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Why psytrance has NO future..


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28 minutes ago, Multi-Media said:

@Padmapani

That Sillicon Sound track was one of my faves years ago, but also due to my Blade Runner obsession, did not age so well.... Interesting that Talamasca and E.Universe count also (now?) in the full-on department, did not know that. Guess their early stuff was just named goa for us :)

both talamasca and eu started out with goa, but switched to fullon pretty early.

talamasca's beyond the mask is pure goa,  musica divinorum is something i'd count as early fullon (not quite fullon as we know it but leading up to it), and zodiac is a almost a genre defining fullon album imho. that might also be because it was my introduction to fullon ;) . too bad talamasca has turned to making predictable cheese soon afterwards.

electric universe did make goa up to the unify album, but cosmic experience is a fullon classic, especially with tracks like the prayer and morning star.

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17 hours ago, Padmapani said:

 

electric universe did make goa up to the unify album, but cosmic experience is a fullon classic, especially with tracks like the prayer and morning star.

i still think Peak is his best track cause thats really kinda what he wanted to do with most of his tracks; and he defined it and boiled it down to the essence of his post-goa days with Peak. Ultra cheese and Ultra climax and Ultra Leads. i think that was his dream all along. and thats only half humor i actually really love this track :D 

btw we need radis input if we are gonna talk about boris blenn feels like we are talking behind his back and i dont like it 

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8 hours ago, the goa constrictor said:

Electric Universe is damn near as close to a Guilty Pleasure as I can think of.
Boris is awesome

Thanks for the reminder, those slower tracks are quite cool from him too
 


@mudpeople

Good to know, must have been around the same time when EBM (supposedly) died too ;)

@Padmapani

Yeah I remember the first 2 Talamasca albums.. but I found also some newer tracks to be listenable, if I want some melodic stuff, and the tracks I mean are not as cheesy as for example the first 2 in the Beatport top10 for "Psytrance" hehe

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I think it's a well-thought out proposal: 

a SONG (has a signature melody, the chord changes/modulations under it, the name itself implying ones ability to SING the signature melody, which I consider less important as I will describe)  can be done in a Polka version, a Psytrance version, a Bossanova version. I'm sure you can picture "Happy Birthday" done in a million different ways,  yet still retaining that signature melody.  You will even EXPECT that a jazz version will alter the chord changes while still allowing the same melody to be contextualized over it!

It's true that mere sound-design accompanied by  "contemporary rhythms" (as you say) will not have any CONTENT to be recontextualized.

Melodies are sequences of notes. Notes are ostensibly "pure tones" with a base root principle frequency, which is a lie, of course, as we understand that even a single note on the guitar string will have an entire correlated frequency system (harmonics/partials) related to a central main basic root frequency (tone), nevertheless, as all physical vibrations follow the physics of the harmonic series, regardless of medium, we will perceive a coherent "note". 

There's some debatable degree of cerebral processing involved beyond the physical mechanisms of the human ear and the frequency "bins" it can perceive activity in. (resonant single-frequency sensors) but one can expect some memory of patterns here, and so one may expect some characteristic and unique "sounds" to be readily identifiable, regardless of their musical content. You will recall that being able to recognize the roar of a predator likely precedes music, lol.

Additionally, much as the sense of smell is pre-cognitive, there is also pre-cognitive auditory function, and I'll not go into this at this juncture.

What are the limits of human-recollection of distinctive sounds and how does this compare as far as broader definitions of a melody?  

I'm going to go out on a limb here and also note that the vast bulk of dance music is a beat and bassline, whose primary purpose is to make physically impressive sound waves when projected over large sound systems, such that one feels suitably impressed and one feels like moving and dancing in response, as surely such an overwhelming force can be the equivalent of darkness in the discoteque, aka "normal" folks who would "normally" be embarrassed to dance and prance around do so with great abandon and alacrity.

 Rhythm and characteristic sequences of this are an equally viable conduit to memory, however.
Our societies are biased against a rhythm-centric approach, but it's interesting to note that that 3/2 ratio is both a basic unit of cross-rhythm syncopation, and, when sped up, is the musical interval known as the 5th, which your fellow Greek, Pythagoras, is credited with noting in his studies of the tuned string and harmonics and musical intervals.

Ask any Punjabi about the Bhangra rhythms and if one can remember them as distinct musical patterns of some kind.

Or, those characteristic 60's and 70's funk soul motown etc drum-grooves, such as Clyde Stubblefield (James Brown's drummer) and The Winstons "Amen" grooves that are featured in countless hip-hop and electronica songs. (or rather, "tracks" as we know that they aren't songs, lol...even though a track is like a single instrument recording (1 or more channels, but commonly characterized as a single mixer "channel" even if there are 6 channels stuck inside, as in the case of 5.1 surround, lol...)

