Discussion board for (electronic) musicians? Also, synthetic drum tracks

Cafe Society
1

I am looking for a place to hook up with other electronica artists. Someplace to discuss the latest synths and effects, audio apps, exchange samples, Max/MSP scripts, etc.

I am asking in general, but my question is fueled by a problem that’s been burning me lately. I only recently got into electronic music production, and I would like to produce synthesized drum tracks out of oscillators, filters and envelopes; I’m not interested in drum machines driven by either drum samples or prefab beat components; I’m not interested in emulating acoustic instruments.

Apparat and Mouse on Mars are examples of the kind of artists who synthesize their own beats; they typically have an organic sound where the beats sound less like individual little drum beats but more like a scattering of metallic grains that click, swirl, flare, congeal, stretch and scream.

Using Absynth I can use an oscillator, paint envelopes shaping the “beat”, and package this into a single note that covers the length of the sequence, but this seems extremely cumbersome.

2

Hm, I don’t know Absynth, but it seems like it would be more straightforward to use a sequencer and just have one envelope to cover one ‘hit’ on whatever tone you’ve got, and then plug it into the sequencer as appropriate, as opposed to what it sounds like you’re doing, which is using one giant amp envelope to turn a sound on and off over the length of a song.

3

Not an answer to your question, but if you are perchance using Mac OS X, I highly recommend the OSXAudio forums. There are lots of polls and how to threads, and there are some pretty prominent figures in the music software industry that post there regularly.

4

I’m on Windows, but I’ll take a look anyway. Thanks.