nervous_testpilot

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2010-03-31T22:06:00.001+01:00

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nervous_testpilot Live Rig - The Inside SCOOP!

2010-01-09T13:49:00.000Z

Just some live rig experiments...

Marko Kantola - Anywhere / Black City

2009-12-04T17:23:00.002Z

Check out this brilliant work from fellow Subtraxx artist Marko Kantola - exactly how trance should be...

Miika Kuisma - One Step Behind the Mankind - nervous_testpilot's Club Mix

2009-11-19T06:19:00.003Z

Miika Kuisma - One Step Behind the Mankind (Nervous Testpilot Remix)

2009-11-08T12:43:00.001Z

Just a quick one to say that this remix by me of top Finnish dude Mr Kuisma is out now on Beatport. I might possibly get a chance to meet the man himself while I'm on holiday in Singapore, which will be awesome! I'll keep you posted.

Here is a link to said tune at Beatport.

DMS Dimension

2009-10-12T19:48:00.002+01:00

A trance VST ROMpler by the name of DMS Dimension that I co-developed with Dancemidisamples has just been released!

Here's the blurb:

If you're a professional producer, or you've ever worked with one, you'll know that a lot of time in the studio is spent layering up synth sounds to create big, powerful tones. To save time, over the years, we've built up a library of huge layered sounds to take the hassle out of this process, and now we're going to share it with you...

DMS Dimension is a VST instrument which gives you instant access to our professional quality 1.2 GB ROM library full of soaring trance leads synths, fat trance basses, insane trance FX, bright synth pianos and lush trance pads.

Our aim is to give you a comprehensive toolkit of tones which can slot into any trance or progressive tune. That's why we've stuck to clean, powerful multi-layered sounds for every single one of the 128 presets. We'd be more than happy to use any of these sounds in a track ourselves: there's no filler whatsoever. Check out the demos above if you don't believe us: every single sound comes from Dimension (apart from the drums, of course!).

Dimension has a simple, fast architecture: amplitude and filter envelopes, a chunky lowpass filter, a delay unit and a reverb unit. Each patch uses two multisamples which are layered together: you can adjust the balance of these if you want. That's it: there's no faff; just instant, usable sounds which can be tweaked so they fit perfectly with the rest of your mix.

All of the individual tones used by Dimension are stored in the popular SF2 (SoundFont) format, which can be used with most VST sampler plug-ins. If you love the sounds, but want to do your own sound design using your own software, feel free to use the samples!

Professional sounds, perfect usability and a vast sample library for just £49.99
US $78.92: you've got to pick this plugin up today.

---

Working on this was great - I built it entirely in Synthedit and sound creation duties were handled by the mighty K Complex. Check it out!

Hiatus

2009-09-28T22:43:00.003+01:00

A couple of things I was doing (and mentioned previously) got cancelled, and now I am pretty entrenched working on the Frozen Synapse soundtrack. Hopefully I will get time to mix Wonderful Information for Subtraxx soon so that they can get that out.

The ASTONISHING Dreamtrak remix of that track should be available soon as well.

Hopefully I'll be able to get my live set completed in between Synapse work and get out and gigging again. I will let you know.

I have a Facebook fan thing now if you would like to network socially with my face. Do this.

Truck vid!

2009-07-28T10:08:00.001+01:00

Truck!

2009-07-25T22:40:00.003+01:00

I'm excited about playing my first proper live set for years tomorrow night. Should be good fun!

If you're here wondering about what I've been up to then you should check out my recent tunes on Future State and the Bonzai Label Group.

Imaginary Cities (Future State)
Ville Lope - Passive Attack - Nervous Testpilot Remix (Green Martian)
Miika Kuisma - One Step Behind the Mankind - Nervous Testpilot Remix (forthcoming on Subtraxx)

I've also got another remix for Miika Kuisma, one for Daz Bailey and one for Upbeat Music in the pipeline - that's "AWESOME PRODUCER LANGUAGE" for "I haven't finished them yet".

Two of the tracks you can hear in the player on the left, "Wonderful Information" and "Remember" are forthcoming on Subtraxx.

I don't post here often enough, but I do Twitter. This is my work Twitter as well, but that's all about video games! If you like those things, you'll probably also like my weekly podcast called Visiting the Village - check it out.

After Truck, my plans are to get that batch of tunes done, then gig a LOT more. Hopefully you'll be seeing a lot more of me towards the end of the year.

