HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

- open
User avatar
John Clees
mnml admn
mnml admn
Posts: 7708
Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2005 4:21 am
Location: walk the e[art]h : detroit-metro.
Contact:

Re: HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

Post by John Clees »

cloutier wrote:if you want to dig up some dirt, find thomas barnett and ask him about "strings of life" and "nude photo."
haha...

he was my old roommate actually...I'll summarize...
thomas barnett paid out of pocket to put out nude photo, and also helped write the bass line..
derrick may put out the record, continued to get large income from such record, it was licensed out..repeatedly over and over, eventually derrick took thomas barnett's name off the record completely.. thus you have a jack move nearly single handedley of the record (1 of 2 or 3) that pretty much made derrick may's career. so derrick eventually took full credit, which I'm sure he is still licensing, and started his career based on ripping someone off and stealing from an old friend of mine..
dirddey_iddler
mnml maxi
mnml maxi
Posts: 859
Joined: Mon May 04, 2009 5:27 pm

Re: HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

Post by dirddey_iddler »

808 tracks are everywhere. check drexciya.

909 are everywhere. check robert hood. he is he man on that machine. he used it as the main sequencer. Jeff Mills is also 909 user at its best. i remember a old peacefrog record from xtrak aka todd sines.
Dal-Tech
mnml mmbr
mnml mmbr
Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 6:34 pm
Location: NY, USA From DFW, USA
Contact:

Re: HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

Post by Dal-Tech »

Cali Can wrote:Hello everybody!

I need some help with my Bachelor Thesis. The Topic is "Detroit Techno and the typical production style of that genre".
It's kinda hard to find out what the most relevant gear guys like Juan Atkins, Derrick May or Kevin Saunderson used in the beginning of the Detroit Techno era in the 80's. 909, 808 and 303 is obvious but can you maybe name some other synthesizers, drum machines or samplers that were mostly used at that time. If you know something, a source link would be amazing, too.
Thank you very much!
Peace
Here's the info you want. There's also a Juan Atkins interview somewhere online where he goes over the early Cybotron days and the equipment that was used. Try Googling.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
From: Praised and Perused [EMAIL PROTECTED],
cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Subject: The Holy Trinity of Detroit Techno
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 00:18:09 -0700


Ok kids, today I FINALLY ran across a copy of the Mar/Apr
'89 Music
Technology magazine, the one with Juan Atkins (and Baby
Ford, Matt Black,
and others) on the cover, the one that got destroyed when
my basement
flooded, and the first place I heard about Techno. In
appreciation of my
lucky find, I've typed in the text for everybody. Enjoy!

TECHNO

THE SCENE: DETROIT, murder capital of the USA, an
industrial city left
behind in a post-industrial society. A recent New York
Times article
vividly refers to urban landscapes "marred by vacant
factories, warehouse
and great open spaces where such buildings once stood."
Despite drastic
cuts in services the city was virtually bankrupt, and its
mayor decalred,
"We are at the edge of an abyss."

Welcome to the world of Techno music, a world peopled by
dreamers caught up
in the despair of everyday Detroit life, yet glimpsing a
brand new future
in which technology functions as savior rather than
destroyer. They've
read Alvin Toffler's 'The Third Wave' and realized that
they're riding it.

Three of those riders are Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and
Kevin Saunderson.
They represent a new generation of musicians who claim
direct descendancy
not from Motown, but from the music of Kraftwerk, Depeche
Mode and Gary
Numan.

"It seemed like music of the future to me, " recalls
Saunderson.
"Kraftwerk had this really clean, computerized,
futuristic sound. Their
music had a good groove, but at the same time it was deep
and you could sit
back and listen to it."

The biggest music in Detroit during the trio's formative
years was
Parliament/Funkadelic, and it was a shared liking for the
Mothership
Connection which first brought together the youthful
Saunderson, Atkins,
and May at Belleville High School in West Detroit. It was
May who likened
Techno to "George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an
elevator with only a
sequencer to keep them company."

Atkins first came to prominence in Cybotron, an early
'80s techno/electro
group which achieved some success but was eventually
split by conflicting
musical directions. Since then he has worked as Model 500
(choosing the
name because he "wnated to use something that repudiated
an ethnic
designation"), releasing on his own Metroplex label
polished, minimallist,
hi-tech dance-music gems with titles like 'Future', '
Time Space Transmat',
and 'Interference'. "My concept was that the Kraftwerks,
Telexes and Devos
were good but they weren't funky. I felt that if I could
take that type of
music and add a funky element to it then it would be a
smash."

