recursion loop

Nobody but you knows what your track needs Try automating some knobs on your synth, change the patterns, add another synth(s)

The intro was gorgeous but when he started singing I had to turn it off, I can't stand such vocal for the life of me. Which is sad cause the musical background is really great. I see your point and generally agree. As for myself, I can enjoy some downright cheesy full-on stuff, I love Ananda Shake and mind you, I even have the damn "Electro Sun selection" folder on my PC (lol, I said that), This is just downright pop music of sorts, but have some their own twists, ofc they are not really psychedelic but make excellently produced energetic music with euphoric feel and not so tasteles melodies (ES often goes cringeworthy but sometimes manages to keep it under control) . Also losts of nuances may be heard if you listen closely. But most other pop-fullon doesn't have the same level of detail, mostly it's nothing but a simplistic melody thrown over a heavily compressed beat. I think it's generally hard to make money from producing electronic music there days no matter the genre when everything is produced digitallly, distributed digitally and everybody and their mom can produce something or run a label, so it is mostly about facebook likes, followers and things like that. I mean "commercialization" in the sence of making music accessible to wider audience.

They both are prog, and I like them both (though i find Freq is more inseresting, it sounds innovative even today, but Astrix' album is extremely well produced although somehow derivative)

This Gen Ohm sound like typical Israeli fullon track from 2009 speeded up to around 180 bpm. If the melodies weren't that stupidly happy I could even like it.

Well, there is Nightwish and the likes and there is TNBM (and lots of things in between). Despite I mostly stopped listening to metal long time ago, I still can enjoy some of what you call "commercial metal" while the attempts to make the most extreme (harsh, noisy, chaotic, poorly recorded and produced) music for the sake of staying underground mostly sound laughable to me. Frankly I can say the same thing about some darkpsy, forest and goa.

Great post. Basically yes, when certain genre reaches popularity everyone jumps on the bandwagon and the average quality goes downhill. This is what has happened to normal trance, and Israeli fullon or YSE prog are also good examples, although some great music still may be found in all these genres, it just takes time to filter out the crap. Well it seems that most of you don't think that when psytrance sounds accessible for the people who are not deeply into it (e.g. when it has "normal" melodies and doesn't sound overly harsh, dark or strange), it is "commercial crap" and no more psytrance by default.

When the music sounds like you tried to acheive something but failed. Like it is supposed to be danceable but the bass is weak and there is no groove, or it is supposed to be melodic but the melodies sound wrong or too simple, or it is supposed to be agressive but it sounds just harsh and unlistenable. Also amateur productions often have wrong frequency balance - too much bass or no bass at all, or the bass sounds good through one sound system and completely dissapears at another one, or the treble is too bright and harsh. Your track sounds nice, but as you said, it's a bit predictable and repetitive. Also it sounds one-dimensional, I'd add some reverb to the main synth and also some background elements. And yes, more variety. I like how the drum part evolves but the synth plays the same thing throughout the track, it becomes tiresome. @ Padmapani. Even people who have released something may be amateurs as well (like me), the quality control at small labels is often really low. Actually I wish some of my releases never happened.

I knew about Merzbow long before I learned that there is such a thing as "psytrance" (not that I ever liked his music). Basically, when I see people writing things like this in various threads and reviews i wonder what is the borderline of the "commercial sounding crap".

If anything, the thread is not intended to bash anyone - neither the artists who want to make money, nor the listeners who pretend to be elitists, nor anyone else. Everyone is free to choose what to produce and what to listen to I just want to know if there are any elements in music which people consider "not admissible" for psy, like it is not psytrance anymore when it has this or that.

Well, if someone collaborates with Armin van Buuren to make a dj-friendly tune with sugary melodies and "hands in the air" breaks and buildups, then this is clearly no more underground and probably neither it is what people seeking for deep and meaningful music would like to listen. But in less obvious cases when do you say "no, this is sold-out crap, no go for me"? And does it matter to you at all whether the music falls udner the definition of "elitist/underground/not for everyone"?

Yeah, that's another track, sorry, it just sounds almost the same lol.

oops!

This LOUD track never ceases to amaze me, I think it is produced much better than the track in the OP actually.

Anything that brings more melodic and sonic variety into psytrance is welcome. Some of the psy/normal trance crossovers are just awesome in my book (Digicult). Having thus said, I can hardly stand anything Vini Vici and this track is no expecption but it is not because because they are cheesy or sold out but because they make boring music.

Such an imaginative name for a VA! I guess the music is just as imaginative

They aren't really similar, Diva is more like Sylenth, it has basic only basic waveforms and filters. Thing is that Diva closely emulates the sound of old analog synths and is known for its rich, warm tone, but it has much less posibilities to shape the oscillators and it is less visual than Serum. If anything I talked about Diva as the "standard" for warm anf fat sound in VSTi, not as an alternative to Serum.

Thanks! Some really cool sounds you have here. I have the Serum demo installed for more than a year. At first I disliked it because I thought it sounds harsh and sterile (and the factory presets are really bad) but in fact many psytrance sounds are supposed to be like that, it may work extremely well when contrasted by warmer synths and then I heard soundsets made by Thrilseekers and Hollo - none of them are relevant to psytrance but they show the ability of Serum to sound warm and organic, almost like Diva. I suppose you need to use small amounts of LFO and Chaos modulation on pitch, wt position and other parameters to add some slight movements to the sound for that? So well, I'm probably buying Serum soon.

Really nice, sounds fat, punchy and pro The arrangement is a bit unfocused but this is something from which I'm constantly suffering myself. For one thing, I wish it would progress into a better defined climax after that break at 5:00 (there is something resembling the climax where you have that distorted synth but it sounds not very interesting, instead of that you could re-introduce the melody you have at 1:56 or the vowel synth from 4:00 and develop it further, make some chord changes and stuff). Which sounds here are Serum? How do you like this synth compared to Massive? I have Massive and also think that I may need Serum, how do you think would it be redundant?

Thanks!

Yeah, really very nice, looking forward to hear more from this project.

I used to think that I have to find a working recipe for psybass once and then I will be able to use it with some variations in all tracks. How wrong I was. Basically what Imba said, the bass should work in the context of the track which is different each time. Still, the bass is what currently gives me the worst PITA.

Finally somebody dared to say that (ouch, that's not KVR lol) I do think so as well. For some reason this relatively simple sound is hard to get right in sofware (if understand it right what sound you mean - that ripping melatic sound made by FM between two saw waves, or square and saw, one being two octaves lower than another). Discovery does passable emulation of this sound but if I'm not mistaken, it doesn't allow assigning FM amount to velocity which makes programming sequences pretty painful. Also it can be approximated by very fast LFO/pitch modulation in Spire, but it should be programmed very carefully cause Spire is prone to bad sounding artefacts in this scenario. And after all Virus FM sounds badass, these other options sound like "well, OK"

I think that it is amazing, mind-boggling and effing good

Я из Питера ) I don't know much about "dark goa" (does such a genre even exist?), hope Paul sheds some light on that, but if you want some dark and trippy yet wery melodious and emotional psytrance, you may check out the first album by Sonic Elysium - Mahaon. Just saw him live in St. Perersburg this weekend, it was mindblowing

Пиши по русски, как минимум я пойму Yes, i fully agree with what you have written. I know that many psyheads hate melodies in the traditional sence (i.e. melodies following traditional harmonic rules, catchy and memorable) as bringing "cheese factor" into the music, and many producers avoid it. But for me personally the music really does it when great melodies meet strange, trippy sounds and deep sonic landscapes. Not many artists manage or want to do that these days.