While not a big fan (in the slightest!), I find it hard to beleive that you can't locate any trance music!
Perhaps you should try your luck from a UK online store. Hard To Find Records (i forget url, do a search) delivers worldwide. Even Amazon.co.uk has quite a large selection of trance. It's far and away the most commercial form of dance music there is here, so forgive my incredulity that you can't find any!
While I have no sympathy for, say, Sash!, or for that matter any of the big commercial bloodsuckers riding this awful trend - if you are into underground trance, then remember that these guys don't have the protection of a big record company, and so you run the risk of killing off the only remaning sources of true innovation in music, leaving us all to the mercy of 'economies of scale' that only the majors and their insipid carbon copies can support!!
So please, I ask everyone to support innovative and independent music of any genre by BUYING the releases, preferably from your local mom+pop record store, where the biggest cuts get to the artists.
The Majors might deserve everything they get for fixing prices way above what they should be, but give the real artists a break!
you've heard positive education, eh? I didnt think anyone would pick up on that one.... are you from the UK? It would be truly remarkable if Slam made an impact in the US. I think they did a pressure funk tour last year, but they're hardly in the same coverage league as, say, Paul Oakenfold. Thank god!!:)
all of the tracks you mention are classics (though i've never heard of big stone lake, what's the cat-number?)
Suppose i'll have to wait till the next related music topic comes round before I can get more techno references in... !
following up my original post, I think the following CDs (should be available on your friendly internet etailer) would be a good introduction to more 'underground' electronic sounds (with a heavy detroit bias!):
* Derrick May: Innovator
'Nuff said. Check 'Strings of Life' in particular - the all time techno classics in one package and totally essential.
* DJ Rolando/UR: Knights of the Jaguar
Amazing track and all time future classic, now available on a CD along with other classics and remixes - check www.submerge.com. Get the Rolando Mix CD also if you can
* Paperclip People: The Secret Tapes of Dr. Eich
Disco-House-Techno, before it was popular. Quality.
* Time:Space - Transmat Compliation
Cutting edge stuff, essential. Some free tracks on MP3.com, check under 'Transmat'
* Deep Space - Model 500 (Juan Atkins)
'The Flow' is absolutely stunning and this album was the godfather at his peak.
* Gesamtkunstwerk - Dopplereffekt
Old skool style, very dark, moody, humourous and hmm, quite similar to Drexciya... hmm, I wonder...:)
* The Hidden Camera EP - Photek
Tell me a 12 year old with cubase can do this! Photek assembles each beat and sound painstakingly and this is breakbeat at its best.
* Computer World & Trans Europe Express - Kraftwerk
The genesis of most techno/dance/electronic pop and still classics.
If you want to take this interest further I would also suggest investing in a record player, since most of the new stuff comes out Vinyl only.
I agree that there was a huge post-hardfloor phase of incredibly bad and formulatic 'acid' 303 tracks, notably anything by Josh Wink.
However, if you want to hear a 303 creatively used to stunning effect I suggest you check out anything by Plastikman, especially Sheet One and Musik, which are brillant.
I hear there's a website going up at: www.plastikman.com although you might also have luck at www.m-nus.com which is his new label, or www.plus8.com if it is still up.
I think the secret to using a 303 properly is to aviod the temptation to go over the top (the squelch gets WAY TOO ANNOYING) but it is a lot more flexible than it might seem at first.
And yeah, I think someone mentioned, Rebirth (used to be www.propellorhead.com) sells a software emulator with 2 303s, a 909 and an 808 for the drums. Quite good fun and a damsight cheaper than real 303s which seem to be doubling in price every year.
If we always followed time honoured rules, making music would involve banging some rocks together and shouting a bit. actually this is rather close to a lot of Aphex work...:)
Serioulsy though, the people need artists to challenge the status quo once and a while. Otherwise ALL music would be like Brittany or whatever the execs think we should like this week.
I sincerely hope that you're trolling in this post and you aren't at all serious!
