Electronic rock music (completely synth)

Pug Fuglies · Joined: Jul 02, 2008 Posts: 7 Location: Dallas, Texas

Many groups and projects have combined aggressive rock music with electronic drums and synths, often with an electronica edge to give it a dancy or poppy feel.

However, in some of my music, the attempt is to use only synths and step sequencing, in attempt to emulate standard rock/metal instrumentals: bass, guitar, and drums.

Complex effects such as distortion, feedback, crackling, harmonics, string bending are all synthesized as well.

Most of the opinions I've received from this style of "electronic rock" was from the death metal and overall extreme metal crowd. Their reaction was often of disinterest, seeing it as a weak emulation of real instruments.

In this setting, most of the musicians here, I'm assuming, not heavily involved in the extreme metal scene. I'd like to contrast the responses by seeing how it's judged here. If this seems like a blatant plug, someone can call me out on it and I'll hault the experiment.

I'll provide specific links for the best examples of this style.

Inventor · Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 6:24 pm Post subject:

I create electronic music that simulates guitars and drums using the Guitar Lab portion of my ChucK Lab software. I wrote it myself in the ChucK programming language with some help from kijjaz, who created the guitar and drum models. It sounds great, or most people say it does. I like it very much. Please post an example of your work, I'd like to hear it. Here is an example of my work:

http://www.freedomodds.com/music/songs/Conspiracy.mp3

note: it starts out with vocals only, then the guitar kicks in after a little while and plays for the rest of the song. Actually it's two guitars together. Cheers!

Pug Fuglies · Joined: Jul 02, 2008 Posts: 7 Location: Dallas, Texas

Inventor, thanks for taking interest. There was a funny Ben Stein kind of delivery with the vocals. I gathered a lot of blue and cyan imagery from the guitars.

This is a link to a Doom tribute I wrote.
http://media.putfile.com/pug-fuglies---visplane-overflow

Right away it's apparent that I favor dissonance and metal guitar work. No vocals on this one (or any of my tunes).

This song is more in a frantic black/death metal style, with a pretty nice emulation of harmonics in a few parts.
http://media.putfile.com/pug-fuglies---devil-noise

Inventor · Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject:

HI Pug, I couldn't get either song to play. When I mucked with the controls it gave me a popup error. Is there some other hosting that you can do, or just post a file if its small enough? You have a 20 MB quota for uploaded files.

Pug Fuglies · Joined: Jul 02, 2008 Posts: 7 Location: Dallas, Texas

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=832334

Visit this link. "The Enemy is Me" and "Visplane Overflow" are the two examples I have set up right now.

Inventor · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:11 pm Post subject:

Yeahhh, dude, Yeahhh! While "The Enemy is Me" lacked an introduction, it's hard-jamming rock more than made up for it, but the real treat was "Visplane Overview" I thought the machine gunner video game intro worked instead of being corny and the video game theme mixed with the high-pitched playing of the lead guitar at the base of the neck like the heavy metal rockers do, plus the hard grinding sound of it all made me want to crank up the volume which I did! Excellent music, man - can you email me Visplane Overview as an mp3 for my personal iTunes collection, I promise not to distribute it. Your music rocks! I thought I was gonna impress YOU with MY electronic guitar but instead it is the OTHER way around. You rock, Pug! More! More!

dewdrop_world

Inventor

Kassen

Inventor

altemark · Joined: May 02, 2007 Posts: 16 Location: haninge

add (n) to x?
the locust?
godflesh?

meshuggah uses programmed computer drums nowadays and used to have a nord micromodular i think

Kassen

Inventor · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 7:43 am Post subject:

Cool, you met Amy, eh? I almost bought some of her music on iTunes, but my budget is so tight. Perhaps next month. If she wanted to use ChucK, I'd write her all the free software she wanted if only to promote ChucK a bit. Maybe get some free recordings of Amy for trade?

Back to Pug, I listened to some more of his songs and I must say that "Visplane Overflow" remains my favorite by far. It is an excellent tribute to DOOM. Pug, did you use DOOM sounds in it besides the intro shotgun and machine gun sequence? Maybe that is what I am reacting to cause I used to be a DOOM/Quake player. Man, I remember the first time I used the double-barrel shotgun in DOOM, what a sense of power and destruction it conveyed! Scary that a peace-loving liberal like me enjoyed that so much!

Kassen · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 7:55 am Post subject:

Oh, I didn't want to promote anything, I just thought it was silly to get stuck over something as simple as a few buffers for looping audio. I think she wanted to stick to Logic though.

