Get Info: #music

Offset (DJ mix)

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 17:56:00 +0000

A mix of music with arpeggios in, just because I thought it would be an interesting constraint.

🎛️🎚️🎛️

Timestamp	Artist	Song (Link)	Year
00:00	Kasper Koman	Loco Motif	2018
04:21	Fakear feat. Alex Metric	Carrie	2020
08:30	Nox Vahn	Walking with Giants	2019
10:55	Kiesza	Hideaway (Zac Samuel Remix)	2014
14:21	Rhythim is Rhythim	Strings of Life	1987
21:07	KC Lights feat. Niki & the Dove	THIS IS FOR YOU	2025
24:18	The Chemical Brothers	Star Guitar	2003
30:06	RONEeS	Discrete	2022
31:48	Hyper Go Go	High	1992
36:13	Sunareht	Super Suna Odyssey	2018
39:17	Rhythim is Rhythim	Strings of Life (Relics Mix)	1992
42:31	Alex Metric & Jacques Lu Cont	Safe with You (feat. Malin)	2013
46:43	Lorenzo Senni	THINK BIG	2020
52:21	BT	Skylarking	2013
54:19	Orbital	Belfast	1991

15 tracks with a duration of 61m35s. As always, this was produced using the DJ.Studio app.

Let me know what you think of the tunes!

Download

“Discrete” by RONEeS (2022)

If you want to listen to one track that gives the vibe of this mix try this one:

Music recommendations (2025)

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:00:00 +0000

As we complete another lap around the sun, I take stock of what has happened this year and filter my favourite music from the thousands of tracks I’ve listened to throughout 2025. Let’s go!

Suspended in a beam of sunlight

After my 2024 year end DJ mix (which I listen to a lot and am really proud of!) I produced a handful of other mixes throughout the year. I use the fantastic DJ.Studio app and a few other tools.

2025: over 4,000 tracks from over 600 releases, with a total listening time of over 30,000 minutes.

This mix saw me start out with 82 tracks totalling more than 5 hours of music, which over the course of a few days were whittled down to the final running order. I wanted to use samples to add some vibes, similar to my “Blade Runner” dnb mix. After a bit of back and forth I settled on Carl Sagan talking wistfully about the cosmos and our place within it, taken from “Pale Blue Dot” and “Cosmos”.

To get the vocal samples I saved the audio from YouTube, split it into stems to isolate the vocals, then cut and arranged them in DJ Studio taking care to either quantise, or not, to get a specific pacing of delivery. I ended up going with quite philosophical snippets. The most difficult aspect was the need to tweak the EQ of samples from different sources so they sounded like the same person.

Listen on MixCloud.

24 tracks with a duration of 1h12m22s.

Timestamp	Artist	Song (Video)	Year
00:00:00	MPC GIRL USAGI	Essence	2025
00:01:23	MPC GIRL USAGI	Music For Tonight	2025
00:05:51	Uilou	Perfect Tokyo	2025
00:07:45	Pacific Coliseum & Teen Daze	Club Memory	2025
00:09:50	Alex Metric & Damian Taylor	Right Here Forever	2019
00:12:27	Sezer Uysal & Spennu	Je te veux	2012
00:14:25	Chris Coco & StoneBridge	The Beach (2025 Mix)	2025
00:15:24	QPLO feat. YOCO	Beautiful Dreamer	2024
00:18:22	Noche feat. NIA NADURATA	Feel something	2025
00:20:11	bane & A.G.O	Contrast	2025
00:23:02	Muscle of the Soul	I Never Tell You My Hurt	2025
00:26:03	Tensnake	Free	2025
00:29:01	Sofia Kourtesis	Nitzan and Aminaa	2025
00:30:50	Yuki Kawamura	R.I.P. Sunset (KAITO MIX)	2024
00:36:41	iri	otozure	2025
00:40:09	Antony Szmierek	Big Light	2025
00:43:35	Snowk	Mist	2025
00:45:31	Hina Ota	Inner Trip	2025
00:48:38	Soichi Terada	Low Tension (Alternative Version)	2015
00:52:25	Danou P	Kaguya	2024
01:00:20	B FROM E	Diamonds	2025
01:01:49	Uilou	Found You	2025
01:04:02	Idiot Pop, hajimepop & Novaurelia	Toumei	2025
01:06:27	Lorenzo Senni	THINK BIG	2020

Playlists

Platform	Link
Apple Music	Listen
Spotify	Listen
YouTube	Watch
Download	Grab

Catch the Vibe

If you want to listen to a couple of tracks that gives the vibe of this mix try these:

“Music For Tonight” by MPC GIRL USAGI (2025)

“Diamonds” by B FROM E (2025)

…and my song of the year:

“otozure” by iri (2025)

Bonus: music of the year

Type	Artist	Title
Single	iri	otozure
Single	bane & Grooveman Spot	Pluto
Single	Egoism	Getting Older
Single	Etherwood feat. Grace Barton	Where The River Meets The Sea
Single	Tokyo Prose feat. Jolliffe & Ruby Wood	Embrace
Album	Winston Surfshirt	Winston
Album	Egoism	And Go Nowhere
Album	Twin Shadow	Georgie
Album	Antony Szmierek	Service Station At The End Of The Universe
Album	MPC GIRL USAGI	Balance
Album	Your Smith	The Rub
Album	Yuki Kawamura	Love Forever
Album	Osamu Fukuzawa & Kazuki Isogai	Inner Orchid
Album	Small Circle of Friends	Slow
Album	Doja Cat	Vie

Mameyudoufu (DJ mix)

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 10:14:00 +0000

A little DJ mix of music and collabs by one of my favourite Japanese electronic musicians.

Listen on MixCloud.

Timestamp	Artist	Song (Link)	Release	Year
00:00	Mameyudoufu	Starting Up	Boot Loader	2021
01:23	Mameyudoufu & 藍月なくる	One Step Closer	single	2022
04:34	Mameyudoufu	Safe Space	single	2024
07:53	Mameyudoufu	Approximation	Stream Friendly 01	2022
12:25	Mameyudoufu feat. Exobolt	Everyday Things	single	2023
16:26	Mameyudoufu feat. Such	Reminisce	Encore	2020
19:05	Mameyudoufu feat. yoei.	Hello and Goodbye	Spd Gar 04	2020
21:23	Mameyudoufu	Retrospectives	Stream Friendly 03	2025
24:17	Mameyudoufu	Literally 1998	Stream Friendly 03	2025
27:35	Mameyudoufu	Second Brain	Stream Friendly 03	2025
30:42	Mameyudoufu	Eyes on the Stars	Epoqc 2021	2018

11 tracks with a duration of 35m16s. As ever, this was produced using the DJ.Studio app.

Let me know what you think of the tunes!

Download

“Safe Space” by Mameyudoufu (2024)

If you want to listen to one track that gives the vibe of this mix it’s this one:

DÉ DÉ DISCO (DJ mix)

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 14:59:00 +0000

My favourite DÉ DÉ MOUSE tracks seamlessly mixed together with great pleasure! Also featuring hitomitoi, AZK, TANUKI, DENONBU, Aki Shirokane, Yuka Nagase, Shin-ski, Kakeru, and more.

High-energy feel-good vibes to fill even the rainiest day with rays of sunshine. ✌️

Listen on MixCloud.

