drukqs

  On 2/14/2013 at 2:33 PM, marf said:

 

  On 2/14/2013 at 11:07 AM, ZoeB said:

The bit that gets me is still all the apparent speech synthesis with various British accents.

what parts? why does it get you? seems the simple part, maybe a speech program or voices from tv programs.

 

It's easy enough to speak in a particular accent, or find footage to sample of someone else speaking in it, and then to vocode, timestretch or autotune it. But there are a few points in this album (I can't remember where, offhand) where there are snippets of what sounds like speech synthesis with, for instance, what I believe is a West Country accent. Let me check...

 

OK, the Goldilocks and the Three Bears bit in 54 Cymru Beats. Although given the title, maybe there's a Welsh accent in there somewhere... it doesn't sound it to me, but I'm terrible with accents, and haven't been that far west in the UK in many years. I'm not sure what accent you'd call the bit saying "dynamically switching sounds during a sequence" near the painful climax at the end, or the other bit just before the bears. In contrast, "Puck" sounds like a real person, but the rest sound to me like speech synthesis, the old fashioned hardware kind used in Berzerk (as sampled in Humanoid Must Not Escape). The kind you program a TI LPC speech chip for. I don't think there was ever a market for Welsh or Cornish accents in these things, so you'd need to program in all the phonemes at a pretty low level. It would take a lot of time to work out how to do that, so you'd either spend many weeks with a lot of trial and error teaching yourself how to do it, or employ someone else to do it for you. Either way, someone would be spending a lot of time and effort for not much payoff, vocals without much attention drawn to themselves and with no real meaning (as usual, he seems to only use vocals as instruments, for the timbres, not the meaning of the words), that probably many people wouldn't even notice in the first place. So it's kind of like a magic trick for geeks.

 

I guess that's part of the appeal of his music though, the curious treasure hunt aspect of it, given the sheer number of easter eggs. For instance, take Carnival Acid buried in the mix of Bwoon Dub, released several years prior. Was this an unintentional side effect of re-using an old tape, or a deliberate ruse intended to give the effect of such messy nonchalance? Who knows? Who cares? One thing is certain: I've had too much coffee again.

Huh, it sounds like 54 Cymru Beats also flat out samples Berzerk. I hadn't noticed that before.

It's all the Voder:

 

I feel a Drukqs phase coming on.

 

I shelve it for a time and then I get low voices in my head whispering reminders to me to go for it yet again.

 

Truely wicked album.

It is pretty fantastic mr Beer-boss... I listen to songs here and there, but I think I should revisit it in its entirety sooin.

  On 2/14/2013 at 7:11 PM, ZoeB said:

 

 

  On 2/14/2013 at 2:33 PM, marf said:

 

 

  On 2/14/2013 at 11:07 AM, ZoeB said:

The bit that gets me is still all the apparent speech synthesis with various British accents.

what parts? why does it get you? seems the simple part, maybe a speech program or voices from tv programs.

 

 

It's easy enough to speak in a particular accent, or find footage to sample of someone else speaking in it, and then to vocode, timestretch or autotune it. But there are a few points in this album (I can't remember where, offhand) where there are snippets of what sounds like speech synthesis with, for instance, what I believe is a West Country accent. Let me check...

 

OK, the Goldilocks and the Three Bears bit in 54 Cymru Beats. Although given the title, maybe there's a Welsh accent in there somewhere... it doesn't sound it to me, but I'm terrible with accents, and haven't been that far west in the UK in many years. I'm not sure what accent you'd call the bit saying "dynamically switching sounds during a sequence" near the painful climax at the end, or the other bit just before the bears. In contrast, "Puck" sounds like a real person, but the rest sound to me like speech synthesis, the old fashioned hardware kind used in Berzerk (as sampled in Humanoid Must Not Escape). The kind you program a TI LPC speech chip for. I don't think there was ever a market for Welsh or Cornish accents in these things, so you'd need to program in all the phonemes at a pretty low level. It would take a lot of time to work out how to do that, so you'd either spend many weeks with a lot of trial and error teaching yourself how to do it, or employ someone else to do it for you. Either way, someone would be spending a lot of time and effort for not much payoff, vocals without much attention drawn to themselves and with no real meaning (as usual, he seems to only use vocals as instruments, for the timbres, not the meaning of the words), that probably many people wouldn't even notice in the first place. So it's kind of like a magic trick for geeks.

