Vtech - Inertia EP review

Vtech is a Drum and Bass producer from Finland. He makes dark and fast paced sounding
Drum and Bass with some occasional ragga vocals.

First track Gangsters Anthem name implies for something about Gangster Rap but offers something very different what is expected. Vtech appears to use street talk phrases in many of his track names.
The track opens with a tiny synth melody and filtered breakbeats and after intro in 0:45 the gangster vocals come in. This track uses low bass only sparingly and nice distorted reece is coming quite late in 2:00 mark.
The mixing and dynamics works very well and usually in drum and bass scene some artists albums are either too loud or compressed to hell. The dynamics mix is both listenable and I believe it sounds just excellent with real PA on the dance floor.
Gangster combines an industrial ambient background with ripping reece leads and is very successful at that.

World Is a Ghetto has got nice breaks style with ragga vocals. Ragga vocals are sung by Ft. Mc Jahvice. His vocals suit perfectly for the Drum and Bass. Could not be any better than this. The track has got also some occasional acid synthlines. What a perfect addition to any breakbeat or Drum and Bass DJ stash.

Third track Black Ice style somehow reminds me of the classic and dark TeeBee tracks.
Very cool rhythmic reece bass is at its best when served with warm and distorted effects with some frohmage* (*editors note: Not sure if the produced uses Frohmage filtering. Just a personal note.) filtering to give listener a maximum drum and bass enjoyment. I am not familiar with origins of the speech department of this track but it surely gives some serious creeps in spine with some hysteric female screams and speech. Around 3:20 is very emotionally intensive with the "horror movie" genre. The track is very well mixed, layered and enjoyable to listen with headphones without head exploding.

The most industrial and eerie sounding track is the last track called Demise.
The ambience is propably the most interesting in this track of the whole bunch. I am able to find myself in a movie theme for a while with some swirling pads and other interesting sub fx. Let´s not forget the drum programming that is perhaps the most "junglistic" especially on the outro part. The outro kind of drum programming style makes me convinced that the producer has listened at least Goldies tracks. I still miss this kind of drum parts in other parts of this track. Anyway this was the most cinematic track on this EP.

Visit Vtech myspace

Buy Vtech Inertia EP

Tenori-on - an interesting interactive electronic music device

in picture: designer of the Tenori-On, Toshio Iwai

I found this interesting electronic music device from a "if its hip it´s here" design blog.
You might have seen those ableton touch pads but this is much more advanced.
Tenori-On is made by Yamaha. It and has 16 control layers and you are able to create different cool light patterns onto it´s light matrix by pushing and activating led input buttons on the fly. The light matrix is 16x16 with is for both user input control and interactive light show with different modes.
There´s 6 different modes. The first might be familiar for those who have used some software studio sequencer of hardware sequencer. It´s the score mode where
user can enter notes in realtime and it is looping around. Just like in fruity loops but this is hardware. Ok let´s forget about fruity loops because this is a real electronic music instrument.

Read more about features with example videos:
http://www.global.yamaha.com/tenori-on/features/

Jim O'Rourke video

There´s a SD memory card slot which can be used in same way as in common digital cameras and PSP etc. digital electronic devices to exchange data. You can load up your own samples from your computer into a memory card.
Still this device with cool design costs around 1200 $ so it´s not friendly for a wallet but I think it´s not just any music device from your local music instruments store.

Interesting combination with live playing cello and Tenori - On by the band called The Books. This band uses device in live performance. I like their style of acoustic contemporary electronic music with traditional instruments.

Listen and view their live performance here:

"The books" video


Pics:

Celldweller - Wish Upon A Blackstar Chapter 02 - "audiowise review"

I have produced music myself over 18 years and listened even more. Nowadays and every year it seems that producers just want to make everything sound louder and louder. And what is even worse, loud all or most of the time. In my opinion Klayton has got some great talent as a producer but that´s not the issue here.
The problem really is that in the album Wish Upon a Blackstar chapter 02 the
guitars are compressed into full all the time. It´s very painful to listen that kind of guitar riffs.
Guitar struts and riffs with proper dynamics would sound so much better.
I must say I am not an audio purist at all but I just like well mixed and produced music. Not compressed to death.

