Qualium

One of the most useful and meaningful threads I have seen for a while in this subforum - imprtant tips on how to cultivate and care for your creativity. In an expansion of this point, you can just draw shapes and patterns (possibly using various colours) that somehow seem like a visual representation of the sounds you hear in your head. A lot of musical patterns used in psy are difficult to tabulate in any form, so if, like me, you get visual imagery along with the music in your mind, you can just draw something that has the same kinds of aesthetic qualities.

Huh? Shouldn't this actually be in "Listen To My Tracks"? It's a link to a bunch of tunes on Soundclick.

Heh, OK, now I get it. Yeah, looks like that festival in Turkey could be a good one for Georgians with the means to make there, considering it's just next door. Unfortunately the expense is likely to rule it out for most Georgians.

Hey yeah that's a great idea! See if you can arrange a solar eclipse in Georgia - those things always pull big crowds in for psy parties.

Even go for a smaller party. With psytrance, 20 people in a room or outside in the middle of nowwhere can make a fine one. A couple of trippy lights, a couple of UV lights, a couple of bashed-together decorations and some trippy visual stuff, some fluro string (strung around), a basic speaker, amp, and mixer setup, and a basic dj-setup and CDs or even just dj-ing software on a computer with a half-decent soundcard. Get a generator if you're outdoors. Then get a night's worth of music you like (100-150 tracks), make sure it has a bit of variety, and then make sure you will always have someone there who will keep it all going. Invite a bunch of people you know who might like to experience it, and tell them to invite anyone else who they know who would feel so inclined as well. It's a bare minimum little psy party - and make it know that that's what it is. Try and put it on for free - this could be seen as a bit of basic market research if you want to put on larger parties with an entry fee. And then hit go! See how it goes, and if people like it, you can start planning for something a little bigger ... PS There's probably a couple of things I left out, but you get the idea. PPS And yes, outdoors is highly recommended.

Hey, Caveman, how was Earthcore? A friend and I were going to go but decided we were too busy and that we'd hold out for Rainbow Serpent in January.

Ooh, very nice. As far as the level of detail of the pictures, what I'd like to see is pictures sized to desktop wallpaper level, as I'd love to have them in the background while I'm producing music - great source of inspiration.

Here's mine: music.download.com/qualium Just the one track so far, but more on the way soon.

Well, a Micro sounds exactly the same as the full size Classic Nord Modular, but it's limited to the one patch on its one DSP instead of the full size machine's four patches on four DSP's. Some in the Nord Modular Community don't like the sound of A/D converters on the G2 range in comparison to the old - I think they say they find the sound a bit too 'bright'. Others say that it's really a matter of preference, and some suggest that the sound of the old range can be more or less replicated within a G2 patch anyway. If you're not intimidated by Reaktor and like the whole concept, but just dislike its sound, then the NM series could well be for you. The NM's don't do everything that Reaktor can do, but they do the classic Modular Synthesis thing, complete with the Editor software 'spaghetti wall', really well; and it's easier and more intuitive to use(well, as easy as modular synthesis can be). But to get it working really well it requires a fair bit of the visual programming involved in constructing patches, so you need to be technically minded. I highly recommend the Electro-Music.com Nord Modular Forums, (the biggest NM forums on the net) for a lot of quality discussion on the NM series. There are a lot of members there that use the synths for experimental electronic music, and there isn't a lot of talk aout psytrance, but it's a great place to learn about Nord Modulars.

Pay no heed to these simple peasants ( ), Kalki - mysticize away to your heart's content. I can see how it relates to the topic in question, even as it flies over their heads.

Pardon me (and, ahem, I'm speaking to you too, Journey Man ), but I do believe Goasia said Nord Modular - that's a whole different kettle of fish. I've had a Nord Micro Modular since '99 and a NM G2 Engine for just over a year now - and I love them to death. The NM synths are non-fixed architecture - a bit like Reaktor, but more reliable and far more user friendly (although a little more limited in scope in some respects). The ability to build your own synth (sequencers included) offers endless possibilities of soundscapes to explore. As a tool for psytrance creation, I couldn't recommend them highly enough - provided you have the kind of brain required to comprehend modular synthesis.

Well, people talk about a 'Scottish accent', even though a native of Edinburgh will sound quite distinct from someone from Glasgow to the trained ear. An accent is naturally made up of many regional varieties held together by certain common features. And believe me, to any non-American English speaker least, the collection of accent varieties found in the USA have much more in common with each other than they have differences. In fact they have far more in common than the various accents found in Britain - or even just England - for reasons obvious to anyone who knows anything about history. So it is perfectly OK to talk about an 'American accent' - we all know what it means.

Thanks for the suggestion,TJM - yeah that's kinda what I'm feeling too. I think the weaving of the overall structure of tracks is where I'm still a bit weak. I find that I can come up with a few dozen bars that work the way I like and then things start to get a bit tangled up. I'm trying to develop a method of working a bit more top-down - that is, giving the track some shape first before focussing on the finer details. It requires a bit of discipline though - it's all too easy to bash out a few nice-sounding sequences and then get lost in fiddling around with them, forgetting the bigger picture. Another thing I noticed since posting this track is that a bit of the mix is way out - there's a few sounds in there that are difficult to hear properly, making it sound even more minimal than it is supposed to be. It sounded OK on my speakers (a pair of Alesis M1 Actives I've had for a few years) but not so good on my headphones. I should stop relying on my speakers for mastering, as I think the acoustics of my room is really messing with the mix.

Yeah, Airyck, that's me mucking around with Absynth 2 and Logic 7's 'Sculpture' instrument (which I've only recently started using since upgrading my system a couple of months ago). It was a bit of an experiment to see what I could come up with without using traditional-style virtual analogue synthesis (apart from a few of the rhythm sounds). It wasn't meant to be any kind of 'Killaaauuuwwrgh!!!' track for a massive crowd - I had in mind the wee hours on a small, dusty, secondary dancefloor at an outdoor party here in Australia with a couple of dozen people gently grooving. So something quite understated but atmospheric. I'm working on a few tricks to be able to draw greater power and flexibility out of these softsynths, and I should be able to serve up something using them which is a bit more musically acrobatic sometime soon. And thanks heaps for your comments BTW Q.

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