Im new to the site, but i wanted to ask a few questions. Does posford make his drum tracks or are they sampled? also ive heard some people say pc is better than mac, from what i know mac is made for art/music whats the difference? can i bring music to this site?

Hi and welcome to the twisted world.

First I’m not sure on Simon’s drums but look around for interviews and you may come across some. Failing that pm moderator Ray who seems to be an encyclopedia on Posford

Not sure about the PC/Mac issue. There are good and bad points for both. I saw Simon P using a Mac when playing in Denmark, Some people love them and some don’t. Never tried music on a mac personally so I can’t say.

To bring music to this site go the Twisted Sessions side and sign up for a free 100mb webpage. http://twistedsessions.com/ (Create an artist account) Here you can upload your tracks, videos etc.

Ok good luck and when you’ve uploaded your tracks come into here and leave a message in the music production forum with a link to your side.

Take it easy

On PC vs Mac

I’ve been using computers for nearly two decades (started very young) and the PC vs Mac debate has continued to rage on.  If I may opine on the notion of Macs being for art and music production…

This is mostly just marketing.  The fact is that a Mac is just a box of ICs, caps and platters like any personal computer is.  There is nothing fundamentally different about the architecture of a Mac versus a PC.  As much as they touted their ‘superior’ hardware, it’s hardly convincing in hindsight now that they’re throwing Intel chips into their machines, but I digress.  They have a different software frontend than PCs, that’s all.  Mac reinvented themselves after (badly) losing both the personal and enterprise computing markets, and started this cutting-edge, ‘alternative’, artsy campaign.  In plain English, a regular old Mac runs editing programs well because Mac does not make low-end machines.  In the world of PCs, vendors offer an enormous spectrum of quality, from $300 budget machines to $10,000 and beyond custom jobs.  Mac just makes machines in about the middle to the mid-high range of that spectrum, and then claims that their machines are superior by comparing them to the low-end PCs.  If you budgeted out the cost of a Mac G5 to use for parts for a PC, I’d reckon you could design a rig that would run circles around it. 

That being said, Macs do serve a valid purpose, which is to give digital artists a performing machine without requiring them to know much about computers.  This is a large percent of the population, so they are filling a need.  So, for the tweaker and gearhead, a Mac would NOT be the way to go for a high performing machine.  For the demanding user who wants a fairly high performing machine without much hassle (and is willing to pay the premium for that), a Mac is a good choice.  When you get a Mac, you are stuck with it until you upgrade.  It is virtually unheard of to upgrade them by component.  This is a stark contrast to PCs, many of which are in a constant state of upgrade and modification and are thus designed to be completely modular.

Also, do NOT buy the hype that Macs are more stable than PCs and never crash.  Most Mac zealots who make this claim probably never tax their system beyond the load of browing the web, writing email or streaming media.  When it comes down to CPU-intensive tasks (i.e. the ones that really count), I’ve seen Macs squeal like pigs just like their zealots claim PCs do.  And in my experience, I saw a lot more of that spinning flower in OS.X than the hourglass in Windows when working with sequencers or audio editors.  Once again:Macs are no different than PCs. 

If you’re trying to get a production rig going, definitely go for a Core 2 Duo CPU; it’s leaving all competition in the dust at the moment, it’s a great overclocker (you can buy the $100 1.8GHz E4300 and crank up the FSB so it runs stable at 3 GHz/core with stock cooling), and audio will undoubtedly be one of the first software industries to use true multithreaded programming.  Make sure to get a lot of RAM too; speed is not as important as amount for audio, so don’t go crazy looking for ultra low latency sticks.  A lot of motherboards come with onboard RAID controllers, which can provide fault tolerance for a hard drive, so look for that in the board.  Last but not least, make sure to get a beefy regulated power supply.  Power issues are starting to become more common, especially as more devices adopt USB, since USB devices often pull their DC power right off the USB bus (hence, your power supply ends up powering all of your MIDI controllers in addition to the stuff inside your box).  What sound card you get depends heavily on your setup.  Note that the above advice applies regardless of which computing platform you decide on.

