Ive always thought of it like this. Psychedelic Trance is the mother genre, then we have goatrance as one sub and also psytrance as another. Yes that becomes a bit confusing since both share the same name; but they are indeed two different things.
for example goa is like astral while psy is like infected. Of course thats just how i have looked at it personally for all these years. I dont remember anyone even calling it "psytrance" until a bit later, early 2000s i think. But maybe we did call some stuff "psy" even earlier than that... Hard to remember.
Anyway i think "psytrance" as a genre is mother to sub-genres like dark, forest, tech, etc. While Goa and "Psy" has always been slightly distinct flavors under the matriarch; "Psychedelic Trance".
makes sense to me at least
Me personally, I listen to Goa Trance for more than 10 years now - mostly exclusively - and I can clearly distinguish between what is called "Goa Trance" and all of the about 10 other sub-genres of Goa / Psy music (Full-On, Proggy, Dark etc.)
I can hear the differences in all of these styles very clearly so thats why I chose to listen to Goa Trance
So here's what I guess are the main differences:
1. Goa-Trance in my opinion is the mother of Psy-Trance. Its originating from Goa - India and if you compare it with old-school Techno like Acid-Techno it sounds almost the same.
2. You will hardly find such hypnotic rhythms elsewhere in Psytrance, like they are present in Goa Trance. These "high frequencies" are widely called "Acid Lines". What I discovered is, that nowadays many people have problmes with tuning in that sound and experience its potential. I explain it like this: the music got more and more Bass-orientated, so people actually forgot how to interpret these "crazy and wild" tunes - a bass is much simpler to dance and move to.
3. You will discover, when you listen to different stlyes, that all of them have their BPM-Area, they are mostly active in. So for Goa-Trance I assume the area from 137-147bpm is most common. And now theres a ad-on i have to make: there's also something like "Neo-Goa-Trance" - a lot of this tribal and acid-line based music is coming out in the past few years, with better synths etc. This new Goa-Trance is also including speeds up to 160 BPM and still sound super hypnotic. For example you can check out "Triquetra" or "Mindsphere" to get an impression of this described style.
4. The original Goa-Trance clearly and mostly had influences from India directly. So if you ever have been there (as I was) you will clearly get what I'm talking about. In my opinion All (at least 90%) of the modern Goa / Psy music is missing this element which makes them sound a bit more based and simpler. I can hear in most Goa-Trance Tracks 1-3 "different but harmonius" Lines at once!
What do I mean by saying this? Modern Psy mostly plays the main theme and all of the different lines work together to form that main theme. Same for Goa-Trance, BUT they are many times that much complex, that some lines like Bass, Mids and Highs could go for themselves, as they have different themes (at times) and harmoniously work together to create a super (weird?) and crazy piece of art! For example: check out "Hallunicogen" who is a true master of Goa-Trance music and has, in my opinion, reached a hardly compareable level of understanding in hypnotic trance.
I'm open for different opinions, but I had to share my thoughts, due to my passion for this incredible sub-genre of Psy-Music.
Every one should get in touch with this, 'cause that's where all Psy is coming from (except Psy-Rock, which was actually prior to Goa-Music).
Thanks for reading & I hope I could get it more clear.
Peace
No Difference Between Goa Trance and Psytrance?
in General Psytrance
Posted
Me personally, I listen to Goa Trance for more than 10 years now - mostly exclusively - and I can clearly distinguish between what is called "Goa Trance" and all of the about 10 other sub-genres of Goa / Psy music (Full-On, Proggy, Dark etc.)
I can hear the differences in all of these styles very clearly so thats why I chose to listen to Goa Trance
So here's what I guess are the main differences:
1. Goa-Trance in my opinion is the mother of Psy-Trance. Its originating from Goa - India and if you compare it with old-school Techno like Acid-Techno it sounds almost the same.
2. You will hardly find such hypnotic rhythms elsewhere in Psytrance, like they are present in Goa Trance. These "high frequencies" are widely called "Acid Lines". What I discovered is, that nowadays many people have problmes with tuning in that sound and experience its potential. I explain it like this: the music got more and more Bass-orientated, so people actually forgot how to interpret these "crazy and wild" tunes - a bass is much simpler to dance and move to.
3. You will discover, when you listen to different stlyes, that all of them have their BPM-Area, they are mostly active in. So for Goa-Trance I assume the area from 137-147bpm is most common. And now theres a ad-on i have to make: there's also something like "Neo-Goa-Trance" - a lot of this tribal and acid-line based music is coming out in the past few years, with better synths etc. This new Goa-Trance is also including speeds up to 160 BPM and still sound super hypnotic. For example you can check out "Triquetra" or "Mindsphere" to get an impression of this described style.
4. The original Goa-Trance clearly and mostly had influences from India directly. So if you ever have been there (as I was) you will clearly get what I'm talking about. In my opinion All (at least 90%) of the modern Goa / Psy music is missing this element which makes them sound a bit more based and simpler. I can hear in most Goa-Trance Tracks 1-3 "different but harmonius" Lines at once!
What do I mean by saying this? Modern Psy mostly plays the main theme and all of the different lines work together to form that main theme. Same for Goa-Trance, BUT they are many times that much complex, that some lines like Bass, Mids and Highs could go for themselves, as they have different themes (at times) and harmoniously work together to create a super (weird?) and crazy piece of art! For example: check out "Hallunicogen" who is a true master of Goa-Trance music and has, in my opinion, reached a hardly compareable level of understanding in hypnotic trance.
I'm open for different opinions, but I had to share my thoughts, due to my passion for this incredible sub-genre of Psy-Music.
Every one should get in touch with this, 'cause that's where all Psy is coming from (except Psy-Rock, which was actually prior to Goa-Music).
Thanks for reading & I hope I could get it more clear.
Peace