Ville Lope - Passive Attack (nervous_testpilot remix) out now!

2009-05-27T23:18:00.001+01:00

My recent remix of Ville Lope's great proggy tune is out now on the Green Martian label. Go here to listen and purchase!

Truck

2009-04-06T17:31:00.000+01:00

I will be playing at Truck this year - check the site for details.

Are you an American and do you like sports?

2009-04-01T21:53:00.003+01:00

Yep, it's another sponsored post. What jewels of commerce will the internet throw at us this time, I wonder?

If you're after Yankee Stadium Tickets, Fenway Park Tickets or Wrigley Field Tickets, then why not go and have a look at A Cheap Seat? I'm guessing they're a Ticketmaster competitor: things certainly look that way.

Beyond that link, several exciting images loop around, including one which might possibly be Shakira. This was definitely my favourite: the football players hugging really did nothing for me.

There's also a strident-looking green lady who's probably from Wicked or something like that. I've never seen Wicked and don't plan to at any time in the near future: I'm incredibly distrustful of modern musicals.

Anyway, yes, go there for your tickets and such. If you're American. Win.

That's the end once more - off we go back into the blogosphere.

ShopWiki

2009-04-01T21:35:00.004+01:00

This is a sponsored post, as if you couldn't guess.

I've not really found a good online price aggregator, so I was actually mildly intrigued to hear about ShopWiki.com, which crawls sites using a Google-esque algorithm rather than simply re-posting a load of sponsored links.

They're harping on about getting good deals on Wii's, video games in general, game bundles and Wii accessories.

It currently seems US-centric - I would like to see a UK version for obvious reasons. However the interface is pretty good and maybe they're going places. We'll see if it stands up to the likes of Froogle, which never really took off for me.

That's the end of this gubbins. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled nervoustestpilot.co.uk.

For Sale: 1 Yamaha RM1x

2009-04-01T21:25:00.005+01:00

Yep, it's on Ebay.

I'll be quite sad to see this go as I used it to do my very first gigs at The Cellar, Truck and elsewhere. It's a good bit of kit and it does have a few quite weird sounds in it I haven't heard anywhere else. Take a look at the auction if you fancy it!

Visiting the Village

2009-03-18T11:20:00.003Z

I've been working on a podcast over at Mode 7 Games entitled Visiting the Village. It's a gaming podcast primarily, and there are lots of those around, but we're going for something a bit different: more of a US-sports talk-show style punchy discussion format with informed opinions and no "LOOK AT THIS AWESOME SCREENSHOT" nonsense. Anyway, Visiting the Village, for all your gaming podcast needs - check out Episode 2 which is out now.

Some Awesome Public Domain Audio Resources

2009-03-16T10:14:00.004Z

So, as per my previous post, I was on the hunt for some genuinely copyright-free sampling material.

Through Electronic Musician, I came across the Prelinger Archive, a brilliant trove of old adverts, public service announcements and so on, all properly Creative Commons and guilt-free.

Also LibriVox, which is essentially CC amateur readings of books and poems.

A massive collection of foley / instrument samples / speech /everything you can imagine can be found here at the One Laptop Per Child project.

These should keep me going for a while!

"What software do you use?"

2009-03-14T11:31:00.002Z

It's the ultimate noob question.

I've seen two cultures where newbies come onto forums and ask questions: programming and music production. In both, it appears, if you want a question answered, you have to do the following:

1. Demonstrate that you've already learned how to do obvious things

If what you want to do is something other people will think is trivial, like "how do I make a sound with this VST" or "how to I load this VST in Sequencer X" (people still ask stuff like this), then you won't get an answer.

2. Demonstrate that you've put significant effort into solving the problem

If you haven't tried on your own then why should anyone else try for you? Some people don't know what VST to use. If they said, "I tried V-station and I didn't like the editing, or I tried Sylenth but it's a bit too complicated for me because I'm a beginner", then they probably deserve consideration.

3. Demonstrate that you're not a prick

If someone is a nice person, and asks politely, they should get a polite answer. There's obvious ways to do this on forums.

Now, back to "what software do you use?" I read an interview with Tiesto in CM recently: it was probably the worst music tech interview I've ever read. That's absolutely no disrespect to the guy who wrote it - we all know how these things work. He was obviously struggling to get anything.

Everyone's keen on bashing Tiesto: I've never had a reason to until now. He was such a complete dick in that interview: he absolutely refused to discuss any techincal details of anything. When asked about synths he gave the usual, "Oh it doesn't matter what synth you use..." stock answer.

