modular synthesizer functionality.
It only needs that sf2 compatibility to reach absolute perfection.