A little piece of history and a possible accidental synchronicity or should i say accidents in early electronic music.
First and for all i'd like to say; 'New Beat might just be an 'accidental invention'' and yes New Beat did once get banned because of a conspiracy; here in Belgium where it originated. No s¨t, i know because i'm Belgian myself.. I'm also a 20 year experienced sound-designer and got something to tell u Steemians. I'm new here so please have some mercy ;) :p
Now what is New Beat U say? U haven't heard of it...? Weird. Why weird? Because it's at the base of all electronic music; maybe even house.. A big claim u say, bare with me, there is more.
I have to admidt i'm a bit to young to have been there but the history fascinates me and i am looking for the father of all techno. People tell me things aren't always as they seem.. so opinions differ sometimes. After talking to some 'connaisseurs' i think i might have got the facts straight. According to them New Beat should be called the AB sound..
I would say House is tonal and there for mother and New Beat a-tonal and father of all electronic music. A tonal had dark notes, House was always bright and cheery, allthough it both came from the belly. hehe
But first is first; what is it exactly? Well a musical genre, a Belgian one.. In addition to that the genre was heavily influenced by industrial and EBM acts such as Front 242 and The Neon Judgement, as well as new wave and dark wave acts such as Fad Gadget, Gary Numan and Anne Clark. One might even say Disco was still envolved as well, but that soon changed with Mega-nightclubs such as the Boccaccio wich made the genre a major underground success. Offcourse the popcorn sound the AB had a lot more to do with it. A connaisseur would say, and i quote; 'Go look for the collector of the Cherry Red Records at close to the noise floor.. '75-'84, then u'll see that everything began around '75 in the UK. What we call New Beat here is actually the AB sound. Fat ronny and Pieters Olivier who played at the AB before they moved to the Boccaccio where'nt actually the first to experiment with the tempo's of records, that where the Belgian popcorn Dj's who had seen it from the northern Soul Dj's..'
This would make sense as the UK had a BIG summer in '89, they even called it the second summer of love.. But actually it was the summer of rave..
Rave, just saying it it already makes sense, offcourse, everything that came from the underground was called RAVE :) Being a General name we can call this the sum of the base of all electronic music in a sense..
But offcourse all the greats who used synths before this all. One could say even Bob Moog was part of this, or the Roland tb-303.. And Kraftwerk, or the DX 7..? We can go on, D-50.. eheh
Allthough New Beat is to be considered, according to belpop, as an 'actual "accidental invention". Made in the nightclub Ancienne Belgique (AB) occording to them and wiki in Brussel, but in actuality in Antwerp when DJ Dikke Ronny (literally "Fat Ronny") played a 45 rpm EBM record, with the pitch control set to +8 (while being high, he remembers it as daylight) lolz wich record this was stay's a mysterie.).
It's not the father of all techno or is it? Maybe one could argue about this, but i've heard UK dj's say great things about Belgian music back in the early days ;) They truly longed for it and kept by there words. It's also the reason why they call 4 to the floor, the Belgian 4/4 beat.. Logically this was derrived from Disco :p
We excelled and started this simple repepitive electronic nonsense in the first place so we got named by it by UK producers who would hunt for our 'Trancey' Beats day's on an end, just to get the wright tune for the next weekend.
More on the old connaisseurs; they say it's mistake when somebody tells u it was 'Flesh' which was used by the Antwerp DJ 'Dikke Ronny' when he made his mistake. The record however got sold all over Europe and everyone played it with the same formula.. Word got around quickly apparently.
In this way New Beat seperated itself from the rest of the scene.. EBM, new wave and all where in the past and a new trend; New Beat... took over. New Beat was born there and then and came from my home town Ghent.
For us this formula; 33rmp +8% is a piece of history..
New Beat would break taboo's and slowely but surely changed hyper normalisation for all era's to come. What great times the '80 where indeed.
One could argue who came first? House or New Beat, if u ask Fat Ronny ;) being an ancient DJ, he claims House came afterward. In reality the 2 more or less evolved at the same time, along with Garage and UK's Rave. But all these genres where a base for all comming electronic music. But it's Belgian bands like Front 242 with 'U-men'(1982) who really where at the Frontier of New Beat's origins and thus all future electronic music. Things like EBM, Goth and New Wave. These fx. inspired 'A Split Second' (Ghentian Duo) to make things like 'Flesh' (1986), offcourse.
We could go on about who or what influenced each other, but then we'll be going on untill early mornin's
EBM is still a general name for what New Beat stands for: Electronic Body Mayhem(music)!? While also conveying a controversial message, sometimes even anarchistic; going against general consent or even against governements.
