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What do you miss in music/goa/psy-trance?


Mentaloscope

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One of the more relevant attempts of "industrial or techno blackmetal", however it is still more metal...
 

I would name Fear Factory - Fear is the mind killer mix EP even more than above one... 
Some would also add Samael, however using some keys and a drum machine is not enough for the category I mean with more than 80% metal and only 20% or so electronic elements

Ah I forgot some promo: Have in the works a kind of industrial/electro doom track, so quite sloooow, struggling with the vocals mostly however, but this should sound at least "out of the ordinary" when complete :) Listened too Burzum and noted his stuff is mostly repetitions so a kind of trance music and often slow - took some inspiration from it. But it does not belong to my fave metal, only some single songs do not get boring over time (I know it is also considered kvlt but seems overrated)

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Padmapani said:

:)

cool, it will be interesting at the very least.
it seems recursion loop is right and the only answer to "what are you missing in psytrance" is to make that music yourself ;)

but i love complaining so!  What good is "doing something about the problem" when there will be nothing to talk about.

Well, maybe you'll get a laugh out of it. It's likely to end up a cheese-fest regardless, due to myself, not the fault of "musical harmony" per se...

I'll basically say that the "safest" option is to always play the tonic note over and over. This level of musical insecurity is paralyzing and rapidly leads nowhere, however.

The next safest is to add a singular other note here and there and this forms an "interval" with the main tonic note, it's simply a relationship between them. Different cultures have different scales made up of intervals with respect to the root "tonic" note. These intervals exist between notes in the same tonic system, however, and this ALSO provides both richer harmonics than simply one interval, but also provides "pivot points" for harmonic movement. 

One doesn't need to continually reference rock-band level "chord progressions" to have harmonic movement, as even this Blue Planet corp track that I'm currently obsessing over (Alidade)  LOL, has a chord progression over a relatively static tonic drone or pedal note that actually isn't always the tonic note of the chord above, but just as you can take a minor triad and put it a major 3rd up from your new tonic and voila, you have a new chord with a 7th. there's nothing magical about this nor does it necessitate "cheese-fests"
At the risk of sounding cruel, "one is doing it incorrectly" if using intervals other than a minor 3rd and a 5th (and octave) scare one.

 

We DO already have some artists using deeper harmony than others. It's like legos, once you understand how all the pieces fit together, say, by learning one of the principle polyphonic instruments like keyboards or guitar, and in the context of everything from Bach to Bebop, you will notice that "western" music, particularly from folk and classical, reference a movement from the 5 chord to the 1 chord as an expression of tension and release in the structure.

Whereas your basic reggae or funk "lego" will be a 2-chord movement typically 1 to 4 chord back and forth all night. Spanish "Andalusian cadence" is a minor4, 3, 2, 1 typically with the 1 being a phrygian (3rd mode from the Do/C or it's relative equivalent...)

It's simply that electronic music is generally weak on the music and heavily emphasizes production values and the loudness war, in my biased view.

We don't need to focus more on production values, we need to turn our attention to the "music" part, rather than the "electronic" part. We have that latter part handled already...

Me chiming in on a thread asking "what do you miss from trance?"  saying what I DO, in fact, miss, is a rather suitable comment. 

I shouldn't have to SOLVE this bloody problem nor should my impending cheese-ball interpretation of trance be taken as just cause to throw away my point.

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i miss 2001-2005 fullon (or just psy really). it was at that point when people with hw gear, reached the absolute peak of what they could get out of their gear. reaching absolute fidelity (Astrix, Silicon Sound, I M).

it only got downhill from there when more and more software was introduced. perfect example is infected.

They began to switch from HW to SW around converting veggies, and it went south from there.  the sound became plastic fantastic, and didnt have any soul like gathering, classical and the incredible BPEmpire.

well, what happened is people sold their so- i mean gear and went into software around 2003-6 and forward. that is the death. :)

but the new is great, dont get me wrong, but the topic is "what do you miss" and thats pretty much it. 

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The sound of 2001/2005 is available in the software environment, much could be related to free running chorus/effects/slight MIDI inconsistency etc. People could not surgically EQ every sound source to "perfection" on a desk, there was 1 band  with Q if you were lucky and the Q of any EQ was not as tight as you can get it in modern software, quality highly controllable dynamic control was in short supply, analogue noise floor was a thing.

In 2020 people choose precision which is available if required in a DAW, this comes from the ground up so the kick and bass sets the precedent. Couple this with highest possible perceived volume mastering and the sound is evidently not the same. I have to say I like quite a lot of it myself, but I also like the much of the older sound as well. But you can hear some problems as well..some leads with piercing harshness, same with hats and cymbals.

We are entitled to miss elements of it but I don't think it will possible to go backwards, or really serve any purpose.

