- This topic has 12 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated June 13, 2013 at 11:38 am by BioTech.
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June 12, 2013 at 10:12 pm #1056001
Alex Banks, one half of two of the UK’s most outstanding dance music acts (Hyper On Experience & EZ Rollers) has, much to my pleasure, created a Hyper-On facebook page and has been sharing tunes, stories & anecdotes and explanations behind their productions.
Hyper On Experience & early Ez Rollers was a big part of the soundtrack to my life, so I thought I’d share the Hyper-On posts for those of us not in Facebook’s grasp.
Posts to follow…
June 12, 2013 at 10:13 pm #12740271st track and how we got signed to Moving Shadow.
Track: HE Anthem
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-experience-he-anthem[/SOUNDCLOUD]Around the time I started working with Danny, Jay started DJing a lot more. Jay managed to get himself on a few mailing lists for promos, one of which was Moving Shadow.
I think I remember Jay speaking to us a few times about sending our tracks out, but me and Danny were totally focused on the music. I had previously completed a solo album that received a very negative response and I think that had slowed me down.
Somewhere along the line we assembled a 12 track demo tape to send to Rob Playford at Moving Shadow. I can remember the last track being unfinished so we cut it short and added a sample off a Cold Cut record that said: “Honey, I’ve got rhythms I haven’t used yet!”.
Cocky bastards.
We went down to see Rob at his house in Stevenage. We chatted at length in his studio in his spare room and the conversation went well. I liked what he had to say and he liked our music, so we agreed to release 3 EPs from the 12 tracks we had sent him. This was later changed to just 1 EP with the pick of the 12 tunes.
1st track: HE Anthem
We wanted to write a big piano tune like the ones we were hearing at Raves.
We had the piano riff and all the beats sorted, but no vocal. We bought a vocal sample CD in the hope that it had a useable sample. The first track on the CD had the vocal we used and every other sample was crap!
I couldn’t believe how well the male vocal sounded and it slotted in the tunes just fine. We then played it out live that night, I think!
The piano was a Korg M1 preset , loads of people used this.
The knocky round bass note was also a staple sound for Rave at that time and is made by distorting a 303 with a fast decay filter envelope, but we sampled it of a record.
The gritty synth stab phase effect was made by layering the same sample in a keygroup on the Akai s1000 and altering the pitch of one of the samples a very small amount. This made the waveforms move out of alignment over time – phase effect.
There is a synth break towards the end of the song that seems heavily influenced by the group N-Joi. They were a big influence, but I’ll chat about influences in another post.
Alex
June 12, 2013 at 10:14 pm #12740282nd track and the shed at the bottom of the garden.
Track: The Frightner
[SOUNDCLOUD]https://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-experience-the[/SOUNDCLOUD]My landlady’s shed where we worked was unbearable, so somehow I persuaded my young sister to let us use hers. It was an old bath house detached from the main cottage by a small yard and set in the middle of a terrace of three houses.
It was a popular place.
Every evening after work Danny and I would meet and make tunes and our friends would visit. Youngie (one of the names on the back of the records) made a platform up one end to store the flight cases and serve as a chill out area for visitors. I also carpeted it.
We always referred to it as “The Shed”.
Conversations would go like this:
“Are you down the shed tonight?”
“Yes”Many people passed through including; Mastervibe, Foul Play, Peshey, LTJ Bukem, Conrad, MixRace, Rob Playford, and half of Beccles. I’ll chat about working with these people later.
We did get a few complaints. One night during a pause in the music the mixing desk picked up a police transmission. They must have been right behind the shed, in the carpark, because I could hear every word on the monitors! The next day I visited my neighbours to pacify them. I told them that if they had a problem they could always come and see me. They said: “Why do you always play the same tune”.
Track2: The Frightner
We had some new samples we were itching to play with and started with that low booming sound (from Pete Gleadall’s sample CD) and the acid synth sampled from Breakers Revenge by Arthur Baker.
The whole track seemed to fall into place without us trying. From start to finish it took 6 hours.
At the end of the night, when we played the final tune back, I had a moment.
I couldn’t believe we had made a tune like that so quickly, and I became uneasy to point where I had a panic attack.
