pouët.net

about the "scattered" thing ;)

and yes the artists' attitude really differ a lot too. ;)

http://modarchive.org/download.php/S/synthetic_bitch.xm :)

haha cp that's really crazy. and i thought drum'n'bass would be scattered. :)

I know. He has him on his myspace page, but he won't accept me. He was also the one who introduced me to Goa trance...and Darkus too I believe.

So basically, when two artists make music which is similar, that becomes a subgenre?

I couldn't be arsed to read the whole thread, but thought i'd reply anyway...

Psytrance varies a lot.. it can be very melodic (like some infected mushroom) or it can be almost like minimal techno with a filtered synth now and then. Goa tends to be cheesier, with indian samples. Personally I like all of it (well, other than goa) so long as it's got some element of quality (a lot of it hasn't as cp says). I got into more melodic stuff long ago (try hallucinogen's first album, twisted - great quality production there) and still prefer that style. It's not something I'd want to listen to all the time though.. variety is the spice of life as they say.

CP: what recent stuff has been good? Only cd I've picked up in recent years that was really good was a compilation called psy stories, the rest I've tries has been rather crap. Oh, and ubartmar.com is generally good of course.. if you can find his cds outside of japan :)

Bah! Psytrance is supposed to be a spiritual experience. In the words of Goa Gil.

Anyway, you have to look at Goa/Psytrance at a slightly esoteric/spiritual angle to fully enjoy it imho.

truta truta truta atum truta truta trua atum espadarte! truta truta truta atum truta truta trua atum espadarte! truta truta truta atum truta truta trua atum espadarte! truta truta truta atum truta truta trua atum espadarte!

Put that on a portuguese voice synth and you'll get it.

Indeed.

Actually i LOVE Shpongle , Simon Posford's (founder of Hallucinogen, and of Twisted Records) Ambien Creatuions....alien sounds!

rc55: I guess the problem _might_ be that you got a blast of "newschool" psytrance.. not too much good in that genre from the last x years.. try finding some older stuff (or, just see sts demos ;)

One thing you definitely _don't_ want to have in a demo is a commercial length dnb tune, the targeted use is just so different. Whatever the idea in a given dnb tune is, for demo use it can be presented in a much more tighter package so that it'll generally make a more interesting and compact demo experience.

Much like Gargaj said, take any given commercially released dnb tune and you find the length can be anything from 6 to 8 minutes. Then, listen through it and notice how much unvaried looping there is in the tune (just because djs want/need it to be mixable). Say, 2 minutes from the start for some pad/ambience intro (A part) with light beats. Then drop the heavy beats and bassline for 1-2mins (B part). After this, just repeat the A-B structure and maybe round up with some slightly varied outro for the B part.

So no, you don't want to have the demo dnb/whatever tunes sound like commercial ones in this aspect. Put simply it'd just be FUCKING BORING.

And to get back on the psy topic, cp, kaneel and kelsey had some good pointers I also relate with. The functionality of psy genre is not to offer melodic content, but to make people dance. This is much approached on the "tribal" angle; make it steady thump-thump and keep it repetitive. Whereas Goa trance still had some melodic content, when it evolved to psy trance much of this got stripped away to make room for a much colder and technical soundscape. Kind of like a programmers approach :)

And as for the quality, indeed there's a lot of shit out there (near zero quality control?) maybe because initially the genre seems quite easy to start with.. You know, drop some mega kick drum, make every synth element chop/gate 16ths and trigger some random speech/sound fx samples here and there. This is especially true with "Suomi-saundi" (the finnish psy trance a la Texas Faggott et al.) given the randomness and weirdness of the sub-genre/style. With this genre in particular to me it seems that you can just slap together whatever on top of a kick drum and the bassline and get away with it (even commercially released). There is good stuff out there too, but with the majority being total shit makes it hard to come up with the gems.

Oh and typing this just reminded me why I hardly ever do long posts to forums etc.. That's some 45 mins taken away from other activities, some which might even make some difference ;)

I think at least 95% of the new psy "trance" is crap.

Artists copying others without any imagination instead of trying to create something they like, or something nice.. everyone trying to copy a couple of good artists, without realizing what's the actual point or hook in the good tracks. Most of the new tracks being released sound pretty much the same..

