acid being

Interesting how much opinions differ because I think I prefer it to most of the tracks on Codex VI (I saw your discogs review of that), with the possible exception of Empty Branes. Nothing Lasts is currently my favorite Shpongle album though and I haven't listened to Flux that many times. It's quite a departure from his other music. I see it as a bit of an experiment.

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/shpongle-simon-posford-20-questions-flux-contemplation-9414552/ Not sure how many of you already read this, but he says some interesting things. Probably the most unsettling bit for us is that he said his album Twisted now sounds "a bit irritating" to him! And Leftfield are great, but Underwold? I was starting to wonder if he was winding them up a bit. I mean, it's not the best interview question for a psytrance pioneer, is it? He also said he hadn't listened to much psytrance since the early 2000s. Most of the best stuff was before then so I think I get it. Worth a read anyway.

I love tracker tunes. You've got some good rhythm there.

Please keep it going. As we get older other things take up our time but sometimes we also end up with more time. I'd been reading the site occasionally for many years but only signed up two years ago and am visiting much more often now and writing posts. I much prefer old style forums and if you ended this site the members would disperse onto multiple sites making a small community even smaller. I also love the feeling of timelessness this site invokes. People happily continue discussions inside threads that had been dormant for many years. It's trippy. Your average web surfer would get confused by that! The threads remain timeless because the great music is timeless. Thanks for all your hard work keeping the site running.

This track's actually not bad psytrance. I wouldn't call it groundbreaking but it builds up nicely with some slightly spooky sounds. It sounds more coherent to me than a lot of the modern psy, there's variety to the percussion, quieter bits and little bits of melody. Love the artwork as well.

Yes I like this one even better than version 4. It definitely feels like it's got more sort of space and depth to it. The quality is really nice and everything sounds well defined.

Any good? I know the sound quality needs some work. It's really hard to get it to sound clean when I turn up the distortion.

No worries. I figured you knew some of it but decided to share the links as they help me. I use the list of chords to help write my arpeggios.

About the music theory, I've just been learning what I can as I go. I'm no expert, very far from it, but just following some tutorials to understand scales (and modes), the chords of your chosen scale, and importantly how different intervals between the notes sound, give you most of the tools you need to start writing melodies and harmonies. This https://feelyoursound.com/scale-chords/a-harmonic-minor/ lists all the chords in the A Harmonic Minor scale which is basically the same as E Phrygian Dominant (just with the notes in a different order), commonly used in Goa and psytrance. It's an easy scale to remember because it's all white notes apart from the G# and you can always transpose your music to other keys later. After the above topics, this https://music.tutsplus.com/the-contemporary-musicians-guide-to-counterpoint--audio-4630t is a good tutorial for learning counterpoint which is useful to keep in mind if you want layers of melodies. Sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs with this, but it might be useful for others reading this as well.

There's a new version of the track now in the original post above. Yep I learned all about sidechain compression and I'm using it on the bass and tom toms now to slightly lower them when the kick plays. I've done the same thing to very slightly lower the lead synth when the flute is playing as well. There's a tiny bit of reverb now and loads of delay. Does the delay on the lead synth sound OK or is it overdone? I still can't get a true ping pong delay but it has different delays for left and right and I had to manually calculate the timing to match the bpm!

I use Ardour. The lead is an Alpha Juno emulator. You're right about the kick and bass not sounding very Goa yet. Those were just presets I found in the Xhip synthesizer plugin until I can replace them with something better. No I've not used sidechain compression before - I'll have a play with that. I've not done any mastering yet, only basic adjustments to the levels and stereo positions in the mixer. It's a topic I have a lot to learn about. At this stage I am a lot more focused on getting better at writing melodies and harmonies, and experimenting with synths and effects. There is delay on the lead synth at the moment but I definitely want to make the delay more noticeable as I think it will help a lot. You only really notice it when you stop the track playing at the moment, because there aren't very long gaps between the synth notes, so I think I need a stereo or ping pong delay. None of the delay plugins I have at the moment offer stereo but maybe I can route each stereo channel through a different delay plugin to do it, more stuff I need to learn. I played with reverb on another track but all the reverb plugins I had seemed to just make the sounds go kind of metallic and a bit messed up, so where I use it at the moment I would only put a tiny bit on, unless I'm after a very particular sound. I want things to sound like they are playing floating in outer space but I think better delay is the key to that. Anyway, I really appreciate the comments, thanks!

Yeah I'm not sure what you did but it already sounds a lot better, to me at least. The synth phrases stand out more and sound more interesting. I especially like the synth that goes into the breakdown from about 2:59 - it sounds a bit more melodic. I'm sure you already know by the later stages of the track it still sounds a bit repetitive, but that's easily solved as you develop it more. Good luck!

OK then.... Have a look here: https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/77953-slightly-tribal-goa-track/ I'll have a listen to your updated one tomorrow.

I've been learning to use my DAW. Here's my very incomplete early attempt at a Goa Trance track, aiming for a slightly tribal feel and lowish tempo (143 bpm at the moment). I'd love any comments and suggestions, even to tell me it's dreadful. The drums need some work I think. The ones at the start are supposed to be 808 style tom toms, but I think the kick maybe interferes with them a bit and they get sort of clicky so I may change them. I like my melody but I'm not totally sure if it matches up that well with the percussion and bass in terms of the timing. If I don't end up abandoning the whole thing I'll probably make some acid lines next and maybe another layer or two, pads and other samples.