Perhaps Danny felt the same, and as we shuffled about mumbling to ourselves Danny came up with the name: “The Frightner”.
Because it scared us.
June 12, 2013 at 10:15 pm #1274029The shed at the bottom of the garden – equipment.
Circa 1994
Left wall:
Roland Juno 6 with midi retrofit
Korg M1
Alesis something or other
2x Alesis MMT8
Alesis datadisc
Dat machine
Akai S1000
Floppy discs
Sample CDsBack wall:
Hi Fi amp
Tape Deck
More floppys
Another Dat machine
Kenton M2CV converter
Roland SH101
Roland Mc202
JBL 4208
Warfdale Hi Fi Speakers
Yamaha 01 Digital desk
Boss SE 50 FX
Emu vintage keys
Behringer composer compressor.This picture was taken just before Hyper-On ended and EZ Rollers started.
We always made music standing up.
About the gear:
The Juno is an absolute beast. It has the most amazing arpeggiator and I still have that synth today. It has the bigest sub bass in the world and was used on every Hyper-On tune. It also did the bassline on Walk This Land.
The Korg M1 was pure Rave. The piano, strings and synth sounds were magical. All the “music” parts of our tunes were done on this especially the intro to Monarch of the Glen.
The Alesis synth was quite a late addition and didn’t have that many good sounds.
We bought the MMT8 because we has seen N-Joi use them. We had 2 so we could do drums on one and music on the other. There was a big difference with the MIDI timing depending on where in the MIDI chain you put them. The memories were dumped to the datadisc for storage.
Akai s1000. World class – period. The timing was rock solid and much better than the EMU 6400 we later got. It had so many cool features like velocity controlled sample start, individual everything for each key group and could stack 4 sample on one key group.
The Yamaha mixer was also a late addition and most Hyper-On tunes were written on a shitty Samik mixer.
The Boss SE50 fx unit was amazing too. The phasor, reverb and delays were really cool.
The EMU vintage keys was new and as far as I can remember was not featured heavily in Hyper-On, but EZ Rollers kaned it.
The JBLs came late to the party and most tunes were written on the Warfdale Hi Fi speakers.
Most synths in Hyper-On were analogue. We made extensive use of the Juno, 202 and Sh101. The 101 is an amazing machine and cost me £140. The Juno was £75 and the MC202 cost about £190.
The best thing about this setup was that you could dance while you made music! Instead of nodding your head in front of a computer while you drop ash on the keyboard.
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June 12, 2013 at 10:16 pm #1274030Third track and about the recording process and samples.
Track 3: Another Rave
[SOUNDCLOUD]https://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-experience-another[/SOUNDCLOUD]Reposted because I put it on the wrong friggin account.
All the tracks were written in The Shed, but we chose to hire outside studios to mix the EPs.
The first EP – Fun for all the family was mixed in Norwich at a studio called Beaten Track by Rob Playford. All the others were mixed at Purple Rain in Yarmouth.
I remember the studio owners smiling as they realised we wanted to mix ourselves so they did fuck all!
I don’t remember much about the first studio, but Purple Rain was a studio I visited many times. It was run by a guy called Hammy (Richard Hamilton). I think it was a Studiomaster desk and monitoring was on Tannoy dual concentrics and NS10s (with tissue paper over tweeters).
I think the fx we put on the bassline to Lords of the Null Lines was from a Zoom fx unit, there were also Drawmer compressors.
It got to the point where Hammy would just let us in and we would be left alone to mix all day.
Sampling was something we did a lot. We also bought many sample CDs.
The most influential samples CD we had was Norman Cook – Skip to my Loops. This was by far the best produced sample pack and had the most amazing breaks. Along with Zero-G Ecstatic Goldmine these made up the bulk of the breaks used by Hyper-On.
Synth sounds came from a CD called A-D (analog to digital).
We also had quite a sweet deal with the shop in Norwich where we bought the Akai sampler. They would let us sample all the presets from the new synths that turned up!
Like most sample hunters we would rinse peoples record collections. This is something that I still do today, in fact it’s possible that I’ve spent most of my adult life bent over a Technics gently coaxing a stylus to the start point on records.
Track 3: Another Rave
I can’t remember how we came up with the name.