The fact that the best example that you can come up with for synthesized music is 'britanny spears' and that production can be done by pressing 'a few buttons' shows an ignorance that beggars beleif, and is either a) a joke/troll or b) a post by some MTV following, 13 year old cultural robot.
The only interesting and exciting music being made today is done using synthesizers. Some of the most amazing music is coming out of your own american backyard and you have been steadfastly ignoring it for the past 10-15 years.
Detroit Techno and Chicago House for instance contain more intelligence and originality than an infinite number of bush/blink182 or whatever carbon copy songs that MTV is shoving down your throat right now.
Especially in detroit, stuff coming out from Underground Resistance, Planet E, Transmat and Metroplex are as close to undiscovered genius as you can get, involving a great deal of raw creativity and expression.
Creativity and Expression - That's what I value. Unlike yourself I'm not an elitist or a traditionalist. I want to hear something that makes me sit up and go 'wow' and I dont care if it was done using 'proper instruments'.
In a way I can see where you are coming from - since I understand the *popular* american dance scene is indeed utterly turgid and full of dire trance tracks put together in 5 seconds using Cubase and a cute sample that says 'ecstacy' or some such.
But, I would not dare suggest that computer scientists should chuck out their PCs and return to vaccum-tube mainframes and punchcards because they are harder to use, and thus the results must be better. Do you code exclusively in assembler? I bet you dont. (in this case the results might actually be better, i concede)
I suggest you educate yourself before you open your mouth on this topic again.
I don't think the MS strategy of trying to shoehorn a 'lite' PC into a handheld box is going to cut much ice with real world users.
The concept is all wrong - the reason palm has been so successful is because it focuses on what the core competency of a handheld should be, not trying to make the handheld a cut down desktop. I like the bit about 'crash prone' in the C-NET review - at least they ported this feature successfully from the desktop!!
I can already sync outlook to my palm, read web content with AvantGo and do basic e-mail, document reading, games and even spreadsheets on this cheaper, more stable, more popular platform. There are thousands of developers working on more apps for this platform as we speak. The sheer fact that it is so well supported and popular should lead to equivalent 'map programs' etc being made compatible with palm. Think about the buying power of this user base and you'll see what I mean.
In business speak - palms add more value because the costs for consumers of buying and running them are less than the benefits. Windows CE imposes more needless costs on the user, in terms of price, crash-ability and kludgieness - all due to trying to FORCE people use Windows (a desktop OS) on a handheld - when there is NO consumer demand for this to happen. There doesn't seem to be much benefit in using this platform.
Microsoft might like to use this OS to create synergies with its desktop OS and create lock in between the platforms, but where's the killer app for this handheld? I don't see it. Connectivity with existing MS document formats maybe? Exclusive lock in with propriatery (pardon spelling) E-Books and Maps?
Microsoft, GET A NEW BUSINESS STRATEGY!! You can't expect to dominate this field with the exact same tactics you used to suffocate the desktop. (maybe if you were in palm's situation - you need critical mass for this to work)
Loads of customers are already locked into the superior palm platform, so i'd suggest you try and find ways to integrate these better with your strategy, since WindowsCE (thats still what this is, whatever you re-brand it) is clearly a non-stater.
I have to add that techno/electronic music never had the support of the big record companies to start with, but succeeded despite them...
For this genre, I don't see any diff between MP3 distribution on Napster and the tape swapping that everyone in the scene has always been doing since the 80s.
In fact, there is a valid argument for saying the scene might not have spread out of Chicago, Detroit and enclaves in Europe as quickly and comprehensively without it - espeicially since most majors wouldn't touch them unless they already had a huge underground following, or made good old fashioned rock n' roll style 'big beat' pish that they find easy to market and understand.
I'm also sure more than a few 'illegal' songs appeared on Ron Hardy, Electrifying Mojo and Wizard tapes that got passed about in the 80s and inspired a lot of the artists and DJs you hear today.
I know for a fact that most underground DJs dont go to the trouble of clearing copyright on the records they play. Yet they are doing the artists a favour by generating demand as effectively as any concert - but playing to many crowds everywhere at once. Of course they have to buy the records themselves to do this. In the old days you would hear stories of indpendent producers begging or bribing DJs just to get their record in a set. Lots of promos are given away today to get the same effect.
