intro

All this music is instrumental and was performed live on a Korg Triton. It is a stereo synthesizer, so you should try listening to this with decent studio-quality headphones to bring out the highs and lows and the stereo effects, such as the Sony MDR-V600 ($100, 5kHz-30kHz freq. response!).

These are by me, Jim Michaels. This is in MP3 format. This is synthesizer music (Track 02 is simply a nice Electric Piano with notes that cover the frequency gamut). This was done in 2005, a year in my life when I had some keyboard creativity. I have not had it since. Once in a while I still play around on the keyboard.

Track 01 (The Train)'s sound I lost and have never been able to reproduce: it was entirely unique and took a lot of work to make. I still think I was making use of an anomaly or something unusual in the Arpeggiator.

If I could ever get the music off the synth properly, the files are recorded at 48kHz but stored on the cd at 44.1KHz.

about the files

The smaller files (lower bit rate) are missing the higher frequency ranges (highs): it is perceptably noticeable on most tracks.

I would recommend you get the cd from me if you want higher quality audio (you don't have to) if you want to demo your speakers. This music is pretty much directly from the synthesizer (the CD definitely is). the only processing that has been done on it is:

• normalize, which maximizes the amplitude without clipping and takes out the dc offset, if any. no effect on frequencies. the same has been done to the cd. some songs will be louder than others.
• conversion to MP3 format. this affects the frequency bands. the lower the bit rate, the worse off the sound is at higher frequencies. at 16KHz you can really hear it badly, but the file is smaller for hearing samples. the CD doesn't use MP3.

Why aren't you selling your music?

• because it's not perfect.
• I didn't have understanding of the sequencer and it would have taken a LOT of work and more understanding of music than what I had to get it right, so it would have been a long slow process.
• I also didn't think to record my music in the sequencer instead of to an audio file. that was an afterthought.
• in some places I think it could use some improvement.

uses for the music/cd

I had thought this music could be used for demonstrating the dynamic range and frequency response of stereo systems, or for demonstrating speakers, since if the volume is up it can push them to their limits. I would be especially pleased if somebody did that!

warning

this music is nearly directly from a synthesizer, and if you watch it carefully, you can catch the bass pushing the speaker cone out to full extent and pretty near hits the resonant frequency of my 4" speakers. So I wouldn't crank the stereo up too loud. There is high frequency content too.

shipping a CD

the CD costs about $8 which includes materials. it won't be fancy. I don't have any production facilities. I don't have any lightscribe media yet or anything to make lightscribe labels.

basically what you can expect is a Taiyo Yuden 700MB CDR (which will work on all players) and a clear breakable (it's all they've got at the stores for clear).

I used to have access to my cd labeling stuff, but it's all in boxes now, and I don't have much money, so now all I can do is use a black sharpie to write on the cdr. Hence part of the reason for the cheap price.

Favorite tracks have a * next to them, especially favorite tracks have **.