Rick Smith from Underworld did this in an interview I read years ago - it really frustrated me at the time because I love Underworld! Now, I know it doesn't matter what synth you use...ooops.

Anyway, there will be a load of idiots in the world who "want to sound like Tiesto" and want to know what synths he has. The "it doesn't matter what synth you use" answer is there to deflect the low level idiots who have never even used a synth: it's an encouragement to make some damn music first and then worry about all that stuff afterwards.

But, what happens when you have made some music? Recommendations are useful.

I'll tell you something: I, and a lot of other producers, quite like knowing what synths people are favouring. It's just information to build in when we consider a new purchase. For example, I was looking into Sylenth quite heavily, then I happened across an Airbase tutorial where he mentioned that he's really into it. Sylenth really suits his sound: it's good for sounds in that direction as well as lots of other things.

Similarly, I bought Quantum Leap RA after I interviewed Inon Zur and he mentioned it; ditto Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra with Richard Jacques. Other things, I've researched and bought on my own.

So, if you're a producer and you get interviewed, what should you do?

As Airbase continually shows, there's absolutely no need to hide all your "secrets" - all of the popular things are already caned to death by everyone under the sun; you're not protecting anything. However, while it's your right to keep some things private, that doesn't give you any justification to deflect all your readers as idiots. Not everyone who reads music tech magazines is a noob: especially CM, which has improved wholesale over the last few years to the point where a lot of the content is extremely valid for professionals.

The next time someone polite, who is making an honest effort to learn, asks you what synths you use, why don't you tell them?

Sampling

2009-03-12T17:54:00.002Z

I was watching Videodrome last night for the first time and kept noticing some very dark, potentially breakdown-worthy samples throughout.

A younger me would have just ripped the audio straight away...an older me waited until this morning and found out that the DVD had already been sent away in its little Lovefilm packet...but anyway...

I'm basically scared of using samples from movies now because I don't want there to be any barrier to my tracks getting a release. I don't want to cause any problems for a label so I just leave everything nicely legal.

Lawsuits over samples only happen to extremely popular tunes, but what if (for example) one of my tracks got licensed to a compilation? Anyway, the point is not that I'm likely to have a Top 10 EUROHIT at any point in the next five years, but that sampling is seen as an impediment to a legal release by a lot of labels.

I tended to use speech samples really prominently in my older stuff because I basically knew it was for a small audience and nobody would ever bat an eyelid. Loads of musicians do the same.

Obviously, you are using someone else's work and not paying them for it - a friend made the point to me a few years ago that a great deal of effort has to be put in to get movie sound to a finished state, and simply grabbing a cool-sounding vocal snippet from the soundtrack is essentially piggybacking on a load of people.

But fundamentally, it makes me sad. It sucks the fun out of production: the era where you could just grab anything is gone and that's definitely, categorically a bad thing for electronic music.

I actually don't know if I should just bash on regardless, get to the stage where labels are willing to shoulder the burden or negotiate for rights on my behalf, or if I have to leave this side of my production behind.

The Orb

2009-03-08T23:41:00.002Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTy4-OjscAQ

I can't embed this video because, while Universal want to make some content free, they don't want it to be free free. It's Toxygene by the Orb: the Jean-Michelle Jarre-sampling techno-dub masterpiece.

I was reminded of this earlier when talking about 90's dance stuff and remembered their ridiculous Top of the Pops performance. The only reference I can find to that is here - YouTube doesn't seem to have it (someone correct this!)

My nostalgia is generally confined to hyper-specific personal incidents, but I do have some 90's nostalgia - ridiculous dance music could cross over into the mainstream and cause a huge stir. Deadmau5 is probably the only good example of this in recent years: basically hardcore dance that has "it" in a pop way. The Orb were different because they were riding a huge cultural wave: they tripped off the edge of rave culture and landed in art-dance. I love the sounds in that track, the "offensive" Jarre-sampling, the faux-disturbing video, the "trippy" freeform nature of it and the driving, driving dubby bassline. It really caught my ear when I first heard it, and I continue to respect The Orb and all their excesses.

Module

2009-03-07T11:42:00.003Z

I've had a few people ask me about my debut album Module recently.

It came about from sitting down with all the kit I'd managed to muster as a 18-year-old and going, "What can I make with this that won't be terrible?"

Full-on dance music was out, really - I didn't have access to anything vaguely analogue sounding, so I decided to go down the electronica route.

