Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with techno

Recommendations for DJ samples/songs ala Fatboy Slim?

heatherfl — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:30:56 -0800

My husband mixes dance music using Fruity Loops. I want to get him some CDs for Christmas for samples -- particularly stuff that sounds like Fatboy Slim. Help? I can buy loops already sampled or I can buy songs for that he can sample himself, it doesn't matter.

This song is a good overview of what FBS sounds like and what I'm looking for:
Mad Flava

There's a lot of retro sounding piano and brass, some funky bass/guitar, syncopated percussion, a bit of synth/electronica, and non-rap but rhythmically interesting vocals. If you're familiar with Fatboy Slim, you know what I mean!

FYI, I already got him "The Ultimate DJ Sample Box" which has actual Fatboy Slim samples. Just looking for supplemental goodies now.

So what should I get for him, music experts?

Thanks so much!

TECHNOVIKING doesn't dance to the music, the music dances to TECHNOVIKING

jimfl — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:49:55 -0800

What is the music that Technoviking is dancing to?

Where is the german version of the montreal plateau!

Smegoid — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:25:07 -0800

Berlin-Leipzig-Amsterdam filter. Visiting all three for a conference on a record shopping (minimal, electro, german techno) and cool neighborhood finding adventure. Any ideas? I looked through previous threads but this rather specific. At a conference, first time in germany (and flying out of amsterdam). I'd love to find some good vinyl, especially all the old 2000-2005 minimal/microhouse/electro german music that I've never been able to find back in Canada (labels like bpict, force tracks, kompakt, ware, gigolos). Any hints (for berlin mostly, but leipzig and amsterdam wouldnt hurt).

Also I have some mates with me who are interested in good tips on where to shop for good euro fashion (mid designer stuff, g-star, energie, whatever). Neighborhoods where records and clothes unit would be a plus! Many thanks mefi! Multiple people here appreciate it!

What was this song I heard?

contessa — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:33:43 -0800

Help me figure out the name/artist of the 8-bit techno snippet played on All Things Considered today. ...And before it's suggested, I did search the NPR site, because I know they list the songs they play between segments.

Not this one, though!

It was played at the tail end of "President's Comments on Economy Examined." I listened to all the songs on the rundown page and...nada. Help?

Help me avoid having the Dallas club experience while I'm in Vancouver

Unicorn on the cob — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:45:10 -0800

Techno in Vancouver? Is there such a thing? If no techno, how about a really good blues bar? Help me find it before September 6. I'm about to be in Vancouver for a week (returning to US September 6). My mother is coming along; she likes live blues, I like techno. When I say techno, I don't mean remixes of top 40 music, I mean stuff like The Black Dog, Heartthrob, Drexciya, Rob Hood, Cybotron, that sort of thing. I also like tech-house and electro, even DnB, but kind of can't stand vocal or deep house or bad dubstep being drowned out by a crappy MC.

I see that Mark Farina is playing while I'm there, and that Lotus might be a good venue. But all the club listings look like they do here in Dallas; there's a lot of hype talk on flyers and all-caps Twittering, but I can't tell crap about the sound system or what style of music the djs play there. I don't care about the crowd or how much it costs to get in; I want a good sound system and a bar where I can get a decent drink without waiting 45 minutes or ordering bottle service for a few hundred just to sit down.

Alternatively, I'd also like to know what DJs to look for by name or if there are underground parties (I see there is an afterhours scene there too).

If there's none of that to be had, a dive bar with a jukebox would be just great. I'm not super-picky, but I don't want to pay $30 to go into a place that sucks, you know?

My mom would like a place where we can sit and hear local blues musicians play, or at least hear blues and jazz of some kind if it's not live and possibly eat dinner.

If anyone has suggestions on how I should dress for going out fashionably in Van, it'd be welcome, too; I see that "dress code" is listed on some clubs' pages. I'm sort of the anti-jeans and tshirt girl to begin with; I'm just trying to avoid being gauche, I suppose.

We will be staying near Robson and Granville.

Shout-out, Vancouver MeFites! If you see this and want to meet up, MeMail me. I won't have my laptop but I'll have my Blackberry which is always reliable for hitting up MeFi. :) I'll be wearing my Metafilter shirt at least once, so if you see a super-short girl walking down the street with one on, it might be me. Say hi!