Doesn't Amy have tracks on her Myspace? I had a CD copy to use on some internet radio thingy but I'm not sure where I left it.

Inventor · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 8:09 am Post subject:

Ah, yes, four tunes of hers on MySpace, I'm listening to them now. Unfortunately the download has been disabled, but that's OK, I can play them just as well from MySpace. Kewl, thanks Kassen.

Rykhaard · Joined: Sep 02, 2007 Posts: 1290 Location: Canada

Pug Fuglies · Joined: Jul 02, 2008 Posts: 7 Location: Dallas, Texas

Rykhaard, thanks for the compliments! FL Studio's "FL Slayer" is responsible for the guitar sound, which is then combined with two separate amp plug-ins which add several layers of crackle, fuzz and distortion.

I come from an extreme metal background, so death metal, black metal, thrash, speed metal, grindcore, doom metal, and sometimes traditional heavy metal make their way into my music.

I thought your observations about King Crimson and classical music were interesting, as I actually employ specific scales and keys in most of my music. I believe theory is very important, even though a lot of metal is chromatic or has ambiguous tonality.

To Inventor, I recorded a small play session from Doom to create the intro, then another in the slow "breakdown" section, synching up the shotgun with the snare. I've been a big Doom fan for about 14 years, so it was an important song for me to compose.

smueske · Joined: May 02, 2007 Posts: 98 Location: Minnesota, USA

I'm actually really interested in this topic, but for probably a different reason. I started out playing in progressive metal bands back in the 80's and 90's. I started playing electronica about five years ago and now I'm interested in hybridizing different genres (I sort of hate saying it like that but it seems that genre is such an identifying characteristic that it's hard to avoid). Rather than avoid using guitars, I'm thinking of chopping up, sequencing and resampling passages that I first record with guitar. The problem I have is that when something is played it automatically fits into a "heavy genre" and as Pug has already mentioned, there seems to be an extreme distaste for electronica in some metal quarters (not always the case, but more often than not). So I'm thinking of approaching more from a creative mixing and synthesis approach rather than how to emulate a sound with another sound (not that I think that is wrong). With the advent of digital sound and manipulation it seems to me that just about anything is possible with enough thought, experiment, and creativity.

Wayne Higgins · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 6:07 am Post subject:

Welcome to the group. I've been told at "another forum" that I don't shut up about myself, but I just can't hold back.

Mysite
http://www.oenyaw.com

For a good sample of my music, go to
http://www.virb.com/oenyaw

Nothing but electric guitar recorded on a home computer.

ttfn
and welcome to the group

solyaris · Joined: Jun 02, 2005 Posts: 49 Location: Genova, Italy

blue hell · Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:57 am Post subject:

I moved this topic to composition, for the reason why please read : http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-18732.html

GaryRea · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:43 pm Post subject:

So, what do you guys think of sample-based music, as opposed to synths? In most of what I do, I use sampled instruments or, at least, high quality electronic emulations of them. If, on the other hand, I feel like making purely electronic music, I opt for software synths. Sometimes, I'll mix the two. I got the impression, from all the discussions of analog hardware here, that most of you are synth purists and would eschew sample-playback instruments.

Inventor · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:23 pm Post subject:

Hi Gary, samples are fine with me. Whatever gets you the sound you want is a good thing, I don't care if you get it by poking a porcupine with a stick (not recommended). I'm a ChucKist and ChucK has sample playback ability. The only time i've used samples is to make Betty, the voice of the computer menu system for one of my guitar effects programs. It worked out just fine.

GaryRea · Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 6:02 am Post subject:

Not being familiar with ChucK, I had to look it up. I'm now tempted to equate "ChucKist" with masochist. Wink

Seems like the hard way to make music, to me. But then, to a dyscalculic, like me, anything using symbolic logic would be.

So, how does ChucK use samples? Is it a matter of inserting the sample's source code or something like that? I have no idea what you're doing.

Gary

Inventor · Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 6:35 am Post subject:

Haha, ChucKing is not masochism, it is joy! For someone like myself who has been programming for fun, school, and career all his life, the concept of using a programming language to do something like make music is only natural. It's not for everybody. If the thought of computer programming sends a chill down your spine, then you're not likely to do well with ChucK or any of his friends like SuperCollider or CSound.

To handle samplpes, ChucK has a UGen called LISa (for Live Sampling). You hook up a Lisa, then give it commands like read in this sample or play it backwards or whatever. It's quite useful. In addition to LiSa there is Wvin, which just reads in one sample. So there is more than one way to ChucK a cat, so to speak.