Time	Artist	Release	Song	Year
00:00	w/ Milk Talk	single	Beautiful Criminal	2024
04:11	w/ Yumenokessho ROSE	single	Darling of Shooting Star	2025
07:04	solo	Just Brokenhearted EP	I Want You	2025
10:44	solo	Just Brokenhearted EP	When We Love	2025
13:53	w/ TANUKI & hitomitoi	single	The Night of Neon Light (Extended Mix)	2021
19:06	solo	single	Thanks Tracks	2017
21:33	w/ DENONBU & Aki Shirokane	single	Sweet Illusion (Instrumental)	2022
24:56	solo	Milkyway Drive	Sun End Girl	2015
29:25	solo	Via Alpha Centauri	Star Gazer	2017
32:40	solo	Via Alpha Centauri	Rigil	2017
35:04	w/ hitomitoi	single	Skyscraper Starlight	2024
38:50	solo	To Milkyway Planet	Nobody’s Place	2013
42:30	solo	Sunset Girls	Light Night Dance (Shinichi Osawa Remix)	2008
47:23	w/ Yuka Nagase	single	Lovely Shy Girl	2025
50:25	w/ hitomitoi	single	Love Groovin’	2023
53:07	solo	single	Love Destination (Edit 002)	2020
56:33	solo	Just Brokenhearted EP	Dream About You	2025
59:25	solo	Just Brokenhearted EP	Fallin’ in	2025
62:23	w/ AZK	single	Disco Revenge	2022
65:56	solo	Be Yourself	Lonely If	2020
69:57	w/ Pa’s Lam System	single	Carry On	2025
73:38	w/ SHIN-SKI (Tiny Griffi)	Night Flowering EP	Goodnight Tommorow	2024

The download version is 22 tracks with a duration of 1h16m46s. As always, this was produced using the DJ.Studio app. The mixcloud version has an extra track near the end that I decided to take out.

Let me know what you think of the tunes!

Download

Sun End Girl (2015)

If you want to listen to one track that gives the vibe of this mix it’s this one:

Ambientalmente (DJ mix)

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 21:09:00 +0000

My latest mix comprises Japanese ambient music.

Some related non-Japanese tracks also in there, just for kicks. 🔰

Listen on MixCloud.

Timestamp	Artist	Song	Year
000:00	Susumu Yokota	Blue Sky and Yellow Sunflower	2004
003:34	Masakatsu Takagi	Marginalia #5	2018
012:08	Hiroshi Yoshimura	Green	1986
016:56	Satoshi & Makoto	That’s All	2017
019:46	William Orbit	Pure Shores (Backing Track)	1999
023:17	Masakatsu Takagi	Marginalia #144	2023
028:09	Yumiko Takahashi	Natsuno Yakusoku	1991
028:19	Seal	Violet (Premix)	1991
035:51	Satoshi & Makoto	Crepuscule Leger	2017
042:03	Hiroshi Yoshimura	Something Blue	1986
046:56	Pierre Barouh	L’autre rive	1982
051:08	Spooky	Orange Coloured Liquid	1993
055:55	Takashi Kokubo	White Ambient II	1990
060:11	Sawako	Tsubomi Saku	2008
060:51	Susumu Yokota	The Future of Ecstasy	2019
063:55	Mitsuhiro	Infinity	1995
064:32	Shinsuke Honda	Moonlight Night	1991
068:41	Takashi Kokubo	The Story of Calm Forest	1993
076:20	Takashi Kokubo	Catalyzer	1990
082:14	Mitsuhiro	Illusion	1995
084:51	Sawako	April ~ From Sea Shell (with Radiosonde)	2008
087:14	I Am Robot and Proud	When I Get My Ears	2006
087:58	Satoshi & Makoto	Closer	2020
092:05	Susumu Yokota	Saku	1999
096:19	Strange Cargo	Water Babies	1993
099:10	TOMC	Extraverted Feeling (Kudan)	2022
103:20	Hiroshi Yoshimura	Over The Clover	1987
109:21	Hiroshi Yoshimura	Clouds	1982
114:40	Masakatsu Takagi	Marginalia #148	2024
119:28	Shinsuke Honda	Summer Clouds	1991
124:08	Junichi Kamiyama	Aquarius	1993
126:35	Haruomi Hosono	Talking	1984
129:06	Masakatsu Takagi	River Returns (Overture)	2025
130:24	Shinsuke Honda	Dreamland	1991
134:25	Satoshi & Makoto	Reconstruction	2020
137:28	Haruomi Hosono	Honeymoon	1975
138:26	Hiroshi Yoshimura	Feel	1986
142:29	Yasuaki Shimizu	Seiko 2	1987
143:05	Max Richter	On the Nature of Daylight	2004

39 tracks with a duration of 2h29m18s. As always, this was produced using the DJ.Studio app.

Let me know what you think of the tunes!

Download

Catch the Vibe

If you want to listen to a couple of tracks that gives the vibe of this mix try these:

“Blue Sky and Yellow Sunflower” by Susumu Yokota (2004)

“Summer Clouds” by Shinsuke Honda (1991)

Moai (DJ mix)

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 20:43:00 +0000

An hour of songs with “Moai” somewhere in the title …for no reason other than it sounded like a fun challenge. And because Moai are cool. Why? Why not? ✨🗿✨

Listen on MixCloud.

Timestamp	Artist	Song (Link)	Year
00:00	Maria Usbeck	Moai y yo	2016
03:03	Saphileaum	Moai	2025
07:27	Seotaiji	Moai	2008
10:40	Fila Brazillia	The Moai	1997
13:54	Bala	Moai	2007
19:56	Jestofunk	Moai Message	1995
26:41	Yosuke Onuma	Moai’s Tihai	2016
34:27	Atiø	moai	2022
35:50	Tora Gargallo	Smoking Moai	2020
38:11	Glåsbird	Moai	2023
40:45	Monica Ramos	Moai	1997
44:22	Urban Zakapa	Moai	2017
48:33	Giorgio Poi	Moai	2021
51:45	La Bergerie	Moaï	2018

14 tracks with a duration of 55m44s. As previously, this was produced using the DJ.Studio app.

Let me know what you think of the tunes!

Download

“Moai” by Giorgio Poi (2021)

If you want to listen to one track that gives the vibe of this mix it’s this one:

If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes (DJ mix)

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 21 May 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Here’s a 30 minute vocal drum’n’bass DJ Mix, all but one tracks are from Jan to May 2025. Plus a few little surprise samples for you, the listener. Photo of Sean Young as Rachael in Blade Runner (1982).

Listen on MixCloud or via the alternatives below.

Timestamp	Artist	Song (Video)
00:00	Mameyudoufu	Literally 1998
03:45	Fred V & Nu-La	Sparks
06:50	Mallrat	Hideaway
09:35	London Elektricity, BCee & Ruth Royall	Diamonds in the Rain
12:10	London Elektricity	Life Is But A Dream
17:13	London Elektricity, Anile & Zara Kershaw	Unfrozen
21:45	Vio.let, Lauren-Paige & Keeno	Worlds Apart
25:14	London Elektricity & Emer Dineen	Build A Better World

8 tracks with a duration of 29m35s. Much like my last mix, this was produced using the DJ.Studio app.