Können Sie ihre Musik, er, stoppen?

doctorpiorno — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:39:48 -0800

I've just moved into a lovely apartment in Frankfurt, Germany, only to discover that my neighbor likes to play loud techno music on his stereo at 1 a.m. I don't speak German. Help? I'd like to leave a note in their mailbox, politely asking them to keep the volume low at night in the hope that he's simply clueless about apartment etiquette and not an antisocial jerk. However, my command of German is nowhere near enough for the task, so I'm turning to the the Hive Mind for help to translate the following (or something to the same effect) for me:

"Hello, this is your neighbor from [Flat number] in [Building number]. May I ask you to please keep the music low after 11 p.m.? My bedroom is just on the other side of the wall and the noise is keeping me awake at night. Thanks!"

If this fails, do you have any suggestions on how to handle this situation? Moving out is not an option, as I'm living in company housing - neighbor is not an employee of the same company, though - and I'm assuming calling the cops on him would be pretty difficult with my current German skills. I have tried earplugs, but they don't help with the bass rumblings. :-/

Have controller, need synth

Thistledown — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:21:16 -0800

I've got a PC, and an EMU-49 key midi controller. I've also got an Audiophile 192 sound card with midi-in-out connections. What I want to do is play some synths on the PC.... I've been out of the game for a long time with respect to synths and midi, but I just put my PC together and got the controller for cheap. So I ask you...what synth software would you recommend? I'm looking for sounds - pianos/ambient synths to make music. I'll probably use an old copy of Audition to do recording. But I'm curious about what's good and inexpensive. Bang for the buck here. Suggestions?

What's this musical technique called?

desjardins — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 12:47:38 -0800

What is the musical technique called whereby the music starts slow/quiet, builds to an, um, climax, and then, um, releases? This is most prevalent in dance/trance music. Examples within. Lasgo, "Surrender" (YT Clip)
Basshunter, "All I Ever Wanted" (YT clip)
Guru Josh Project, "Infinity" (YT Clip)
Alice Deejay, "Better Off Alone" (YT Clip)

(Clips may take a second to load.)

I think this question references a similar technique.

Song recommendations utilizing this technique very welcome!

Burning Question

Frasermoo — Sat, 23 May 2009 21:20:54 -0800

What is the cheapest (best way) to get my vinyl on to YouTube? I have a stack of vinyl and want to share it. I sold my decks before I emigrated so what should I do now? I don't want to mix, just burn and upload. I live in Canada.

It's Like That, But Different

nomisxid — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:35:32 -0800

Looking for the name of a house/techno club tune from the mid-90's. I'm pretty sure I was hearing it in the clubs of St Louis around 1994-95 timeframe, and was struck by the similarity between it's hook, and that of the then-current radio/MTV track Lucas With The Lid Off. It was definitely not a remix of the Lucas song, just the primary sample had a similar flapper-jazz/swing vamp to it.

Best techno albums since 1990?

Ultra Laser — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:46:09 -0800

What are the best techno albums since 1990? After discovering Basic Channel and Chain Reaction, I'm left wondering what other essential, must-have techno recordings I might have missed (1990-ish to present day). I mean "techno" in the stricter sense of the term, but I'm also interested in IDM and clicks & cuts type stuff. I'm NOT looking for proto-techno, synthpop/electro, radio-friendly electronica or trip-hop.

thud thud thud thud

SNWidget — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:40:10 -0800

BubbleGumPopFilter: My deep shame as a professional musician is that I love European bubblegum techno pop music. I've heard a bunch, but I'm craving more - what should I be listening to? Here's something to guide the suggestions - I'll take anything and everything.

* Both of Aqua's Albums
* Tarzan & Jane by Toy-Box
* Space Invaders by Hit'n'Hide
* Jet Set Life by Smiles & More
* Butterfly by Smile.DK

Most of this stuff includes a sickeningly sweet melody, poppy sounds, heavy bass line, and (usually) contrasting male and female voices.

I'll take album suggestions, as well as individual songs. I just nee more of this stuff.

Multiple Mystery Songs

batmonkey — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:33:00 -0800

Three songs I'm looking for - various degrees of difficulty... Easy:
Song played frequently on KEXP 90.3 in Seattle in '07. A dude is going to head to his shack with his woman and smoke weed (he may have used euphemisms...damn my conceptual memory). Sure it's not "Shake the Shack Tonight" by Sid King & the Five Strings. Solo artist, I think, but could be wrong. Quite frequently played on Fridays, near rush hour. However, even my digging through the archived playlists isn't jogging my memory. I'll bet you're smarter than me & know it right off.

Medium:
House-ish song from the late '80s. Most remember the samples: "Brothas and Sistas!", "I've got a question" - may be snippets of the same person, more likely separate samples. I've been told it may be tackhead. I've been told it may be "[?]screw" or "screw[?]". I know it most comes to mind when listening to "Beat Dis" by Bomb the Bass or "Hey, Poor - Jesus is Here" by Front 242. The "I've got a question" part is the most central piece of the whole search. Played in various clubs there (notably #s), heard years later in Dallas, lost the slip of paper with the details long ago.

