Spindrift

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I was not so sure about this one so it's nice to hear that you didn't think it was awful at least @Cybernetika I agree that maybe I made the bass is a tad too dominant....i do like strong and middy bass sounds usually, but a track this style might be better off with a sound that gives more room for the leads/fx. I try of course to make it sound deep and with this track I did not do much reduction in the low mids on lead/fx sounds trying to maintain the fatness. I guess what I could have done on this track is to use more dist/saturation to warm and fatten the sound. @Ukiro Thanks again for taking time to review my tracks. I'm happy if people think it sounds like "a nice night-time forest-style track". Making stuff that works when played loud on a dancefloor in the forest/jungle is really what I am concerned with. I love Shlab stuff in the night, and I agree with that their arrangements usually would be more interesting and chaotic compared to this track. I do like many of their more simple and monotonus tracks as well as a complement in a set to make an interesting blend. But now I'm making excuses... I did want to make a really chaotic night track this time, and you are probably right that the arrangement should been more chaotic for this track. Actually it's the first time what I can recall someone comment my music comparing it to another act.... Normally I don't really set out to do a certain type of music and just let the flow decide. But this time I was deciding beforehand this time that I wanted to make a hard night track the influences might have become a bit too obvious. Well...i better get back to making my stuff that neither the dark night freaks or fluffy morning fanatics like I really appreciate to hear your opinions...in normal circumstances the only ones voicing their opinion is people saying they think all tracks are great, which is of course nice but pointless. Normally I post tracks for feedback if I'm a bit unsure about them, but it would be interesting to hear your honest and valuable comments on the tracks that I'm happy with myself as well. So if you happen to have a few minutes to check them out...here is some of my personal favorites: Fresh one that turned out nice IMO: Out Of Controller One of my favorites from 2004: Jack On Usually the favorite of old-school fanatics: Glitch

I just finished of this little tune, and since it is a diversion from the usual style I make some feedback would be greatly appreciated. It's noisy and dark stuff, so be warned lovers of melodic morning music Click here to download 128k mp3

My favourite instrument would be the pulsar modular. Extreme flexibilty and awsome sound. And looks good as well:

I only stared crying to one track. Not trance though...sorry. And on top of that a track that only Swedes know. And not because of the melody as much as the lyrics I guess. So heavy off topic... But I mention it anyway. Di Leva - Vad Är Frihet Otherwise I never cry to even to films except two times so far. Once to an animated film based on a Douglas Adams book. I think it might be called "The Plauge Dogs" in english. Once to a documentary on BBC about the advances of man kind in the 70's.

I never understood why people seem to think cubase and logic is so complicated. Maybe it's me who is ignorant because I grew up with using sequencers, and when notator and cubase came they seemed like a breeze to use compared with Dr T that I was using before that. The mixing and routing is now when audio is integrated is maybe the cumbersome part, but still a lot easier than patching up and using a hardware studio. Basically you have to find the matrix editor to edit your MIDI, move some blocks around to arrange and learn how to use inserts and busses to mix. I would think that it should not take more than a couple of days to get going and be able to make a track. Of course there is plenty of functions to explore, but thats extras and not needed for being able to make a tune. I did have a quick look at reason the other day, and I never tried a piece of software that seemed so hard to do even the most basic things in. And since it operates so differently than any other sequencer I would not recommend it to anyone as a stepping stone. And the sound did not seem better than fruity, rather the opposite. Fruity is also quite different in the way you use it and the beginners sequencer I think has the most intuitive interface is orion. Thats in most ways like a scaled down version of cubase or logic. But unfortunally the sound is as bad as in fruity and reason. But if the major sequencers seems daunting to start with and you just want to have a play around I would think orion is the best option. I would reccommend to focus on the basics. A very slow scedule would be: Day 1: Learn how to load an instrument and edit the MIDI notes and controllers. Day 2: Learn how to insert FX and use busses. Day 3: Learn how to move, cut and paste parts in the arrangement. Day 4: Learn how to record and use automation. Sure there is a lot more in a sequencer that can be useful to know in some circumstances, but that one can learn as one go along. They are really not that complex pieces of software and to get started should not take that long. Compared to Director or software like 3D MAX at least it's like learning how to use notepad I would think. But like I said...I might not have a clue since I can't remember learning how to use a sequencer myself, so sorry if I come off as ignorant. But hey...fake it til you make it. If you think it will be easy it will make it easier in reality as well

http://www.ResonantEarth.com have the pleasure to present a track from new exciting artist Krankov entitled "Flippy Trippy Hippy". Also we are very glad to bring to you five more tracks from excellent SF artist Random: Mindbending Meylin Sheath Good To Go Law Of Karma Honorable Intention Lastly another brand new Spindrift track is available, "Mental Aviation". Check them out and enjoy!