Good tracks are still being made.:+1:

 

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2 hours ago, Mantra604 said:

diversity ... 90's oldschool goa was an emotional rollercoaster  (the reason was maybe the 'strong' melodies or idk

A DJ playing 90's Goa would have crossed-through about 20 million of todays "sub-genres"

A "Modern" DJ often plays 2 hours of the same "sub-genre".

This templated "genre formula" thing hadn't been defined yet either...we got a lot of different interpretations of the same concept. 

Evolutionarily speaking, it was a time of greater diversity in the musical genepool, agreed.

 

It's all still possible now. The forces stopping us are social forces, not technological ones.

You will note that I was basically told above that "using music foo at any higher than a rock level will invariably produce non-trancy results", which I find rather unpsychedelic to even think let alone write in public about...lol    That's why we can't have nice things like evolution :D

careful, or you will be assigned a homework project for being ungrateful at all you were given and questioning progress, lol.

nevermind that this is the very topic of this thread "wishlisting" but ok... I'll be presenting my cheese soon enough and then folks can return to dismissing "music" as an undesired element in the perfect form of trance we have been handed from the Gods on High as soon as it's determined that my cheese is indeed cheesy, lol. which is purely my own fault, of course... I blame it on my cheesy tastes. Stilton anyone? Limburger? Brie?

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23 hours ago, MikroMakro said:

 

We are entitled to miss elements of it but I don't think it will possible to go backwards, or really serve any purpose.

Good tracks are still being made.:+1:

 

Yes, its just something I miss, I havent heard that style in a very long time.  It was a special time. The end of HW and beginning of SW. And sw didnt really get good until like 2012 or something to be perfectly honest. Now its so good that theres not even differences between daws anymore, neither digital EQs. Well, there may be some, but its not gonna be night and day or anything. And the synths avaliable in sw now are just stellar.

Of course! 

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...announcing my cheesy efforts at adding more "advanced" harmonies beyond basic 1-3-5 major/minor triads.
please excuse the total lack of sound design, whooshes, swooshes, crashes, vocal samples, or decent production.

hmmm I realized that there are a LOT of variables in "making a track" and that my harmony ideas quickly got lost in a pile of "what should i do?" for every single sound.
If there were only a "control" song, I could happily remix it or re-harmonize it, LOL... so please don't consider these examples as a concrete proposal for what ALL harmonies sound like beyond the 1-3-5... Any cheese is strictly due to my own cheesy taste. It's literally not possible to say that "more musicality will result in cheesiness" as that's a position of ignorance about music.
Knowing more music will not ever ever limit a person, but will provide more options to consciously choose a toolkit. There are certainly times in which only a "powerchord" (1-5 interval) is called for....

Anyway, enough pre-amble... here, for your laughter and amusement, my attempts at trance... (is there any preferred way of posting audio files? i just put it on mega here...)

https://mega.nz/folder/zBkRTa4B#wkaDI7fI7-nIM6ccmOucEg

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On 7/16/2020 at 5:52 PM, astralprojection said:

Yes, its just something I miss, I havent heard that style in a very long time.  It was a special time. The end of HW and beginning of SW. And sw didnt really get good until like 2012 or something to be perfectly honest. Now its so good that theres not even differences between daws anymore, neither digital EQs. Well, there may be some, but its not gonna be night and day or anything. And the synths avaliable in sw now are just stellar.

Of course! 

I think it's mostly about conscious choices in track production and conforming to the 3 "styles" circa 2003: full-on, prog, dark. (old school being considered uncool at that time)

We forced everyone to copy GMS Talamasca 1200-mics, lol... well not really, but you can see where that old "unka unka" minimal vibe just completely disappeared... Paps etc...

That Organic Noise track I posted the link to on the "sounds like x-dream" thread would be considered "terrible production" today but it still sounds totally awesome over a decent system, especially the beginning watery sounds with just this bassline slightly drifting in pitch until "smack pop" this funny poppy kick comes in and the whole thing is like a locomotive....choo choo!

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21 minutes ago, fluorosis said:

Anyway, enough pre-amble... here, for your laughter and amusement, my attempts at trance... (is there any preferred way of posting audio files? i just put it on mega here...)

https://mega.nz/folder/zBkRTa4B#wkaDI7fI7-nIM6ccmOucEg

I think such melodies and harmonies are definitely viable in psytrance context. Actually the first two sounded good to me, except some melodies in the second half of the second track, these were a bit off but maybe they could sound fine if there were more context (more different layers, more advanced sound-design).

 

Didn't quite understand the third one, too much dissonances (but maybe it also could sound good with more context)

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ah, i was showing a few different harmonic movements over the same riff/bassline... yes I agree, it's all a bit too muddled...i was initially going to try to make it like "comparisons"

basically, i have a new respect for anyone able to carry ideas through a whole track, lol... 

