Hi, Cory MacNiven here posting a little bit of info about my sound work and what I do. A lot of it is music related so if you have any interest in playing with time signatures or Dubstep then read up a little bit. If not, stick around anyways and maybe you'll learn something. Before I talk at all about my work, let me cover the basics for understanding the ways in which music is divided using western standards.
Time Signatures
Time signatures are easy to understand. Most of what you listen to is probably either 4/4 or 8/8. The first number tells you how many beats are in a measure and the second one is the general tempo of the music. If the time signature is 4/4, then you can count four pulses (beats) before the measure repeats. Since 8/8 is twice the amount you can count 8 beats twice as fast. 16th notes are even faster, 32nd notes are twice that and 64th notes are what I like to use when I want to make IDM noises. A time signature of 7/4 simply means that you count to seven before repeating. 7/8 means you count the rhythm at twice the speed.
Dubstep/Dumbstep
A genre of electronic music that has entered the mainstream over the last few years is something called Dubstep. The element of the music that characterizes it the most is a heavy distorted synth lead or bass line. A common purveyor of the genre includes some some sort of filtering of this lead instrument with a wavy pattern. Connoisseurs of Dubstep call this sound "wub wub." The genres drum rhythms are characteristic of a 4/4 pulse and a snare on every count of three.
Some friends of mine and myself have taken it upon ourselves to free up the rhythms in Dubstep. We've grown somewhat bored of Dubstep in 4/4. We've started playing with rhythms such as but not limited to 7/4, 9/8, 5/4, 28/16 and so on. We call this perversion of sound Dumbstep and we pride ourselves in it's sheer stupidity. We've created aliases on Newgrounds.com so that we may offer this sound for free for any one who is interested.
This is my alias for my Dumbstep music. The first thing you might notice on that page is that I'm a very pretty girl. Well the truth is I'm not. The Newgrounds audio community has a running inside joke about gender and popularity. Moving along, you can click on one of the CD icons to listen to one of my songs. On the player page you can click the floppy disk icon to download the music. I might recommend listening to Rise Again or Angry Jellyfish. Some people have been known to like It Came From Outer Space.
He goes by the alias SmithCommaJohn but his real name is William Burns. He was the person who started pushing us all around to make Dumbstep. His sound has been growing a lot this last year and I'd say he's about good enough now to blow any pro out of the water. His recent Dubstep remix of Daft Punk's Derezzed is the perfect example of why I feel this way. The same rules apply for his pages. Click on a CD icon to listen to music and click on the orange/ black floppy disc to download the song.
Probably my favorite alias out of the group ReanuKeeves keen sense of parody gives the genre a cuddly and likable aura. Devins been pretty consistent with his output and releases tracks regularly. We're currently working on a collaboration. The ball is in his court at the moment so I'm waiting to hear back from him but last I checked the mix was sounding quite sassy.
We're still waiting on a song from JP Nuefeld but I've listened to something he was working on for the group and it was immensely clean. Since JP doesn't have any Dumbstep yet I'll just link to his main newgrounds account Rig. At this point I should probably mention that everyone brought up in this post has alternate newgrounds accounts. If you're interested in hearing what we sound like when we're not playing with Dumbstep post a comment saying so and I'll throw that into the next update.
Links
Want to start making Dumbstep or any other sort of electronic music for that matter? Read these...
This link is just an old help FAQ on newgrounds that points you in general directions for getting started with electronic music.
I made a tutorial recently on how to write dumbstep rhythms. If you can't quite get your head around those time signatures this should help you. You might notice that my main Newgrounds account has a yellow icon. This means that I'm an Audio Moderator. I've been making music on Newgrounds for a long time and I'm well known by the regular community. I like to think I'm important but the truth is, everyone mentioned in this blog post is a Newgrounds Audio Moderator.
Still confused about the original Dubstep sound we're perverting? This wikipedia link will tell you most of what you need to know.
I'll exit this post with a quick little youtube video Devin threw together. I'll be uploading my Dumbstep to Youtube eventually but for now there's this:
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