The lead stab was made by layering many sounds in the Akai.
I remember it wasn’t tuned to “C” and to get the pattern I used a lot of black keys!
Also, Rob Playford chose to alter the arrangement and did this in a rather smug way that annoyed me. He explained as he altered the sequencer that : “This is called arrangement”.
Yes mate, I knew that, thanks.
I had a tape from a Rave Pack where this tunes was played and the MC chanted “Every day’s my birthday!”.
Its mostly sample with the SH101 following the lead in the 4th and 5th breakdown.
4th and 5th breakdown! You don’t hear that in tune descriptions nowadays!
June 12, 2013 at 10:16 pm #12740314th track and more waffling.
Track: Watch Us Now
[SOUNDCLOUD]https://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-experience-watch-us[/SOUNDCLOUD]When I hear sounds I see colour, shape and movement. Its dulled a bit over the years, but its still there.
Synth sounds, like the harmonically rich orchestral rave stab, appeared orange with a burnt yellow hue, and have a surface texture like a sponge crossed with heavily ridged bark. Its sort of a rounded rectangular shape that bends a little and raises…
They are enjoyable to see! And many hours were spent experimenting with these sounds as they were the most fun.
As for why Hyper-On tunes seem to completely change every 8 to 16 bars – I’m unsure.
Rave tunes at that time were very disjointed. There were so many breakdowns! I guess the stop/start arrangement of the tracks at the time were an influence, but we didn’t bother repeating the last 32 bars – we just played something else!
I think we were telling a story. Like it describes a journey where at the end you feel glad you’ve made it. That pretty much summed up the Rave days.
Track 4: Watch us now
The name came from a sample we had, but Danny had introduced it as part of his spoken repertoire. Danny was a good dancer and would laugh and throw one liners at everyone. He might, on occasion, throw a move and say: “Watch us now!!!”.
The intro whistle was a blatant steal from a track we had heard Rob Playford do (or was involved with). I loved this sound and couldn’t wait to use it.
The sub is from the Juno 6.
Breaks from Norman Cook – Skip to my Loops
Orchestral sound came from sitting in The Shed constantly doing 30 second samples of the radio on the Akai. I would listen to classical music hoping to find a killer sample! We had no DAT at that time.
Synth is Sh101. I think the phase fx came from modulating the pulse width of an oscillator with a slow lfo. Its nice to hear this synth in its pure form as nowadays we would process the fuck out of it.
Other Synth is the 202. This whole tunes is a bit of an analogue work out.
Strings are pure Korg M1 classics!
The vocoder sample “Break it down suicidal” was made on the Boss SE 50 and was a sample from UK Hip Hop group Hardnoise (I think).
June 12, 2013 at 10:17 pm #12740325th track and the concept of naiveity.
Track: Ascension (To The 9th Level)
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-experience-ascension[/soundcloud]Track: Ascension (To The 9th Level) prototype version from tape (low quality)
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-ascension-to-the-9th[/soundcloud]I’ve been asked by a few people about the chances of Hyper-On returning.
Its a nice idea, but I fear I’ve learnt too many rules about making music to recapture my youthful enthusiasm.
We made those tunes at a time when UK underground dance was exploding with experimentation.
Simply put: we took Hip Hop ideas (breaks/bass and sound fx) and added the ideas of American House and European Techno (stabs/piano and synths).
We just speeded it up a bit and called it Jungle Techno.
There were very few pigeon holes to describe the music played at raves at the time. It just seemed that every track had a breakbeat and the variation came from the samples used, or synth patterns played.
It was at a moment before things settle into their respective genres of music. Before “music” entered Drum n Bass and before House entered the charts.
It’s possible that the very early 90s rave scene defined all the genres that we now have under the banner of “Dance”.
How do you recapture that?
Track 5: Ascension (To The 9th Level)
Track 5a: Ascension (To The 9th Level) from tape.We started with the orchestral stab pattern that comes in halfway through the tune. I loved this, but had some difficulty wrapping a tune around it. The tape demo shows this.
Eventually we got a load of new sample CDs and came across the spooky intro pad and quirky synth loop.
The drums sound a bit Tod Terry and the sub is Juno 6.
