____twoism

Music Is Meth

*snif snif* Purple *snif snif*

At 2:51 in Gemini, when listening to the sides and nothing from the center, sounds like a man saying "I can't take it any more" or maybe "I can't take any more [damage]". Right before the track ends there's a deep voice that sounds like it's saying "Great" or "Correct" through a radio.

Also I finally heard the "Thank you! Thank you!".

around 2:56 sounds like the same instrument/synth/whatever used in Forest Moon.

Wow. Never realised how much of that was recorded in reverse. Also 4:10 is BoCs melodica again.

Things I've noticed about MHTRTC after years of listening:

1. There's WAY more 101 all over the thing than I had previous thought. It seems they actually may have used hardware samplers a little less with MHTRTC than Twoism and Hi Scores, or at the very least instead fed synth leads into a sampler, resulting in the sort of odd playback present on Bocuma but not on other tracks with that exact same sound to each note played. I would assume they probably tweaked the sound/layered it with something else since it seems a little redundant to do that sort of thing otherwise.

2. Some old interview had them talking about how they felt they used computers a bit too much with MHTRTC and that they wanted to get away from that with Geogaddi. Then there was something about how they were mainly used for sequencing (arrangement/multitracking for the cleaner tracks, possibly?) of sounds at the time, namely Telephasic Workshop. I listened to the track afterwards and it became so obvious and I'm surprised I'd never noticed it before. No wonder percussion and recurring samples in Geogaddi sound so more natural (for lack of a better word).

My question now though is...what would they have used? I've never heard them mention much re: software. I think maybe you could rule out trackers looking at stuff like the really finely altered cut-up voices in Telephasic Workshop. They have mentioned Logic and I do wonder whether or not they used that back in the day on the material that involved computers. It would have been, what, Emagic Logic...3? I don't know a whole lot about 20th century DAWs.

Rodheh wrote:Things I've noticed about MHTRTC after years of listening:

1. There's WAY more 101 all over the thing than I had previous thought. It seems they actually may have used hardware samplers a little less with MHTRTC than Twoism and Hi Scores, or at the very least instead fed synth leads into a sampler, resulting in the sort of odd playback present on Bocuma but not on other tracks with that exact same sound to each note played. I would assume they probably tweaked the sound/layered it with something else since it seems a little redundant to do that sort of thing otherwise.

2. Some old interview had them talking about how they felt they used computers a bit too much with MHTRTC and that they wanted to get away from that with Geogaddi. Then there was something about how they were mainly used for sequencing (arrangement/multitracking for the cleaner tracks, possibly?) of sounds at the time, namely Telephasic Workshop. I listened to the track afterwards and it became so obvious and I'm surprised I'd never noticed it before. No wonder percussion and recurring samples in Geogaddi sound so more natural (for lack of a better word).

My question now though is...what would they have used? I've never heard them mention much re: software. I think maybe you could rule out trackers looking at stuff like the really finely altered cut-up voices in Telephasic Workshop. They have mentioned Logic and I do wonder whether or not they used that back in the day on the material that involved computers. It would have been, what, Emagic Logic...3? I don't know a whole lot about 20th century DAWs.

Some nice observations. Your second point makes a lot of sense also because they said they were going for an idea that consisted of the music, on Geogaddi, being imperfect. That idea implies that all of the approaches they took were going to be much more complicated than simply snapping sounds to a set grid or using a sequencer with simple instructions in a DAW. Like you said, it's obvious that a computer was used in Telephasic Workshop. Whereas using alternative methods in Geogaddi definitely sounds more effectively natural, in that we know it sounds great, but can't quite understand the full complexity of it. Unless, someday we put it under a figurative microscope.

Now it is possible to achieve a level of imperfect sound on a computer. But I'm guessing that it would be much more tedious and complicated in figuring things out and then executing it to what they were aiming for. Whatever their methods were, I bet it'll work waaaaaay better than any computer can do now, or even in the foreseeable future, for achieving that effect/idea.

When I first read that article where they said they wanted to steer away from using computers. I didn't fully understand why. I now have a much better understanding of that.


As for your first point, I think I remember someone here, or maybe on watmm, saying that they suspect the SH-101 was used a butt-ton in MHTRTC. Now, I've never owned an SH-101, so I'm not very familiar with the sound other than in some songs I've heard with it in there. I don't know it's full capabilities, so I can't accurately determine where it's used in the album. Except for the obvious parts, like in ROYGBIV for example. So I envy those who own 101's, because what I can recognize, I obviously really like. So I have two questions for you:
1st Question) Do you currently own an SH-101, or have owned one/used a friend's in the past? My guess is that you recently explored it's sound more extensively, which lead you to post your new findings here.
2nd Question) If your answer to question one is "yes", and you do currently own an SH-101.... Give it to me!

