[Firestarter]

OK I have to confess.... You see sometimes I try to look like I know Shit about Techno and all but really......I KNOW NOTHING!!!

Yeah NOTHING!

I don't even know what kind of Music is Techno cause there are so many other genres that are alike.

So I would like to know the meanings of.... What is:

Explain me what instruments are used in these genres.
Techno -
Electronica -
Trance-
Breakbeat-
Rave-
Dance-

What is:

Hz's -
Bits -

Mono -
Stereo -

[techno4yourhead]

Firstly it dont matter wot instruments are used, that does not determine genre.

Techno is dark, usually hard and fairly minimalist.  Check Ritchie Hawtins DEX FX + 909 albums, or anythin by Jeff Mills.

Electronica is not a music type, it is a name made up by American journalists to describe music they know nothing about.

Trance is long progressive blissed out choons, like anythin on Platipus label.  Or stuff Like BT or Paul Van Dyk.

Breakbeat is like speeded up Hiphop.

A rave is a big party.

Dance is what you do there.

Hz is the number of waves or cycles a sound makes per second, the higher the number the higher the sound.  Bass frequencies have very long waves so don't have as many cycles per sec.

Bits are little packages of info, the more there are the better quality the sound.

Mono is a single signal and Stereo is two, one left and one right.

That any use to ya?

[Ekko]

That's pretty much it.

Maybe understanding what frequency means (which is measured in Hz) will be more easy if you picture a vibration (think of a sine-wave) that starts off with high peeks and deep valleys. And from the beginning on, it constantly goes downwards, the peeks fall, the valleys rise, it gets more even.
This loudness-curve is called amplitude. The volume of the frequency, to name it.

Okay, I got a bit off here, that was, as I wrote, the amplitude of an audiosignal.

Hz itself describes, as Techno4yourhead explained, the number of vibrations the signal has - per second.
A high tone (take a birds chirilihii, for example):
Imagine the sine-wave from above, but more tightened together. The peeks and valleys are more close to each other
and therefore the ferquency is higher. YOu've got more oscillations per second, than -let's say- a starting car.
The more oscillations you got, the higher the sound.

A common dance-track-bass sometimes even reaches into meter-range, which would explain why you can feel it in your stomach. It rumbles.

Cheers,
Ekko

[Firestarter]

Hey Ekko that Stomach thing got me Interested!!! Sometimes it happens to me! When I first listened to Narayan last september (I haven't heard the track for 3 years!!!) i had that thing in my stomach is that it? Well It's like very excited feeling how do you call it Ekko?


And I still don't understand Wha the fuck is Electronica supposed to mean? I thought It's what prodigy is all about?

More explanation:

Electronica:
Techno:          

Which one of those is Prodigy

[techno4yourhead]

Neither really.
Though some of theor tracks could b classed as techno ie- Rhythm Of Life, Full Throttle, Speedway, The Heat The Energy to name some.

[Ekko]

For those music-category-questions you better hook up with
t4yh or anyone, I don't even try to sort all that stuff out anymore.
Also it makes not much sense to pigeonhole music, that's just mainly of use for reporters or the media.
But I have one: As mentioned above, those tracks could be seen as Tekkno (dunno if I'm right, but I think 'Techno' is the overall name for the music. The original idea was to describe the hardness of the music with the number of K's in the word Tekkno which again is used for music that uses those 4 to the floor beats. If you have that mad Gabba-stuff you might wanna write it Tekkkno.)
Just say Tekkno to everything that has 4/4 beats and everything will be good.

Mhm, you seem to mean the *feeling* by saying "in my stomach", don'tya?
The acoustical stomach-thing is provided by a strong bass-sound. Let's take an example. I'll use a washing-machine here, since it's the first machine that came to my mind that rotates slow at the start and then speeds up later on.
Dull, but nevermind.
So you put your hand on the machine when it starts to sling
all the clothes around. It's slow at the beginning and you feel the power this evil machine possesses. The rotations are slow but heavy in a way and you can see the machine totter a little bit.
(I really hope we have about the same shitty washingmashines.)
But when the machine goes fast, you sometimes barely see the vibrations because they are like smaller but faster.
When you now touch it, you might notice that the vibrations aren't as heavy as before but therefor you have more of them in the same time.

And frequency behaves equal, it's high, you can't feel (physically) too much anymore, but hear it quite well.
A great part of what we sort the bassy-frequencys to, is actually felt over your bones. This is due to the fact that your real bones are bigger than the small ones you've got in your ear, so they resonate more. Bass always sounds very warm because of the low oscillations, it's a slow sound if you want. You might say now, that you can remember a track that has a non-warm but more evil bass or something, but that is just due to a high range of overtones (the ones that make it melodic), which might be distorted or somehow made 'evil'. The bass-sound itself (musically mostly everything that's under 80Hz) is always warm and round. It's the basses character.

The reason why you can really FEEL it in your stomach is, that
it vibrates slow but with pressure in the air.
This air movement reaches your body and the biggest resonance-area it hits is the torso, because of the high amount of water in the organs (-water is a better sonic-carrier than air).

Fortunately we don't have real water in our eyeballs but some slimy stuff, for we would feel bass in the eyes, uha.

Greetings,
Ekko

[Firestarter]

How old are you, Ekko?

And in the synthesizer topic those are English money in dollars how much would that Fader cost?

[Ekko]

How old are you, Ekko?

Why you wanna know that?
You could have a look at the members page to find out.

And in the synthesizer topic those are English money in dollars how much would that Fader cost?

Fader? Do you mean that Lexicon Reverb?
I guess you are relating this to the Narayan-sound we talked about. Well, don't forget that, to build the sound itself, you'll need a synthie at first (some software thingie should do) before that machine would be of some use for you.
Well, 15.000 Euro would be about 13.230 US Dollars, so you might save quite a while. And if you wanna get that delay (oh, I think THAT is what you meant!), you should first find out which one you wanna buy. There are loads of good delays out there. I would recommend a software delay, easy, cheap, good. The Ohmboys delay is superb, if you ask me.

[Firestarter]

Hey Ekko there is a smooth electronic rip in Narayan.... ( 6:17 - 6:19) Well It's actually everywhere throughout the song but you can hear it more clearly. How does Liam makes that sound?.....is it a 'synth' again?

[Ekko]

Might be a synth or a sample.

You can hardly say it's the one or another, synthesizer and sampler are somewhat equal, both use certain editing methods. The difference is the soundsource, a sampler takes samples, sounds that already exist and a synth takes an oscillation or a wave.

In this case, I'd guess it's a synthie.
Some distortion on it - ready

[kenzie]

yo if you had to classify THE PRODIGY into one of those groups you explained what would u say - i'd say breakbeats ...mixed with some of that shit....and that other stuff....and sum rock influences....and what what about hmmmm....it realyy is hard classifying 'dem heroes of mine....feck i'm bored

[Ekko]

feck i'm bored ::)

Are you hanging around at your internet-cafe-thingie once again...?

Man, that must be terrible!  ;D

I don't want to pigeonhole them. The next album will be different any way, so why make any description now?
It's just good music.

[kenzie]

yep...good comment, but like i'm inpatient and stuff...but at least i know it's going be da shit....just like dieselboy's mixing -i saw him last nite...ashhhhhhhhhh