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Sep 01, 2010
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Ten years. That’s how long I’ve been writing the Dance column for Keyboard. It has enabled so much for me—from meeting heroes,
to receiving letters thanking me for my insights, to compiling dozens of columns for my book, The
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Sep 01, 2010
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“This is what I wanted,” beams the multiple Grammy-winning mix
engineer from amidst the glow of his NASA-sized collection of vintage outboard
gear at Electric Lady Studios. “I wanted a job where I’m totally responsible
for my
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Sep 01, 2010
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Most folks think of ’80s-vintage Madonna and remember the hair, rubber bracelets, and attire that spawned a generation of dress-alikes. Listen to the Material Girl’s early hits, though, and you’ll find some pretty sweet vintage
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Aug 01, 2010
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Last month, we learned how to create dramatic pitch rises using
soft synths. This time, we’ll add rises to audio from beatboxes or
drum loops. Drums that rise? Hell, yeah! This is a fantastic trick for
constantly increasing
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Aug 01, 2010
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Vince Clarke has cemented his place as a legend of synth pop. In the ’80s, he penned numerous hits with Depeche Mode prior to
forming smash duo Yaz with singer Alison Moyet. Yaz disbanded after just two albums, but Vince
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Aug 01, 2010
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For your playback duties with Mariah Carey, are you still touring with the two G5 Macs,
multiple MOTU HD192 interfaces, and the 72 x 24 Clair Brothers audio switcher?
I’m considering just carrying laptops on tour. What do you
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Jul 01, 2010
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Herbie Hancock’s music has traversed many paths over the
years, but in the early ’70s, the album Head Hunters set the standard
for jazz-funk fusion. Using a combination of Clavinet, Rhodes
electric piano, and ARP synth, Head
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Jul 01, 2010
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On Kurzweil’s PC3 series synths, a layer of a sound program can have up to four “units” of DSP—measures of how hard the chips
work to create sound. You can spend DSP units on a modeled analog oscillator, a filter, or other
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Jul 01, 2010
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For dance floor mayhem, one of the most dramatic, hands-in-the-air effects is “the rise,” which usually happens after a big breakdown in
your track. Often starting quite low, then rising in pitch over the course of eight, 16, or
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Jun 01, 2010
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Who could forget the suit-and-tie clad Robert Palmer surrounded by
a “band” of five vapid models obviously only pretending to play? Considering
the small fortunes spent on videos then, “Addicted to Love”
was cheap, simple, and
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Jun 01, 2010
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Killer synth riffs and slammin’ drums are key components of dance tracks, but if you want fans to wonder, “How was that sound created?” you can get a lot of mileage from adding ambiences. Not as in “Brian Eno” washy drones, but
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May 01, 2010
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Mixing in a home studio can be
hazardous to your music. Over the past
few years, I’ve finished and mixed a number
of synth instrumentals, but I never took
the essential step of burning them to a CD
and listening to them on
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May 01, 2010
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Duran Duran were the poster children
of the ’80s with a string of MTV-era hits that
still rock the clubs today. Nick Rhodes’ mix
of swirling atmospherics and percolating
arpeggios went a long way toward establishing
the
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Apr 28, 2010
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Starting in the underground and now
infecting hip-hop and mainstream pop, the genre
called electro combines elements of greasy funk and
grimy synths. This booty-shaking, floor-stomping
sound is one reason that artists like
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Apr 01, 2010
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Last year, I became fond of a popular
techno technique for keeping a simple,
repetitive riff interesting: using dramatic
delays as the part evolves over the course
of a track.
This trick is so effective that it can be
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