Why not let everyone be their own DJ, selecting and passing on the best tracks as a quality control mechanism? (They do say these days EVERYONE is a DJ!).
This is the embodiment of 'Viral Marketing' which seems to be in vouge these days, and its quite amusing that record companies are trying to trigger this effect whilst keeping cast iron control. They'll never do it unless they embrace reality.
If I hear some amazing music on MP3 (such as Transmat's Tour highlights on MP3.com - I encourage you ALL to check it out) I will generally buy the vinyl (because I can spin it in a set) or the CD (because the quality will always be better).
In short, napster and freenet might actually accelrate the growth of innovative scenes and acts without having some idiot in a suit decide what we like for us.
An interesting attempt to fit a textbook economics model onto the situation...! I loved the application of marginal analysis to programming!:)
I think a lot of these economic analyses pan out in plain language to be the general business knowledge in the market though. I would say that at the very least M$ understands this model better than anyone!
Lots of very valid points though - especially with regards to adaptability to market disruptions, which is a real strength.
It would be interesting to see some numbers and charts to validate this in terms of 'economics' though.
A couple of confusions though. I am by no means an expert in the art of economics but I don't understand how stability of software turns hardware into a durable good.
With Moore's law, and the ever widening scope of applications, I doubt hardware/software today will be sufficient for applications 10 years down the line. I doubt many slashdotters are using a 16MHz 286 with 20Mb hard drive to access this site. Computers will never be a durable. It's debatable whether most durables are durable anymore.
Valid conclusion at the end - in that there is a bit of a 'pet project' influence on Linux. And you are 100% correct in terms of mainstream established markets.
However, price signals aren't always the most efficient indicator of future markets (despite what classical economists say).
the fact that open-source isn't driven in such a manner is a key strength which allows interesting tangents outside of the current demand structure to develop.
How many cool, useful and important technologies can you think of which were developed as a pet project?
Quite a few I am sure. A lot of marketing people loathe engineers for coming up with useless inventions that the market can't support.
Inventions like the Sony Walkman, the Automobile, the Internet had no market during development. They were market makers... Linux itself was a pet project with zero commercial input. Now Red Hat etc are making money from it.
* Does software have inelastic demand?
I assume you mean that M$ charges way above market price for its new software releases, because users 'have to pay it'.
I would say software is extremely elastic. For three reasons:
1) M$ faces a huge competitive burden from itself. If M$ charged $1e20 for Win2k then users would stick with NT4!
2) Barriers to entry in the market, while incredibly strong in some respects (proprietary software standards etc), are incredibly weak in others. With the Internet, dissemination of new software and information is nearly efficient.
While there is no serious *current* competitve threat to M$, it must price as if there was, because it must price against the *threat* of possible future competition.
3) Piracy helps to keep the prices down too - if M$ doesn't charge a sensible price then people will find ever more inventive ways to rip off the software to meet the chasm of demand at a lower cost.
* Diversity of platforms
Judging by the ratio of Intel boxes to everything else, this isn't really a significant economic advantage in terms of superiority over NT. It could be significant in future in terms of 'information appliances' provided Win-Tel doesn't use market muscle to penetrate these markets with pricing and marketing economies.
* Efficiency of execution (less hardware investment)
Perhaps under the bucket of diversity of hardware you could squeeze Linux onto that 16MHz 286 and thus embrace a wider market than NT. However with the aforementioned acceleration in technology it is hard to see where the value would be added in this, apart from helping users to continue using outdated technology.
I know my example is extreme but consider a 600MHz PIII to be equivalent to a 16MHz 286 in 2019. From this perspective it seems a little conservative!
Anyway, if I am arguing with a proper economist and I am speaking 100% rubbish at least I hope I added a little outside perspective! And perhaps an interesting flame thread!:)
Economics will never be an exact science.... the 'laws' are there to be challenged and broken!
Slashdot Mirror
While not a big fan (in the slightest!), I find it hard to beleive that you can't locate any trance music!