There are plenty of little Hyper-On drum edits and tricky programing that we loved doing at that time.
Each one of these had to be manually entered into the hardware sequencers – a process that I enjoyed immensely! I don’t play an instrument as such, but I could program the fuck out of that MMT8!
Loads of Malcolm McLaren Buffalo Gals samples.
Every 16 bars changes. New samples come in towards the end of the tune. New riffs are introduced late in the song – Danny did a lot of these.
Love this track.
The tape version;
This one is insane.
The 1st breakdown synth was the Korg M1. I can remember playing it in.
Breaks are Mantronix.
2nd Breakdown: All Korg M1 classics
Not sure where we were going with the Queen samples.
3rd Breakdown: My favourite synth pattern and the Buffalo gals samples.
4th Breakdown: Sounds like the MC202 on bass.
5th Breakdown: Sh101 and MC202.
6th Breakdown: Korg M1 and Sh101.
7th Breakdown: 7th? Are you kidding me? And what’s with the cheesy guitar riff?
How did we name it? Just put this on full blast, grit your teeth and see if you can make it…
June 12, 2013 at 10:19 pm #12740336th track and influences.
Track 6: Imajika
[SOUNDCLOUD]https://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-experience-imajica[/SOUNDCLOUD]My first love was Hip Hop.
When I was 13 I lived above my parents shop in West Wickham high street. I remember lying on the lounge floor, watching Top of the Pops with the family, when a band called Tik And Tok performed Cool Running. They were dancing like robots to electro beats. It was 1981.
It felt like the hand of life reached out and touched me and I knew from that moment what I wanted to do.
I wanted to Breakdance/Rap/Beatbox/Graffiti and make music. For ever.
I even made a rudimentary sequencer on my Commodore Vic 20! I knew nothing about quantising, but programmed the Vic 20 to record me triggering internal sounds played on the keyboard and loop them (badly). Casting my mind back I think there was a simple counting system that stored a value between keystrokes and played them back.
I spent a few years rolling around the high street on bits of lyno. I considered this perfectly normal behaviour.
Around 1986 I heard House music. They were using the electro beats, but in standard 4 by 4 formation. There were vocal samples played like drum beats, melodies and basslines.
I liked it. So I started making it.
But I also liked Hip Hop, so I combined the two.
The problem was I kept the 4×4 beats, but put breaks over the top. It didn’t groove.
I remember Danny getting really frustrated with me, and one day he just exclaimed: “WHY DO WE ALWAYS HAVE TO HAVE THAT FUCKING KICK DRUM RUNNING THROUGH EVERYTHING!!!”.
He may have had a point.
At that time there were hints of Jungle Techno in Rave, but no real definition.
Until Rhythm Section made “Feel the Rhythm” (Coming on Strong) 1991
Rhythm Section – Comin On Strong – YouTubeCheck this tune out – all the way through.
Vocal loops and vocal fx. Synth stab melody. Sub bass and breaks. Piano breakdown.
And the arrangement! 1 bar drop out at the ends of 8s and 16s where breaks are used as drum rolls.
Sound familiar?
Rhythm Section were Ellis Dee and Rennie Pilgrim (and someone else who I forget, I’m so sorry!).
I bumped into Rennie Pilgrim a few years back. I turned into a proper Fan Boy and told him how his music had been such a big influence on what I was doing. It was apparent to me that he had heard this before and with grace he explained how it had happened:
“Alex, I said to the guys in the band: why don’t we speed the breaks up and add these house riffs?”
He then smiled like a Cheshire Cat.
Track 6: Imajika
Sampled pad intro with Korg M1 presets. Outrageously cheesy Jazzy vibe playing.
Juno 6 sub, of course.
Breakdown to rave stab played in a joyful pattern. Drum rolls.
There is a sample that says: “Well you’d better hurry up Sir!”. Dj Peshay loved this and said: “No one uses samples like that!”.
Lots of Norman Cook – Skip to my Loops samples
2nd breakdown has a more Rave/Happy Hardcore feel to it.
3rd switch seems a little dubby.
4th switch with vibe sound is a little intense! I guess you’d call it a bridge nowadays, but we extend it before returning to the original riff.
