Re: [linux-audio-user] Accessibility: Tips for making sounds for the masses?

On Fri, 24 Feb, 2006 at 12:55AM +0100, Carlo Capocasa spake thus:
> After my thread got hijacked so nicely about drawing in developers with
> little musical interest to help do music tools coding, I felt encouraged
> to raise another discussion.
>
> It is my goal to make music as accessible as possible, IE it's gotta be
> valuable to your average working man (or teenager) in terms of
> entertainment, identity, cult status, etc.
>
> The reaction I want from people is: "MAAAAAAN that's so cool why can't
> the sucker produce as fast as I can listen? MORE MORE MORE!!!!"

That's an interesting position. Are you looking at making music
commercially, or do you see acceptance as one of the qualities of
music that you'd like to be able to quantify and add as much of as you
want?

Personally, I make what I enjoy making. It still surprises me that
what I try to do is quite different from what I listen to normally.

If it ever occurred that what I created was something that the masses
wanted to consume, it would be a completely accidental confluence.

That's not to say that I see myself as above all that. As the list
knows, I like my feedback as much as anyone else. I'm not sure I'd be
happy if people loved my stuff because I'd tried to make it lovable
before I made it mine.

Just to be clear, this is not a rant! I've just read it through and
realised it might be taken that way. I'm just thinking aloud. And
not too clearly, either.

James

 
> :)
>
> One technical approach I found that is quite effective at that is to
> jack everything through compressors. (I know, it's not new, I just
> didn't know that). Get some white noise with an envelope, a formant
> filter, and a low pass filter, and pipe it through two sets of LADSPA
> compressors jacked to max (small attack, small release, large knee,
> maximum compression, small theshold) and it sounds like your average FAT
> dance track snare from scratch. Penetrating enough to make your average
> metal worker notice it.
>
> Another strategy I found effective is to combine the familiar with the
> new... That makes it an adventure with a guide. A little adventurous,
> but not so much as to be perceived as different and strange. (Personally
> I WANT to be different and strange but I respect that not everybody does).
>
> So ya wanna use generative synth? Fine, with a dance beat. Gonna make
> completely synthed tracks? Cool, add some vocals. To me, that makes
> strange synths sound "household object".
>
> So you wanna make stuff that people can enjoy ("people" meaning in terms
> of popular listening familiarity NOW)? What do you do?
>
> Carlo
>
>

-- 
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb.  Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)