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Does anybody else miss melodic full-on?


recursion loop

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Nano does very mainstream fullon but I don't think I ever heard any melodic track from them since Protoculture (I don't count  8 minute track with an acid line of 2-3 notes appearing for 30 seconds as "melodic")

I thought Vertigo was mostly releasing darkpsy but that Hedgehog track from their Omnipresence compilation was really good and indeed very melodic.

Twillight/SA fullon may be quite melodic too, at least what I think is twillight

 

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yeah I bought some of the releases just now after an old friend from the scene said I might from Sangoma Records and I am really enjoying the sounds, to me reminds a bit of my fav Timecode releases which I know they are related to.

Yeah I"m sure Nano would sound good in the right party environment on a big system but I"m a Dad now and rarely get out to gigs other than metal bands cause they don't play that late haha.

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Reading through this whole thread now and bring back many golden memories. The first thing that got me in to psytrance was Atomic Pulse - De-Toxicated, tracks like Trip to Space... man... this album drew me into the web of psytrance for sure. All of the stuff posted here was a blast down memory lane, Ephedrix, Protoculture and the whole SA scene (I'm from SA) and of course some reference to later on, like Delirious Noon -it seemed that was kinda like the peak of the morning psy scene?  Then things went.. well.. kinda ''blah''. 

As mentioned in the first comments, the morning full-on style really is an art of trying to put JUST the right amount a little bit of that cheezy, yet softer and easy going feeling in the track. A bit uplifting, yet energetic and full of power...

 

Recursion loop your track sounds f-ing sick dude! DEF reminds me of Delerious Noon!  In fact browsing you SoundCloud and it's all a-grade man!!!  We need the full-on morning revolution! Soldiers, man your battle stations! :D

 

 

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On 9/8/2020 at 7:13 PM, Immerse said:

Recursion loop your track sounds f-ing sick dude! DEF reminds me of Delerious Noon!  In fact browsing you SoundCloud and it's all a-grade man!!!  We need the full-on morning revolution! Soldiers, man your battle stations! :D

Thanks! :) Maybe I'll make more tracks in the style like that Safe Travels track. Basically when I started making some music myself I wanted to cocnentrate mostly on this style but by the time I became able to make tracks of more or less acceptable quality the world had moved on and this style seemed to be dead. 

 

There is some charm in these oldschool jumpy basslines, like in that  Atomic Pulse track (dope track!).

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Haha just keep making what you like I guess and eventually the style will come back to what you're doing?

When I listen to that atomic pulse track I guess some people might think after the first min or two like oh this is soo slow and not much is going on. Nowadays  the full on has to sound powerful and grab your attention really quickly, almost sounding full on from the start of the track. Maybe it's a good thing, can't get mad at evolution I guess lol 

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20 hours ago, Immerse said:

When I listen to that atomic pulse track I guess some people might think after the first min or two like oh this is soo slow and not much is going on. Nowadays  the full on has to sound powerful and grab your attention really quickly, almost sounding full on from the start of the track. Maybe it's a good thing, can't get mad at evolution I guess lol 

Indeed, older fullon used to be less intense but this wasn't a bad thing. I like slow evolution in trance tracks, when elements are gradually added instead of being thrown into your ears right away :)  Like here, there are sections where not much is going on  except for the bassline and some squelches/stabs but somehow the whole thing sounds really entrancing. 

 

Is it your Virus at your userpic?

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True, something happened about a decade back... all the "day" music started sounding like "night" music but with a groovy bassline and lower tempos.

 

I miss music with all the parts. I'm not keen on this "but we explicitly leave the chocolate sauce out of our genre" style things...

 

As far as the examples given above, i don't find them melodic in the slightest.

Those of us who were there KNOW,

when full-on came BACK to melodies after minimal and tech trance, they weren't the same kind of goa melodies.

They were "club melodies" and I put much of the early 2000's so-called-melodic in this box.

Edited by fluorosis
i forgot something. i added it.
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14 minutes ago, fluorosis said:

As far as the examples given above, i don't find them melodic in the slightest

Do you mean Mr. peculiar or everything in this thread? The Peculliar's tracks aren't really melody-driven and don't have very complex harmonies (especially the 1st and the 3rd one I've posted) but they have some nicely executed melodic bits so I think they still fit. E.g. the Other Speices track at 1:50 and 6:28... goosebumps!

 

What do you think would be an example of proper melodic psy?

20 minutes ago, fluorosis said:

I'm not keen on this "but we explicitly leave the chocolate sauce out of our genre" style things...

Agree with that. It seems that at some point it was concluded that "melodies are for pussies" and then psytrance became much less ineteresting to me as a whole. I do like some non-melodic stuff but big part of it sounds to me like some kind of "genre exercise", often techncially good but not really inetresting musically.

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1 hour ago, recursion loop said:

Do you mean Mr. peculiar or everything in this thread? The Peculliar's tracks aren't really melody-driven and don't have very complex harmonies (especially the 1st and the 3rd one I've posted) but they have some nicely executed melodic bits so I think they still fit. E.g. the Other Speices track at 1:50 and 6:28... goosebumps!