Probably also the reason why it got banned in the first place.. Yeah u heard me the governement placed a conspiracy on top of it and clubs like Boccaccio had to be closed down. U have to understand Europe had never known of the concept of a big club yet, back then people didn't have these things. This was all brand new and so people would come from all the corners of Europe.. Before that we had concert halls and schoolballs being held in the ballet room. Lolz U can imagine what the effect was, thousand of people crossing the border every weekend.. This caused a enormous pressure on the local autority's and eventually the governement and they turned it into a drug scandal. By pushing in litlle teenagers who had drugs on them; offcourse after a raid by the police word got out that Boccaccio had a drug fueled scene.. With all the concequences for the New Beat scene,that got banned and ridiculed and New Beat almost dissapeared. It'll never be same that's for sure; not for us.. U had to have been there they tell u.. Although some of us prefer a revival, and connaisseurs tell u it still lives but that these day's the best New Beat is to be found in other country's then Belgium. Something remains doh, Praga Khan fx, but all the rest.. things like the Confetti's and such they commericalised and it never really went anywhere anymore. Allthough there where times when bands got invited to America, and back then all LP's, EP's and Vinyl was fly'n out the door. But that all changed. Banned, actually.
Yet somehow this lower pitch New Beat applied did result in people going crazy, New Beat was born with a middle C at a completely different tuning. Back then there even came a general consenus that all the rest of the music now some how sounded badly produced. What does this mean? Well other tunings as standards can be applied without a doubt and can work.
Why is this all a big thing to me? And where lyes the synchronicity...? Or was it serendipity? ;)
Well considering the fact that i make music myself (i play mouth harp), am Belgian i choose the latter and wanted to produce New Beat.. i made some calculations. The lower the tempo on a vinyl, the lower the pitch, so i started wondering why the people where so attracted to it, offcourse. ;)
After doing the math, i came up with a whooping result; A=360Hz...
Isn't that a coïncident; 360 is a well know number in math, it's the radius of a circle, but also of the vinyl record itself. Lol
I even did some more digging on general use of tuning in music and found some weird claims . Some even got ridiculed because of some hoax going around them and the claim of an other conspiracy..?.
There even seems to be almost no general consensus to all of this, some say the East uses 432Hz tuning and artists like Ravi Shankar used this tuning and even this seemed unclear after all my hours of research on the matter..
Hmm ok, never the less as far as my knowledge goes the 360Hz is a note in reference to Fibonacci; A=432Hz where F# is a frequency of 360Hz.. And found this really interesting... Because it somehow pointed toward something, or at least for me. Also note that the clock also is a 360 degrees thing?! But why matter about that? Well the clock is the heart of any computer or synthesizer, as many of u might know without this a computer can't function or calculate anything.... Hmm and that got me thinking again just this early afternoon. So this means that indeed the 3. 6 and 9 oscillations (seen on a youtube clip) do matter and that maybe just maybe he.. ;) equal temperament isn't the most obvious way of deviding measures any more. It might have been back in the '50 when they changed standards to 440Hz but we use computers these day's, and those have clocks and the math of these clocks don't correlate with simple things like equal temperament; they can do so much more and where build to do so even grown by nature to do so apparently, and nobody seems to realise this.....
One might say the cpu is the brain, but the clock is the heart, it ticks.
Note that the crystal used for this really grows according to the fibonacci sequence; and the words sequence and oscillation are general music terms
So i did an experiment as an experienced sound-designer, who's making his almost 20th year of making sound round.
I set A=360Hz in this case and gave it a try on my Moog synthesizer (u wount believe it but i already had it accidently tuned to 360Hz, rara) I played with this for month's and was suprised when i returned to equal temperament to notice that indeed the people of the '80 where wright.. Everything now sounded so sterile. So fake and made?? But why? I have no clue.. Maybe i'll have to leave that question with U. We sure thought it had it's charmes... i do too. Maybe just maybe it was just all that 'e' people where doing back in the time :p Never the less, this 360Hz isn't just anything.. It made my day then and now, i love these kind of coïncidents and synchronicity's.
Maybe 'just intonation' was found in the same matter? I have no clue, i wonder...
I would say follow the signs.. That's also mostly the way to the party.
