The BBC is cool. BBC radio over the internet is essential for an ex-pat in Brazil. Now 1-Xtra has joined The Archers on regular rotation here.

TODAY'S BEAT

0204 : Starts with lush, ponderous synth. But then the rapid offbeat snares speed the whole thing up. Off pitch clinking adds an unworldy sheen.

0203 : Another rain of tinkling bells. Over a froggy kind of bass. What could you do with it? Be creative.

You missed 'em : up to 0145

Last chance saloon :

0146 : A whole lunar ecology of gloopy sounds. The Clangers mooch about as desperate radios broadcast their last.

One day I may suddenly flip and think Cohen is up there in that pantheon of great songwriting geniuses. I know it could happen. But right now ...

TODAY'S BEAT

0202 : it's almost a full track. Long and lazy. Echoed percussion. Punctuated by rare bursts of beautiful synth

ILM is asking about Brazilian funk.. I'd like to know more too.

Ever since I was a child, I've always wanted to be a Bar DJ

RECENT BEATS

0200 : Yey! It's BeatBlog's 200th beat! "Fresh beats (nearly) everyday" is perhaps a bit of a misnomer as I've bene going more than a year, :-(

Still, this is a cracking bit of echoey, phased, paranoia

0199 : Starts with a swing, then income the strings ...

TODAY'S BEAT

0198 : Try to hear the stress on the dry little snares in this shower of metalic clunks, and it breaks the 4/4 symmetry of the kicks. The chiming rain never lets up though.

TODAY'S BEAT

0197 is storming. Download it and I defy you not to dance round the room crazily like I'm doing right now!

It's using my patented[1] "multiple, random, analog synth riff laziness"

Most people use their virtual analog synths like this :

• program a pattern,
  
• repeat lots of times,
  
• slowly and lovingly caress the filters, up and down, until you bring your synth orgasms of euphoric pleasure
  

Or maybe there are algorithms that fake the last move.

Well, it was great back in the days of Acid House (anyone remember "Electron" by "WildPlanet"?). But now it's become kind of cliched. (And I haven't figured out how to do this in Fruity Loops :-(.

So I like to bung in 3 or 4 random analog synth riffs, with slightly different settings. And then just throw them in semi-arbitrarily. One pattern might repeat, another might appear occasionally, sometimes several happen at one. I find this kind of thrilling. Instead of a uniform sound, you get sonic multitexturality, the kind of collision you get when an imaginative DJ is cutting and scratching different records together,


[1] only joking, but Creative Commonsed sounds clunky

ILM : What music do you listen to when coding?

Funny, I thought I had the Creative Commons logo on this page already.

Well, it's there now. Remember kids, you can use BeatBlog beats in your own compositions, multi-media presentations, or loop 'em and MC over them.

TODAY'S BEATS

0195 : More swinging. I do like a good 6/8 beat occasionally

0196 : Not sure what I make of this one. Bit of an insistent synth riff, kind of swamps everything. You could filter it. Or use for some psycho, paranoia.

Some interesting Exotic Scales

More thoughts on Folk vs. Pop

TODAY'S BEATS

0193 : Swingin' tribal toms, made luminous by distortion.

0194 : Some X-Files spookiness

Bad luck you missed 'em : 0131-0133 gone today.

Last chance : 0134 some interesting, delicately flanged, polite crashing. Hard to describe but worth catching before it goes

Today I'm also doing some Gbloink! maintainence.

TODAY'S BEATS

Yesterday's beat (0190) was so much fun that I fancied another piece of frenetic, distorted, rage . But somehow, the distortion / echo combination I used on 0191 seems to have got into some weird cancelation thing. The beat erodes to almost nothing. Didn't plan it, but it's kind of interesting. 0192 is one of those telephone thangs.

Notice BeatBlog has an RSS feed? Not for the trivial words. But to support Beats in RSS enclosures. The problem is, I haven't tested it yet. The XML looks OK, but I need to try it with some aggregators that support enclosures.

Anyone got ideas which ones do? My Radio Userland trial license expired before I got this working, so I'm still looking for something free or that I can try it out with.

If you've managed to get the RSS feed working and BeatBlog enclosures downloading, please tell me

TODAY'S BEATS

0190 is fast, distorted and furious. With a big crash of chiming, atonal guitar synth.

And hi to everyone who's now getting here redirected from the old URL. If you want, you can still go to the original BeatBlog page.