Hard:
A version of "White Rabbit", house-ish - trippier/swirlier than techno - from very early to mid '90s (I dunno, could be late '80s, too). The key here is that it was played at The Church (Goth night at Dallas's Lizard Lounge") fairly frequently, generally in a set containing "Daisy Chain 4 Satan" and "Sober".

Upbeat jazzy techno

knave — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:46:13 -0800

Stupid question about a particular flavor of techno music. I stumbled across this pretty hilarious remix of the Pac-Man music called Eat 'em up.

What I'd like to know is, the section that begins at 1:16 in the video linked above... what flavor is that? I never really learned what the various types of techno mean (i.e. trance, house, etc.). This one's got kind of a 70's disco feel, I guess, although not so funky (e.g. Jamiroquai). If there's no name for that style, it would also be cool to hear recommendations of other groups that have a similar sound.

Thanks!

Murder on the dance/office floor

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:49:05 -0800

I find repetitive noise maddening, to the point where I want to commit violence to make it stop. How can I stop this from happening? Certain repetitive sounds make me crazy, I feel trapped and suffocated and am driven to distraction. It can get so bad that I want to curl into a ball, or sometimes cry or yell or lash out, I can't stand it. I become irrationally angry but it subsides the second the sound stops. I'm especially affected by a particular techno-style looping beat. If four-to-the-floor dance music comes on the radio I have to restrain myself from just chucking the thing out of the window in my haste to MAKE IT STOP. It sounds funny but it really isn't, especially at work. I have to listen to white noise at deafening levels on my headphones just to cancel the noise of other people touch-typing and it shatters my concentration.

Is this abnormal? I'm not sensitive to more freeform sounds and my musical tastes veer heavily towards asynchronous, dischordant stuff, and I do actually like some dance stuff when it's more funk or drum and bass style rhythms - but the aforementioned even beats actually turn my stomach. What is it about this sound (especially in music) that other people find so compelling? How do I make it stop affecting me so negatively? Would hypnosis or some such help? Any thoughts welcome (anonymous because, well, it's a bit weird).

Suggestions for "urban espionage" tunes

angry.polymath — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:52:02 -0800

MusicFilter: help me find some "spy rap" songs! So imagine a film like The Bourne Identity, with Ice Cube playing the lead.

I'm looking for songs that would fit in such a film; techno, bass-and-synth heavy, espionage and action overtones, but with rap lyrics and breakbeat themes. Sort of Hybrid-meets-50Cent.

Suggestions from the hive mind?

Looking for a song that is probably not about beef trucks.

Metroid Baby — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:39:34 -0800

I’m looking for a song I heard a few years ago. It was some kind of techno song, and I remember a spoken line that sounded awfully like "My name is Benny the killer fuck beef truck." I have a feeling those aren’t the actual lyrics. I heard the song a few years ago, hanging out at my friends' house. From what I remember, it was a pretty standard techno-sounding song, with a male voice speaking the misheard line in question. I also heard, at some point, "My name is Moody the electro beef truck." This cracked me up and I remember spending a lot of time giggling about the beef trucks. (We were fairly stoned at the time.) These may have been the only two lines in the song. They were fairly rhythmic lines and didn't sound like they’d been sampled from an old movie or anything.

We can't figure out what song it was. A few days later, my friends looked through all of the techno mixes on their computer and couldn't find it, and haven't been able to find it since. ("Seriously, it's long gone," they swear.) I've Googled anything that might be reasonably close to the real lyrics (funk? beat? track? ...meat truck?) with no success. The real words might be nothing like what I misheard. Maybe we just hallucinated the whole thing.

I know that's not much information to go on, and it's probably a long shot, but I've been wondering about the true identity of this song for years. Hopefully someone recognizes it. Thanks in advance!

What is the tune I can't remember?

Frasermoo — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:32:10 -0800

Help me remember name of 1994 mainstream (super popular) dance track. I'm jonesing to hear an old house anthem. I remember spinning with it in 94/95, and sure it had 'bomb' in the title. A huge tune for the dance scene, I'll probably remember it in the morning, but I'm gonna test the hive and see if someone can nail it. Then I'll find it online and hammer it until I go to bed. I can actually picture the release I played (dark purple label) but other than that I am super-blocked.

I need music for my Mage game

mr_book — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:40:48 -0800

Help me find appropriate music for my Mage: The Ascension game set in 1997. Alright, so i'm running a game of Mage: The Ascension (OWOD) set in 1997. The characters are all recent high-school grads who, once friends, have reunited after their first year out of school. I want to play this game to appropriate background music for the time period and, also, for the characters (meaning late teenagers).