For me though; it's like a sacred knowledge, a bound of some sort, to this new way of tuning. I wount go back. I will mix it along with 432Hz; i have to admidt it also sounded sterile after getting used to the A=360Hz, but works perfectly along with it. Afterall they are in the same matrix. For me as a mouth harpist this mattered and the 432Hz is also used by throath singers even most singers abide by it too, it's easier and less straining on the voice. Verdi wasn't kidding when he used it for his opera's. But one could still argue. For me the answer lies in 'trance' we used our voice for ages to get into trance and to sing too offcourse.. so how else would i tune my instruments. I suppose the ancients did it in the same fashion, maybe?
That whole hoax thing, honestly i find it so rediculous.. Even perfect fifth's don't even work with equal temperament perfectly ;) Math and music can go way beyond what equal temperament is try'n to convey to us. Computers and synths too.. I'm not the only one by the way; there is a youtube clip on the secret behind 3,6 and 9 and some correlations to Tesla's answer to the secret key's to the universe.
Yes conspiracy's do happen..
Now if my formula is correct (wich it is) then u end up a pitch at 359.9Hz so that's pretty cool 360Hz is an F# (also within fibonacci) so can be used along with 432Hz .. Actually 440 and 432 can go hand in hand too. It's all devidable by 8 i figured..(might be a simple way of looking at it) So yes why not use these all togheter? Microtonality does...
I do as my SparkLE can't be tuned at the base. allthought a lot of my pitches in the modular synthy part do -3.. But these mainly do drums and synth fx's.
Why well because why would we give up on people using ancient instruments and ancient methods to making music like throath singing fx.. It's an ancient eastern way ot tuning as well; sounds logic to me to tune according to voice and ear 'cause ear will say 432Hz is a guitar in tune... And btw who doesn't love Fibonacci.. or anything closer to this math nature came up with so accidentally. Ask yourself where it all came from, our mathematics take a look at these things, our devisions always made sense and within lye a multitude of synchronicity's. To me this all is a conjunction of some sort.. The New Beat pitch those early Dj's used with ancient tuning systems wich correlate perfectly.. The Old and the New, it's like alfa and omega, so why wouldn't i? It sure seems like a sign from above ;)
For electronic music 432Hz can do no harm, i mean is equal temperament(440) something that important when using synths? Not really; the craziest sounds i've made sometimes work for only a couple of octaves... Sometimes even less a couple of notes, or just that one note.. People who do a lot of extreme sound-design will know what i mean. And be serious in the end it's way more intresting to use microtonality on a synth and in music then it is to only use equal temperament..
Was't the effect of an old out of tune (detuned) analog synth the thing that drove the whole electronic scene? And analog synths!? Arent't we still looking to achieve this effect with our latest VA and digital synths? We've developed techniques for this, hold functions on envelopes, or drift on an oscillator and a thing called detune... I find doing sound-design in 432Hz way more interesting on a VA or in the computer as it tends to sound a little disharmonious. But it can be as harmonious too without a doubt, we can't always use every octave in electronic music so, no harm done. ;) I like a little disharmony, nothing is perfect, and maybe i'll just fine tune my oscillator when and where i feel it should ;). For me 440 honestly feels as something to sterile, and i know i am repeating myself but just give it a try, it woun't harm u.. There even is a claim it ca heal and being depressed and all i'm willing to try lots of things. This, Tumeric and cashewnuts are some of the things i gave a try. They all helped..
There was a wolftune chord wich was mentioned in a youtube video to debunk '432Hz hoax' sounds more wolf in 432 to me then in 440, this again felt to sterile. Offcourse opinions, opinions, it's a matter of choice, but for music and microtonality it think the matrix to best make use of is 432Hz.. And i seem to be devoloping an interest for just intonation aswell... More on that later. I also wonder if i could make a wolfwhole out of the wolftune chord..? with one of my synths, hmm the Analog four should work for that.
#Fatherofalltechno; first there was Disco and Funk then came New Beat. They don't call it the Belgian 4/4 beat for nothing...
It's just an other means to an end. A choice, if u will. Nothings perfect, except maybe then for a circle ;)
Cheers, Armen Sörc'herz
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U will be hearing from me soon, i'll start recording some more of my infamous improvisations with my mouth harp. Be sure to check it out. I might even throw in some other Live Improvisational Music Practices (L.I.M.P.) on Dlive. And offcourse more electronic music like Drum and bass, Acid, Dub Techno, Shamanic Downtempo and Psy- and Goa Trance, Dub and New Beat too offcourse and all mixed with some mouth harp-sounddesign and such. So dive with me into the Deluge of old pitch settings of New Beat and the ancient sounds of mouth harps. Let me tell u about the history and check me out doing stone masonary, something else i hold dear too. Next to music and stonemasonary i'm also heavily influenced by Ethnic cultures and Native habits. Lol One might even call me a Pacha ;)