Jikkenteki

I often find a synth sound I like and just trigger a short note with a long release and then reverse the sound and apply FX as needed.

This page might have something that can help you. http://www.thedx7.co.uk/

Try here Steinberg Midi Gate tutorial This is for Midi Gate in VST 5, but it works exactly the same in all the versions of Cubase since. Best, Jikkenteki

I disliked Skazi for a long time until one day I realized that all he is doing is making hardhouse with some psy-sounds. After I started thinking of him as a hard house artist everything was fine.

Those of you out there who have bemoaning the high price of legitimate software should be happy to hear that Mackie together with Guitar Player magazine are offering Mackie's Tracktion Multitrack software for free for presumably a limited time. Tracktion is fairly straight ahead but has proper ASIO, CoreAudio, midi, vsti and rewire support and works with 32 bit floating point. Go here to register and download, http://www.guitarplayer.com/freetracktion.htm Check here for more info on the program, http://www.mackie.com/products/tracktion/index.html Hope this is useful to someone.

Various Artists - After 10 Years Of Japanese Trance ELF Music 2004 ELFCD-007 1 - Tri-Force – Interstellar Harmonics 2 - Hydro Generator - Sunset 3 - Drap Drop - Poponga 4 - I.B.I.S. - Reaction 5 - Elegraffiti – Beneath The Blue 6 - Theoreme - Ridatsu 7 - Bug Funk – Cursed Death Rmx 8 - Phi – Everything Never Can’t Stop Us Dude 9 - Uni - Adventure After the release of Phi's excellent Phinalizer album, ELF Music follows up with yet another winner which focuses on more Japanese artists. Tri-Force starts us off with Interstellar Harmonics. This monster starts off the way an album should start off. Big, brooding and epic, this piece of full on-ish psy should get the dance floors worked up nicely. Musically I have always felt that good full on should both pound and soar at the same time and Interstellar Harmonics is definitely a track that does both. The bass and percussion definitely pound, but synth-wise there is less emphasis on wizzy zipping sounds and more on soaring, reverb drenched atmospheres and melodies. After the break the track even goes through some chord progressions in the bass line, a welcome, but not often seen thing as of late. All and all this is looking to be a good release from ELF. Next stop is Sunset, from Hydro Generator. The vibe and production values here are similar to the opener. The beginning gives us some open spaces, slowly building hats and some clean muted guitar sounding bits and pieces. Slowly the kick works in and the layers start to build. The sound-scape isn't too dense, but the vibe is nice and calm, floating airily over the bass, kick and hats. The emphasis is again more on melodic sounds rather than atonal noise. The production is top notch, although I find myself wishing that the hats were a little quieter and the leads a little louder. That said its a small issue and Sunset is indeed a nice track. Again, full on-ish, but not really all that full on outside of the bass line. Drap Drop's Poponga is next on the list. Here we have a much harder kick and some nice conga work starting us off. This is much more of a traditional full on track, but it reminds me more of the earlier era of full on. In fact it actually reminds me of early Talamasca here and there (a good thing in my book). As the layers build up some surprises come in. There are some small organ hits eventually a rather strange synth lines in that somehow shouldn't work, yet does in a way that a lot of Japanese music seems to pull off. Tonally this makes for a really bizarre track taking some of the initial hard edge off it, but I like it. Definitely not run of the mill. I.B.I.S. offers us our next track in Reaction. Starts us off hard and thumping with a solid 16th note bassline and kick providing the groundwork and a mess of zippy, crashing zapping noise floating overhead. Just as I am starting to think that perhaps the sound space is a bit hallow, suddenly some HUGE pads come in, almost as if on request, and fill up the sonic space wonderfully. Again we have that winning aggressively stomping while soaring in the clouds combination I love. This is definitely the thickest track of the comp sonically so far, going from minimal sections, filling the audio cup, then dumping it out and starting over several times. Great stuff. Beneath The Blue by Elegraffiti is the 5th stop on ELF's sonic bus. Things start with a sort of slow tension, finally popping the balloon straight into another quality number. Lots of cool metallic warbling sounds and fly by sounds, while the synth bits slowly pile up and some congas work their way in. Some bits of this actually remind me somehow of old X-Dream in their construction (again, a good thing in my book). Definitely a modern track, but it somehow recalls the "good old days" too. Theoreme starts us off in Ridatsu with some orchestral strings that almost remind me of Uni's work, in that they are entirely "natural" sounding (i.e. they don't sound like Classical Mushroom or The Misted Muppet type strings), but they still work well. The track quickly drops into a serious full on-ish bassline and when the strings cut out, the leads take over and bring things to a higher level. Lots of nice sudden choppy breaks and change ups to keep things interesting. Again, good stuff. Bug Funk comes in next with Cursed Death RMX and, as the name might imply, things go over the top here. At 148 bpm, its definitely the fastest track of the comp. The intro starts off almost in the Xenomorph brand of horror trance. The kick is high and edgy, but I must admit, I find the bass a bit garbled for this speed. Else wise, we have everything you would expect from, i.e. sheer madness. Sudden breaks for weird sitar like lines, dissonant pianos, and general craziness of the horror trance variety. Part way through the bass changes up for the better for awhile and the track comes into its own. Maybe not for everyone, but for fans of over the top madness and horror trance, this is a winner. Phi comes up next with a typically wonderful Phi nonsense track title, Everything Never Can't Stop Us, Dude. Umm, yeah, right on... I think. All kidding aside, fans of Phi's excellent debut album, Phinalizer, will be happy to know Phi has started up right where they left off with that album. If you know the Phi sound, you know what to expect. That's being a sort of hi-fi lo-fi hybrid full on monster hard goa trance beast with lots of breaky beats in the background. If you liked Phinalizer, you'll like this, 'nuff said. Closing the album is Uni, with Adventrue, a track from their recent (and great) album La'Movin. Like Phi, Uni very much as their own sound that you can identify quickly if you know it. The sound is epic, smooth, with some great echoing piano lines, yet edgy, with some crunchy guitars (but not over the top, don't worry, this is no generic metal riff track). This ended up being one of my favorite tracks from La'Movin so its a great choice for this comp. The final result - ELF Music is on a hot streak here with two excellent releases in a row. After 10 Years Of Japanese Trance is definitely one of the better comps I have gotten recently, offering us something familiar, but still unique in its own way. Better still, ELF is about the only Japanese label really giving the new generation of Japanese artists the attention they really deserve. All in all highly recommended!