The first track I recorded was "Yes to All" and that formed the basis for the sound of the album. It had very short samples in it as I only had very restricted sample time before I upgraded the RAM in the sampler: a lot of the percussion came from me doing weird things with the pitch controls on my RM1x.

Here's the full kit list I used for it:

Yamaha A4000 sampler
Yamaha DX100 synth
Yamaha (detecting a theme?) CS1X synth
Yamaha RM1x "groovebox"
Cool Edit Pro (some effects and sound editing)
Spirit Folio Notepad Mixer
PC running Cubase Score (MIDI only)

The bit-reduction on the A4000 is basically "the sound" of that album - I used it on pretty much every single channel in every single track! Everything is mixed super warm to the point of being seriously muddy, but hey that's what you get with lo-fi! Oh yeah and the entire album was actually mixed IN the sampler, as you'll note that I don't have enough channels or anything approaching a DAW to mix anywhere else - crazy behaviour I know, but I got pretty good at it! Determinance was mixed on that sampler as well.

The Yamaha A4000 is one of the best bits of kit I've ever owned, hands down, possibly THE best. Its sound and architecture were spot on and it was super powerful - such a shame it's obsolete now.

I still have all the stuff listed above! There's almost no point selling the sampler, the mixer is busted, the CS1X is still my MIDI keyboard (I wrote every single thing that's been released on it). I'd love to get the RM1X and DX100 out again and mess around with them, but I just don't seem to have time to start setting up hardware. My setup is as lean and mean as possible because of my situation right now, but that's good as it keeps me pumping out tracks on a regular basis.

You can buy Module from the Mode 7 Games store if you're interested in getting hold of it.

As I've said, I'd love the opportunity to do more electronica but it's just a time thing. I've really concentrated on the dance side of my output for the last year or so, and things are starting to take off there. As I gain confidence as a producer I'm starting to reintroduce a lot more experimental techniques and take things in a bit of an unusual direction. I'm hoping that the remix I'm doing right now will be a breakthrough track for me: I'm definitely aiming for something original.

One of my ambitions is to release a double artist album - one disc of listening electronica and one disc of mixed trancey stuff - that would rock. If I ever get the chance to do that, then I will.

Some inspirational words from DJ ReOrder

2009-03-03T16:45:00.000Z

"[16:44] Tibor Tomecko (ReOrder): if somebody tells you to do track that or thos (sic) way f*** him"

EXACTLY.

Although he did add the usual caveat about mix critique, which is always useful.

The Stupidest Sound I Made Today

2009-02-20T20:01:00.000Z

Yep, that's it basically.

Crazy old acid house

2009-02-19T22:38:00.001Z

Humanoid (via the great blog Digital Tools)

Really need to listen to more crazy old acid house...I have definitely been considering how much more interesting dance music was when there were less rules.

Monitoring Low

2009-02-19T19:07:00.005Z

For various reasons I've been trying to bring my monitoring volume down recently. I've actually really started enjoying it - but it takes a lot of getting used to. As always, A/Bing helps: I'm planning on sticking with it for a while.

I know that this is better for me which is the most important thing, but I'm wondering if it has affected my mixing in the past. Highs always seem accentuated at higher volume, so it may have led to the slight dullness my older mixes possessed. Everything on Module, for example, does sound a bit flat to me now, but high frequency content is so divisive.

Take trance for example - there is such a huge divide in the masters of someone like Orjan Nilson and the more recent Ferry stuff in terms of highs. Orjan's Last Pluck remix is full of screaming hi-hats, whereas something like Radio Crash sounds completely dull in comparison.

Compare:

Ferry Corsten - Radio Crash

Marcus Schossow - The Last Pluck (Orjan Nilsen Remix)

I'm still not entirely sure which side of this debate I'm on. Obviously there's the old "hard limiting" debate going on here, but I'm wary of too many highs in my stuff at the moment. I think I will be working on warming things up, but I do think it's telling that so many of the top labels are blasting their stuff so hard. Maybe harsher sounding stuff will always be more popular, and it'll only be the musos who are continually advocating trimming 8.5k?

Anyway, to return to the point, quieter monitoring will hopefully lead to a bit more refinement in my mixes. Anyone out there got an opinion on monitoring volume?

Player down

2009-02-16T15:02:00.001Z

The website player is down currently - it's out of my control as it's hosted by Soundcloud, but it should return shortly.