For example: Klayton producing style is bit like with Metallicas latest album "Death Magnetic" and fans and audio engineers have told the Guitar Hero version was much more listenable because it was almost 10dB quieter than the album version.
Read an article by Ian Shepherd here: http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/09/metallica-death-magnetic-sounds-better.html

You don´t have to impress listener all the time like in some big movie soundtrack or in tv commercial where the audio is often compressed heavily to "wow the listener".
Please bring back the dynamics into music and save my and other peoples hearing ability.

Other than that the first chapter was really enjoyable but the second chapter is disappointing because there´s no music which can be listened to through the loudness.
Despite of the title "Louder than Words" has got much better mix with the guitars and overall production is very much better thought and laid out.
If the same trend continues I will not waste my money on this loudness garbage. Louder is better but too loud is bad. :shock:

Celldweller - Wish Upon A Blackstar Chapter 02 (Deluxe Edition) (MP3 Album) -review

Follow this to album store page


"Eon" it´s trying too hard and it´s almost painful to listen to. It´s totally overproduced and too loud for most of the time. You don´t have to compress everything into full. Less is more. Same thing with track "The best it´s gonna get".
I was bit disappointed for this album. The first chapter was much more listenable. I think Klayton should learn to produce music not to kill his fans ears. I gave it only two stars.

The first chapter was much more listenable and I really enjoyed that.
http://www.fixtstore.com/product/4766/Celldweller---Wish-Upon-A-Blackstar-Chapter-01-(Deluxe-Edition)-(MP3-Album)

I think most of the modern music is killing the dynamics.

read more:
http://turnmeup.org/index.shtml

Pump Audio is Pumping from the artist ? Do not fall into music licencing trap - Pump Audio amendment in 2009

It´s coming to the end of year and it´s time for artists to check out all the current
licencing deals they are currently having.
If you are about to licence music to a company that is not willing to pay you at least 50% revenue share I advice for you to not sign a deal. And if you have got an amendment for a current contract with less better deal then answer is no as well.
I hope this blog post will tell any aspiring music producer to think with their brains and not only what they are told to think by licencing companies when they are handed a new set of contract papers. In this case an amendment to an ongoing deal.

Do not be fooled by any stock music companies that are willing to pay you only
35% and they take themselves the bigger 65% chunk.
In this case Pump Audio made a change to their licencing during summer 2009.
This is also because they merged with Getty images. But with the cost of loosing their contracts including myself and I hope many people out there.

By quoting straight from their newsletter sent in June 2009.
"As we plan for the future growth of our offering to the global music licensing client base, we have determined that to fully support the 400+ person Getty Images sales staff and invest in marketing and technology needs that we must make adjustments to the current revenue split system. By making these changes, we intend to accelerate the pace of our growth and achieve our goal of becoming the largest music licensor in the world. "

It´s not really about helping artists to grow their music producing business. I personally see that artists by selling their music for cheap are only helping
their company to grow. If it´s depending from me it will not happen by licencing my music and sell out with some pennies in their service. Do not be a fool, think!


Breaking the old salesman way and cutting the costs - "marketing music licencing with web 2.0", facebook, reverbnation, blogs, music websites etc.

Selling music with a common salesman way is dead and buried. I can see marketing people in call center now. hahaha. That does not have to be like that anymore because it´s old fashioned and not very effective. In this case Pump Audio and Getty Images now with the resources of two companies the marketing will be more effective but I see that an old salesman way. Of course they have a website for selling the stock images by Getty Images. Getty images website has got a flash based application built in their site. Currenly I still have the some old tracks with the name of Finnlux Tuna in their stock but after amendment I have not and will not send any new music to their service. I would only be only fooling myself.
I wonder why my music has not yet been taken out because I didn´t accept their terms and did not sign the amendment.