The title came from a Clive Barker book – Imajica. I just couldn’t remember how to spell it!
I told you that we used to work standing up? We danced all the way through making this tune. Danny has a big smile.
The Smiley Rock Remix.
June 12, 2013 at 10:20 pm #1274034Why you kids don’t know how lucky you are.
If you make music on a computer then you’ll know what they are capable of.
You have in front of you more than was even possible when I started. Even if you had millions you could not buy all the processing my computer has because some of it wasn’t invented.
Convolution reverbs, physical modeling and channel emulation – these are all new.
At the press of a button I can quantize live audio. Time stretch audio to fit a region and tempo map rhythms.
It wasn’t always like that!
Top formula:
The LFOs we had in the Akai were not midi controlled so to get the LFO to sync to a tempo I used the first formula. This will give you the frequency at a given temp to keep the LFO locked in time.
2nd formula:
When you time stretch a sample in the Akai you were given the resulting sample length in seconds and the number of samples it would contain. This formula tells you how many samples it will take to match a given tempo.
3rd formula:
I was given this one by Rob Playford. This one is a little more involved and it was used to mix tracks in a computer. Logic Audio in the early 90s gave you the option to change the sample rate of an audio file. The benefit of this was that if you reduced the sample rate of an audio file (complete song) it would play back faster because Logic would seek to play 44.1k sample per second. We would then mix the tracks in the computer.
I fucking love algebra.
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June 12, 2013 at 10:20 pm #12740357th track and more influences.
Track – A Certain Emotion
[SOUNDCLOUD]https://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-a-certain-emotion-als[/SOUNDCLOUD]In the late 80s and early 90s Danny and I went to a lot of club nights and raves and saw a lot of live acts.
The ones I remember were; Shades of Rhythm, N-Joi, Rhythm Section, Guru Josh, Prodigy, Altern8.
I regret never hearing Adamski or 808 State play live. I heard Adamski was amazing. There was such a massive buzz about him.
To advertize Adamski’s album they used the styling of a Lucozade bottle, but Lucozade complained and got the advert pulled. A while later when they realized how big Adamski was they produced adverts that played on their association with NRG.
Influences.
The Prodigy were/are excellent, both musically and live. The first time I heard Charly Says on a system I came up so hard a bit of wee came out.
As Hyper-On Experience we had tried to hook up with The Prodigy’s manager, but nothing came of it. His 1st album was called “The Prodigy – Experience”.
Influences.
N-Joi were the Dons for me. I’ve heard them half a dozen times and it was always brilliant. They had a raft of analogue synths on stage and sequenced using an Alesis MMT8.
After one of their gigs in Yarmouth I went up to them and asked what equipment they were using, one said: “I can’t tell you”. They immediately organized the putting away of all the equipment so I couldn’t see.
I can’t see the point in this and the whole “I’m not gonna tell you how I do things” business. The way I see it, even if I gave you my hard drive full of samples you would not make Hyper-On/EZ Rollers tunes. You would make your tunes with my samples.
When we were deciding what we were going to do live we came up with the idea of uniforms. Danny bought and altered some clothes for us. They were meant to be red with black piping down the arms and legs. But it later transpired that he had bought all the gear from a womans shop and the red actually looked pink on stage! We even had pink sailor hats with HE embossed on them…
The horror.
7th Track – A Certain Emotion (Al’s Theme)
Making music is an intensely personal experience. You are, in effect, attempting to communicate your emotions without words.
I sometimes see it like a mirror. The music you make reflecting how you feel.
I guess I was just a skinny messed up kid, or something, but I remember this tunes meaning a lot about how I was feeling at the time.
Sampled pad with Korg M1 piano.
Sampled vocal note and Korg synth.
Vocal sampled looped in the Akai using crossfade overlap.
Korg flute playing hookline.
Sampled Hammond.
“Stirring Stuff” sample came from sampling the radio.
Dropping to standard 4×4.The modulated synth bassline was a variation of an eq trick we used to do. We would effect a synthline by massively boosting the midrange and then sweeping the eq frequency. This one was done in the same way, but modulating a phasor effect in the Korg.
As Hyper-On we didn’t do many 4×4 tracks. I guess this was a final gasp before Danny removed all the kicks!
