fourteen                 @        14        @                 fOURtEEN
                         @      Rebirth     @
onetothe4                @       Seti       @                 elevation


Music, Rebirth, and other fun stuff:

At first Rebirth is very confusing and strange.  Hopefully this will help you
get past some of that confusion.

I. Software:

In order to get Rebirth to work you need to either buy it, or download the 190
meg image.  Otherwise mods won't work.  Mods are different interfaces with
different sounds for Rebirth.  So the 808 and 909 on different mods have
different sounds for each button.  Also, after getting the non-cracked version I
noticed that it never crashed my system on the memory errors.  You also want to
get the mod-packer, which is used to create mods.  And the mod-unpacker, which
deconstructs mods.  These two things are really useful when you want to make a
mod consisting of your favorite sounds.  If the mod packer doesn't seem to work,
rebuild your desktop.  It will fix the problem.

II. Rebirth:

Making music with Rebirth can be fun, but it sucks if you have no musical
knowledge (like myself). I'm not a music expert, so I'm not going to lie and say
I know what I'm talking about here.  There is no guide on how to make music,
that is the creativity which is up to you alone.

The good rebirth songs, if you haven't noticed already, consist of chord
progressions.  If you don't know what I'm talking about listen to something by
Niclas Lundqvist, or T.G. Virus.  Each pattern in rebirth, (A1, A2, etc...) is
in a different "key" in these guy's songs.  When they cycle through the
patterns, it sounds good.  This is not an accident.  Rebirth's patterns consist
of 16 notes, and are one "bar" long.  Start simple.   I think it's easier to set
my pattern to one step and just choose a few notes that sound good when I cycle
through them.  Lets say I have the notes: C, A#, A, F.   After you have this
then change the step to 4 and add a few notes.  And if you can get something
that progresses well, change it to 8, then 16 and keep working on it.  There are
lots of ways to make your music, this is just one method I use.  There is one
rule you should remember:  All that matters is that it sounds good.  The Beatles
couldn't read sheet music and they had a couple good tunes.  A good time to
really think about progressions is when you have come up with 10 different
patterns that you like and you start wondering why it all "sounds the same." 
It's because it's all in one key most likely.  You can have one 303 with a chord
progression and the other with something else.  There are lots of things you can
do.  It is possible to make your pattern 16 steps and have all of them be the
same note and just change the accent and slide.  Then in your next pattern just
change the note.  This can work very well sometimes.

Some of this stuff seems really obvious, but when you first start out it can be
very confusing.  All the dials and knobs on the 808 and 909 are probably the
most confusing.  But I will go over a few different things here:

303:. If you didn't already know, the two synthesizer sections on the top half
of rebirth are the 303's.  All the dials on the 303 are somewhat simple to
learn.  As with most of rebirth you can learn best by playing around and seeing
what you like.  There are two buttons above the "down/up/acc/slide" section. 
The left button turns the note ON for the current step you are editing.  The
right button turns it off (it will not play  that step).  Maybe I was just a
retard, but I couldn't figure that out for a week.

Waveform: Sawtooth is a more rigid sounding wave, while the square sounds more
like 8 bit nintendo.

Delay: Gives a delay to the sound, you can hear it's echo, and it gets more and
more intense If you set the delay steps to 1 it will get intense very quickly,
you can also change the pan (R/L channels) and the amount of feedback.

PCF:  This is a filter that changes the way your pattern sounds.  Many times it
"sounds" like a sine wave, fading in and out.  But that can be changed, the
frequency is how much sound it allows in through the filter.

Compressor: It's possible to get your sounds to seem like they are `pumping' if
you set the threshold and ratio to 10.

808:. On the standard mod to hear different kinds of drum beats you just use the
large knob on the right that points to the different sounds (BD1, CY2, OH2, LT,
MT, etc) and click on which beat you want to hear it.  You can change the
attributes of the sound by varying the level, tune, or decay.

909:. With the 909 you just select which sound you want to hear by clicking on
the little rectangular boxes above the square boxes at the bottom.

What do all those two letter abbreviations mean and do?  If you're just starting
out you probably are using the standard mod, which I don't care much for.  My
personal favorite mod is Massen's MSM, and I added much of my own sounds in with
it.  So the following list only really holds true for the standard mod.   Other
mods may have better or worse sounds as replacements.

AC - Accent:  If you put this on the current step it will make it "louder."  If
anything else is on the step as well, it will be louder too.  A way of making
things like bass drum or anything else stand out.

BD - Bass Drum: Usually in rebirth most people but the beat on steps 1, 5, 9,
13.  Do this for now.

SD - Snare Drum: Can sound very metallic or like animal skin.

LT - Low Tom MT - Middle Tom HT - High Tom

All three of these are usually replaced in other mods by completely different
sounds.

RS - Rim shot:

CP - (Hand) Claps: This effect can make a song sound good or make it sound
completely fake and cheezy.  Use with cuation.

CH - Closed Hi-hat: Cuts off the Open Hi-hat. You can use these together, for
instance if you have a series of CH's and then one OH it sounds like it  is
"complete" OH - Open Hi-hat: Cut off by the Closed Hi-hat.

CC - Crash Cymbal: Sounds like a crash sound.

RC - Cymbal: Toned down/less dramatic CC


The difference between song mode and pattern mode:. You use song mode when you
want to record your whole song into one piece.  Say you have a song and want to
record it, you'd click on song mode.  Make sure "bar" and "start" are set to 1,
then select "Initialize Song from Pattern mode" in the edit menu.  Click record
then play, and play your song by hand.  When you're done click RECORD AGAIN.  If
you want to go back and say add effects to the 303 you can do this by going back
to bar 1 and clicking record then play.  In other words it's possible to record
over your song without destroying it, only adding to it.  One thing I usually do
is I record just the 303's.  Then go back and record the 808/909 this way I
don't have to worry about 4 things at once.


Mixing:. If you have a song you like and want to mix in a Gregorian chant or
something.  You can mix it in with Cubase, Peak, AudioFusion, and a variety of
other programs.  My setup is like this: I've got my laptop, other computer(s),
turntables, cd, VCR, & radio going into my mixer, which then goes to my desktop
to be recorded.  I don't have to be completely restricted to only the computer.


Some good resources/links are:

http://www.computercontrolled.com/
http://home.worldonline.dk/~alf8myc/The_Rebirth_Songmaking_FAQ.htm
http://www.netmix.com/bpm
Hotline:  209.90.212.12

                                          -Seti