Playlists

Apple Music
Spotify
YouTube (playlist)
YouTube (video)
Download

Old Codes, New Releases for Playdate

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 16:24:00 +0000

As I sadly move away from game dev on Playdate, I’ve released a couple of interesting old things…

SHARK TURTLE

This is a version of SameGame (さめがめ) originally released under the name CHAIN SHOT in 1985 by Kuniaki “Morisuke” Moribe for Fujitsu FM-8 home computer. The concept is as old as Tetris, perhaps even older, and at one time SameGame in its many guises was more popular than Tetris in Japan. One version had an active modding scene and some had strategy guide books.

It was submitted and rejected in the first wave of submissions to Playdate Catalog. At one point the plan was to wrap this in a theme/concept and give it the same sort of love that resulted in the great experiences of my other games like YOYOZO, Fore! Track, Bender 2: Bend Harder, but for one reason or another it never happened.

What is here is a fully-playable, feature-rich, albeit “no frills” version of SameGame with fast updates, solid controls, and great music. It’s a lot of fun and great to play little-by-little when you have a spare moment, as you dictate the pace and progress of the game turn-by-turn.

gingerbeardman.itch.io/shark-turtle

NEW WORLD

This is an interactive music track where you’re the DJ. You control various instruments and vocals, doing live mixing of the track. It’s really fun to play with!

It is a technology demo that was put together as part of a pitch for a game. Whilst the game never came to be, an improved version of this technology went on to be used in Bender 2: Bend Harder for the dynamic background patterns that animate to the beat of the music.

gingerbeardman.itch.io/new-world

More games!

All my Playdate games:

YOYOZO
- read about it being a GOTY 2023
Sparrow Solitaire
- read the making of
Bender 2: Bend Harder
- read the making of
Fore! Track
- read the making of
Super ICARUS
- read about its dynamic music

Music recommendations (2024)

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:55:00 +0000

Initially I had thought this year wasn’t as good as last year in terms of music, but listening again to the best tracks from the first 40-something weeks of the year proved otherwise. It was a great year.

Most music I was sent by the Apple Music algorithm continued to be Japanese, thanks to my ongoing deep dive. During the initial playlist curation I was struck by a fairly clean divide of dance and not-dance. I was also still listening to Soichi Terada’s Essential Mix from 2022. All of this merged together in my mind and I wondered if I could make a DJ mix? In 2024 surely there is software that can assist? There is.

My first DJ mix

I pruned 50 tracks down to about 30 and set to work sequencing the tracks so their key and BPM flowed nicely. Each transition became a puzzle, gamifying the whole process. I had been listening to a loosely arranged playlist of 26 tracks for about a week, and two of those didn’t make the cut for the final mix.

It was possible for me to create my first ever DJ mix thanks to some fantastic called DJ.Studio that makes light work of some difficult and cumbersome process. Listen on MixCloud.

24 tracks with a duration of 1h18m58s, a mere 12 seconds longer than last year. Bonus points for consistency. It also meant I could run off some CDs and MiniDiscs for friends and acquaintances.

Timestamp	Artist	Song (Video)
00:00:00	luvis	Whales
00:02:44	yomm & Moto Kawabe	Alice
00:06:56	macaroom	Geinin
00:09:58	leift	Orangette (feat. 安次嶺希和子)
00:12:50	Ai Kakihira & VUIZE	超機車的機車人 ~Super Auto-bike~
00:15:24	Swimming Sheep	Supermoon
00:17:47	leift	Soda (feat. kim taehoon)
00:20:13	ASS MAGIC	Corn Soup Baby
00:21:14	voquote & Lil Summer	YOUR LAST
00:24:07	Pasocom Music Club	Colors (feat. Haruy)
00:28:27	Shōtaro Aoyama	Once (feat. SHOTA ARATANI)
00:32:08	AKIRA	Jet (feat. SPENSR)
00:35:30	HOME	Plastic Romance
00:40:11	Shōtaro Aoyama	Nowhere (feat. NAGAN SERVER & Yunoa)
00:44:28	DE DE MOUSE & hitomitoi	Skyscraper Starlight
00:47:23	kei	Girigiri Tamotteru [Instrumental]
00:50:25	Omodaka	Hokkai Bon Uta [Instrumental]
00:54:29	Natsudaidai	Dusky Dolphin
00:57:14	Steroid & Y.A.	Arson
00:59:38	showmore	Fruit
01:03:02	hitomitoi	Dive
01:07:14	yanaco	Your Orbit
01:11:13	Fried Banana Shop & Julia Takada	Fever
01:15:16	Lucky Kilimanjaro	Koi AoAoto

Playlists

Bonus: albums of the year

Artist	Album	Release Date
Yo Irie	Love Affair	2024-02-14
The Painted Word	Lovelife (reissue)	2024-02-14 (prev. 1989)
macaroom	Burning Chrome	2024-07-10
Hazel English	Real Life (compilation)	2024-08-16
leift	Citrus	2024-04-03
Fabiana Palladino	Fabiana Palladino	2024-04-05
bog band	Vanity Project (EP)	2024-06-12
showmore	Liquid City	2024-09-11
Sabrina Carpenter	Short ‘n Sweet	2024-08-23
Betty Boo	Rip Up The Rulebook	2024-08-30

Apple Music
Spotify (missing my number one album)

Remix: Hitomitoi - LIKE A FIRST KISS feat. Wild Nothing

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 11:04:00 +0000

I made a 12” extended remix of Hitomitoi’s “LIKE A FIRST KISS feat. Wild Nothing”. I’m calling it the Lingering Mix.

Adding your own multi-channel audio to Music app

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 09 May 2024 20:19:00 +0000

I’m really enjoying Dolby Atmos, “spatial audio”, or “surround sound” as we used to call it. There is so much music in this format on streaming platforms, both new albums and classic albums. I wanted to listen to Björk’s first four albums in “spatial audio”, but they don’t currently exist in that format on streaming platforms. But I was reminded about DVD-Audio versions of these from back in the day, and I could find most of mine, so I figured I’d have a go of converting them myself whilst I’m waiting for Dolby Atmos versions to hit streaming.

This blog post lists the three main steps needed to add your own multi-channel audio to Music.app (you might know it by its old name: iTunes) and have them be accessible across all of your devices thanks to Apple Music’s Cloud Library (you might know it by its old name: iCloud Music Library).

DVD Audio/Video

Three albums I have were released on DVD and contain multi-channel audio in both DTS and Dolby Digital as DVD-Video, these are Debut, Post, and Homogenic. Vespertine is better mastered and was released as a disc that included DVD-Audio. Regardless, we can take the same approach for these two disc types: use DVD Audio Extractor (the 30-day trial is OK) to extract the tracks to FLAC files:

Settings:

Sample rate: Same as input
Channels: All 6 Channels
Bits per sample: 24-bit

It’ll take a minute or two for the files to be generated.

Result: many multi-channel FLAC files

Aside: Cloud Library

Music.app (formerly iTunes) doesn’t really go out of its way to support multi-channel audio users might add themselves. We won’t be creating Dolby Atmos tracks, but rather we’ll take advantage of a loop hole in Apple Music’s Cloud Library feature.

Thanks to a post on the QuadrophonicQuad forum we know that we need to limit the bitrate to 256kb/s for it to be uploaded unmodified to our Cloud Library and sync to all our devices. Well, it turns out that trick also works with 768kb/s bitrate files, which is the same bitrate as Dolby Atmos releases on Apple Music. That’s good enough for me.