Still managed to slip in the cheesy: “One, two, three, four” sample at the end 😉
June 12, 2013 at 10:21 pm #12740368th track and a proper reminisce.
Track – The Threshold of Sanity
[SOUNDCLOUD]https://soundcloud.com/hyper-on-experience/hyper-on-the-threshold-of[/SOUNDCLOUD]Today I did a video interview with a freelance journalist called Tim Cant.
He did the Computer Music cover CD interview with Friction which was just the best thing I’ve seen in ages. He filmed Friction going through the process of knocking up a tune and all the decisions he made doing that.
I learnt a lot from this. Infact, copying this idea of watching someone construct music forms the basis of how I lecture. I tour for a month every year doing masterclass in music production for Access to Music colleges.
Tim knows his stuff. He actually knew my stuff better than I did! He played me a remix I didn’t know we’d done and pointed out that there were two versions of Imajica….
It was enjoyable, and I got to reminisce about working with Peshey, Foul Play and Mixrace and a host of other things.
Hyper-On did a lot of tracks for Peshey including the Piano Tune and the Vocal Tune. Peshey is a brilliant producer and a joy to work with.
He would turn up at The Shed with a bunch of samples and a definite idea of what sort of tune he wanted. He would have all the breaks, stabs, bass and vocals and me and Danny would put the tune together for him.
Peshey didn’t have a lot of technical knowledge and would describe the type of rolls he wanted in the drums by conducting with his finger while he followed a drum roll. We made him a conductor’s stick out of a piece of rolled up A4 paper topped with a pen lid.
He used this extensively and it became known as “The Shuffle Stick”.
Foul Play were great remixers. They had such a simple way of remixing tunes that worked every time.
When we engineered their second Omni Trio remix John Morrow put the original track on the technics and played the 1st 16 bars. It was an Amen snare played in a pitched pattern.
He said: “make the 1st 16 bars an Amen snare played in a pitched pattern, but play it differently and put an effect on it”.
It was the same for the next 16 bars, and so on…
I thought this was genius. Copy what’s been done well before and change it to your style. This works on so many levels.
Also, we spoke about the DJ set I recently did as Hyper-On and I was keen to show Tim the patterns I’d noticed in the BPMs over the years 91-94.
The tempo changes from around 127bpm to 163bpm.
To factor this into my set I chose to mix a few tracks within one tempo bracket and the chop mix to another tempo. But I could definitely see patterns by year.
7th Track – Threshold of Sanity
Two great sounds in here that we’d been itching to use; the Hammond and the break.
Its quite a full on intro. I remember that I couldn’t program out the initial stab from the pad that fades quickly and then rises slowly, so I left it in!
Original TB 303 bassline. Gorgeous.
Quite rolled out for a Hyper-On tune.
Love the techno switch.
Quite a few N-Joi influences.
Last breakdown is the SH101. Very Intense. Octave shift was operated manually.
How did we name it?
I was once told the story of someone who went to a big rave somewhere. They did something that made them think that outside the dance tent was another universe with its own reality, very much different than ours.
And when you stood in the doorway from the tent, you stood on the threshold of sanity.
June 13, 2013 at 8:33 am #1274026@BioTech 549115 wrote:
Why you kids don’t know how lucky you are.
If you make music on a computer then you’ll know what they are capable of.
You have in front of you more than was even possible when I started. Even if you had millions you could not buy all the processing my computer has because some of it wasn’t invented.
me and my mate Phil (who now runs White House studios in Reading) set up a home studio from 1996-1999, even the newer AKAI S2000 he had had to be programmed manually until we eventually got some Windows software that would allow stuff to be uploaded and downloaded via MIDI sysex. Originally we used a 32 bit DOS program as a sequencer and the soundblaster MIDI. The PC was one of the first ones to have Windows 95 and multimedia. The whole thing was a real bear to keep working and we must have spent as much time fixing it as making music.
June 13, 2013 at 11:38 am #1274037A link to the Facebook page, should anyone want to take a look/like. it has more bits and pieces on that I haven’t posted here.
https://facebook.com/profile.php?id=148282892017648&_mn_=11&refid=46
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