Perhaps you should try your luck from a UK online store. Hard To Find Records (i forget url, do a search) delivers worldwide. Even Amazon.co.uk has quite a large selection of trance. It's far and away the most commercial form of dance music there is here, so forgive my incredulity that you can't find any!
While I have no sympathy for, say, Sash!, or for that matter any of the big commercial bloodsuckers riding this awful trend - if you are into underground trance, then remember that these guys don't have the protection of a big record company, and so you run the risk of killing off the only remaning sources of true innovation in music, leaving us all to the mercy of 'economies of scale' that only the majors and their insipid carbon copies can support!!
So please, I ask everyone to support innovative and independent music of any genre by BUYING the releases, preferably from your local mom+pop record store, where the biggest cuts get to the artists.
The Majors might deserve everything they get for fixing prices way above what they should be, but give the real artists a break!
you've heard positive education, eh? I didnt think anyone would pick up on that one.... are you from the UK? It would be truly remarkable if Slam made an impact in the US. I think they did a pressure funk tour last year, but they're hardly in the same coverage league as, say, Paul Oakenfold. Thank god!! :)
all of the tracks you mention are classics (though i've never heard of big stone lake, what's the cat-number?)
Suppose i'll have to wait till the next related music topic comes round before I can get more techno references in... !
following up my original post, I think the following CDs (should be available on your friendly internet etailer) would be a good introduction to more 'underground' electronic sounds (with a heavy detroit bias!):
... hmm, I wonder... :)
* Derrick May: Innovator
'Nuff said. Check 'Strings of Life' in particular - the all time techno classics in one package and totally essential.
* DJ Rolando/UR: Knights of the Jaguar
Amazing track and all time future classic, now available on a CD along with other classics and remixes - check www.submerge.com. Get the Rolando Mix CD also if you can
* Paperclip People: The Secret Tapes of Dr. Eich
Disco-House-Techno, before it was popular. Quality.
* Time:Space - Transmat Compliation
Cutting edge stuff, essential. Some free tracks on MP3.com, check under 'Transmat'
* Deep Space - Model 500 (Juan Atkins)
'The Flow' is absolutely stunning and this album was the godfather at his peak.
* Gesamtkunstwerk - Dopplereffekt
Old skool style, very dark, moody, humourous and hmm, quite similar to Drexciya
* The Hidden Camera EP - Photek
Tell me a 12 year old with cubase can do this! Photek assembles each beat and sound painstakingly and this is breakbeat at its best.
* Computer World & Trans Europe Express - Kraftwerk
The genesis of most techno/dance/electronic pop and still classics.
If you want to take this interest further I would also suggest investing in a record player, since most of the new stuff comes out Vinyl only.
Cheers!
I agree that there was a huge post-hardfloor phase of incredibly bad and formulatic 'acid' 303 tracks, notably anything by Josh Wink.
However, if you want to hear a 303 creatively used to stunning effect I suggest you check out anything by Plastikman, especially Sheet One and Musik, which are brillant.
I hear there's a website going up at: www.plastikman.com although you might also have luck at www.m-nus.com which is his new label, or www.plus8.com if it is still up.
I think the secret to using a 303 properly is to aviod the temptation to go over the top (the squelch gets WAY TOO ANNOYING) but it is a lot more flexible than it might seem at first.
And yeah, I think someone mentioned, Rebirth (used to be www.propellorhead.com) sells a software emulator with 2 303s, a 909 and an 808 for the drums. Quite good fun and a damsight cheaper than real 303s which seem to be doubling in price every year.
If we always followed time honoured rules, making music would involve banging some rocks together and shouting a bit. actually this is rather close to a lot of Aphex work ... :)
Serioulsy though, the people need artists to challenge the status quo once and a while. Otherwise ALL music would be like Brittany or whatever the execs think we should like this week.
I sincerely hope that you're trolling in this post and you aren't at all serious!
The fact that the best example that you can come up with for synthesized music is 'britanny spears' and that production can be done by pressing 'a few buttons' shows an ignorance that beggars beleif, and is either a) a joke/troll or b) a post by some MTV following, 13 year old cultural robot.