I was there myself, and I remember a lot of music that fits this style; however, I came into the greater portion of my music-fu after the turn of the millennium and thus only remember a fraction of what was there. What I do remember was the stuff that got blasted over the radio. I'm looking for the music that was between the cracks, the kind you would have heard while you were getting high in your friends basement or while romancing that amazingly hot girl in her bedroom while she played riffs you'd never heard of before. Non-mainstream, but awesome, that kind of thing. Early grunge bands, under-the-radar goth rock, decent techno, sweet hold-over bands from the 80's, etc.

Also, anything that has to do with that quiet, impending apocalypse that all teenagers were told to expect in the 90s works. And, of course, anything Mage-appropriate would be helpful if you know what that is.

Dance Music By People Who Hate Dance Music

murphy slaw — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:02:14 -0800

I recently rediscovered the song "Man, It's So Loud In Here" by They Might Be Giants, and the delicious juxtaposition of the New Order/Pet Shop Boys pastiche of the music and the sardonic treatment of club culture in the lyrics leads me to my question: What are some other songs that sound like typical dance music but which have lyrics that are critical of dance music or club culture in general?

Does anyone else love Lacquer?

4ster — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:55:05 -0800

I have fallen in love with the song "Behind" by the band Lacquer. If I love this song, by this (thus-far, by me, at least) hard-to-locate band, who else would I enjoy listening to? Thanks everyone for your help.

How does a Roland MC-505 stack up against a TR-808?

neilkod — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:01:58 -0800

Does the Roland MC-505 produce TR-808 sounds using synthesis or samples? Is there anything that the TR-808 does that the MC-505 wont? I'm a hobbyist, passionate about electro, techno, and bass music(and the sub-genres). I've played around with the reason demo and have had pretty decent results with redrum and an 808 patch. I am, however, itching to try the real thing.

I'm seeing inexpensive MC-505s pop up on local gear forums. They claim to have the abilities of a TR-808 but do they have the sound and the legendary timing? I'd like the sounds to be generated, rather than played-back samples.

Or would I be better off sticking with a full version of Reason? I already have a small 25-Key O2 midi controller that has a couple of knobs. I can't use ReBirth because I'm on an Intel Mac and I don't have a VMWare+XP license.

I'm not looking to quit my day job by any means. I am fascinated with the production of electronic music; I can lose myself in the Reason demo for hours.

Of course, a real 808 is out of my budget; some of these used 505s are not. I haven't really looked around for other machines in the Groovebox series.

Find this video!

Hargrimm — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:50:57 -0800

Help me find a music video? I've been going insane for the past couple days trying to unearth a music video a saw a while (year or so) ago on YouTube. It was (I think) a techno/electronic dance beat, and the video was very striking. It was an evangelist talking along to the song, and I remember a clear glass both with operators inside and three robed 'angels' standing behind the preacher. He also turned water into wine and healed an (obviously set-up) woman. I would know in an instant if I could find a thumbnail or anything, but all my Google-fu is failing me.

Earliest use of "Techno"

urbanwhaleshark — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:02:37 -0800

The origins of "Techno" - the earliest recorded use of the term. I'm cross-posting this from uk-dance.org.

"The earliest references I can find to the use of the word "techno" to describe a form of music are both from 1988 - "Techno: The Dance Sound of Detroit" (Virgin Records LP, 1988) and Q magazine "'techno’ is the futuristic, synthesizer-based sound of Detroit" (October 1988, p.65).

Earlier uses of the term are in combined term only (e.g. in 1980 the New York Times uses "techno-pop" to describe Carly Simons' album "Come Upstairs"). Does anyone have any pre-1988 uses of "techno" in an uncombined form?"

Following the thread the earliest discoveries we've found, in terms of music, have been c.1984.

Does anyone have any earlier references?

help me find this awesome band i heard in a coffee shop in Johannesburg

allkindsoftime — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:47:39 -0800

Name-that-music-artist-filter (South Africa style)... This is a long shot, but...

I was in a very chill coffee shop in Johannesburg a few weeks back and they had some very laid back music playing - something about half-way between hip-hop and techno. Not too Kanye, not too Moby.

I asked them who it was, and he said "______ & Justice" - or at least that's what it sounded like to me through his thick accent (second name might have been "Justas" or some other variation). Problem is I couldn't understand the first name very well and I promptly forgot it.

So that's about all I have to go on. I figure there's a 50% chance the artist is South African, but googling with that as a context or without has yielded nothing so far...

Thanks!