Don't go with a VIA mobo. What you want is an ASUS A8N rather than an A8V, ie a nForce mobo. And it doesn't specify brand of RAM or HD.

Cost more for the same performance. AMD is very good at doing raw floting point calculations and is just a stable as a P4. Also windows is already out as beta with a 64 bit version, and in a year or two you might want to switch to 64 bit and will get a performance boost out of your AMD. With the intel inside you will have to stick to 32 bit until you change machine.

I don't know the ASrock mobo and would not go for it myself. ASUS boards is generally considered best for audio machines. ABIT would be my second choice. And I would go for AMD 64 instead with an nForce chipset. WD disks is noisy, seagate barracuda is much more quiet and hence better for an audio machine. "branded" RAM don't say much, and I would expect very cheap brand RAM with that as the specification. Power supply is important but not mentioned in the spec. Preferably you should have minimum 350w and a reputable brand. It looks to me like it a machine built for high spec and cheap price rather than a quality system. In my experience you'll be better off spending the same amount on a machine with 521Mb of quality RAM, maybe a 2.5Ghz CPU and a quality mobo and PSU.

Sorry for getting a bit upset before, but we don't agree on what a music contest serves for purpose. A music competition serves a few purposes. For example: Publicity and promotion for the artists and the site. A means for the audience or the judges to express their taste. It does not serve the purpose of deciding who is "best". It can't be done, because taste cannot be measured on a scale. So winning the competion when the rules was that you had to have a climax in the last part of the track would not proove more in anyway compared to if you could arrange the track as you feel like. So i still don't get the point with any of the rules you suggest. And again, who should set the rules for how the arrangements should be structured and what styles should be allowed? And who should judge the contibutions to see if they qualify within the given criteria?

Just go and buy a spun release or something. To have the objective to please as many people as possible is a shit approach to music, and if thats your attitude you have no understanding for art nor a mind suited for creating art and you might as well quit IMO. Or start a boyband and at least please a lot more people than you could ever do with trance and earn a lot more money. But don't call yourself a musician.

There is no need for a contest in music...it never is and never have been. You cannot tell who is "the best" because music is about taste and how it speaks to you personally. Sure a competiton can be fun if you take it for what it is and don't have a lot of strict rules. And a more efficient way to get music heard and rated by many people, but it still will not tell you who is the best. Thats just a ridicolous concept.

I think you are making it seem hard. This is a psy related site. Most people will produce psy music and most people will vote for psy tracks. Or do you think we first need to vote for what style should be accepted and with what kind of buildups etc. So again I ask: Who will decide how the tracks need to be structured and what style they should be in? What is the actual problem with if a hip-hop track enter and win? It's not about who is the best, it's a way for people using this site and producing music to get their music heard and get feedback on it. To tell them what they need to make in advance completly defies the purpose IMO. It wont be the music that people here make in the contest and it wont be what the users of psynews like that wins. If you want a competiton to crown the "best producer of full-on between 10-144 bpm" because it seems like it's more likely that the winner is actually is the "best", then go ahead. But it seems extremly pointless to me. Music is not a competiton sport, it's about expression and in this case getting feedback from what you create.

There is a form. Make music, upload it and let the users of the forum decide. Come on, making rules like 'There must be a big climax with a decent going up before the end of the track...' Whats the point and who should decide what the rules is and what tracks fulfill them. Are you going to be the judge of what is progressive, housey or trancey? If this turns into a hip-hop contest it would be because most producers here make hip-hop or if one hip-hop tracks enter and win it's because the people in the forum like hip-hop best. I doubt that will be the case since after all this is PSY-news. But if it happened I don't see the problem for anyone. The only rules needed is that you made the track yourself and who gets the most votes win. Anything more is completly unneccessary, and I think most people agree on that.

IMO rules about style or BPM is completly unneccessary. If someone using this site does death metal in 190 bpm, let him send the track in. If he manages to win votes on a psy site like this, then it's fair enough he takes the prize. Why judge the tracks before they are even allowed to compete?

