Jeskola Buzz is a free DAW that’s been around for 20 years already. To celebrate that special event a collection has been assembled on the Jeskola forum from all Buzz artists willing to participate with tunes that are over 10 years old.
So people went through their digital archives and dug up unfinished pearls, snippets and small songs from long ago.
The collection is a cool mix of tunes spanning the full spectrum of electronic music. Great for hours of unexpected sounds when you want some background tunes while doing work, or writing blog posts like this one. Put it on shuffle and allow yourself to be surprised.
The internet, it’s awesome. One reason is the constant free flow of music that comes off it and my main pipe for this musical sweetness has become twitter lately. Since not all of my dedicated readers (that’s you right?) are following me on twitter (yet) I’m going to post a little recap of stuff I found out about in tweetspace recently for all of you to enjoy. If you want the total freshness however, feel free to get on the train and follow my ass. Say hi if you do. It’s always nice to know you’re dropping in from the blog.
So here it is, the list of stuff I thought I’d share again here:
United Elements of Hatred’s release number 3. Don’t let that name scare you, they’re swell lads. It’s breakcore and it has to sound tough and hardcore remember? This is not the first release on the new netlabel but just like the previous releases this one is also free free free and of high quality. Horsehead’s tracks are heavy on breaks, jungle influences and hardcore breaks, just how we like it. Also check out the previous releases if you haven’t already.
Then there’s Paniq’s free album titled from Zero to Hero. Paniq makes his tunes in Jeskola Buzz and he does it well. The album contains tracks made of the last two years but fit together quite well as an album. It’s hard to describe the album because anything I come up with doesn’t really seem to fit. If you like the lighter side of techno or electronic music but still like a good groove and a kicking beat this could be something for you. Expect some melodies, some 8-bit tweaking, some non 4/4 beats, pirates, a good dose of humour, some acid and much more. I told you it was varied. Definitely worth checkout out IMO. Some of my favourite tracks from this album are “Nuts and Bolts”, “Commercial Invasion”, “Cease and Desist” and “The Future of the Internet”.
Ninja Columbo Zombfree live sets. The latest of this free download contains 4 live DJ sets filled with the hard drum’n’bass, breakcore, IDM and banging, dark techno. The Teknoist brings a set with the hardest of drum’n’bass tracks and hard industrial techno. Scheme Boy mixes some IDM, techno, drum’n’bass and dubstep in his set performed at the Bang Face Weekender. More hard drum’n’bass, hardcore techno and industrial sounds come from the sets by Tugie and Infrared. Nothing to pass by if you like a free jolt of adrenaline delivered in mp3 format.
Once again the mighty internetz provide us with alternative sounding awesomeness that would be hard or even impossible to find in the record stores of the old age. Long live the internet and it’s preaching bloggers and tweeters I’d say.
It’s turning out to be quite the musical week in posts here, but I just had to post about this one as well. Do you remember that 60×60 Buzz compilation I started last year? Well, since the Buzzchurch forum turned out to be a live bunch of music producers supplying the main source of tunes coming in for that entry, Owen Gilbride aka Cryptowen thought it would be cool to start up a new compilation. This time the theme was to write a soundtrack to the End of The World. How about that?
You can guess where the chaotic vs calmer tracks will be at right? Anyway, this collection is another one containing a wide variety of tracks in genre and style, which makes this one great to listen to and explore some new sounds. No matter what style you are in to, you’re bound to find some gems in here that you’ll like. It’s free anyway, so nothing is wasted if this turns out to be not your thing at all, but I doubt it.
Feel free to leave some comments here, or at archive.org if you like this release. I’m sure the folks who participated in it (like me) will love it (like me).
Update: there seems to be a problem with the VBR versions of some disks, which results in the VBR zip-file not being complete. Every file seems to be available in OGG format however.
A project that has been sucking up quite some time lately, but was well worth the investment is something I thought of doing after running into the Subvert Central 60×60 compilation.
