Judge Me !

thought I give it a try, made too much for myself lately and need some feedback.

lookie here, download, unzip and say something.

oh and use headphones if possible, I am rather hooked on stereo-effects.

Nice dub work. :)
I listened to every song carefully and I like ‘hammond’ the most.
You made a really nice usage of the stereo matrix.
Kept basses mono, high percussions slightly panned and the melodies, vinyl- and fretch-noises widened. I checked Hammond once again in 4.1 surround (Pro Logic) and noticed that the organ itself isn’t widened. In my personal taste I’d give it a full 180° stereo seperation. It would strenghthen the atmosphere.
And I really have to ask one thing: Is the trumpet really dubbed? If so, then you made a good selection of samples. It almost sounds played :)

I think the hammond is a rhodes and its actually mono, its from some old 70s record where its being played completely on the right (and you hear some room on the left). I chopped it totally though, but there was no stereo to widen and a reverb sounded ugly. but I am rather proud of the acbass, thats trilogy programmed by me and it sounds very good imho.

yeah, and the trumpet … is from one of the first records of a now rather famous german female jazz-musician who would kill me on sight for sampling this, I suppose. its a solo (not played by her, she plays something else) and the sound of that thing is simply awesome.

and no one else ?

I liked “hammond” also.
Only thing what you could do is pull down the bass little. I think its a bit too loud.
In general very good song. Everything sounds just fine, and liked the mood!

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Hang `m.

Already everything said and done.

I’m listening and preparing to comment ;)

I have no access to ftp at work, and slow connection at home… argh!!!

Pacemaker:
In the beginning I’m not very convinced about the drumset.
Sounds slightly “fake” about the sound… like you kept hi-hats very loud and very “flat”. The beat goes in straight to the point from the beginning while my overall impression is that the track really starts to chew the point past the second half, when you throw in electro-like noises and hummings to complete the soundscape. Ah… talking about soundscape: that’s one flat wind you got in there. I’d be tweaking it a bit to make it even lighter or at least not to have it back there whistling all the times with the same single freq.
I’d say that it sounds like a hip-hop base in the beginning and like a chill-out ambient track in the end. You might decide to give it a stronger mark on one of these two options… (you know, they both strongly and differently influence the kind of EQ you’re going to give it) but it’s Interesting anyway

Hammond
I hear the mighty trilogy in action here. The intro is obviously ok… with the broken hammond and the vinyl scratches… but right after it, the loop sounds “Empty” all the way to the first minute. This emptyness is like “remarking” somehow the not-human nature of certain instruments like trilogy. The drums are there but it all sounds pretty “empty”. After the first minute, with those strings accents in the back you got a pretty groovy thing going on… and that goes improving with the nice trumpet bit. The whole track has one downside… imho… it doesn’t really “goes” anywhere… it grows somehow… but it grows in circles, if you see what I mean. But this is a downside to me, obviously. One freejazz listener would probably appreciate this point…

Wanted Remix
I’m sorry but this is a No-Go for me. The drumset is totally out of place.
At my ears acustic drums are not fitting at all in such an electronic noise-ambient environment. They sound very “basic” and “old” to me…
2 bad because the rest of the track goes on as a very interesting experiment…

Seems like all 3 tracks are sharing a common “thing” about “starting” the music… so if I have to suggest you about something to improve… your conception of “crescendo” in music could be the “next thing”
:)
Sometimes just adding a “new” set of sounds makes the track “step” to a different feeling in a raw and possibly unwanted way instead of obtaining a “crescendo”. You should care more about the way you blend new voices coming in to enrich the track.

I’d say you’re doing quite fine, anyway. ;)

pacemaker : the wind is part of the string-sample. its from some 70s anime and the wind was blowing there while the orchestra was playing those string-staccatos (or whatever its called). I tried several times, but I couldnt get the wind out, because its one of those filtered filtered white-noise things. at some point I decided to keep it that lo-fi way, altough I have heard before that it sounds awkard and I can only agree, but I think thats kind of charming too :) however, good point in not simply saying “this sucks” but “its gets boring after a while”, I could try to make this whole piece abit more lively soundwise. What I really like however is the very “drunken” feel about this song (I cant call it groove, thats not the word to use), the rythm of this song is very far off but (for me) appealing at the same time. its just staggering along. (this is also the track where I reached the limits of renoise, 2xx bpm and speed 16 didnt give me enough control over the whole thing).

hammond : mhh, I very much get what you mean. while the bass is good for being a programmed bass it does ofcourse suck compared to a real bass. (I actually have collected some tracks from the 70s which do have some total freakish bass-players going mad on their instruments. not in terms of soloing, but normal funk-tracks where the bassist is playing along in the background but at the same time improvising the whole time the thing he plays. I am very fascinated by this.) However, the thing that I love about this track are the chord-progressions, I basically took all the self-played stuff (guitar, bass) and tried some progressions and then took timefactory and and the musical samples and pitched them accordingly. for me this is a rather huge step in terms of composing, so its okay. Anyway. this is a rather generic and nice downbeat/triphop (whatever this is called nowadays) thing, but I like it.

wanted : hehe. actually I had a very, very minimal drumset in the beginning, kinda lika that old-photek-d&b stuff after taking a huge load from the bong (you remember his snares and basedrums ? those industrial-style things), but then alot of people nagged about this and so I kinda programmed my own loop and then treated it like a drumloop (chopped it, rearranged it), and for me it works better than the old one.

and in general : some years ago someone said to me “dude, you are not a musican, you are a producer or something”, and I went really mad about it, but then I thought, maybe he was right in a term that I am not really a “musician” in the exactish definition. I cant compose, thats a fact, I cant sit down and work out a melody and find chords to that or something. When I make music there is always a sample first which sets the mood or the way to go and I make music around that (and often the original sample where it started from get totally in the background), but I am helpless if I have nothing to work with.
Also, what I am way more interested in is the way things sound and what feelings are created this way and the rythm that lies in things.
And I am a minimal dude. I love the hiphop-instrumentals which go on and on for five minutes but never get boring just because they are completely on the point . I am admirer of mr. oizo or dj vadim, people which build 5 minutes-tracks out of some drums and a very few samples, but in those 5 minutes you hear everything thats possible with those samples and while other people get bored after 2 minutes because “nothing happens” I enjoy all those small details that either happen or that you discover after a while.
And the other thing is that since a few years I feel like I am practicing all the time, sometimes I get finished songs, but they all feel like sketches or milestones on a path that leads somewhere or as some signs of things to come. I am still trying to find it you know :D

The only thing that I am rather certain of is that my music is kinda special, its my own, I dont hear comments like “yeah, this reminds me of artist xy”, (except for that hammond track maybe), and its always good for me if people consider my music unique (despite the obvious flaws).

but thank you very much about that comment about “changing the sound”, I know my tracks are like a mountain, they raise, have a peak and go down again, working on something more complex is definately a way to go, but I dont know how yet.

so thanx for all your comments (and I would be glad about more :D)