I used a PIII 850Mhz with 256Mb for many years, and it will do the job with a bit of bouncing and being sparse with the latest most power hungry plugins. I can run quite a few z3+a anyway before it craps out on me. But the internal soundcards can have drivers that is not so happy with many sequencers and in that case you might need an external soundcard. Some cheap laptops have very bad handeling of audio in general. I would only buy laptop and soundcard to go with eachother after checking somewhere that there is people using the same machine, soundcard and sequencer combo as you plan to use. What I do first with a computer if it run bad. Get the latest drivers, and maybe even BIOS. Back up data you need to keep. Reformat the windows installation partition and reinstall XP from scratch. Install drivers. With XP i'd say tweaking is a must if you dont have a top spec computer. Check out www.musicxp.com for example and go thru the steps there. If it don't work ok now, try disabeling services you don't need and experiment with different settings. My laptop for example I almost gave up on being able to use for audio until i tried without APM enabled in the power options. It's so stable running Logic that I can bring a track out and play the logic arrangement on a live gig.

I presumed that the tracks have to be downloadable to make a contest. People can't really vote on the tracks based on snippets. But with the help of the community here it's maybe not impossible to be able to sell 1000 copies, which is really the minimum if you want to break even if you would sell it thru a distributor. If you are planning to be self-distributed it would be an enormus success to sell more than a couple of hundered copies, and pressing say 500 copies will cost you about the same as pressing 1000. I just have to defend the CDR a bit, because I do think it's a great option for the artists and the scene to loosen up the rigid distibution system in place. The label owners I know don't make any money from their investments or their work. Still the pressure is there to please the people that disrtibute you otherwise you end up in depth. There is in effect 3-4 distributors in this scene you can get to sell you the required quantities to finance a pressing. You are likely to have to adjust you licensing terms to their liking and you might have restrictions about for example selling downloads directly yourself or have to get their agreement if you find partners to widen your distrubution in more countries. The total turnaround in the scene is not so bad but the amount you can pay the artists is very small. Say you sell 1000 copies, and people pay on average some $17 per CD in the shop or with postage. $17000 is then what the fans anyway do support with. From this if you have a good deal with the distributor you get maybe $7000, many time with very long delays. After costs for printing, mastering, artwork, shipping, mechanical royalty maybe and ads/promotion that will normally end up in that the artists should get their $1000 and you should have $1000 profit left. If you get $1000 profit in the end it normally seems to get quite unnoticable as a result in the end after working for months with the release and the $100 each for a track on a comp will not mean that much to the artist. If you only sold 700 you are looking at a loss and will have problem to pay the artists and never mind yourself. You can get very high quality discs by burning them yourself. To manufacture your own and get quality results you of course need to be careful with selecting top quality CDR to go with your burner and methodical with scanning the quality results of your burned discs. I travelled a lot with CDs, both burnt and pressed, to India and especially Goa. I think that must be one of the worst imaginable places for having a tendency to destroy CDs quickly. Goa is really sunny, moist and has lots of really sticky dust everywhere and most CDs I brought there has been ruined after a few months there. On some cheap CDR I could see the recording layer dissolve after a few weeks. I'm not hte most care taking maybe, but I try and always keep them in quality cases Still most of my pressed CDs get too scratched to be playable after a season in GOA. Some very good CDR have lasted more more than 5-6 years of my abuse so far. The on body print and booklets you can achive with a home printer is excellent quality and if you spend money on good quality printable CDR and photo quality paper for booklet and inlay you can make a result even better looking than what you get from the pressing plant. CMYK colour is quite dull compared to the RGB prints from an inkjet. I think it great spirit in both Lemmi and Amygdala for offering to take on the release and wish whoever does it best of luck and is sorry for the long monolouge. This an issue close at heart for me so I like to speak about and I hope I'm not being discouraging to anyone. The artists doesn't seem to be bothered with the money from it and on the contrary offer to invest, the person releasing it should be willing to invest a lot of time and money with no return and the tracks should not be possible to download before they are released to make it possible to sell. So with the scenario at hand it seems to me that there is more advantages than disadvantages with the CDR option. But if you feel like going ahed with your plan Amygdala, I would say have a word with some distibutors about what they would say about the idea. Of course you can't get a definate yes or no before the compilation has ended and you put the CD together, but it could give you an idea of if it will be much of a chance to sell enough to pay for a pressing.