Conversion/Encoding

There are many GUI tools that you might use to do this but I’ve chose to use ffmpeg on the command line. Feel free to adapt these settings to your tool of choice. The most important property is the 768kb/s bitrate, as mentioned earlier.

for n in *.flac; do ffmpeg -i "$n" -vn -c:a aac_at -b:a 768k -sample_fmt s16 -ar 48000 "$n.m4a"; done

Breaking down the command above:

for n in *.flac; do = loop through all *.flac files
-i "$n" = input, using filename from for loop
-vn = remove the video track
-c:a aac_at = use Apple’s AAC encoder
-b:a 768k = target 768kb/s bitrate
-sample_fmt s16 = 16-bit sample format
-ar 48000 = 48KHz sample rate
"$n.m4a" = output, using filename from for loop, adding .m4a
; done = end for loop

Hopefully that makes sense.

Result: many multi-channel M4A files

Chapters

If the M4A audio file contains chapters they will need to be removed or the file will not be playable on iPhone. We can load it into Subler, then select and delete the “Text Track”.

The process above should not introduce them, but I’m mentioning it as I was repeatedly caught out by this on my journey to this solution. If you fail to remove it the track will either either upload but not be playable, error and not upload, or be matched rather than uploaded.

Result: multi-channel M4A file (modified)

Final steps

Add the final files to Music.app on your desktop. At this point you can add artwork and other meta data, such as tagging them as “multi-channel” or similar.

When you’re done make sure to choose File > Library > Update Cloud Library. After they finish uploading, open the Music app on your iPhone and you’ll see the multi-channel files ready to play.

These multi-channel files work wonderfully with AirPods Pro spatial audio head tracking!

The Blue Nile “A Walk Across The Rooftops” (5.1)

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 22:00:00 +0000

1984

In early 1984 Scottish band The Blue Nile released their debut album “A Walk Across The Rooftops” including the single Tinseltown in the Rain. After 40 years the album is still regarded as a classic, and in all that time the band have released only three other albums.

2010

A user called XTC343 uploaded some files to a USENET newsgroup: a fan-made multi-channel version of The Blue Nile’s “A Walk Across The Rooftops” album. The .nfo file said only:

This is an upmix from stereo to 5.1
Done in Plogue.

I was so excited to listen to one of my favourite albums in a new way. I burned the DTS format 5.1 .wav and .cue pair to a CD and played it in a Sony Blu-Ray player. It was awesome! The album sounded more like a live session, with instruments and noises positioned all around.

2023

Anyway, lots of time passed, and one day in September 2023 I rediscovered these files in my archives. A quick Google showed that they had been forgotten about and did not exist anywhere else, so I thought I’d upload them to Internet Archive. I didn’t give it any further thought.

2024

It’s now February 2024 and I realise that I have a whole bunch of devices capable of playing multi-channel audio: my iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and AirPods Pro headphones! Time to revisit those files.

Wrangling

Immediately it was easy to confirm playback using the original DTS format .wav and VLC app on macOS. But how to get the audio into the Music app so I can listen on my device of choice?

XLD and the .cue sheet to split the single DTS format .wav into multiple files
FFMPEG to convert the DTS format .wav files into AC3 format .m4a files

Using a video container for audio content is a trick normally reserved for podcasts, so they can have chapter markers, but here it enables us to get multi-channel content into Music app (aka iTunes).

Playback

You’ll need some multi-channel capable listening equipment.

For the DTS .wav you can either burn it to a CD and play it in a suitable CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/etc player, or play the file directly using software (VLC).

For the Apple .m4a files you can drop them onto the Music app or copy across your devices.

I’m sorry but I cannot help you with any of this.

Have fun listening!

Download

archive.org/details/the-blue-nile-a-walk-across-the-rooftops-dts-5.1

Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 01:22:00 +0000

The only aspect of game development I’ve not attempted myself is the music. I mostly use royalty free music of Japanese origin (just because I dig their vibe, man) as in the case of Sparrow Solitaire or Fore! Track or in rare cases I pay friends (like the amazing Jamie Hamshere) to write music specifically for a game as in the case of YOYOZO. Maybe one day that will change, but until then I’m enjoying gaining more understanding and control of the music in my games. Whilst I develop games for Playdate these techniques are general enough to apply anywhere.

The main way I make the music into more than a static track is to apply a dynamic, reactive, or adaptive effect in one way or another. In this blog post I’ll go into how I’ve achieved this. Please note this is by no means an exhaustive list, rather it’s just the ones I have personally used.

Dynamic BPM

I use this method in YOYOZO because it uses “chip tune” music data representing songs composed by my friend Jamie Hamshere using Playdate Pulp. A playback engine for this data, written by Pulp creator Shaun Inman, works beautifully when integrated into games written using Lua and the Playdate SDK. I added hook to allow me to set the BPM at any point to any value. The end result is that the BPM of the music scales from 130 to 135 as your score increases. As you improve at the game you’ll notice the music speed up ever so slightly along with an increase in tension and anxiety.

Of course, it’s possible to do this in a pre-recorded song stored as a digital music file, but it’s much more difficult for that to respond to the what the player does in the game. An example that takes an interesting approach to this is the track “Sunny Day” from the game Vib Ribbon, and indeed the rest of its soundtrack, where tempo changes over the duration of each song.

Infinite Variations

Another technique I use in YOYOZO, again made possible because I can modify the music data and playback parameters in real time. With this one I cycle the values for the instrument voices pseudo-randomly so that the track plays once as it was programmed and then morphs slightly for each subsequent playback. The track is quite minimal and repetitive in Steve Reich, Philip Glass or John Adams sort of way, so there are automated variations wandering around the original arrangement work really well. Perhaps the ultimate implementation of this approach is Wii Play’s Tanks game.

For sound effects, I vary the playback sample rate to change the pitch of sound effects. This prevents the same sound effect becoming monotonous. Two examples might be Lara Croft in the first Tomb Raider game, groaning the same way every time she climbs up a platform compared with the rich variety of sounds when Mario walks on different surfaces.

Blending/Fading/Balance

Another idea I had was to fade or blend two tracks as the player makes progress in the game. But how to find two tracks that can be cross-faded in a way that always makes sense? Of course you can have them composed, but what about in music that already exists? If only there was an easy way to find such tracks!

There is: stereo pairs! You’d be surprised at how different the left and right channels can sound whilst obviously being the same tune. Of course this means that are output audio will be mono but for me on Playdate that’s just fine. I use this method in Fore! Track.

The idea is to adjust the balance of the two parts of the audio, at once point you’re playing just the left audio across both outputs, then you adjust the balance to play a mix of both, at the other end of the scale you’d be playing just the right audio. Unfortunately the Playdate SDK currently has no API to easily adjust balance, so I had to program a method myself. First, I convert to the destination format which is for me ADPCM using adpcm-xq. Once the files are in this format I split the stereo pair into two files, one for the left channel and one for the right channel. Converting to the destination format before splitting ensures that the two are exactly the same length in terms of samples/bytes.

In the game I fade between the two as the score/chain increases, which has the effect of subtly changing the instrumentation of the tune. It’s one of those things that most people wouldn’t notice, but that once you know about it you can’t miss it. Sadly, I don’t have an easy way to demo this in a video or sound file.

