Drukqs Gear and Samples

[ZeroZeroZero]

Cool.  I'll have to pick up some wax.

[Bubba69]

Was the whole of Drukqs made using software/on a laptop? 

 

No. The fast tracks were on a laptop. Piano tracks on a piano, other tracks unknown.

[flacid]

 

Was the whole of Drukqs made using software/on a laptop? 

 

No. The fast tracks were on a laptop. Piano tracks on a piano, other tracks unknown.

 

 

Apologies, I mean't the non piano ones. Can imagine that the slower non piano tracks like Gwely Mernans were also made on a computer. 

[marf]

i doubt Gwely Mernans was laptop. probably evenide. also gwarek. the reverb is too good for some g3 powerbook. And you can hear the piano on gwarek. he cuts off the attack and uses it as an ambient sound

[Bubba69]

I doubt this is a tracker

 

 

especially going by the title he is talking about hardware. Could be making beats on the tracker and running through the EQ, but it's simple enough he could be using any kind of sampler, maybe RS7000, I know he's quite fond of that.

 

EDIT: nevermind this predates the rs7000

[ceiling]

 

 

would love ot hear more tracker music from Rich.. the tracker heavy RDJ LP And Druqks tracks are so classic and unique in his discography.  Would really love to hear more.  One of my favourite basslines of all time comes in around 45 seconds of Peek 824545201.  

I spent so long trying to re-create it with hardware.. I think its that desire to learn how something is made and then to learn how it was done and be able to re-create it, or a variation of it, is one of the main driving forces behind me making music.  Anyways, after months and months i figured i could get modulation like that with renoise with a lot of time and experimenting.  In the sequencer you get the ability to be able to enter custom values for the filter cutoff (or any parameter) per step and have it instantly jump to that setting giving a similar sound to the modulation in those basslines coming in and out.  But getting a call and response going on like rdj did in peek is a whole other pain and skill.    

I am really hoping he puts up some tracker/laptop era tracks to the store soon, was sad there didn't seem to be any in the sc dump  

I started a thread over on the gear discussion page ages ago about this exact sound. Was trying to figure it out myself, theres a similar sound in parts of 'Inkey' too. 

Care to divulge a bit more about your technique? I use renoise also and figured it obviously has a lot to do with automation of the cutoff and resonance but have always felt like somethings missing. 

 

I'd say it's something like the old tracker method of recording a filter sweep as one sample and playing with the sample offset command; this was the best way of creating interesting tonal variation back in the days when trackers were entirely sample-based with no synths. Using the Sxx command in Renoise is the way to go:

C-5 02 .. .. S10

F-5 02 .. .. S50

D-4 02 .. .. S20

C-4 02 .. .. SF0

 

etc etc

 

It was also common to have different instruments using similar samples and switch between them, which was good for per-note variation using single cycle waves.

 

Of course with Renoise now a lot of this stuff can be done using the graph style automation lanes and VSTi settings, but there's a certain magic/precision to using samples and commands. I still render all of the lead sounds in my prog tracks to samples and use the Renoise commands to add expression.

 

you think RDJ album was a tracker?

I think so too, it's so precise that I reckon it would have taken years to sequence any other way, then again it is RDJ so who knows what tricks he had up his sleeve in those days.. plus he says that everything was done in software for that album, was there anything else in 1995/1996 that could use samples in such a way apart from trackers? I started using trackers in 1997 and didn't know of anything else capable of working with samples so quickly other than sequencing external samplers.. then again I was 13 and didn't really know much about making electronic music :P

 

Do you mean applying a filter sweep to any given sample and printing that off or literally just the sound of a filter sweep? 

 

I'm trying to wrap my head around how you get from chopping up a filter sweep into something like on 'inkey$'? 

[modey]

Yeah, applying the filter sweep to the sound, then playing it from different start points. 

 

Also possibly rendering several versions of a synth sound with different levels of cutoff and switching between them could work. 

 

As for inkey$, yeah, it does sound like several rendered versions, and some samples with sweeps as well. I can't think of an example of any tracker music that uses that technique at the moment, but someday I may be able to put something together that sounds similar.

 

Who knows though, he could have sequenced it straight in a tracker and then rendered each individual track out later and applied filters/effects to each stem; it certainly sounds like some of the room reverb etc was applied later. I did this a bit in the late 90s/early 2000s, back before live control of stuff like that was viable/possible with the processing power of my computers..

[Lane Visitor]

Been listening to Drukqs a lot lately. I find it really calming and peaceful, esp while driving.

[Ragnar]

Occam's Razor, it sounds kind of snares-y so it's a Tracker. Also using a tracker was kind of common knowledge back then, there's videos of Prodigy songs and stuff whether it's a recreation or not. Just CPU-lite way of making music on a PC in general

 

also though, if Ziggomatic is done on a tracker that's kind of one impressive acidy synth he's got going. Love good acid stuff that somehow came at that sound without use of a 303. Some Streets of Rage II music and there's not even a filter going on on the Genesis? what the heck

[ZoeB]

I'm pretty sure The Prodigy's demotape was made purely on a Roland W-30 sampling workstation, so like a tracker only without the interface, with a handy built-in keyboard, and not completely quantised.  Then for the first few albums, Liam Howlett got a bunch of synths and sound modules (Jupiter 8, Alpha Juno as heard on that famous Charly remix, U-220 for strings and piano, etc), but still sequenced them all on a W-30.  So similar to tracking, but less quantised, and eventually controlling other instruments over MIDI.  (On a side note, Impulse Tracker can do this too, as well as work with a controller keyboard, having full MIDI I/O, but I doubt many people actually did this, although it was kinda fun.)