 

What do you think would be an example of proper melodic psy?

Agree with that. It seems that at some point it was concluded that "melodies are for pussies" and then psytrance became much less ineteresting to me as a whole. I do like some non-melodic stuff but big part of it sounds to me like some kind of "genre exercise", often techncially good but not really inetresting musically.

Sorry, no, I didn't mean Mr. Peculiar, I must have missed that here in this thread. Mr. Peculiar is something *else*, quite nice at the time it came out. It was quite special, actually. I wouldn't put it into a box with full-on nor minimal. What's interesting here is that he plays a lot of harmony with the pad and string sounds, the fluffy cloud chords, not too much with overt "loud sawtooth lead melodies played on a nord lead goddammit!"

Proper "melodic" psy? I dunno, "People can Fly" ?  There's a lot of stuff that was inspiring as hell on a party once-upon-a-time but doesn't stand the light of day today as "melodic"... like "we created our own happiness"... there's this vague kinda sorta melody, but mostly it's just the acid sounds doing that same tonic main bassline note. (panic in paradise is still rather inspiring feeling, although it's not complex. none of this stuff is, musically speaking)

Do you remember how when the melodies came "back" with full-on after minimal and tech-trance that they WERE simplified down into club melodies?

I mean, Astrix and all this, it's more stripped down than goa-psy... it's more about the production already.

I'm trying to point out that the wrong-road we started on happened already with the early 2000's full-on... it was ALREADY prioritizing production over melodic content.

I guess you could say that we generally, as a scene, focus too much on production and too little on the musical ideas.

purely abstract sound design can be a wicked layer (Prana and Psychopod were both quite good at this) but if it's the only music always? that's techno, lol

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 I suppose I am accidentally saying that the "melodic" full-on of the early 2000's wasn't melodic enough for my goa tastes.
I suppose that I am saying that modern full-on only made this split more evident. Even "melodic" stuff like Avalon typically just has a few accent notes on the end of a rather dry production-heavy passage of banging percussion bassline and sound effects like whooshes, swooshes, crashes, and all the requisite single-note "stabs" of gritty "modern" synths so you know it's psy, but they typically only reinforce the bassline main tonic note, not making any harmony or melody.  Modern daytime sounds rather night-time, and that's not even on a "darkpsy" party! Only the bassline remains groovier.

 

but that Mr. Peculiar sounds rather contemporary in a way, almost like a harbinger of things to come... I suppose I am suggesting that folks have copied him a bit, lol

 

it's funny. I've just put "Alien Pump" by Tandu on, and it's mostly gritty sounds, but somehow i patiently await it's buildups to get swept away like a wave washes a plastic coke bottle ashore...  and it's wailing (mildly ridiculous) melody at the end is a fitting passionate crown to such a journey through a steel scrapyard where leaf-spring pterodactyles gimble and gyre amongs the mimsy waves, outgrabe.

 

@recursion loop yeah, mostly good stuff from Vertigo for about a decade now, ever since they split off from that generic insomnia/deja-vu sound that became the dark side and they went more... it's not quite Suomi, but it's not full-on really... but i tend to like quite a lot of their stuff, I think they released Trold and such too.

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16 hours ago, fluorosis said:

I guess you could say that we generally, as a scene, focus too much on production and too little on the musical ideas.

That's excatly what I was saying in another thread ;) 

All in all, i think really complex harmonies typcially don't go well with psytrance. Some people manage to pull it off, like U-recken, Terrafractyl or early Infected Mushroom. But mostly the "melodics" in full-on are repetitive patterns in natural minor or Phrygian with some occasional root note changes adding tension. These melodies keep the entrancing effect of the bassline but also add some emotion, making it more than just a bassline with some sfx noises on top.

 

I see how this style of psy may sound like 'elevator music" to some, as people said in the nearby thread, but I still like it for what it is.

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If it sounds lush and complete, I tend to like it.
I have preferences, of course. (not big on close intervals way down low. Keep it at 5th and octave and THEN add some other notes...)
Modally, they are all available, but you can't really switch tonic notes too often, but by all means, give us the 5th mode of the melodic minor or WHATEVER, feel something. No one said it had to have ALL THE NOTES always etc... it's more like some alternatings stacks of notes to move around between, to not always feel so STATIC. IMO, the number one issue with electronica, as music, is the feeling of static lack of motion,  like a 1 chord song. Plus, an inversion is already a different sounding chord, in modal-land :D

It's best not to get muddy, sure, but that's often due to trying to shoehorn the wrong bits where they aren't welcome, or too much in one bite, etc...

I guess my dream concept I didn't hear yet (and please don't tell me to make it, I'm allowed to bitch and moan about the current state of trance like a consumer, lol):

always feeling like it's moving, harmonically, and yet feeling like there's some "closing" of a phrase, like a cadence, and so there's roots and feeling grounded, but I'm not bored. The best modal piano jazz does this for me,  for example. There's lovely bands out there too: Anyone remember "Jah Levi World Fusion Project"? 

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