 

I guess that's part of the appeal of his music though, the curious treasure hunt aspect of it, given the sheer number of easter eggs. For instance, take Carnival Acid buried in the mix of Bwoon Dub, released several years prior. Was this an unintentional side effect of re-using an old tape, or a deliberate ruse intended to give the effect of such messy nonchalance? Who knows? Who cares? One thing is certain: I've had too much coffee again.

 

 

Also, there's a sample in 54 Cymru Beats where a vocoder talks in Cornish. Pretty cool, but I can't remember what it says. Something about how the vocoder itself sounds so natural or something like that... Edited February 15, 2013 by drukqs

I find analord series a lot warmer, less tinny, more melencholic, and so ultimately better than the drukqs LP - if you had to put a crossbow to my nads

 

BUT

 

When a drukq track is dropped in an aphex dj set........ I loves it just the same as analord.

  On 2/15/2013 at 10:35 AM, Stickfigger said:

I'm listening to this alot at the moment... In all honesty.. ive also been listening to alot of Exai... but I can not think of another album that has the level of Craft that this album has ... any suggestions?

 

All autechre since, and including confield, has that very "this is an experiment" feel... but everything in Drukqs seems deliberate ... and painfully crafted.

 

Thoughts?

 

You're talking about level of craft. I feel an arbitrary constraint hanging in the air.

*names an arbitrary album and expects a disappointed response in return*

i think i get and agree with what you are saying. autechre seems to lean more towards experimenting with techniques that allow for things to spring up on their own, then sifting through the results and picking and choosing which to keep and how to put them together, but with a mind towards keeping a degree of 'machine music' feel to the end result. drukqs sounds like a very deliberately assembled, meticulously crafted work, where you always hear the 'human hand' at work.

Edited February 15, 2013 by MisterE

  On 2/15/2013 at 12:32 PM, Stickfigger said:

... are you saying Exai has an abitrary restraint or drukqs? I realise my statement reads pretty vaguely..

 

I was saying that I think druqks has the high level craft etc..

 

I'm saying that level of craft is an arbitrary constraint. I mean, what popular album on this forum does not have a high level of craft?

  On 2/15/2013 at 12:43 PM, goDel said:

I'm saying that level of craft is an arbitrary constraint. I mean, what popular album on this forum does not have a high level of craft?

 

Surfing On Sine Waves? I mean, it's nice and all, but it's nowhere near the meticulous, painstaking level of Drukqs. Which is as it should be, as if you're constantly learning new things and expanding your skillset, each album of yours should be better than your last.

  On 2/15/2013 at 10:35 AM, Stickfigger said:

I'm listening to this alot at the moment... In all honesty.. ive also been listening to alot of Exai... but I can not think of another album that has the level of Craft that this album has ... any suggestions?

 

All autechre since, and including confield, has that very "this is an experiment" feel... but everything in Drukqs seems deliberate ... and painfully crafted.

 

Thoughts?

 

I haven't heard any Autechre since LP5 yet, so can't comment on Exai... but in terms of what I listen to after Drukqs, the only album that I've heard that obviously has that level of work put into it is These Hopeful Machines by BT. I know it's not a popular choice around here, but it shows just as much experimentation and genuine passion for making beautiful music and then sort of breaking it in countless creative ways, from the structure (with, for instance, various parts echoing others, in an almost classical way, which both these albums have) through to the glitches (actually taking advantage of modern software tools and techniques, which most musicians still don't really do that much). These Hopeful Machines even seamlessly morphs from one time signature to another, which is just the kind of interesting novelty I'd expect from either of those musicians. The only real difference as far as I can tell is that BT can produce better, write lyrics (not always great ones, but lyrics nonetheless) and is quite happy to collaborate with manufactured pop groups and the like, whereas Aphex Twin has more of a love of timbres and transporting you to other worlds, or at least his own quirky little world. I'm still not entirely sure why there isn't more overlap of their fanbases, other than people only being supposed to like serious, instrumental music or shameless pop music but not both. But that's just silly.

the vocal part in fenix funk gets me cause it sounds like its working with the underlying synth sequence. Maybe its a formant synth or something. Im not entirely sure its human.

