This weeks web site is a blog styled site I have come across which lists competitions on the internet where you have to remix a track in order to win something or get your remixed track released in some way. Reeemix lists a good number of these competitions from around the globe and also splits them up into those which are running and those which have ended. No matter what your genre of music you make is, I’m sure you’ll find a remix comp to have a go at.

I’ve had a go at the Bus Records one this week for Flip Side by Prime Time and had some great fun doing it. I didn’t listen to the track before doing it, just downloaded the sample pack and then listened to the track afterwards. Not sure that was a wise move though as it turned out very different, we’ll see whether it was if I win :-). If you want to have a go at remixing someone else’s work, Reeemix is a great little site. I found that my track turned out very different to my normal creations because you start off with samples that you may never of chose yourself. I might have a go at the 4Hero - Mr Kirk’s Nightmare one next as I actually remember that track from when I was about 10 years old.

Our third samplepack from Rhythm Creation and this one is in conjunction with my post entitled Do Musicians Use Too Much Equipment? (Going Back to Basics) and these are the sample I used in my track called Beatbox. All samples were created using my mouth. I’m not a beatboxer or a singer, these samples have just been released to show what the track Beatbox was created from. I want to thank HumanBeatbox.com as many of the drum hits were me using their tutorials as a guide. There are 18 wav file samples in the zip file with no effects on. Enjoy! and keep a look out for more samplepacks coming soon.

Download from RhythmCreation.com

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All my own made samples that I post are released under the Creative Commons NonCommercial Sampling Plus 1.0 Licence. (Free to use and change for non-commercial uses). For the full terms of this license click the image button below.

Too often today I see many musicians/magazines/web sites telling you about some amazing new piece of software or hardware thats going to magically make you into this amazing producer/sound engineer with this amazing new sound it can produce. Basically adverts trying to sell you equipment and I think a lot of musicians fall for this and buy into products they don’t really need. Too often I see musicians who have used vast amounts of kit to get a specific sound, they have hard drives full to the brim with plugins and VSTis or rooms filled with hardware. Every other day some new software is out and you see people on internet message boards more concerned with having the latest piece of kit than actually creating music or them saying the only way to make this sort of sound is to have this or that.

Yet when I listen to some of todays music even though the newest equipment is being used it still doesn’t sound any better than music that was produced 10 - 15 years ago. One of my favourite bands of all time is The Prodigy and Liam Howlett’s production skills are amongst some of the best I have ever heard. Take the Prodigy’s Music for the Jilted Generation album for example, it is now 13 and a half years old, yet it sounds as if it could have been made today. Now this doesn’t seem to fit in with what these other musicians, magazines and web sites seem to be telling me. For 13 years of improvements in equipment the benefits in sound quality seem to me to be incredibly small. Maybe it is not what you’ve got to produce music with, but rather how you use it?

This led me on to thinking do musicians and sound engineers (electronic music based) rely on too much equipment? What would happen if I reduced the amount of kit I use? what would my music sound like?

I then thought the best way of putting my point across in this post would be to actually write a piece of music. So I created a list of kit I will use for a track to really limit myself in what I could use…

• One Shure SM57 Microphone.
• Audacity (A free open source, sound editor)
• A Sampler (I used the NN-XT within Reason).
• A Drum Machine (I used Redrum within Reason, this is basically a sampler like above).
• Only the basic effects/processing of Reverb, EQ, Delay, Compression and Distortion.

But that’s not all, I also decided I would limit myself in the sounds I could use…

• NO samples from the net, samples CDs, or any that I have created before.

And then I thought of the biggest limitation of all…

• NO sounds other that what I can create with my own mouth.

This basically means no synthesizers, no recording of any intruments or other objects, no other body parts like hand claps. Just the oldest sound creation device us humans have, my mouth and voice (And I’m not a singer or a beatboxer). So basically I was limited to my voice, a microphone, a sampler and some basic effects (To me that is extremely limited set of tools).

And here is the track I produced


I have to say, I had loads of fun producing this track and it came together quite quickly (I only spent about 8-10 hours including recording the samples). I believe that considering the way I limited myself, I was amazed at the wide variety of sounds that could be produced, I was also amazed at how I made it so electronic sounding. Using this method has made me rethink about the way I produce music for the better. I will never again say or think that I don’t have the equipment to produce a sound I like.

I do think that yes a musician can have too much equipment and I would advise anyone to have a go at limiting yourself, you might be pleased with the results. Too much equipment may actually hinder you rather than help you. It will make you a better producer and if you can make the music you want by limiting yourself, when you unlimit yourself again you may just find that your music has taken a giant leap forward.

And I have also released all the samples I used which are available here.

Download from RhythmCreation.com

Copyright Info For Music and Samples
Track provided free under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported Licence. For the full terms of this license click the image button below.



Samples are released under the Creative Commons NonCommercial Sampling Plus 1.0 Licence. (Free to use and change for non-commercial uses). For the full terms of this license click the image button below.

In a recent post I talked about how you can make your drum tracks sound more human like if you played them in using a keyboard instead of putting in drum hits with the mouse. I then then later showed you a great little video of a keyboard drummer showing off his skills in a instrument demonstration.
Well guess what?
Here are even more keyboard drummer videos to watch that I have found on YouTube. Enjoy!


Original YouTube Posting by finakajsa.


Original YouTube Posting by DavidMeShow.


Original YouTube Posting by Somesz.


Original YouTube Posting by Stmoo.

If you find any more great keyboard videos post the urls to them in the comments section of this post.

As our internet connections have became faster and internet technology has grown, more and more computer applications have started to become on-line in the web browser. We have seen on-line email applications, office applications and on-line music and video players. But never did I think we would see the on-line music sequencer and that’s exactly what Splice is and because of this I have decided to award splice a place in the hall of fame because it is very innovative.

It is written in flash and you can access the sequencer by going to the main sequencer window. From here you can see we have the basic layout of a music sequencer. On the right we have instruments and effects which we can drag to our left main window. The control bar is located above our left main window.

There is a public library of sound samples which are easily searchable to use, as well as some instruments (Cheap Piano, Sinusoid Synth and a Basic Sampler). There are also some simple effects which you can place in your tracks too.

All in all it is a nice simple sequencer but it’s not going to be used by people who are serious about music production. The reason why I featured this piece of software was because I was quite impressed (for an on-line application) and it shows a possible future for sequencers, as well as showing that in the future musicians may be creating music together from around the world whilst seeing the same screen.

I won’t write any more about it as you can go and try it yourself

What is Good about Splice

• Very innovative (First time I’ve seen an On-line Sequencer)
• Works well and reasonably fast for being an on-line application
• Public sound library to include in tracks.
• You can share tracks by saving them as public.

What is Bad about Splice

• I can’t see it being used by any serious music producers.
• Needs a drum machine.