Open You're Min'd

[Rotwang]

Hi guys, how's it going? Hope you're all managing to stay sane. I've spent a bunch of time recently rewriting my music software in Clojure, this is my first track with the new system. Let me know what you think:

 

[Dolmot]

On 10/25/2020 at 7:39 PM, Rotwang said:

Hi guys, how's it going?

Pretty good! You?

 

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Hope you're all managing to stay sane.

As if anyone in here ever was!

 

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Let me know what you think

It's quite long but nice. Now code a spell checker!

[Rotwang]

1 hour ago, Dolmot said:

Pretty good! You?

Not bad thanks. Work is super busy which is why I'm seldom here. But I'm pretty lucky in that the lockdown hasn't affected me too badly, I work from home and I sure as hell don't miss the commute.

1 hour ago, Dolmot said:

It's quite long but nice.

Thanks! I've been told elsewhere that it doesn't have enough bass so have just reuploaded a (hopefully) improved version.

1 hour ago, Dolmot said:

Now code a spell checker!

Misspelled track names are a psytrance tradition though.

[astralprojection]

omg havent seen you in years man. gotta catch up some day. 

so wait, you actually program your own daw?

music reminds me slightly of both MFG, Planet BEN, and Hara Gobi. but its certainly its own style.

[recursion loop]

This might require a bit more mixing/mastering work (IMO it still doesn't have enough bass - not in the sense that you should add more low frequencies, but the bass and especially the kick somewhat lack presence and impact).

But sonically and musically it's really impressive!

[antic604]

That was quite something!!! :o

Can you link to that Clojure software? I never heard of it and what I googled seemed not for music?

[Rotwang]

5 hours ago, astralprojection said:

omg havent seen you in years man. gotta catch up some day

Hi!

5 hours ago, astralprojection said:

so wait, you actually program your own daw?

Not sure whether it's fully-featured enough to be considered a DAW, but it's definitely a thing that makes noises of some sort.

5 hours ago, astralprojection said:

music reminds me slightly of both MFG, Planet BEN, and Hara Gobi. but its certainly its own style.

Cool, thanks. Don't think I've ever actually heard Hara Gobi, will check it out.

 

4 hours ago, recursion loop said:

This might require a bit more mixing/mastering work (IMO it still doesn't have enough bass - not in the sense that you should add more low frequencies, but the bass and especially the kick somewhat lack presence and impact).

But sonically and musically it's really impressive!

Good to know, thanks. The bassline is concentrated in the low harmonics, so maybe that's the problem. I did try boosting the upper harmonics a bit when I was mixing it but didn't like the result. Also I reduced the low frequencies (centred around 65 Hz) in the kick, maybe I shouldn't have?

 

1 hour ago, antic604 said:

That was quite something!!!

Thanks.

1 hour ago, antic604 said:

Can you link to that Clojure software? I never heard of it and what I googled seemed not for music?

Clojure isn't for music, it's a general-purpose programming language that I used to write my software. The original version was written in Python but Clojure turns out to be much better suited - it's a dialect of Lisp but it runs on the Java Virtual Machine and can call Java code, which means I can write high-level Lisp code for the complicated stuff but do all the low-level number crunching quickly in Java, and also that I have access to the whole Java ecosystem for GUI programming, playing audio and so on.

[recursion loop]

8 hours ago, Rotwang said:

The bassline is concentrated in the low harmonics, so maybe that's the problem. I did try boosting the upper harmonics a bit when I was mixing it but didn't like the result. Also I reduced the low frequencies (centred around 65 Hz) in the kick, maybe I shouldn't have?

 

That's a bit tricky to explain, and it's not that I'm such an expert. I'm listening in a relatively decent environment (have some acoustic treatment in there) with good monitors and headphones... the same room where I mix my own stuff. What I hear is that your bass seems to be indeed concentrated around the root harmonic without  much harmonic content in the upper octaves, if any at all,  and the kick barely has any impact, it's just a short midrange sound, not even very clicky. 

 

The kick/bass in psy is not just low frequenices, it actually populates the area from the lowest sub to upper mids and even highs (approx 15-20 kHz) and you have to get it right in this whole frequency range - the attack/release, the balance, the frequency content etc

 

e.g., that's the spectrogram of the k/b bus from the track Silent Universe in the nearby thread (that's not a pro relelase, but I think if you dissect a mix from a pro artist you'll see something more or less similar)

 

Hope that helps  

 

[Rotwang]

Actually it was a choice on my part to make the bassline different from a typical Psytrance bassline, I wanted it to be more in the background (or "underground") and have a more unconscious effect on the listener, if that makes sense. Not good to hear about the kick though. Here's a spectrogram of the kick from the first section of my track, by way of comparison; the peak is around 1.1 kHz - is that what you mean by midrange?

[U.F.Orb]

This is great !!!!

It was much easier for me to break it down to two parts.

The first part had that early 00's vibe to it, early spiral trax, early Lish's music. 

Brings back a lot of good memories of nights on a foggy dance floor out in god knows where.

The second part (4:27) was when it hits the spot for me, i cant actually put my hand on the spot

so ill just use the term "when you listen to a minilogue track" and somewhere it all starts to make a bit more sense.

towards the end i wished it to be a bit more explosive, but im after a few weeks of going through psykovskys discography

so im not exactly sure anymore.

Anyway ! i loved it, and would like to listen to more !

ps

 

Never change that signature gif

 

[Rotwang]

Thanks! I've had the same gif in my sig for over a decade, it's not going anywhere.

[recursion loop]

21 hours ago, Rotwang said:

Actually it was a choice on my part to make the bassline different from a typical Psytrance bassline, I wanted it to be more in the background (or "underground") and have a more unconscious effect on the listener, if that makes sense. Not good to hear about the kick though. Here's a spectrogram of the kick from the first section of my track, by way of comparison; the peak is around 1.1 kHz - is that what you mean by midrange?

It's always far more important how it sounds  than what it looks like in an analyzer. But I'd say it's quite unusual to see such a massive peak at 1.1. KHz in a kick. Also it seems you have the two main harmonics and not much stuff inbetween. 

 

That's what a spectrum of an exemplary psy kick might look like

You may watch this video, it gives some basic explanations on how psytrance kicks are usually made

 

[Manuser]

I struggle to like the middle part, I wish there was a more normal melody, more harmonic. That said I really like the first and third parts of the track. I guess recursion loop is right about the sound quality but the underground feel is very real that way. Nice work!