For sound effects, you might consider panning to increase immersion and guide the players visual focus through use of audio. In YOYOZO I pan certain sounds relative to the location of the ball, certain other sounds relative to the location of the player, and there are global sound effects that are not panned at all.

Progressive Loops

Digital audio is a different beast. I always try to find a time that fits the game, going so far as to audition many hundreds of tracks and creating playlist of songs far ahead of ever making a game or even having and idea for a game. I try to find tracks that will loop well and not get annoying, which is easier said than done. If I can’t find a track that loops well, there’s another way.

You can use PyMusicLooper to analyse a digital audio track and spit out information about ranges that loop nicely, along with a percentage indicating how good it considers the loop. In other words you can identify and extract a loop from digital audio files that sound like they could loop. Of course, can’t identify loops in tracks that aren’t repetitive or consistent in their structure. You might get PyMusicLooper to split the file into into three sections (intro, loop, outro) or just export the loop information as a text file to use in your game. Which I choose depends on how much of the file I want to use.

For an example, in my game Super ICARUS I’m using a file that gives the vibe I wanted in the game and sounded like it contained some loops even though it was not provided as a looping song. PyMusicLooper reported that it contains tens of possible loops of varying quality.

loop	start	end	duration	match
0	3.437	30.755	27.318	94.87%
1	0.023	27.341	27.318	94.79%
2	7.279	34.598	27.319	94.63%
3	6.850	34.168	27.318	93.95%
4	8.127	35.445	27.318	93.92%
5	22.221	52.953	30.732	93.80%
6	25.635	56.366	30.731	93.23%
7	11.970	39.288	27.318	93.17%
8	6.850	35.875	29.025	92.13%
9	6.850	54.660	47.810	91.98%
10	20.515	52.953	32.438	91.54%
11	10.263	37.581	27.318	91.26%
12	22.221	54.660	32.439	91.11%
13	23.928	68.325	44.397	90.92%
14	39.300	70.031	30.731	90.82%
15	12.399	70.449	58.050	90.78%

My goal was to find three loops of increasing length and with a high percentage loop quality. After some experimentation and listening, I decided on loops 0, 9, and 15 (table only shows the top 15 loops from this track, even though their percentage loop match are not 100% they still sound like good loops, so selecting these loops was a case of finding three of suitable length and content. PyMusicLooper will let you audition the loops directly, so there’s no need to use an audio editor.

Using the Playdate SDK I can do setRange() on the audio track to change the playback range and the music will loop between those new points when the playhead reaches the end of the range. For this reason, this method does not provide immediate results so is better used to signify a large change in progress as the delay until the change is noticed will be an unknown amount of time. But when the change does kick in it’s a really nice surprise!

The final result sees the game start by playing loop 1 (synth and drums) and then as the player gets makes some good progress I switch to loop 2 (synth, drums, guitar licks), and finally as they pass a certain threshold I switch to loop 3 (synth, drums, guitar licks into guitar solo). This provides music that sounds very dynamic with little effort. You could even drop back to the shorter loops if the player lost a life, missed a target, and so on. Again, there’s no real way of me demoing this as it’s something that will become apparent through play, and the final result is just one long dynamic song!

For sound effects I use the same approach as above. As an example, in Fore! Track there is a clapping sound effect after the player gets the ball in a hole. This is a long sound effect but I play three increasingly long sections of it as the player’s chain increases (number of successive holes-in-one). It starts off as a short clap, increases to a longer more enthusiastic clap, and finally it begins with a whoop and continues to enthusiastic clap. I have a separate sound effect for the end game cheer that plays over the top of the full clap, resulting in a raucous end of game celebration.

Quantised Sounds

In Super ICARUS created certain game event sounds from small sections of the music track. I then adjust playback rate/speed/pitch. The result is that the sounds appear to be quantised or matched to the music. I’m not sure how to describe this phenomenon accurately in musical/technical terms.

I’d love to hear about other methods of achieving dynamic music and sound in video games. Feel free to reach out to me on social media!

Elsewhere

2023-11-22—Hacker News
2023-11-22—Tildes

Tom Moulton, Father of the Disco Mix (1976)

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 17:12:00 +0000

This interview is reproduced from the January 1976 “Disco” issue of Black Music magazine.

TOM MOULTON is the behind-the-scenes figure of disco music. His name has appeared on the credits of discs by Gloria Gaynor, B.T. Express, Bobby Moore, Al Downing, Peoples Choice, South Shore Commission and many others. Yet Moulton’s vital contributions to the hits of a dozen soul acts is in a manner new to an industry increasingly immersed in the complexities of a technological age. For Tom Moulton, a white New York based engineer, is the father of the “disco mix”.

Mixing a record is a complex process. Modern recording uses sixteen or twenty-four track machines, which means that every instrument is recorded and controlled separately, and can be balanced against the others. Tapes can be edited in a variety of ways, and played at any speed. Effects, like echo, repeat and phasing, can be placed on instruments, and stereo separation is exploited to give breadth to a recording. Compression, expansion and limiting are techniques which can firm up a sound by making quiet parts louder and loud parts quieter, or emphasize the dynamic range, or completely remove certain frequencies. Equalizers (which are found on home stereos in the form of bass and treble knobs) can be used on each instrument separately to change its characteristic sound. Most studios have bass, lower middle, upper middle, treble and top frequency controls which provide endless permutations of tone for each track. Tom Moulton has specialised in mastering these facilities, an assignment usually left to the producer. Tom’s services are called for whenever a company wants to perform a magical transformation: changing an uptempo soul disc into a ‘disco record’. Black Music spoke at length to this charming articulate man in his luxurious New York apartment to unravel the mysteries behind the oft quoted but seldom understood complexities of the ‘disco mix’.

BM: Tom, begin by telling us a bit about your background. How did you get into the music business?

TM: When I was fifteen years old I had a part-time job in a record store, and I liked it so much that I left school to try to get into the music business as a salesman. I worked for Seeburg’s (the jukebox company), and King Records. Then I went up to Boston and worked for a retail chain. I got a salesman’s job with RCA, left there, and went into United Artists as a promotion man. By that time I was so fed up that I left the business for about a year.

Then I went to a couple of discotheques, and I noticed how people were really starting to get into music, in a different way than I had ever realised; and I noticed how, towards the end of a record, people would really start to get into it and then, for some strange reason, they’d lose it, because another record would come on, or two records would be playing at the same time. So I figured, God, if people get off that much on music, there’s got to be a way to take them from where that peak is at the end of a record, and hold them, and take them up another level.

I started fooling around technically with tapes at home, and I finally got one place to try one of my tapes. I noticed that by doing edits, and by using parts of the actual record over again, like the instrumental break, people would yell and there’d be an emotional reaction. I just wanted to make people get off on the music, or at least extend that feeling that they had at the end of a record. Say I do a forty-five minute set; you start your records off at one level, and try to build up to a peak. When I do a mix, I try to take that whole forty-five minute trip and put it into one record. You start here, and then by the time the record is over you have them up at the ceiling.

BM: When did you get into the disco thing?

TM: It was 1970.

BM: Are you freelance?

TM: I am; I do a lot for Scepter—and they’ve done a lot for me. They gave me my first chance at something like this, with the BT Express.