Sure, I have tried it. It's a lot nicer sounding than the nord leads from my impression. Still it sounds more digital than the pulsar modular and don't have the same fatness. Although fatness is not desirable with all sounds it is what normally is missing with most VSTi's. The G2 and nords make sounds that is easy to mix and is ok for leads and quelchy fx sounds but don't really excite me. I never owned a VA myself though since I found them so great sounding a lot of the time. I really did not get along with the nord when it came and was a real analogue geek. A was a great fan of waldorf when I was using the original microwave with analogue filtes, but thought the virtual filters they make is not so good and is not really keen on their VA's either. I also used a lot of hardware modulars which is fun albeit a bit cumbersome way of working. Many of the old machines I tried sound a bit tired though and I would never spend the money on a moog, arp or roland modular since I'm not sure if I would bother to use it much at all. The only hardware I could imagine that i might bother to integrate with my setup again sometime would be a modern analogue modular like doepher. Pulsar just rules. Since I got my card some 5-6 years ago I get no exitement looking in sound on sound anymore and I really have no feeling to integrate any hardware because I simply don't need it. I all the time discover new machines and ways to use the modular so I'm still like a kid on x-mas when using my setup. That I can take my complete setup with me when I do a live or go travelling is of course nice bonuses as well.

I agree with prosect that an mp3 release is a easier option. The idea to start with is that you have to dl the tracks to listen to them and I doubt many labels want to invest a couple of thousand € to print a CD with beginner material already widespread on the net. No offense to any budding producers, I'm sure there will be some great music, but it will nevertheless be labeled as a amateur CD somehow. And anyone with a modern printer that can do on body print could offer to do print CDR copies if people do like to order the compilation on CD. Modern CDR discs look just like the real thing and is very durable and is the preferred option in most cases when the volume is less than 1000 copies. That way there is no investment needed really, only a small income for the artists and the person that print and mail the CD's.

If it's spaces you need to replace them with %20. Lets see if this works: http://66.135.37.73/psyvideo.com/~dj/Lepto...20part%20II.mp3 EDIT: Not working for me now, but neither is the original if i copy and paste. It get stuck on loading.

Should I take that as that you are planning to quit to leave room for the newcommers?

@dj mylo And what is Beyer made for...to use with a walkman?? Have you compared the bass response on the DT250's and sennheiser? Or is it the 2hz lower response that make you convinced. But like I said, the sennheisers is more comfortable. The beyers is not bad, but the fully closed design gets a bit how and sweaty for prolonged use. And clumpsy as hell for DJing. So it's about priorites, but soundwise, and especially for producing, I sure prefer the Beyerdynamics.

I tried all the models from sennheiser and the Beyerdynamics when I worked in a music equipment shop a few years ago. I went for the Beyer DT-250 in the end. Beyer have by far the best build quality, but their old DT-100's sounded crap. The 250's on the other hand sounds great and have an awsome bass response. Not exaggreted, but somehow you actually get som idea of what going on down there. Otherwise the bass is the main problem with using headphones for mixing IMO. Although I agree it's a bad idea to try to mix a track on headphones I have manged when I been using the DT-250's to make a decent mix that sounded fine on the monitors after. They are fully closed and a bit clumpsy and less comfortable than the sennheisers though.

A few more tracks on http://www.resonantearth.com today: A couple of tracks from Starseed aka Fragrant Vagrant with his own morning sound. Dogon Rotor and Spectral Earth. An Electrypnose remix of Spindrift - Dig It. Another heavy night track from Noble Savage - Outfoxed And finally one new Spindrift - Out Of Controller. Enjoy!

Creamware scope modular. Especially with the flexor modules. Punchiest envelopes there is, and the NBL oscillators is great. The step sequencers with slide makes programming twisted leads really fun. Shapers, wavedraw, phase mod, envelope followers, waldorf wavetable oscs and a multitude of filters just make it impossible to get bored with playing around. All the Zarg synths I used for scope (dark star, ambient, comb plus) is really great sounding as well. Miniscope WE and plastic is other favourites. Before I got scope my favourites was Sequential Cirquits Pro-One, Waldorf Microwave (the original one with analogue filters, the newer versions did not sound that good IMO) and Oberheim 8 voice.