 

Alas, all 4 on the floor disco-based dance music styles bring absolutely zero to the table on the subject of rhythm. Future people will not be quoting our beats, lol

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12 hours ago, the goa constrictor said:

Electric Universe is damn near as close to a Guilty Pleasure as I can think of.
Boris is awesome

Agreed. Plenty of his newer tracks still sound amazing, as do his collabs. He still has a magic touch!

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Silly me, I wrote a long discourse actually replying to the video that started this thread.

I now realize that absolutely no one watched the video,  and they merely turned this topic into another argument about which trance from when is the best.

The video actually had a totally different and coherent point, but then folks who won't watch the video, considering it "clickbait" will be happy to expound on topics that are NOT in the video the OP posted.

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1 hour ago, fluorosis said:

Silly me, I wrote a long discourse actually replying to the video that started this thread.

I now realize that absolutely no one watched the video,  and they merely turned this topic into another argument about which trance from when is the best.

The video actually had a totally different and coherent point, but then folks who won't watch the video, considering it "clickbait" will be happy to expound on topics that are NOT in the video the OP posted.

Well yes the thread de-railed long ago. And I think people felt the original topic wasn't much to discuss perhaps since the topic creator hasn't participated. :) But since he disappeared and as you've noticed not many of us here cared to watch the video, it turned into a meta discussion about anything really. I feel like making a video and using it as a topic feels a bit detached/unpersonal/lazy, I mean for all we know the video might've been shared on many forums/platforms. In this day and age when we get constantly bombarded with promo liks/videos/dj sets/tracks on reddit/facebook etc, it needs to feel interesting enough for me to even click it. I'll usually wait for peoples reactions before considering clicking it. :) So I mean go ahead and post your reaction to the video, it could make for an interesting discussion. And who knows maybe it'll pique my interest to actually watch the video in question. By not doing so, you yourself contribute to the de-rail/off topic. ;) Perhaps topics about videos or blog posts on external social platforms should be posted in a more suiting forum section, as they are a form of self promotion, to drive traffic/and perhaps revenue.

As a comparison, imagine if all users here who make music or dj sets would post them here in the general section, and for example name the topic, "psy trance is dead, here is my attempt to revive it" let's discuss. Members posting something in the general section hopefully do so with the aim of  creating an interesting topic, and to participate in said discussion. Or else it can easily come across as just some lazy spam. The topic creator could've written down his ideas/thesis here in the original post and the topic would've had legs on it's own, now it relies on us actually watching a video on youtube, and I think the main intention is perhaps to generate a discussion in the comments section of the youtube video, and not here on psynews. Psynews is probably just a portal where the topic creator thinks a lot of potential people who are interested in the topic might reside.:) I mean if the video is deleted, this topic has zero legs, which happen quite often when youtube users gets banned/or delete the videos themselves. :P

 

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fair enough.

Boris Blenn makes nice music. Etnica was great precisely for what it represented and sounded like when it first came out, with respect to everything else going on at the time.

Endless attempts to "clone the magic" look like some plastic surgery ducklips. 

Message to the world: Stop living in the past and make the music of the future so I can nitpick it errrrm test my new car stereo with it :D

 

... i mean since we have a topic free-for-all I'll just drop my usual refrain that you will see me repeat in all threads always henceforth, lol

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9 hours ago, AstralSphinx said:

Well yes the thread de-railed long ago. And I think people felt the original topic wasn't much to discuss perhaps since the topic creator hasn't participated. :) 

I'm guessing this video is actually some kind of sneaky promo for his new album or something along those lines. I'm not sure why the mods haven't moved this somewhere or closed the thread, it's obviously just bait.

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On 7/11/2020 at 2:08 AM, Padmapani said:

not necessarily. it depends on how you define and and melodic.

is this dark and melodic?

certainly dark, but is there enough melody to be called melodic?

or this?:

certainly darkpsy derived and melodic (esp. the latter third), but is it really dark?

or this?:

a darker vibe, melodic, but it's the kind of goa trance that's more chaotic than anything else.

btw: i don't find asia tribe dark at all. imho it falls in that sweet spot that's neither happy nor dark, where most "cosmic" or truly psychedelic music can be found.

IDK, none of these sounds melodic to me. Maybe only Lunarave, some bits in the second half. They aren't completely atonal but that's not enough to call them melodic. By melodic I mean some sequence of notes that makes some sense on its own without the sound by which it's played and the surrounding synths and beats. Basically soemthing you could play on a piano or guitar and it would still sound recognizable and express some emotion.

 

As far as Lunarave goes, this track has some good melodies

The Asia Tribe track has  great depressive/dystopian vibe which I really dig. To me it actually sounds  "darker" than a typical darpsy track with all the howling synths and random FM noises.

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1 hour ago, recursion loop said:

IDK, none of these sounds melodic to me. Maybe only Lunarave, some bits in the second half. They aren't completely atonal but that's not enough to call them melodic. By melodic I mean some sequence of notes that makes some sense on its own without the sound by which it's played and the surrounding synths and beats. Basically soemthing you could play on a piano or guitar and it would still sound recognizable and express some emotion.