BM: What is the appeal of discos?

TM: People go to get away from everything. Here in New York, a lot of people go to the discos to get away from the world, to get away from the city, and be totally free while dancing: being freaked out with the music and the lights. But you watch people, and they come in, they don’t know if they want to dance or whatever, and all of a sudden they’ll hear a record, they get up on the floor, and they totally come out of it. You just watch the expression of how they’re getting into it; I love to see people turn on like that to music.

BM: How do you mix a track for disco?

TM: A disco record has to have excitement, so what I do when I’m involved in a record is, first of all, something has to turn me on about it or I won’t get involved. What I usually do is hear a rough mix, and see what they’ve tried to do with it. Then I take it into the studio, and I try to get the right tempo for it. I slow up and speed up records, which I do on the sixteen track, and I get the right groove. Then I try to make things in there like the guitar, or piano, or something… I try to get some kind of drive going, some excitement. I notice that the beauty of things, like the bells, or vibes, or something, that are in there, or like a guitar that’s playing some pretty chords, I’ve noticed that the contrast has a funny reaction on people. It’s a hard driving thing, but all of a sudden there’s all this beauty there at the same time. I notice things like that really turn people on. And what I also try to do is put in breaks if I can, cause that takes people even higher. It’s down to flow; I try to take people somewhere. I never stay on the same plane because I think that becomes boring.

For example, the People’s Choice record (‘Do It Any Way You Wanna’). You hit them right over the head the first time with that drum beat, and then you build them from there, but you don’t let them go. You gotta keep their attention. When I first heard that on tape, it was the same thing all the way through the record. The same monotonous thing. So I did that record thirty seconds at a time; I started with the drums and the bass, then I punched in the guitar, then another guitar, then the Fender Rhodes. And you go like that. Then you keep bringing the hook back in; I brought the hook back three times. The original was close to that, except I kept repeating things to make it interesting. I’m not sure what the record would have done if it had come out the original way, but I know this way made it more exciting.

BM: Are you involved in computer mixes?

TM: I use computer mixes quite a bit now if it’s twenty-four track; it’s difficult with sixteen. It’s good if there’s a lot of riding to do, like if you want to get certain licks in on the guitar, or maybe the voices. It’s good in that respect, especially if there are a lot of things on there that you want to get out. The other thing I like about computer mixes is that you can use group masters, so you can bring the whole orchestration up at times, or put the strings and horns in something to accentuate what somebody’s singing. I find the computer mixes are fantastic for that; but even now I rely on the computer just as a group master, even on the sixteen track, ‘cause it just makes it easier. The use of computer mixes still isn’t perfected yet; the computer can perform two hundred and twenty functions, and we’re only using about three percent of its total capabilities.

BM: What do you think is your best mix?

TM: I think the most creative was probably Gloria Gaynor. The first one was probably the one I like best. It was just the excitement of taking two old songs that they felt, well, the only reason we’ll let you do them is basically because they’re old, and who really cares about them; they didn’t say it exactly that way, but since they’d already gotten the hit records, I mean, why would anybody want a five minute version of ‘Honeybee’? And I had to convince them into doing that.

BM: Did you change the tempo on that one?

TM: Yeah, a little bit.

BM: Don’t you find that that distorts the vocal performance?

TM: No; I speeded that up a little bit, but what that does is it puts things up in a higher range and makes the drums a little brighter. It makes the voice a little higher, and if you roll off the bottom and put more highs on the voice, you can almost make like she’s really screaming, like she’s really into the record. I’ve done that with a lot of records, where it sounds like they’re singing their ass off, but they’re not, ‘cause it’s done technically. I did that on ‘Leavin’ The Good Life Behind’, by Phyllis Hyman on Private Stock, (unfortunately that one wasn’t a hit) and on ‘Just Can’t Say Goodbye’, by The Philly Devotions. I suppose my all-time favourite mix is ‘I’ll Be Holding On’ by Al Downing. The radio stations here played the long B side on that; they never once played the short one. Stations started playing the long versions, like on ‘Do It ‘Til You’re Satisfied’, what they call the disco mix. I was thrilled when I heard that.

BM: The disco mix on ‘I Don’t Know If I Can Make It’, by Dawson Smith, sounds toppier than the vocal A side, especially the guitar and percussion.

TM: I did a mix on the vocal version as well as the instrumental, but they used the producer’s vocal version. My instrumental was just the track to the vocal version without the voice. My whole number on that was that I wanted to make it more dynamic, rather than just a street record. That guitar is brought out by adding brightness. I like a clean sound on most records; if I’m gonna hear a guitar playing I want it to sound alive; I don’t want it to sound compressed, or so tight in the record that there’s no life to it. When things bounce out of a track it sounds real, it sounds alive. I find also a great deal depends on the mastering of the record. I like to take a lot of bottom off the bass, so I can push it more, and pick up the melody line without destroying the bass drum sound. I like the bass to ride above the bass drum. Now, if you take off a lot of the bottom, roll off the bottom or some of the mid-range, it gets very thin, but it’s clean. Then when you go to master, you push the bottom again, you put the bottom back in, but you get a very clean bottom sound, without it all being boom boom boom, vibration rather than music.

BM: It’s been said that disco mixing is a matter of emphasizing highs to compensate for bottom-heavy speaker systems.

TM: I think I was probably the one that brought back the bright sound on top. The only reason for that is, at that volume, I always like to keep a dry top. I like to keep the cymbals as dry as I can, because when you have a lot of echo on a record, and you play it at that volume, everything just jumps together, and it sounds all distorted. I notice with a dry sound on the cymbals, they cut through, and the cymbal tracks would sort of float across the speaker. And I notice that people react to highs like that.

BM: There was also a lot of top on the Banzaï record.

TM: Yeah, well I think that was the hottest record I’ve ever mixed. That was deliberately done that way. I had a tape of that, and ‘Undecided Love’ by The Chequers, at the same time. I got them from France, and I turned Scepter onto them so they could buy it. But I did say that if you buy them, buy them with the stipulation that we get the sixteen tracks so I can redo them. I feel ‘Undecided Love’ is gonna be a big hit now. And there’s a break in that that never existed, and that’s 5:35, including that. I always try to get records to hit 5:35, it just seems to be a magic number with me. ‘I’ll Be Holding On’ was 5:35, and so was ‘Free Man’.

BM: Is there such a thing as a slow disco track?

TM: It’s hard to say; I feel there’s gonna be a trend towards that, what it is I don’t know, but right now, I would say no, there isn’t. In New York, the gay discos still influence the sound. You’ll find the gay discos are much more into things they’re not familiar with, whereas in the straight discos, people still feel they have to hear something they’re familiar with, and only occasionally can you slip in that new record that’s foreign to them. But now it’s getting to the point where gay discos aren’t gay anymore, they’re mixed. Because a lot of people are getting hip and saying, “Oh, we don’t want the same old music. We want to be able to go where it’s new and fresh”, and that’s what a lot of people do now. But I think you’ll find that in your big cities rather than your smaller towns. They’re not really into that sort of thing yet, and they watch what New York does.

BM: Are there any older records which are natural disco tracks?

TM: Yeah, there’s quite a few of them; ‘Think’, by Aretha Franklin, ‘Just One Look’, by Doris Troy, ‘Who’s Makin’ Love’, by Johnny Taylor. Things like that are really kind of disco records.