  On 2/14/2013 at 7:11 PM, ZoeB said:

what parts? why does it get you? seems the simple part, maybe a speech program or voices from tv programs.

 

I'm not sure what accent you'd call the bit saying "dynamically switching sounds during a sequence" near the painful climax at the end, or the other bit just before the bears. In contrast, "Puck" sounds like a real person, but the rest sound to me like speech synthesis, the old fashioned hardware kind used in Berzerk (as sampled in Humanoid Must Not Escape).

 

I heard that Puck sound on Ubu web somewhere. Maybe a vocal installation recording. I know i heard some drukqs sound on that site.

Edited February 18, 2013 by marf

  On 2/18/2013 at 6:18 AM, marf said:

the vocal part in fenix funk gets me cause it sounds like its working with the underlying synth sequence. Maybe its a formant synth or something. Im not entirely sure its human.

 

Heh, that one doesn't get to me because although I don't know how he does it, I know how you can do it, so I'm happy. I'd imagine you could get that effect from either vocoding with a sustained open vowel sound where you make lots of different shapes with your mouth, using a carrier that's a regular synth patch playing a regular simple melody and not some long, sustained note, so your voice is supplying the timbre but not the rhythm, and you could probably also get the same effect from a formant filter, as you point out. It could be either, but at least it's something you can do without having to program anything by hand. :)

  On 2/14/2013 at 11:07 AM, ZoeB said:

 

  On 2/13/2013 at 1:04 PM, Deer said:

Did you guys kept the track order as is or did you changed the order so it made more sense to you.

Is there anything else for post-Drukqs satisfaction?

venetian snares

 

  On 2/14/2013 at 11:07 AM, ZoeB said:

 

  On 2/18/2013 at 6:51 PM, yikes said:

 

  On 2/14/2013 at 11:07 AM, ZoeB said:

 

  On 2/13/2013 at 1:04 PM, Deer said:

Did you guys kept the track order as is or did you changed the order so it made more sense to you.

Is there anything else for post-Drukqs satisfaction?

venetian snares

 

  ZoeB said:

 

  On 2/18/2013 at 10:11 AM, ZoeB said:

 

  On 2/18/2013 at 6:18 AM, marf said:

the vocal part in fenix funk gets me cause it sounds like its working with the underlying synth sequence. Maybe its a formant synth or something. Im not entirely sure its human.

 

Heh, that one doesn't get to me because although I don't know how he does it, I know how you can do it, so I'm happy. I'd imagine you could get that effect from either vocoding with a sustained open vowel sound where you make lots of different shapes with your mouth, using a carrier that's a regular synth patch playing a regular simple melody and not some long, sustained note, so your voice is supplying the timbre but not the rhythm, and you could probably also get the same effect from a formant filter, as you point out. It could be either, but at least it's something you can do without having to program anything by hand. :)

 

 

comment:

Hi, writing the code for it easy. But it wouldn't be possible without Ben Yates. He managed to track down the original designers of the speech chip, and they gave him some old software (written for windows 3) that converts WAV files into LPC (Linear Predictive Coding) - the raw data that you need to make the chip talk.

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has nothing to do with your reply, but i wanted to reply abou tthe welsh accents. Maybe he got a program to convert wav files to lpc synthesis.

Edited February 18, 2013 by marf

  On 2/18/2013 at 7:33 PM, marf said:

has nothing to do with your reply, but i wanted to reply abou tthe welsh accents. Maybe he got a program to convert wav files to lpc synthesis.

 

Huh, yeah, that'd do it, thanks! I didn't realise you could convert rather than synthesise from scratch. That's pretty neat!

 

...Who are the people in the photo?

It's Harry Styles, I was trying to make a funny.

Exai sounds like drukqs part 2

Edited February 19, 2013 by Ivan Ooze

dojo on pluto alien kungfu pastel gas nebulae breezes killer comets photons thru void until 4ish when mushroom teakettles indoors with mum rain drab extraterrestrial cetera

  On 9/21/2013 at 3:04 AM, doorjamb said:

dojo on pluto alien kungfu pastel gas nebulae breezes killer comets photons thru void until 4ish when mushroom teakettles indoors with mum rain drab extraterrestrial cetera

yes

  On 2/18/2013 at 8:39 PM, mcglockers said:

It's Harry Styles.

 

I don't like that kind of talk.