I also think that artist should not ever pay the salary for people who market their music for licencing. From their point of view I understand they have 400+ salesmen now to be fed. But that´s not from my pockets.

In web it´s very easy to get traffic and sales with banner advertising and with social media and generate leads in discussion forums where professional people gather. Also with blogs and music industry websites are sites that generate good traffic. One can also have credits on a youtube video with the licencing company credits. Blogs will also get their traffic because of their effective use of keywords or in blog talk "tags" or "tag clouds".


Values of a psychopath

Nowadays some big companies seem to have values of a common psychopath.
First value a company should have is respect for people. Respect for other people is not something that is one directional and will be always a value that is achieved not taken. Still large companies try more to ride with big television and company brands and forget the values for people, in this case artists.

Final words

No matter what they tell you. It´s not personal it is only business talk and complete rubbish.
Anyone with not even any business understanding would not to sign any of these kind of bullshit deals.
edit: as an example a licence for a worldwide tv promotion costs 1000 $ from which I would get 500$ with old agreement and with the new I will get only 350$. Money talks and bullshit walks.

For your reference I shall give you the original PDF documents of each royalty
licence agreements from Pump Audio. First one is before their company merge with Getty Images and second is the addendum for the first.

But of course times change and artists change licencing companies to better too.
The choice of yours. I will still stick with Shockwave Sound which pays me 50%.
Their licences are not with that high priced so competitive as well.

Licence my music "Kimmo Rinta-Pollari" from Shockwave Sound -> follow the link

Pump Audio licence agreement original 2005:

http://digitalbeatmusic.net//download/bad_deals/pumpaudio/licenseagrmt_av5.pdf

Pump Audio licence amendment 2009. (As you can see my signature is missing)

http://digitalbeatmusic.net/download/bad_deals/pumpaudio/PumpAudio_2009_Music_License_Amendment.pdf

Download codes are handy? Digital Beat - Dark Sun free promotion

Already downloaded Digital Beat - Dark Sun?
Feeling lucky?

go get yours here:
http://digitalbeatmusic.net/?p=84

Redeemed the codes but what we still miss?

The bandcamp.com is so technically superior that they want to give artists this neat system which is able to generate random download codes for their album downloads.
I didn´t found this very useful because I tried to post the codes into discussion
forums and then one by one check out which one was redeemed.
The system does track each code and gives out a redeemed list as a csv file which then can be downloaded into your (artists) computer.

Now after 2 days of sitting at the front of my pc I wondered why the hell they
just didn´t invent a technique that makes people to buy music. Of course because they should be geniuses in new web technology and social advertising?
On the bright side it gave me a lot of traffic for the website but also some bunch of negative comments of the code system and my music.
Why the hell they do that?
I want to direct all my frustration to the system. It´s not the peoples fault who only want to listen my music whether they like it or not. Still some people did not like to download music for free because it was that there was not any previews of music on the code redeeming page.

So my addendum for that page would be a preview clips of all the tracks. Not just a dull slot to enter the code which I also found a bit stupid. To download something music you cannot even preview on the same page!

We artists who make music also as a part time work are interested of getting paid a nickle for it. But anyway it´s a free service and there´s not monthly payment as in some music websites. :D

I could add whole album free for the sake it´s easier for people to get it for free
without entering any code.



trackback link.
http://blog.bandcamp.com/2009/03/02/reassessing-your-definition-of-illmatic/trackback/

Weird electronic instrument - Otamatone

I saw this funny note shaped instrument on Jetdaisuke´s Youtube channel. He is very creative and funny japanese guy makes video previews of electronic music instruments for web. It has got also a mouth and a face. It comes in different colors but personally I prefer blck because notes are black? Very funny instrument.


Have a look.