qa2pir

This awful sound wouldn't exist if the loudness war didn't. It sounds bad because it's maximised, and it is maximised because people like you can't use the volume knobs on your iPods

I'm glad that you, as the head of the label, recognises this as a problem. I have to say that other Ektoplazm releases I've listened to have had excellent (transparent) mastering which doesn't harm the music. Anakoluth is a prime example of psytrance that sounds really good. Analysing the Anakoluth album in Audacity, I can see that it's a brickwall for the most part, but I think there are two important differences compared to Mindsphere. 1. The intro's are left quiet. 2. The music is less dynamic composition-wise, which makes excessive loudness less of a problem - it's not made to be very dynamic. Mindsphere, on the other hand, is climactic, dynamic goa which suffers from amplitudal dynamic reduction, because highs and lows are a huge part of what makes it good.

Mike A: Listen to Mindsphere's album, released on Ektoplazm (for free). It's completely fucked up, and has basically the same volume all the time. The intro is as loud as the climax. The track doesn't get louder when the bass drum kicks in. Something is wrong. Dynamics is important, not a nuisance.

Music Making or Promotion </rant>

The first sample is tuned to 432, the second to 440 hz and so on. So you obviously prefer 440 hz

If I understand his dutch (correctly) he starts of with 432 hz. "vierhundert tvei en deter hertz" first, then "vierhundert ferder hertz". (I know german, not dutch, so stay off my spelling please).

Nice music. Good work Anakoluth!

What he's doing seems kind of like lo-passing a sine wave to me.

Everything basically. The pitch bend, the distortion, the pitch envelope, the filter.

Right now, it would be Drumatic 3 and Synth1. Both free VST's.

Why down tune all oscillators? You might as well play the MIDI one octave lower.

Envelope linked to pitch, then play around with that, filter envelope and amplitude envelope. Filter out the bass. That could give something farty right?

Well. Genres are recipes. Goa trance already has TONS of ingredients that are almost required. Music is about enjoying sound. Of course you want more of a given sound that triggers positive response!

wtf r u talig about?

This is very true. Furthermore, chopping is not a bad word for it at all. In fact, gating is kind of blurry for this use. What you're actually referring to, more specifically, is side-chained gating with MIDI (most commonly) as a trigger. Gating as a term for this practice is bound to create some confusion, while chopping is a great, intuitive word for it. Oh, and NEMO.BOFH, what is actually important in goa trance? I can tell it's important for you to make radi feel like an idiot. These chopped choir parts have a prominent role in old school goa trance, and, if anything, are as important as any other sole component of goa trance. Bass drum, acid line, background pad, sweeping resonant filtered sounds, detuned saw wave. What's wrong with a guy thinking of chopped choir sounds as important?

Oh how I hate to see you meaningless scumbags making "fun" of radi. You're not funny at all. You make me cry. You're arrogant, evil and boring.

There's a difference between what you think and what you appear to think. Nevermind, I'm just being a clown. (not saying I'm not right and you shouldn't listen to me, though)

Yeah I didn't read it properly.

When are you going to stop pointing out how psytrance is inferior and this cool Techno thing you're listening to is better? It may be true, but come on

I agree. It's actually a bit silly to start a whiny thread like this when you could download the music without risk.

CD or files?

There's tons of implied chords to work on in that song, even though the bass plays the root note all the time.

Sequence is as important as samples. If you know what syncopation is, play around with that. If not, read some about it and try to implement it in your tracks. At a basic level, syncopation is the practice of not putting notes in straight 8ths or 16ths for example, but rather complex patterns that play around each other. I would make an example using some neat ascii but I don't know how to format it to make it comprehensible.

Why isn't anyone allowed to think goa is better music? Everyone knows it's not supposed to be the same.

Maybe not for you. Does that mean you can't like Pizza more than pie? Pie is just better at a different thing? Poo is just better at a different thing?