Or well, you obviously have to start with something, so maybe the problem is in the excessive amount of psy labels around nowadays.. all wanting to release all the time.. the end result is that 95% of the stuff being released is just non-finished or just crap without any ideas.

So many labels around that there's no room for quality control anymore? You just have to take and release everything you can get?

Also some of the new psy trance is starting to be really cheesy, following the same patterns and sounds copied from the mainstream/eurotrance. Why oh why..

I guess some of the new psy artists want to be "pop stars" and more mainstream.. just think of skazi and infected mushroom for example.. their hobby has turned into a job? It's not always a bad thing, but it seems to have unfortunate downsides..

The number of releases sold has been going down all the time because there are much more labels nowadays, meaning there are much more stuff being released, but not that many new people in the "psy scene". And also because of piracy.. I think psy/goatrance is one of the genres that has suffered the most from the piracy. So, when you will sell less, you need to try to maximize the sales.. so as a label owner you go for the cheesy stuff and wish some of the more mainstream dj's also will buy your releases? At least in israel many people want to have their own company (=label) and they want to be succesfull with that.. make their living with that. That's where you go wrong?

8-12 years ago there was much more good stuff being released (imho) even when the amount of labels was much smaller. Back then the labels had to actually think about the tracks and release only the good tracks?

One point why there was so much more good psy/goa stuff earlier might be the fact that 10 years ago you had to buy a lot of (expensive) hardware to be able to produce "professional" music.. maybe that had the (positive) effect of artists actually paying attention to what they are doing? Wanting to spend time with the tracks, and create something of their own.. and the tracks had to be actually good before the labels wanted to release them?

Nowadays it looks like many labels just want to release these cheesy "killers".. hoping to sell more instead of thinking what kind of crap they are actually pushing out. Or maybe they should stop using the name "psy"..

Many of the new people and dj's in the "psy scene" seem to just go for all the new releases without questioning them.. maybe they haven't heard of earlier/better stuff? When many of the new dj's play only the new crap, people get to hear only that.. snowball effect.

Maybe that's enough ranting for a while.. :)

and fuckings to pouet, it took so long to write that post I had already been automatically logged out. argh.

I'm not sure that buying hardware was a factor to become a good musician or engineer. But yes, it's more about involvement in a passion, not "wannabeism". And I remember that back in those days peoples used to be first musicians interested enough in composition and production to afford the money.

Nowadays, someone who has some basic knowledges can quickly achieve some completely unoriginal yet acceptable sound-wise music, because of the many existing soundbanks available freely here and there from more or less bought virtual instruments...

That's probably why a lot of people found on various music sites are into stereotyped and more or less well done techno and trance things (and so why there are so many synths dedicated to this). If they got the "sounds" then we end up with something "oh, the kick is great or the pads are amazing" resulting in this obese music area where the box is more important than the content.

oxb: I think he meant that 10 years ago you had a lot smaller foundation to choose from because "everyone" couldn't make music.. You had to be able to afford the hardware (or at least have access to it).
Not like todays pirated soft synths that even I could get in x amount of minutes, more regarding the speed of my internet connection. For that reason only really dedicated people probably ended up buying the stuff (or really rich people ;), which again led to fewer tracks being made and as such, the quality of those tracks being higher.

Being a good musician is obviously not about how much hardware you have. However, back in the days, it mattered in the sense of making music at all. That's where the first trackers and music programs for computers were revolutionary :)

Hmm.. That looks like a bunch of mambo-jambo. The point i was trying to make was that you would probably not even go buy the hardware in the first place unless you had a passion for it, since it was rather expensive those days..

And obviously, this wasn't the only reason, but one of them :)

Real man listen Drum & Bass... like this
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZfKA4b5SFq4

...ok that drummer is really bad... but that's suposed to sound good. You get the idea.

Check out Simon Posford's projects and let the rest be :)

'nuff said.

btw did you get DESTINATION CALABRIA this summer ? :>

http://www.ultimae.com/en/releases/index.html

On Simon Posford.. his first album 'twisted' was a classic I reckon, the album after that (forgot the name.. it had wicked artwork though) wasn't so good. And aside from a few good singles, I always felt that he'd maybe taken too many drugs, or perhaps he'd just peaked, and never reached those heights he hit on twisted again.

Having said that though, I gave up on him a few albums later.. did he do anything else of that quality after?