 

As far as Lunarave goes, this track has some good melodies

The Asia Tribe track has  great depressive/dystopian vibe which I really dig. To me it actually sounds  "darker" than a typical darpsy track with all the howling synths and random FM noises.

Exactly what I meant by the definition of dark melodic, and to me dark melodic could be either something gothic sounding, ala the Infected Mushroom - Classical Mushroom album or something with a sinister touch ala Hallucinogen - Gamma Goblins pt 2. So often it's about melodies/arps utilizing regular chords, as oposed to oriental scales. Often lots of minor chords, a 3:1 ratio usually, that is 3 minor chords and 1 major chord per 4 chords. And often diminshed chords/scales thrown in for good measure, for that haunted feel. I would separare this from dark goa, as those often have a different vibe, and often wouldn't perhaps sound scary if played back on a piano. As dark goa often is more about dark atmospheres/sinister sounds. There are exceptions of course.

And the best examples of this subgenre utilize themes for the naming of the tracks, and fitting album artwork to set the tone, so that it has some depth/conceptual layers. I think the trend was started by Hallucinogen with the abovementioned track, and perhaps somewhat with his "Infernal Machine - The Loin Sleeps tonight" The ideas were then further developer by Infected Mushroom, and later on by Talpa and Pandemonium! So those are the only ones I know of really that fits the vibe I'm looking for. The main focus is not about random noises/FM sounds. As in dark psy, but there can be such elements as something in the background, the main thing is melodic hooks, chords, emotional pads, often warped epic leads/hooks. TB-303 or SH-101 riffs make for great additions to create some familiar acidic drive. As in the loin sleeps tonight example.

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5 minutes ago, AstralSphinx said:

 So  often it's about chords/arps utilizing regular chords, often lots of minor chords, and often diminshed chords/scales thrown in for good measure. For that haunted feel.

One needs to know some musical theory for that, rare thing amoung psy producers :D

Check out some South African twillight, like Tickets or Brethren

 

Or some U-Recken

 

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16 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

One needs to know some musical theory for that, rare thing amoung psy producers :D

Check out some South African twillight, like Tickets or Brethren

 

Or some U-Recken

 

Thanks for the links will listen after my forest walk, btw I wonder why knowledge of music theory is not so common within the psy scene? In the regular trance scene It's very common to atleast know more about chords in general. I can't really present any statistics to back up these observations. But it's quite evident when comparing the genres. 

Perhaps we could name this subgenre Tim Burton trance lol :D as his visual style is what some of these dark melodic tracks conjure in my mind.

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1 minute ago, AstralSphinx said:

Thanks for the links will listen after my forest walk, btw I wonder why knowledge of music theory is not so common within the psy scene? In the regular trance scene It's very common to atleast know more about chords in general. I can't really present any statistics to back up these observations. But it's quite evident when comparing the genres. 

It's not that common because you can write a bassline, program a beat and program a basic melody with no problems. Tweak the synths, add samples and use software to make it sound presentable. Get gigs, a record deal and be happy. Why waste time on theory when it won't increase your chances of making it?

I had a well known producer from Zenon over a couple of weeks ago who said the same thing. Zenon doesn't have melody so why waste time studying the theory?

i know theory because my parents made me learn piano as a kid, but I rarely apply much to my electronic productions. It does come in handy when I'm tracking guitars though, as I can give good advice to them on how to make the music interesting. 
 

take the guitarist called Teloch from Mayhem, great bloke but know barely any music theory. He knows how to tremolo pick Norwegian style, he knows basic scales and that's all he needs to do the job. Why waste time learning more when you don't need to?

 

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9 minutes ago, Bartzabel said:

It's not that common because you can write a bassline, program a beat and program a basic melody with no problems. Tweak the synths, add samples and use software to make it sound presentable. Get gigs, a record deal and be happy. Why waste time on theory when it won't increase your chances of making it?

I had a well known producer from Zenon over a couple of weeks ago who said the same thing. Zenon doesn't have melody so why waste time studying the theory?

i know theory because my parents made me learn piano as a kid, but I rarely apply much to my electronic productions. It does come in handy when I'm tracking guitars though, as I can give good advice to them on how to make the music interesting. 
 

take the guitarist called Teloch from Mayhem, great bloke but know barely any music theory. He knows how to tremolo pick Norwegian style, he knows basic scales and that's all he needs to do the job. Why waste time learning more when you don't need to?

 

It's an interesting topic, I understand the reasoning, but at the same I think it's a bit limiting for those producers who opt for that way of thinking. The easy way is not always the most creative way. :) It's a shame I think, as there is a wider palette available for making expressive melodic music. But hey, stylistic preferences vary, some music don't rely on melodies so it's up to everyone what they like to do. I do think a track with good melodies can age better sometime than a track which rely solely on the latest technical gimmicks. But yeah depends on the genre as well, techno and acid for sure don't need melodies :D

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