Re: Wild SpeKulTion (tm)

[jsd@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (Public Enemy)]

>Really-From: nrc@cbema.att.com (Neal R Caldwell, Ii)
>
>Actually I'm quite relieved.  No drive by shootings, no fire bombings
>and no lynchings.  Maybe I just haven't allowed enough time for everyone 
>to recover from blasphemy induced comas.  

Could be that everybody's out buying ivy and roses for their KaTemas
parties, too...

In response to some comments of mine, you said:

>You may be right about this.   I still don't think the percussion
>has the same inspired quality in it's rythmic patterns as many of her
>previous works but even those tracks with potential suffer from just
>the sort of lifeless drum sounds that you mention.

Yeah, well, you'd be surprised how effective a simple drum pattern can
be with the proper sounds.  I *don't* think that the percussion
programs are anything world-class, either - I'm just saying that
there's at least two places where the ball could have been dropped.

>> reverbed noises that have become pop "power ballad" staples.  A real
>> lacklustre bunch, and given that Kate has said she's relying mainly on
>> factory patches, I think we know where the real problem lies.
>
>Have factory patches gotten so good that Kate is willing to use them
>so widely?  Is someone <ahem> telling her that they sound just fine?

The answer to your first question is "yes, in comparison to those
available to her for _TD_ and _HoL_."  The Fairlight was never really
revered for its sterling sound quality, particularly in its model II
and IIx incarnations.  Now that the Fairlight III is available (which
is what Kate had for _TSW_), the sound quality has improved by light
years.  Listen to the flute sounds and compare them against the breath
samples on something like "All The Love" - alias city!  (aliasing is
that weird kind of digital noise that samples exhibit when they are
played out of their range).  In fact, factory sounds CAN be fine, but
I don't think Kate picked a particularly inspired batch, really.
Compare the incredibly bland and typical snares on _TSW_ to those
HUGE, brain damaging tom toms on _TD_, f'rinstance.  This isn't a fair
comparison, since the toms were played live on _TD_ and not sampled,
but it illustrates how Kate has steered away from sounds with
character and guts in favor of wimpy presets.  Love-Hound Larry Deluca
has at least two disks full of drum sounds with much more character
than those TSW snares.

>I wrote off those cheesy horns in _Ken_ because it was obviously a 
>"quicky" but would it really take that much time to get a better sound 
>than that?   (Thanks for sending that review along).

Tough question.  The cheesy horns might owe some of their cheese
factor to the fact that Kate is just playing standard chords on them,
whereas most horn arrangements have a little more to them than that.
To get a convincing sequenced horn arrangement is actually a difficult
kind of task, because you don't want to just use one sound for the
whole thing - real trumpeters play fast attacks, slow crescendos,
whatever, and you need to use different samples for each kind of note.

But, there are also probably better sounds available - I know the
Synclavier library has some great punchy horn shots, and horns are one
of the easiest sounds to synthesise convincingly, even...  I'd just
put it down to the fact that the song was a quickie, and a joke
quickie at that.  Too bad it's one of the best things to come out of
the TSW sessions! 

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