I'm pleased you're still making music. I saw your web page was down. I think this is a bit better than your earlier stuff so keep at it. The bass and overall sort of rhythm to the track sound good to me. I like the bleepy sounds near the beginning but to my ears they repeat later in the track too often without changing, and as you say the whole thing is very repetitive at the moment. The synth does sound good for psytrance but listening to the whole track I get a feel that most of the sounds are quite low down plus the occasional high pitched sort of whilstley synth sounds and my ears are left wanting something more melodic in between in the sort of middle octaves. But then I don't listen to much progressive psytrance so maybe that's my love of goa talking. The drum patterns sound OK. It could be my terrible messed up headphones, but the drum sounds themselves sound sort of muffled to me. Not sure if anyone else is hearing that? I don't know if that is the quality of the drum synth like you said or a filter you've got on it. Where I'm also learning to make this kind of music, I find it's a constant struggle not to make something that sounds too generic or formulaic, to keep my creativity and originality but still make something that will be recognizable to fans of the genre. Do you find that too?

I would like to figure out how Sheyba did their leads. I saw someone said they used an Alpha Juno 1. But the waveforms of the lead in Ancient Lands look like they're based on triangle waves to me, and I thought the Juno 1 could only do combinations of sawtooth and square waves. The big triangular waves could be the LFO - I'd have to check the frequencies to know. But the smaller, higher frequency waves look kind of symmetrical to me too like little triangles. Is it a different synth? Update: I've more or less figured it out. On the Juno 1 some of the sawtooth waveforms have lots of little peaks. They're not really triangular, more sinusoidal, especially at lower VCF Cutoffs. With the VCF Resonance turned up high, I'm starting to get something sounding a bit like their leads.

This is the darkest electronic track I've heard. Nice dark space ambient from Enigma. The album is A Posteriori. I think that would go great in a sort of doom psy mix with Psychaos - Chaos to Order, Orbital - Dwr Budr, and a bit of drum and bass:

This probably deserves an entry in the review section but I'm in love with this album. It's my favorite of his so far. I don't mind if some of the sounds are recycled - to me it all sounds fresh. The acid lines are perfect. It's dark and full of energy without getting monotonous or colorless like some dark Goa seems to. This is probably because it's constantly changing and bringing in different interesting sounds and rhythms. The vocal samples are spot on and I love the track reminscent of the Lone Deranger. We're so lucky to have this music.

I don't agree because goa / psytrance is a musical niche and there are some very talented and knowledgeable people on this site that understand it. Sending to a friend that only likes rock and pop isn't going to help anyone learn (That's why I put my very early stuff on here as well). Many of them wouldn't even like Dimension 5 or Posford's stuff! For what it's worth, I don't think the track sounds horrible at all. It just sounds unfinished.

I can't offer technical tips because you're beyond my level, so only opinions based on my weird tastes. I like the lively dancing synth patterns you've got and they all fit well together. The basic track structure seems good to me too with elements dropping in and out at various points. For me I think your alien noise at the start loops maybe one or two too many times on its own before the other elements start to come in, unless you're going to add another sample or do something else with it but that's a minor point. In my opinion you need to decide what flavor you want to add as you develop the track as it could go in a number of different directions. You could add variety by writing a couple of other synth patterns. Or keep the same ones and add more effects and vary the settings a lot more. I like the sort of frequency filter effect at 3:47. The mood or theme of the track could change a lot depending on any other samples and instruments you want to add. You could go spacey, tribal, or harder, though the light synths give me a somewhat light, spacey feel at the moment. Personally, I'm a sucker for 303ish acid sounds as you might guess from my username! Oh, I personally prefer a slightly more complex bassline as well but you don't always get that in this genre and it makes it harder to fit the other elements around it. Anyway it's great you're still making music. I enjoyed the track you shared on here previously as well. Keep at it.

I forgot all about that EP, thanks! I still have the CD somewhere, if it hasn't fallen to bits.

I like it and I think it's awesome Simon's proving us wrong by making new Hallucinogen material. It's not perfect but I like it better than about 60% of Shpongle's catalog. I'll keep watching this space.

Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to listen. I'll probably set up a youtube account for the next time. I think part of the reason things are sounding out of tune is the same reason the piano sounds bad. There's no multisampling on these tracker tunes. It's just one sample being slowed down or sped up to alter the pitch. I've borrowed most of these sounds from old tracker tunes so I can't guarantee they were even in tune with one another to begin with. When I move onto a DAW I'll check the samples carefully before I start and where possible record or synthesize my own. What about the third track. Do the ideas have any potential or is it too chaotic?

Well I guess when it comes to my beginner's attempts at composition it's a case of "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I get the message. I'll go back to school, metaphorically, and up my game next time.

I have always loved Ra'anan's music and I wish he made more and gained wider recognition for his frankly incredible talent. I've listened to his Mantis tunes countless times over the years. There's very little out there in a similar style to this. It's very dark but full of melodies and unique and weird sounds and ideas. On the offchance that someone else comes looking for this, I found an archive link to Resonance on trance.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20010827154453/http://www.trance.org/dissonance/resonance.htm There were a few tracks under the name Paradigm Shift. Around the same time there was a project called Principia Imagika which I seem to remember was also him. They made a track called Hosanna. It comes up in searches online but I won't post links here as he may not want the tracks appearing on unauthorized sites.