The only interesting and exciting music being made today is done using synthesizers. Some of the most amazing music is coming out of your own american backyard and you have been steadfastly ignoring it for the past 10-15 years.
Detroit Techno and Chicago House for instance contain more intelligence and originality than an infinite number of bush/blink182 or whatever carbon copy songs that MTV is shoving down your throat right now.
Especially in detroit, stuff coming out from Underground Resistance, Planet E, Transmat and Metroplex are as close to undiscovered genius as you can get, involving a great deal of raw creativity and expression.
Creativity and Expression - That's what I value. Unlike yourself I'm not an elitist or a traditionalist. I want to hear something that makes me sit up and go 'wow' and I dont care if it was done using 'proper instruments'.
In a way I can see where you are coming from - since I understand the *popular* american dance scene is indeed utterly turgid and full of dire trance tracks put together in 5 seconds using Cubase and a cute sample that says 'ecstacy' or some such.
But, I would not dare suggest that computer scientists should chuck out their PCs and return to vaccum-tube mainframes and punchcards because they are harder to use, and thus the results must be better. Do you code exclusively in assembler? I bet you dont. (in this case the results might actually be better, i concede)
I suggest you educate yourself before you open your mouth on this topic again.
www.kraftwerk.com
www.transmat.com
www.submerge.com
www.hyperreal.org
I don't think the MS strategy of trying to shoehorn a 'lite' PC into a handheld box is going to cut much ice with real world users.
The concept is all wrong - the reason palm has been so successful is because it focuses on what the core competency of a handheld should be, not trying to make the handheld a cut down desktop. I like the bit about 'crash prone' in the C-NET review - at least they ported this feature successfully from the desktop!!
I can already sync outlook to my palm, read web content with AvantGo and do basic e-mail, document reading, games and even spreadsheets on this cheaper, more stable, more popular platform. There are thousands of developers working on more apps for this platform as we speak. The sheer fact that it is so well supported and popular should lead to equivalent 'map programs' etc being made compatible with palm. Think about the buying power of this user base and you'll see what I mean.
In business speak - palms add more value because the costs for consumers of buying and running them are less than the benefits. Windows CE imposes more needless costs on the user, in terms of price, crash-ability and kludgieness - all due to trying to FORCE people use Windows (a desktop OS) on a handheld - when there is NO consumer demand for this to happen. There doesn't seem to be much benefit in using this platform.
Microsoft might like to use this OS to create synergies with its desktop OS and create lock in between the platforms, but where's the killer app for this handheld? I don't see it. Connectivity with existing MS document formats maybe? Exclusive lock in with propriatery (pardon spelling) E-Books and Maps?
Microsoft, GET A NEW BUSINESS STRATEGY!! You can't expect to dominate this field with the exact same tactics you used to suffocate the desktop. (maybe if you were in palm's situation - you need critical mass for this to work)
Loads of customers are already locked into the superior palm platform, so i'd suggest you try and find ways to integrate these better with your strategy, since WindowsCE (thats still what this is, whatever you re-brand it) is clearly a non-stater.
I have to add that techno/electronic music never had the support of the big record companies to start with, but succeeded despite them...
For this genre, I don't see any diff between MP3 distribution on Napster and the tape swapping that everyone in the scene has always been doing since the 80s.
In fact, there is a valid argument for saying the scene might not have spread out of Chicago, Detroit and enclaves in Europe as quickly and comprehensively without it - espeicially since most majors wouldn't touch them unless they already had a huge underground following, or made good old fashioned rock n' roll style 'big beat' pish that they find easy to market and understand.
I'm also sure more than a few 'illegal' songs appeared on Ron Hardy, Electrifying Mojo and Wizard tapes that got passed about in the 80s and inspired a lot of the artists and DJs you hear today.