 

It's interesting how people can get kinda cornered into a particular setup.  Look at Fatboy Slim and his Atari ST and Akai samplers.  That's another setup quite similar to tracking, but not quite.  Also Mr. Oizo.

 

A few tracker musicians went on to become working musicians, and a few working musicians have setups comparable to tracking, but aside from Drukqs (and I still suspect the Richard D. James album), I've never heard of anyone being paid for work created in a tracker itself.

[ZoeB]

As for the Mega Drive, it's got one PCM channel and five FM channels, all monophonic.  That's it.  All digital, and no subtractive synthesis.  The Streets of Rage series' emulation of house music is very impressive.

[mcbpete]

A few tracker musicians went on to become working musicians, and a few working musicians have setups comparable to tracking, but aside from Drukqs (and I still suspect the Richard D. James album), I've never heard of anyone being paid for work created in a tracker itself.

Brothomstates was (is?) a bit of a tracker-head, so Claro and Qtio might have some tracker created goodies on it (possibly!)

 

 

[Lane Visitor]

As for the Mega Drive, it's got one PCM channel and five FM channels, all monophonic. That's it. All digital, and no subtractive synthesis. The Streets of Rage series' emulation of house music is very impressive.

YES, I thought the same thing about the Streets of Rage score- smooth tones and transients for such a repeative genre in fm/pcm, truly not easy to achieve, esp for early 90s brittle digital.

[perunamuusi]

Isn't that bit in inkey$ just any sequencer, a synth with key tracking on the filter and some additional knob tweak. Why it have to be some cray cray heckadecimal biznizz?

[BCM]

Because people are fucking idiots.

[Ragnar]

A few tracker musicians went on to become working musicians, and a few working musicians have setups comparable to tracking, but aside from Drukqs (and I still suspect the Richard D. James album), I've never heard of anyone being paid for work created in a tracker itself.

 

wait really? Venetian Snares? Or do you mean because snares' sounds are probably created externally, with the behemoth synth he's got

[theburglar]

 

A few tracker musicians went on to become working musicians, and a few working musicians have setups comparable to tracking, but aside from Drukqs (and I still suspect the Richard D. James album), I've never heard of anyone being paid for work created in a tracker itself.

wait really? Venetian Snares? Or do you mean because snares' sounds are probably created externally, with the behemoth synth he's got

Loads of people have been paid for work created in a tracker. A few of us still are.

[modey]

I've never heard of anyone being paid for work created in a tracker itself.

Pretty much all of the Epic Games (as well as Team17 and many other developers) soundtracks in the 90s were made with trackers. This includes the first Unreal/Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex games. A lot of the Amiga demoscene musicians went on to paid work in games, which were made in trackers (and even stayed in tracker formats within the games in most cases) up until the early 2000s when it became more common to have fully rendered WAV/MP3/etc soundtracks in games.

 

Autechre have used Renoise and Sunvox for a few tracks, according to the AAA thread.. and the aforementioned Snares and Brothomstates. Shit, even I've been paid for music I made in a tracker :P

[modey]

Isn't that bit in inkey$ just any sequencer, a synth with key tracking on the filter and some additional knob tweak. Why it have to be some cray cray heckadecimal biznizz?

 

 

Because people are fucking idiots.

lol

 

it's well known he was using software at that point, the logical conclusion is that he sampled a bunch of synth sounds and arranged them in a tracker, which was at the time one of the few ways to actually make music using samples in software

[GetSquirrely]

 

I've never heard of anyone being paid for work created in a tracker itself.

Pretty much all of the Epic Games (as well as Team17 and many other developers) soundtracks in the 90s were made with trackers. This includes the first Unreal/Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex games. A lot of the Amiga demoscene musicians went on to paid work in games, which were made in trackers (and even stayed in tracker formats within the games in most cases) up until the early 2000s when it became more common to have fully rendered WAV/MP3/etc soundtracks in games.

 

Autechre have used Renoise and Sunvox for a few tracks, according to the AAA thread.. and the aforementioned Snares and Brothomstates. Shit, even I've been paid for music I made in a tracker :P

 

dont forget all the junglists still rinsing their amigas 

[modey]

Absolutely. And the chip scene touring the world using trackers on Amiga, Gameboy, Atari, C64 etc.. though that doesn't make as much money lol :P

[killabyte11]

Most jungle/drum & bass producers used an Atari 1040st running cubase or logic. Like so...

 

 

 

 

[killabyte11]

To answer the original post, what was used on Drukqs? - A computer and early software. And for that reason I tend to agree with what one person said in this discussion - https://www.reddit.com/r/aphextwin/comments/8jgzo1/drukqs_thread_like_it_or_hate_it_why/

 

 

"I like this album for its compositions, however, piano tracks excepted, compared to ICBYD and SAW2, I don't think this album "sounds" very good, even though it's obviously technically well mixed. Now I'm pretty sure there's a lot of analog gear involved anyways, but back in 2001 I thought the album sounded very digital and flat (though very crisp)."

[killabyte11]

re:  would like to add.....jungle/drum & bass producers used an Atari 1040st running cubase or logic sequencing E-MU EIV series samplers or Akai S series samplers and very little else.  Maybe one synth but everything was made almost exclusively with samples.

[marf]

He said on his soundcloud it was done with player pro (tracker) aside from the piano tracks