Although worshiped, early technopop was never viewed as
an end in itself.
Derrick May states, "English bands ten years ago hardly
knew what they were
doing. They left us waiting. Somebody like Gary Numan
started something
he never concluded." Saunderson identifies a significant
difference
between the music of the early '80s groups and that of
Techno musicians:
"Techno has a better groove as far as the bass end goes,
and it has a much
rawer sound. In fact, the bass end tends to make people
associate Techno
with House music, but really the two are very different."

Like many of today's most influential dance music
producers and artists,
all three bagan their musical careers as DJs - in
Saunderson's case on
college redio and in the underground clubs of Detroit. He
still plays the
clubs, currently spinning a mix of Techno, House and Acid
on Friday nights
at Detroit's hottest underground club, The Music
Institute, alongside
Derrick May.

When Saunderson took the decision to start creating his
own music instead
of playing other people's ("I was always wanting to add
things to other
people's music, and I felt I had a good feeling for what
people liked to
hear"), the number one priority was to set up his own
studio. His mother
helped him out financially, while Juan Atkins advised on
equipment.
Saunderson started out with a Yamaha DX100, Roland Juno
106, Fostex
eight-channel mixer, Tascam eight-track recorder, several
reverbs, and
giant speakers that could handle 800 Watts each - all set
up in a
two-bedroom apartment. Hardly surprising was that he had
to move four
times in the first year.

"I tried to be courteous to people", he maintains,
"but...I have to play my
music loud. That's the only way I can get a feeling for
what I'm doing."

Examples of Saunderson's work includes "The Sound" and
"Bounce Your Body To
The Box" - stripped-down bass'n'drum workouts which
attempt to dissolve
music into pure frequency and rhythm. Saunderson creates
a spacious
rhythmic backdrop through a judicious use of reverb and a
careful
combination of splashy, clicky percussive sounds which
float in and out of
the mix. Rich, booming bass sounds operate at virtually
subsonic levels,
strange synth sounds burble away, and any hint of a vocal
line is reduced
to a disjointed rototic incantation - all over a
pounding, insistent
bass-drum beat. The effect is hypnotic and compulsive.

Saunderson's instrument arsenal now takes in a Roland
S550, Casio CZ5000,
Roland JX8P, Korg Poly 800, Roland TB303 Bassline and
Ensoniq Mirage.
Drum-machine chores are taken care of by Roland's TR909,
808 and 727
together with an Alesis HR16 ("one of the cleanest drum
machines I've ever
heard") and his own sampled sounds.

"I like to use a combination of 909 and HR16 hi-hats,
together with the 808
bass drum or sometimes the bass on the 909", he explains.
"Those drum
machines have a real good feel, both together and on
their own".

Atkins shares Saunderson's love for the old Roland
machines: "I still use
the 808 and 909. The 808 has a real techno feel.
Everything on that drum
machine has an electronic feel - it's not like
digitally-sampled real
drums".

Saunderson refuses to use sampled drum-machine sounds in
place of the
genuine article: "Sampling changes the sounds in some
way. I'll go into a
studio and they'll say, 'We have the 808 right here,
sampled on disk', but
I won't use those samples 'cos somehow the results just
don't have the same
feel".

Instead he prefers an offbeat approach to obtaining
percussive sounds which
is in tune with the creative spirit of sampling - for
instance, sampling a
handclap or a piece of paper being crumpled, and playing
around with the
tuning to see what sort of results he can get. Extracts
from old records
don't find their way into Saunderson's sampler.

"What's going to be the music of the future if people
keep sampling all
this stuff from the past?" he argues. "I figure that the
people who're
gonna be real successful are those who keep looking
ahead, who're going to
set the trend. Forget what's happened in the past. It was
good, but let's
move on".

Atkin's Model 500 tracks are characterized by a clean
sound and a
contrapuntal interplay of musical lines - or "layered
sequences". It's an
approach which he explains as the major influence of
Kraftwerk on his
music. How, then, does he set about putting together a
track?

"On 'Interference' I started with the bassline, cause the
bassline is to me
the most important thing in a dance record. Even the
drums become
secondary to a good bassline. I worked everything else
around that. A lot
of times I let my basslines carry the melody. You'll hear
that the little
tweaks and bits people can listen to are in the
bassline".

Like Saunderson, Atkins is not interested in sampling old
records. He
prefers to devote himself to the delights of synthesis,
and in particular
to "one" synth: "The Pro One is my heart. I'll use that
Pro One until it
falls apart, and then I'll probably still use it if it
makes any sounds".

