TW #87–#97 — Music Theory: A Modern Approach (The Modsquad, seven parts)
This is satire, the sequel to the chiptune "seminar" of #77–#81 (s-tw077-chip-off-the-block): fake gear lists ("$450 TB-202", a Speak & Spell), "musical DNA", Elvis, juggling raves, a prison inmate given impulse-tracker, a "circle of fifths" that labels G–B–D "D Majour", and a running gag in which the new member Bottlehead is expelled (#94) and "killed" (#97). It is summarised as one source. The parts announce 5, then 6, 8 and 9 instalments; seven appeared in traxweekly between 30 January and 8 May 1997, signed "(c) 1997 FuNkY MoDSQuaD iNC" from #92. Read nothing here as fact unless listed under usable content; the wiki cites the series only for those items.
Contents by part#
- #87 (part 1) — Analogue vs. digital ("Go Analogue. Go Mod Edit."); "lead progressions"; a nappy stuffed cat; groove interactivity; making samples with a $6,000 gear chain.
- #88 (part 2) — Mexican 909-and-accordion dance music as a model for genre mixing ("mixto"); musical DNA (A C G T mapped to notes); a MIDI-to-keyboard-buffer "patch"; joke scales ("C Fucked Minor"); Wave vs. necros — groove vs. emotion; juggling raves; three "classic drumbeats".
- #89 (part 3) — the Wienerschnitzel-whistle story; "understanding waves" (triangle, sawtooth, square described; the sine "impossible to show in ascii"); communism = ftp.cdrom.com as the scene's "big hole in the ground"; a QBasic program that writes a 256-byte "acid hit" sample; tracking in prison; "chord proggies"; instrument-name "lies".
- #92 (part 4) — Elvis; building a Paia 8-band vocoder kit (a mock review); the "firestarter" disease; a Stratocaster-and-crack parable; inspiration outdoors; light sources (put a lampshade on it).
- #93 (part 5) — "poetry" (the Samurai Pizza Cats theme); "I heard a dope beat" — drum sampling and two full six-line patterns; "groove" with a track-by-track description of an N.W.A. song; bad nursery rhymes; pawn-shop haggling; a TV predator.
- #94 (part 6) — a form analysis of Purple Motion's Inside Out (.s3m) by a member who had just started theory lessons (it calls him "the late Purple Motion" — part of the joke, not a fact).
- #97 (part 7) — guest "The Tracking Music Theery" by ZeroCool (18 909 rips incl. "the infamous woodblock", a four-channel pattern with
h99,x00/xaa/xff,e08); Van Gogh, Bach and Necros; the Wurlitzer electric piano; the "circle of fifths"; sampling with a ring modulator; Rocky; a drive-thru; Schroeder's piano.
Usable content (the few real ideas)#
- Interlocking drum lines (#87): kick on every 4th step and a "rez hit" on the same steps sound fine separately but clash; offset the hit by two steps (
B---B---against--R---R-) so they "fit together like teeth in a zipper"; then interlock four lines (kick, rez, snare, cymbal on successive steps). - Three "classic drumbeats" (#88), each 64 sixteenth steps, written as one string (B kick, S snare, H hihat, R ride) and then spread over three channels: (1)
BHHHSHHHBHHHSHHS…— kick on 0 and 8, snare on 4, 12 and 15, hats between; (2)BHRHBHRH…— kick 0 4 8 12, ride 2 6 10 14, hat on odd steps; (3)BHHHSHBSBSBHSHSS…— a busy kick/snare alternation. Advice: "Reverse them, change the hihat to a crash cymbal or something. Swap the bass and snare. Mix in bits of other beats." - Drum sampling (#93): get good drums — sample drum machines in a pawn shop or real drums; listen closely to commercial drum loops; the main beat of a loop is often a tambourine; sample combinations (kick followed by snare in one sample) — nearly the same as playing them with NNA continue in Impulse Tracker "but then you lose all the subharmonics and resounding frequencies as the two waveforms interact" (see new-note-actions); use a splash rather than a crash; two six-line patterns (kick, tambourine
TTt-TTt-TTt-Tt-T…, snare, open hat, ride, cymbal); render the pattern to a sample, add "a shitload of REVERB" in Sound Forge, Cool Edit or GoldWave, then record to tape and resample "for that analog noise feel". - "Lead progression" (#87): sketch a slow guide line that the lead circles "never straying more than three half-notes from the original note", track it, then delete the channel (in a 4-channel tracker put it in the drum channel until the end).
- Chord progressions by root motion (#89): write the roots first (c – a# – g – g# – f – d#), then move the other chord tones "in the same way" (d# – c – a# – a# – g – f) — the roots become the "melody" of the progression.
- Form analysis of Inside Out (#94): descending three-note riff over the "classic Purple Motion noise track" → quiet hihat as a precursor → chords with syncopated kicks → drums in, austere verse melody echoing the riff → crescendo, drums stop, two low bass notes → chorus, chords turn major, a chip-sample melody → a placeholder verse → chorus again, then again "in a higher key" → repetitive chordal bridge with a new melody → loop.
- Waveforms as samples (#89, beneath the jokes): plot a waveform on graph paper and enter it into fasttracker-2's sampler; the QBasic listing does write a real 8-bit unsigned 256-byte-per-cycle "acid" sample with decaying peaks (see chip-samples for the sincere version from #77–#78).
- Electric piano tone (#97): the Wurlitzer's hammer strikes the reed about a third of the way down and the pickup sits at an angle, both adding odd harmonics — otherwise it would be "a decaying sine wave".
Notable quotes#
- "Analogue is good. Digital is bad. … Go Analogue. Go Mod Edit."
- "If you can get your lines to interact like that, you know your song is gonna make them groove out on the dance floor."
- "Necros does it." (the whole argument for the circle of fifths)
Relevance#
Scene humour with a few real drum-programming and arrangement ideas; also documents the Modsquad's 1997 line-up. Everything else is a joke and must not be cited as fact.
Pages touched#
the-modsquad, rhythm-and-groove, chord-progressions, arrangement, melody-writing; notes for instrument-design, new-note-actions, chip-samples, necros.