Hope that helps!

Re: On PC vs Mac

[quote author=“moodysteve”]
Also, do NOT buy the hype that Macs are more stable than PCs and never crash.  Most Mac zealots who make this claim probably never tax their system beyond the load of browing the web, writing email or streaming media.  When it comes down to CPU-intensive tasks (i.e. the ones that really count), I’ve seen Macs squeal like pigs just like their zealots claim PCs do.  And in my experience, I saw a lot more of that spinning flower in OS.X than the hourglass in Windows when working with sequencers or audio editors.  Once again:Macs are no different than PCs. 
!

      I like your phrasing there. Squeal like pigs made me chuckle I must say.

You bring up some worthy points especially about upgrading and stuff. PC wins in my opinion.

thank you dimutech!  and to moodysteve, i now see that it is better for someone like me to go with a pc. My brother and i have a duo core toshiba. Im not much of a computer gearhead at all. we have two pc’s, the one im writing this with and the duo core lap top which is strictly for music. I have just seen so many musicians with macs it made me wonder, since i have one for music and one for the internet. I don’t think i would want to pay that amount for mainly a look and different software which is similar and does’nt have upgrade possibiliies. I see the marketing in the type of look they go for, space agey style! In terms of building a custom pc for the price of a mac, i see how it would leave a mac in the dust. thank you very much, you’ve helped me look at this comparison in a new light! I’ll stick with the pc, and feel good about upgrading!!!!!

Toady if I may, before you blow your cash. Moddy has a few points to make but I question his mac savy ways after what he says.

My home studio uses macs and have maxed them beyond belief. I have 1 PC. I have spent many many hours sorting out the PC issues my musical mates and I have using PC based studios and I associate it with belting my head against a wall over and over and over again.

While I could go on for hours about the benifits. I am sure I already sound like I am going on a crusade.

Do yourself a favour. if your producing music, or just perusing the internet get a mac. You will not be disappointed this I guarantee.

Productivity. you wanna be writing tracks not making your computer work.

I thought since mac switched out their kernel for a linux one it was more stable… shortly after windows released vista to grab their slice of the “artsy” market (to unamazment of everyone) they stated the next version would be rebuilt kernel up lol. Obviously if your are pushing your machine to the limits your gonna notice it. The difference is between waiting and crashing.

Look, it comes down to the application(s) you are going to use.

Read the required software specs, and then see what sort of machine you’ll need.

For example, if you’re gonna go Mac, then obviously you’ll want to buy Logic Studio.  Buy a Mac with the hardward above and beyond that of what Logic wants.

If you go PC, then you have way more options for software, but each app. is going to have it’s own requirements, so your PC is going to have to match or be better than the requirements for the software.

So then, if all you want to do is write music, both PC and Mac can handle that job.  It then comes down to your budget and what you expect your “music” software to do.

Re: music production

[quote author=“toadlicker209”]Im new to the site, but i wanted to ask a few questions. Does posford make his drum tracks or are they sampled?

My musical ear tells me that Simon P almost certainly programs the majority of his drum tracks from scratch. I would say that most of the psytrance / Goa trance genre is built on programmed electronic drums, rather than the sampled breakbeats that you might hear in the worlds of hip hop, breakbeat and drum & bass.

I also believe that Simon P did some live drumming himself on the Younger Brother and Shpongle stuff. He’s a very talented bloke, that Posford geezer!

Its possible that some of the tribal / ethnic type rhythms used in Shpongle may be sampled, but my guess would be that most of these were programmed (very well) or done by live percussionists. It probably mentions something in the album sleeve notes.

Cheers

Alex

Yea I have to say the Mac/PC debate is largely pointless. At the end of the day its your own preference; they both do exactly the same thing.

I use Mac, but have Windows installed on it .... And altho I’m mostly in PC to play games, I always tend to come back to Mac for music creation! Just seems to work for me.