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1 hour ago, fluorosis said:

Anyway, enough pre-amble... here, for your laughter and amusement, my attempts at trance... (is there any preferred way of posting audio files? i just put it on mega here...)

https://mega.nz/folder/zBkRTa4B#wkaDI7fI7-nIM6ccmOucEg

thanks for putting that effort into this. and i must say it does sound better than my first attempts at making goa trance.

i especially like the second one. nice melodies and groove there in the beginning. reminds me of early 2000 progressive. though for me the bassline (/progression) really seemd to want to go back up to the "root" after two bars.

the first one almost sounded jazzy (wasn't there are thread about jazz influenced psytrance somwhere on the forum?). this one lives on the border of what can be called psytrance imho. but i guess it would work fine as a downtempo psy track.

the third one got dissonant fast (as recursion already said, there was dissonance in every one of them).

anyway, it's nice to hear a new perspective and i can understand your point better now.

btw: for that minimal offbeat sound check out some releases by panzar productionz. though sadly they seem to focus more on hard knb rather than musical aspect of the sound in the early 00s. rtp probably is the most knowledgable about their best releases.

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I'm missing colorful, story-telling 10+ min tracks... rest assured, they're rare to hear because they're difficult to make. There needs to be coherence within the change and it's actually difficult to achieve without some level of conceptual thinking. 

It's exactly these sort of threads on Psynews that initially sparked the flame to start composing. My personal vision can only be materialized by me. In fact, I'm gonna open my FL and try to come up with final melody to the last track of forthcoming 4th album. :ph34r:

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1 hour ago, astralprojection said:

I checked out a little bit from surrounded by surreality. Sounds really good! A little chi-ad vibes in there, will have to listen to the full thing now :)

 

Thanks for kind words mate, it's appreciated.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/24/2020 at 1:14 PM, Tsotsi said:

Go on then... I dare you

Only took about 400-500 hours (probably more) and 6 months but I think the last track is ready now. 

Time for mastering... I got a great cover art ready as well! 

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First of all, cool thread! Keep it going :)

@OopieI didn't know your alias, but you make good music :+1:

@fluorosis nice melodies ... I got reminded of Kraftwerk at the second tune :)

On 7/22/2020 at 7:17 PM, Padmapani said:

btw: for that minimal offbeat sound check out some releases by panzar productionz. though sadly they seem to focus more on hard knb rather than musical aspect of the sound in the early 00s. rtp probably is the most knowledgable about their best releases.

heh, I am very surprised that I see Panzar Produktionz mentioned here ... yes, I was a big fan of them and also wrote the one or other promo text for them.
Their motto was to "bring back progressive as it was in the 00s" - and in the process they have created their own style, which is not an exact clone of the "old progressive", but very close to it. The closest I could find, in fact ... my favourite artist was Pusherstreet (the project from Rasmus Alanne and Liam Dorff (Liam founded the label) - both came from Etnoscope, that's why I found them) ... and they also provided the "ignition spark" for good artists such as Mantra Flow or Patara ... they even had a then new track by Magnetrixx ("Flusensieb"), whom I'm a big fan of...
Do check them out:
https://soundcloud.com/panzarproduktionz
Everything they released was always for free, which also was great.

And here we are already at the spot of "what I miss in psytrance": it's this old progressive stuff that has caught me big time - and I mis it, because it is not around anymore.
What I like most is to go jogging or walking to this music - and for this purpose I need "walking-friendly" bpm and SIMPLE structures and melodies so that my brain does not drift off completely, but still can process the information coming from outside, such as other people, cyclists, dogs, trees :D ... and all of this in a comfortable way - because yes, I could listen also to very complex or intense stuff, but then such outside occurrences would always lead to me "leaving the zone" which causes me to be not happy. The "old school progressive", as I am beginning to call it, provided exactly this: digestible melodies and bpm that took me on a literal journey as I was running along to it.

I'm talking of artists such as: Atmos, S-Range, Matenda, Noma, 12 Moons, Etnoscope, Magnetrixx, MOS (Mittelstandskinder Ohne Strom), Shiva Chandra, old Son Kite, old Vibrasphere, old Antix ... most of pre-2005 Digital Structures releases basically, plus Spiral Trax
Interestingly, CALM Fullon beats - such as Silicon Sound - did this trick for me as well.

The "progressive psytrance" that is around nowadays is completely different. It seems to me almost like fullon was before, measured in terms of intensity, number of breaks, uptwists, downtwists ... I could probably make fancy snake-man moves on the dancefloor to this music (and get tired quickly), but I can't run to it - at least not in a straight line :(

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Re. "progressive Psytrance"... here a mix from 3 artists, I wonder if it hits the genre or wrong one? Not sure but such music I adored 10 yrs ago or so (yes I still like it, but it has worn off): I can write the artists name if interested or someone knows them already? If you want to guess - do not read description:

 

 

 

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