BM: When did disco begin in America?

TM: It began in the early sixties; but it really took off around 1971. I feel disco started happening more because radio got very tight with their playlist, and there was a lot of music which just wasn’t being exposed. And of course, the economy doesn’t help either. People want to be able to go out and have a good time. If you believe that history repeats itself, I think we’re going through the dance era of the forties again.

BM: Like the old tune ‘Brazil’ being recorded again?

TM: There’s quite a number of them now; there’s ‘How High The Moon’, on Gloria’s new album.

BM: What do you feel catalysed the new boom?

TM: Everything has an effect, when you put it all together, but I don’t think just one thing does; it takes everybody to get on a good thing, or it’s not gonna work. That’s what I tried to get the disc jockeys here to do; a couple of years ago I said, “Hey, the only way you guys are ever gonna get anywhere is if you all stick together, and then you can become something”. One will help the other this way, rather than each one trying to become a star themselves.

BM: Is that how the record pool came about?

TM: The record pool was really formed because of ‘The Chicago Theme’, by Hubert Laws; let’s say that was the basis of forming it. There was a man who was working for the company, CTI, who was giving out test pressings, and a couple of other disc jockeys tried to get it. The guy said, “I’m sorry, you’re not big enough”. So they called me and said, “I can’t believe anybody would say we’re not big enough”. And I said, “Well, I don’t have a solution to it”. I tried to call him, and he was very nasty about it. So the next thing I know is, “Well look, we’re all gonna get together then, and if we all don’t get it, then none of us are gonna play it”. And I said, “That’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard you say”. That’s the reason they all got together, and of course I tried to help them .

BM: Are there any other disco mixers you admire?

TM: I don’t really know anyone else who does what I do: see, I call myself the objective side of a producer. I’ll go in there being totally objective, and take out everything that doesn’t work, and put in stronger things that are the key to it. And the reason I’ve come to that conclusion is, I’ve tried to produce some things myself, and I found it very difficult in the mixing to be objective, to say it’s not really mine, it’s somebody else’s, and I’m out to get everything that’s good in the record.

BM: Have you ever overdubbed anything onto a record?

TM: Sure, background voices. In ‘Reach Out, I’ll Be There’ by Gloria Gaynor, the drums in the beginning. See, that was only once in the record, so we went in and overdubbed it, put it in again, kept repeating it.

BM: Did you change anything in ‘Call Me Your Anything Man”’, by Bobby Moore?

TM: No, but we had to triple the strings. We did it technically, cause there were only three violins, and rather than… I don’t like to add things to a producer’s record, I don’t think that’s right: if I can do it without that sort of thing, I would rather. ‘Cause I enjoy what I do, but I’m not trying to take it away from the producer either.

BM: ‘Anything Man’ had a lovely summer quality.

TM: I loved that record. Everybody always says the same thing, they always say “summer quality”. I was just fascinated with it. It’s the melody which I think attracted me to that record, and the girls’ voices. It’s like a lovers’ record, I can’t explain it. Like, to me that was a ballad. It wasn’t really disco. The original had a sideman (a rhythm box simulating sixteenths on a closed high hat) up louder, but the whole mix was much harder. And there’s that thin line where you’ve got to compromise, where you still want to retain the feel of the record, but you also want the beauty, and the minute that was up too loud, it clashed with what he was doing, it ruined the intimacy of what he was trying to say. You’ve got to consider the vocalist too.

BM: Has disco affected dance itself?

TM: It has; I don’t think the hustle would have come up without the disco. They call it the hustle, I don’t actually know how it got its name, but I know that a promotion man at RCA was the guy who gave Van (McCoy) the idea to record it. The rhythm is really a Philadelphia sound, what I call pretty soul.

BM: Is the bump surviving?

TM: I don’t think it was ever that big in New York. It was big with the blacks, but not so much with the whites. On a national basis, I’d say the bump is probably still popular.

BM: Has disco transcended ethnic lines?

TM: I find black music on the whole more effective than white records when it comes to generating excitement. I’ve grown up with black music, and maybe I’m prejudiced, but I prefer black music, only because there’s an excitement there. It’s like the way a black group performs versus a white group. It seems like a black group needs less to make it exciting, I don’t know why that is. Even vocally, they sing between the notes. I guess you’d call it soul. And why should that kind of music be just for the blacks, that’s not fair. I appreciate anything that’s real and exciting. That’s what I try to do in a mix.

BM: Aren’t discos expensive?

TM: No, they’re not. It’d probably cost you around five dollars to get in, then you’d probably spend maybe two or three dollars for a drink or whatever. That’s not a lot of money here.

BM: Are drugs prevalent on the scene?

TM: I think you’re gonna find them anywhere. I don’t think there’s as much as there used to be, but there’s still a lot of drugs around, let’s say grass, or they might be on amyl nitrate, what they call poppers here. But I don’t think there’s as much as before.

BM: Do you think that disco has hurt struggling live acts?

TM: No, because if you look at the charts, there’s still a great percentage of ballads. I just think that disco music has opened a whole new area and created some new record stars. Those small clubs still exist. There’s still a lot of people who like that kind of music.

Maybe it’s hurt them a little bit, but there are still people who want to hear the small trio, the piano lounge. A lot of restaurants have opened discos where before they had nothing. If you’re gonna go the music route, discos are hot right now. Rather than someone saying, “I wanna really increase my business so I’m gonna throw out the small group and start getting discos”. There are still a lot of places that have the small lounge acts.

BM: Do you see any signs of disco fading?

TM: No, because I don’t think it’s peaked yet.

BM: A lot of people have jumped onto the disco bandwagon; has James Brown?

TM: What James Brown used to do really wasn’t disco music. James Brown generates a raw excitement, and that’s a prime reason why a number of his records were played in the discos, because it had that raw excitement to make you wanna move. There’s a certain line there where it becomes listening music, and music where you’ve got to tap your foot or something; and that’s what you try to get out of a mix, to get people, like, to slap them in the face and say, “Hey, come on, let’s move”.

BM: What do you think of James Brown’s two latest disco albums?

TM: I wouldn’t want to comment on those.

BM: What do you think of ‘Bad Luck’, by Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes?

TM: It’s got to be one of my favourite all-time records. That of course was a million seller here. That’ll probably be the biggest record of ‘75 in terms of popularity, because people just don’t get sick of it.

BM: And The O’Jays?

TM: Believe it or not, The O’Jays are the biggest sellers on Philadelphia International. They’re probably one of the strongest black acts around; they do have some white appeal, but it’s primarily the black appeal for The O’Jays. ‘Love Train’ was probably their biggest seller to the white audience, and ‘For The Love Of Money’ was an incredible disco record.

BM: And The Temptations?

TM: It’s funny about Motown. I think the most exciting thing they’ve come out with is ‘Forever Came Today’, by The Jackson Five. That became a number one disco record here in New York; but as for some of their other products, it seems like there’s no excitement anymore. It’s like they don’t take it far enough, they confine it.

BM: Does that hold for The Commodores?

TM: Oh, I wish you didn’t say that. There’s one song I love right now, it’s my favourite song. It’s called ‘This Is Your Life’, it’s a ballad. That to me is one of the greatest Motown records I’ve ever heard. But I didn’t care for ‘Slippery When Wet’. If they applied the same approach to The Commodores’ up records as they did to ‘This Is Your Life’, they would really dominate the disco world.