I know for a fact that most underground DJs dont go to the trouble of clearing copyright on the records they play. Yet they are doing the artists a favour by generating demand as effectively as any concert - but playing to many crowds everywhere at once. Of course they have to buy the records themselves to do this. In the old days you would hear stories of indpendent producers begging or bribing DJs just to get their record in a set. Lots of promos are given away today to get the same effect.
Why not let everyone be their own DJ, selecting and passing on the best tracks as a quality control mechanism? (They do say these days EVERYONE is a DJ!).
This is the embodiment of 'Viral Marketing' which seems to be in vouge these days, and its quite amusing that record companies are trying to trigger this effect whilst keeping cast iron control. They'll never do it unless they embrace reality.
If I hear some amazing music on MP3 (such as Transmat's Tour highlights on MP3.com - I encourage you ALL to check it out) I will generally buy the vinyl (because I can spin it in a set) or the CD (because the quality will always be better).
In short, napster and freenet might actually accelrate the growth of innovative scenes and acts without having some idiot in a suit decide what we like for us.
An interesting attempt to fit a textbook economics model onto the situation...! I loved the application of marginal analysis to programming! :)
... Linux itself was a pet project with zero commercial input. Now Red Hat etc are making money from it.
:)
.... the 'laws' are there to be challenged and broken!
I think a lot of these economic analyses pan out in plain language to be the general business knowledge in the market though. I would say that at the very least M$ understands this model better than anyone!
Lots of very valid points though - especially with regards to adaptability to market disruptions, which is a real strength.
It would be interesting to see some numbers and charts to validate this in terms of 'economics' though.
A couple of confusions though. I am by no means an expert in the art of economics but I don't understand how stability of software turns hardware into a durable good.
With Moore's law, and the ever widening scope of applications, I doubt hardware/software today will be sufficient for applications 10 years down the line. I doubt many slashdotters are using a 16MHz 286 with 20Mb hard drive to access this site. Computers will never be a durable. It's debatable whether most durables are durable anymore.
Valid conclusion at the end - in that there is a bit of a 'pet project' influence on Linux. And you are 100% correct in terms of mainstream established markets.
However, price signals aren't always the most efficient indicator of future markets (despite what classical economists say).
the fact that open-source isn't driven in such a manner is a key strength which allows interesting tangents outside of the current demand structure to develop.
How many cool, useful and important technologies can you think of which were developed as a pet project?
Quite a few I am sure. A lot of marketing people loathe engineers for coming up with useless inventions that the market can't support.
Inventions like the Sony Walkman, the Automobile, the Internet had no market during development. They were market makers
* Does software have inelastic demand?
I assume you mean that M$ charges way above market price for its new software releases, because users 'have to pay it'.
I would say software is extremely elastic. For three reasons:
1) M$ faces a huge competitive burden from itself. If M$ charged $1e20 for Win2k then users would stick with NT4!
2) Barriers to entry in the market, while incredibly strong in some respects (proprietary software standards etc), are incredibly weak in others. With the Internet, dissemination of new software and information is nearly efficient.
While there is no serious *current* competitve threat to M$, it must price as if there was, because it must price against the *threat* of possible future competition.
3) Piracy helps to keep the prices down too - if M$ doesn't charge a sensible price then people will find ever more inventive ways to rip off the software to meet the chasm of demand at a lower cost.
* Diversity of platforms
Judging by the ratio of Intel boxes to everything else, this isn't really a significant economic advantage in terms of superiority over NT. It could be significant in future in terms of 'information appliances' provided Win-Tel doesn't use market muscle to penetrate these markets with pricing and marketing economies.
* Efficiency of execution (less hardware investment)
Perhaps under the bucket of diversity of hardware you could squeeze Linux onto that 16MHz 286 and thus embrace a wider market than NT. However with the aforementioned acceleration in technology it is hard to see where the value would be added in this, apart from helping users to continue using outdated technology.
I know my example is extreme but consider a 600MHz PIII to be equivalent to a 16MHz 286 in 2019. From this perspective it seems a little conservative!
Anyway, if I am arguing with a proper economist and I am speaking 100% rubbish at least I hope I added a little outside perspective! And perhaps an interesting flame thread!
Economics will never be an exact science