I thought it would be great to have a similar compilation with tracks from people using Jeskola Buzz as their music software. I thought this would be great because I use Buzz myself, and it would be a way of forcing myself to actually write and release something again. Another reason is that I know there are a lot of people writing great stuff using this underrated piece of free software, and this would be an excellent way of getting some of that stuff out there.
After launching the idea on several mailing lists, spamming some folks over email, bending a few arms, and getting other volunteers on board to make some cover art and do the mastering, the final result is now online on archive.org. It turned out into something I’m quite proud of. The quality of the tunes submitted by the contributing artists are in general outstanding, ranging from poppy tunes, to chill ambient, crazy breakcore, techno and some industrial rock. I’ve listened to the compilation for a few weeks now and I have to say it still doesn’t bore me. I can’t help but cranking the volume up to insane levels with some of those tunes. They are simply t3h awesome!!!!11.
One of the best things about this for me personally is getting to know a lot of people from the Buzz scene by doing this. I found the Buzzchurch forum to be a real driving force for this project, as it’s full of positive energy and open-minded people. Props to you all, this wouldn’t have been possible without you guys.
So if you feel like downloading a quality compilation of 60 tracks, each 60 seconds in length by a ton of artists using Jeskola Buzz in one way or another… then get your butt over to archive.org and start downloading that free hour of sweet sounds!
For quite a few years I’ve been keeping myself busy with making music on computers. Well, some people will disagree on the fact that I call what I make music, but that’s a different discussion.
I started out on the Amiga with tools Octamed, StarTracker and FastTracker, which where cool at the time, but of course still rather limited.
Later I used FastTracker 2 on the PC, which was a lot better already, to finally start using some “more professional” tools like FruityLoops.
Since I started out with trackers I’ve always had a software based approach to music making. What I mean is that I’m not interested in the way for instance Reason works, by looking at the whole process from a hardware perspective. That’s simply because I never had a clue how the actual hardware of what I’m using really looks like (and I don’t really care either), so this just makes things more complicated for me.
So I want sliders, switches and maybe some knobs (admit it, it’s so cool to tweak a knob) but please no fancy skins to make something look like an actual TB-303, which just sucks up your memory anyway. So Fruity was cool, but I was always on the lookout for something better, and euhm… free for instance (yes, you can read between the lines).
So after a while I came across something called Jeskola Buzz. Some call it a tracker, which sort of made me look down on it a bit, but that’s mainly because it has a tracker-like interface in e.g. a sampler machine.
But Buzz is so much more than a tracker (no offense to the tracker peepz btw).
hey look! it’s buzz!
First of all it’s modular. You can connect as many machines to as many effect combination as you like, just click and link em up. Want to pull all your synths through separate delays, distortion, into a mixer and through a compressor? No problem. Your Buzz gear consist of machines and effects. Machines generate sound, like a synth or a drum computer, while effects change it, like reverb, compression, flanger etc. The cool part about Buzz is that creating a machine for it is done with a well described API, which has resulted in a huge amount of different machines made by a large community of developers ranging from TBS404 or Roland 808 emulators to the weirdest synths you’ve ever heard (unless your name is Richard D. James that is).
Second, it’s free.. free!! How sweet is that!
Another cool thing is the low impact on your memory, and you can never have enough of that, mainly because all sort of fancyness like huge skin bitmaps aren’t used in it.
It’s a bit buggy too sometimes, but I can live with that, especially because a lot of the machines are optimized for speed. You can really run a lot of reverb effects for instance on a decent machine without bringing it to it’s knees.
And it’s free, FREE!! Did I mention that already?
Anyway, time to check it out I guess. You can download everything you need and more at the BuzzMachines website.
Be sure to check out the tutorial. I know, I know, reading manuals is for n00bz, but it’ll definitely save you some time trying to figure it out on your own…
Also check out the BuzzWikki, which has some excellent tips for newbies and the more experienced buzzers.
Jeskola Buzz is a free DAW that’s been around for 20 years already. To celebrate that special event a collection has been assembled on the Jeskola forum from all Buzz artists willing to participate with tunes that are over 10 years old.