"These new synthesizers now, I think they're scaling them
more to interface
with the consumer. Synthesizers used to be synthesizers
that a synthesist
could play. Now manufacturers are going for presets and
they make it
really hard to get beyond those preset to program your
own sounds."

Techno strives to bring the future to present-day feet
and ears. "I make
my records in the hope that people will go and buy them
to listen to as
well as to dance to", Saunderson explains. "A good dance
track is going to
grab your attention, but on top of that I want something
that's interesting
and different enough to make you take notice of it. It
should be totally
different from anything else that's happening, but not so
different that
it's beyond people so that you end up not interfacing
with them. Be right
on the edge without going over".

"The music is not for everybody. It's for certain people
that want a
little twist".

Atkins echoes the sentiment: "I want whatever I do to
stand out, but not be
so far above that people won't relate to it. It doesn't
really make sense
to do music that people will get into in ten years or so.
I just want to
be involved with things that are going to be interesting
enough to set
trends or standards"
Dal-Tech wrote: Everyone else is trying to be cool, not me.
hey everybody : I'm a douche !
User avatar
tone-def
mnml maxi
mnml maxi
Posts: 3822
Joined: Sun May 27, 2007 12:05 am
Location: Hertfordshire

Re: HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

Post by tone-def »

It's important to note that these guys used whatever they could get their hands on. The korg poly800 is one of the worse analog synth ever made. It sold a lot because it was cheap but everyone hated them.
minimal house
mnml maxi
mnml maxi
Posts: 879
Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2004 9:41 pm
Location: South Chicago, IL

Re: HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

Post by minimal house »

You should research the people who created those instruments, not who used them.
Dal-Tech
mnml mmbr
mnml mmbr
Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 6:34 pm
Location: NY, USA From DFW, USA
Contact:

Re: HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

Post by Dal-Tech »

One thing that's important to point out is people's perception of Detroit techno has changed over time.

I was fortunate to get into Detroit techno early on when "techno" was a new dance genre. Back then I didn't think much of it. I bought UR, Plus 8, Transmat or whatever as well as Todd Terry, Trax, UK Rave, Industrial or whatnot. Detroit techno back then during the very late 1980s and early 90s was the stuff you'd hear on the first New Sound Of Detroit techno comp. Music with more of a house groove like No UFOs or Nude Photo but had that futuristic technology vibe to it.

Later on during the mid to late 1990s and early 00s electro and early 80s retro type music became very trendy. When the Book Techno Rebels came out it was very much like George Lucas Star Wars Episode I, II, III. People saw early techno as the electro stuff like Cybotron and Sharavari. Music from the days of rave was very much not in vogue and construed as an exploitation of the early Detroit sound. I became less of a fan of Detroit techno during that time because there were a lot of fandom people and politics. Kind of like going to a sci fi convention and seeing role playing games, cosplay. People wanted to suck up to the Detroit scene and make Detroit sounding music with moody strings and portamento but it wasn't that great to my ears.

So if the electro stuff like Cybotron. It was like vintage analog synth stuff using CV Gate, Korg monopolies, The Pro One.

Various - Techno! The New Dance Sound Of Detroit era was similar to what the Chicago guys were doing. More MIDO gear like the DX-100, Roland TR 909 808 727. Back then there was digital synths and sampling mixed with analog but the 909 and 808 played a huge role in the drums.

During the 1990s. Artist like Juan Atkin, Kenny Larkin go into more rompler workstations. Some artist relied more on sampling such as Shake, KDJ et al.

Post 2000 an today. You see them embrace software such as Ableton or NI Maschine.
Dal-Tech wrote: Everyone else is trying to be cool, not me.
hey everybody : I'm a douche !
User avatar
John Clees
mnml admn
mnml admn
Posts: 7708
Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2005 4:21 am
Location: walk the e[art]h : detroit-metro.
Contact:

Re: HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

Post by John Clees »



one of the earliest dance records to use the legendary "roland 303" which changed electronic music forever..
with the band/group that Juan was in..
Dal-Tech
mnml mmbr
mnml mmbr
Posts: 237
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 6:34 pm
Location: NY, USA From DFW, USA
Contact:

Re: HELP! Bachelor Thesis Detroit Techno...

Post by Dal-Tech »



This one from Newcleus had a 303 in it. Not acid sytle but you can hear the 303 slide on the bassline.
Dal-Tech wrote: Everyone else is trying to be cool, not me.
hey everybody : I'm a douche !
Post Reply