BM: What about some other groups?

TM: I love Kool & The Gang, always have. I like The Ohio Players, they’re interesting. I’m surprised they’re as commercial as they are, because when you listen to them they’re really not that commercial. Love The Isley Brothers.

BM: Is side one of ‘The Heat Is On’ disco?

TM: Yes and no. That’s a group disco-wise that’s predominant in the straight clubs. It’s too repetitious for the gays. And it’s bigger in black clubs.

BM: And Barry White?

TM: He’s sort of over now. His last big record was ‘You’re The First, The Last, My Everything’.

BM: Are you involved in any work other than disco?

TM: I’ve been doing a lot of ballads lately. I think ballads are much easier to do. You can get more emotion out of a ballad, where, with a disco record, there’s a lot of things that you’ve got to keep going. ‘Cause if I get bored with it, then I know other people are. You’ve got to keep the excitement level up, whereas on a ballad you depend more on the lyrics and the melody.

BM: How do you see the future of disco?

TM: As long as people can go out and have a good time for five dollars, and feel uninhibited, because maybe it’s dark, and let’s say, escape, and just come out of your shell and dance, I think discos are gonna be around. Because it’s really a cheap way of having a great time.

Japanese music recommendations

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For the past month or so Apple Music has been suggesting new music from Japan in my weekly “New Music” playlist. I’m not quite sure what flipped the bit in their recommendation engine, but I’m happy it did. If I had to guess I’d say it was the music I was listening to whilst finishing off Sparrow Solitaire for Playdate which has an excellent soundtrack by young Japanese musician Yuyake Monster.

It’s so great to receive tailored recommendations of music that I enjoy, and occasionally find so good it has me doing somersaults. I’m attempting to keep the most enjoyable from each week in playlists on my Apple Music profile, so feel free to check them out. There are a lot of artists featured and I only have time to explore those that make the biggest impression.

So, I’d like to mention a couple in particular:

Nathalie Wise

The track 何もない世界の果てに “A world of nothingness” was featured in the third week of recommendations and it immediately struck a chord with me thanks to its lush synthesisers, range of live instruments and the particular poetic style of vocal delivery. I immediately listened to the rest of the EP and it was all equally good.

A quick google later and it turns out that Nathalie Wise is the name of the band rather than an individual, and the EP was a taster for “Open Sky” their first album in 19 years! What a splash.

I figured if the band thought they still had something to say in 2023 then they must have really had something to say back in the day. So I listened to their 2004 album “raise hands high” and …it blew me away. Instant Super Fan!

The “Open Sky” album launched on the May 2023 Bandcamp Friday, and bandcamp is the only place you can get it digitally at this point. Sadly I wasn’t able to watch the live album launch event video stream as it required a Japanese credit card for payment, but I tried my best! I hope the band release the footage after the album launch period.

Masakatsu Takagi

Marginalia is an ongoing series of daily piano recordings made at Takagi’s private studio in the mountains of Hyogo, Japan. He opens all the windows, welcomes in the sounds of nature, and proceeds to play the piano without any further preparation. In these recordings there are no overdubs, no edits or fixes, everything is just …as it happened. I love this sort of passion project!

At the time of writing 130 recordings have been released since April 2017, making up a total of more than 11 hours of music spanning a handful of albums and dozens of singles. Everything is on bandcamp, and I’ve created a playlist of them all on my Apple Music profile.

Since my introduction was to some of his recent pieces, I’ve gone back to the beginning of the project and am listening to every piece in the series in chronological order. I’m only part way through at this point, but am enjoying it immensely.

The biggest crime in pop music?

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The re-recorded version of “Ride on Time” (featuring an uncredited Heather Small on vocals) released in the UK on Deconstruction Records.

It was (re)made as the original samples couldn’t be cleared. The track’s success is what gave us M People, for better or worse. 😅 Sadly this version is the one you hear today on UK radio.

And here’s the original version of “Ride on Time”, released in Italy by the real BLACK BOX in 1989.

The original Italian version of “Ride on Time” can be found today because the samples of the Salsoul Records classic, Loleatta Holloway’s “Love Sensation”, were eventually (finally!) cleared in 2018!

The Sample

Music: T&E SOFT “New 3D Golf Simulation” games

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a huge fan of the music in T&E SOFT’s “New 3D Golf Simulation” series, so I have spent some time to digitise the music from those games in the series I did not have in my music library. That makes 13 new soundtracks!

Devil’s Course (PC-98, 3DO)
Eight Lakes G.C. (PC-98, X68000)
Harukanaru Augusta (PC-98, X68000)
Harukanaru Augusta HD (PC-98)
Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 2 (PC-98)
Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 3 (3DO)
Pebble Beach no Hatou (3DO)
T&E Selection (PC-98)
Waialae no Kiseki (PC-98 + 3DO)

For PC-98 and X68000 I used a Windows app called HOOT to play back the “chip” music and export it as WAV, then I trimmed any loops and added fades, then finally converted to FLAC and MP3.

For 3DO I extracted the filesystem from CD-ROM ISOs, then converted files containing audio into WAV and then FLAC. For AIFF/AIFC files I converted using command line ffmpeg, and for Stream files I used ZStream CHUNKS Reader (version 0.96).

www.mediafire.com/folder/tcm6u1rhz1xsy/vgm

They should make it on to the Video Game Music website soon, but they are available first here. Enjoy!

Music from the 3DS game Pullblox/Pushmo/Hiku-Osu

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:18:00 +0000

Music from the 3DS game Pullblox (EU), Pushmo (USA), Hiku-Osu (JP).

soundcloud.com/gingerbeardman/sets/pullblox/

Get Info: #music

Offset (DJ mix)

“Discrete” by RONEeS (2022)

Music recommendations (2025)

Suspended in a beam of sunlight

Playlists

Catch the Vibe

Bonus: music of the year

Mameyudoufu (DJ mix)

“Safe Space” by Mameyudoufu (2024)

DÉ DÉ DISCO (DJ mix)

Sun End Girl (2015)

Ambientalmente (DJ mix)

Catch the Vibe

Moai (DJ mix)

“Moai” by Giorgio Poi (2021)

If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes (DJ mix)

Playlists

Old Codes, New Releases for Playdate

SHARK TURTLE

NEW WORLD

More games!

Music recommendations (2024)

My first DJ mix

Playlists

Bonus: albums of the year

Remix: Hitomitoi - LIKE A FIRST KISS feat. Wild Nothing

Adding your own multi-channel audio to Music app

DVD Audio/Video

Aside: Cloud Library

Conversion/Encoding

Chapters

Final steps

The Blue Nile “A Walk Across The Rooftops” (5.1)

1984

2010

2023

2024

Wrangling

Playback

Download

Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games

Dynamic BPM

Infinite Variations

Blending/Fading/Balance

Progressive Loops

Quantised Sounds

Further reading

Elsewhere

Tom Moulton, Father of the Disco Mix (1976)

Japanese music recommendations

Nathalie Wise

Masakatsu Takagi

The biggest crime in pop music?

The Sample

Music: T&E SOFT “New 3D Golf Simulation” games

Music from the 3DS game Pullblox/Pushmo/Hiku-Osu