I'll pm you my address right now..... done. Cool! How long do you expect shipping to take? Not long? Express? My, my! You are generous!


...just let me live in this fantasy a little longer....

I'd always lumped Poppy Seed into some stack in my brain of "mere remixes" and never gave it the deepest of listens. Then the other day I was listening to that Tycho "Black Sunrise" morning at Burning Man set list which opens with it and remembered how much I love the track. On a lark I put on the original Slag Boom Van Loon track which sounds almost nothing like it and now realize that the BoC "remix" is in reality 90+% it's own special animal. And remarkable for being MHTRTC era but presaging Geogaddi (the Branch Davidian references http://bocpages.org/wiki/Slag_Boom_Van_ ... Poppy_Seed) and sounding to my ears like it would fit very nicely on disc 1, side A of Campfire Headphase.

Miles Powerhouse wrote:I'm pretty sure the swirly sound 28 seconds into Sixyten has the exact same chords from the very end of The Smallest Weird Number. You can hear it in between the notes of the main synth.

Woah! I've never even heard that before, super brief but obvious once you notice it. It sounds to be a Bflat-A-G-A melody with some eerie chord progression sitting beneath (parallel major chords?). Sounds like a distant echo of a carousel.

It sounds close to the ending of The Smallest Weird Number, but definitely not exactly the same, and I don't think it's from Magic Teens either. Hmm...

tonx wrote:I'd always lumped Poppy Seed into some stack in my brain of "mere remixes" and never gave it the deepest of listens. Then the other day I was listening to that Tycho "Black Sunrise" morning at Burning Man set list which opens with it and remembered how much I love the track. On a lark I put on the original Slag Boom Van Loon track which sounds almost nothing like it and now realize that the BoC "remix" is in reality 90+% it's own special animal. And remarkable for being MHTRTC era but presaging Geogaddi (the Branch Davidian references http://bocpages.org/wiki/Slag_Boom_Van_ ... Poppy_Seed) and sounding to my ears like it would fit very nicely on disc 1, side A of Campfire Headphase.

You have expressed my feelings about this track almost fully.

Has anyone else listened to it in reverse? I uploaded it a year back to show a couple of friends.

What I've noticed recently is that 'In the Annexe' makes me feel nauseous.

fujee wrote:What I've noticed recently is that 'In the Annexe' makes me feel nauseous.

Yeah, the wow and flutter is really strong on that one!

I've recently noticed that Over The Horizon Radar is probably a Rhodes piano with heavy processing (reverb, reverse delay, lowpass filtering, etc.)

Also, I suspect that the reason the formant shifts so much on the “Although not a follower,” sample in 1969 is that they pitch shifted bits and pieces of the sample (before they ran it through the vocoder) to tweak the timing so that it would fit in with the song.

Cosmic Manta wrote:Also, I suspect that the reason the formant shifts so much on the “Although not a follower,” sample in 1969 is that they pitch shifted bits and pieces of the sample (before they ran it through the vocoder) to tweak the timing so that it would fit in with the song.

Yeah, I agree with that. Just listen to the same sample used in the Poppy Seed Remix with much less alteration at around 5:17.



In 1969, it's definitely pitch shifted up a bit, and in different parts, making it sound more like singing a melody instead of just reading a news report.

I did a back to back listen of Geogaddi on CD and LP for the first time and I noticed, for the first time, how flat the CD sounds. Maybe that's only in comparison to the LP, because it sounded great for years, but holy fuck the LP sounds so much better. I think I knew that, but it wasn't as instantly apparent and MHTRTC and especially TCH.

Lazerize wrote:I did a back to back listen of Geogaddi on CD and LP for the first time and I noticed, for the first time, how flat the CD sounds. Maybe that's only in comparison to the LP, because it sounded great for years, but holy fuck the LP sounds so much better. I think I knew that, but it wasn't as instantly apparent and MHTRTC and especially TCH.

Same goes for TH

@Lazerize
What do you mean by flat? The dynamics?

Sofa_Kartoffel wrote:@Lazerize
What do you mean by flat? The dynamics?

I know from TH that e.g. Gemini's end growl is MUCH louder and more clear ln vinyl, rather than on mp3.

Stavorius wrote:

Sofa_Kartoffel wrote:@Lazerize
What do you mean by flat? The dynamics?

I know from TH that e.g. Gemini's end growl is MUCH louder and more clear ln vinyl, rather than on mp3.

Of course it is!!

this has more than likely already been mentioned but it blew my cock off today when i finally figured it out.

listening to niagara i realized that the percussive sample which kicks in at 22 seconds is the little girls giggle and chime sound taken from the very end of the i love u seasame street vignette.