I think Saiko Sounds had it or was due to get it in. I live in Japan so I just walked to my local record shop and bought it

Uni - La'Movin Throb Records 2004 1 - Departure 2 - Underground Around 3 - Ghost Dance 4 - Biblove 5 - Time Out 6 - Adventure 7 - The Opened Eyes 8 - La Fin Bonus - Spotted Mesa Live Video Uni are one of Japan's better kept psy-secrets. This duo, hailing from Kyoto, has released two excellent albums, as well as a home video over the last 5 years, puts on great live shows, but is still somehow more or less completely unknown outside of Japan. La'Movin is their third studio album and their first Throb Records. Uni have always had a wonderfully unique sound, somehow combining classic goa goodness from Macho, with live percussion via Osho and a general melodic sense that is just simply "Uni". Uni has been quiet for a couple years and rumors in Japan were that they were "changing their concept" some. Being a huge fan of all of Uni's output to date, these comments had me worried, so I listened to their new album in both a state of excitement and trepidation. I must admit that I wasn't sure what to think upon first listen, but at some point I realized I had listened to the album about 15 times in two days and had no real desire to turn it off yet and I'm happy to report it has been growing on me steadily in the month since then. So how does it sound? We start our journey with Depature. This is a fitting title as it is the beginning of this new music voyage and also something new for Uni. In many ways this track is the most "trademark" Uni, yet it is very different from their previous work. The basis of the track is a basic Uni kick and bassline combo over which tons of live drumming, various flyby effects and lots of melodies float about. The main difference is that, while in the past, the melodies and sounds tended to be fairly straight out of the goa textbook, this time around the sound selection is more out in left field and I find some of it to be downright jazzy at times (while not being cheesy). Upon first listen I wasn't terribly excited, but this has become one of my favorite tracks of the album. Underground Around is next and also had me rather worried at first. It starts off nicely, but then suddenly drops in a bassline that is a bit too close to modern full-on psy for me. Things soon thicken up and the track dirfts back and forth from crazy to ethereal floating and the bassline starts to fit the mood. I'm still not entirely solid on the beginning, but the second half of the track is a damn fine piece of music. This track also begins to introduce something that becomes a theme of this album. Heavily distorted parts. Ghost Dance is up to bat next and Uni gives us a solid whack at bat here. Strangely, some of the breaks parts here remind me of some of The Delta's more distorted techno-ish loops, but this track sound nothing like The Delta. Uni are fairly skilled at delivering fairly long melodic lines and when have a few here, along with a lot of live snare soloing and general drum madness by Osho. Bibolove is a very different piece of music for Uni and is very untraditional psy-trance. This reminds me more of some of Nine Inch Nails' older quiet, but distorted percussion to hell, pieces. A nice quiet but noisy piece, we have some smooth synth lines providing the base for some spacey piano lines floating gentlely over a mess of distorted percussion loops. Very different, but I like it a lot. Time Cut is one of my favorite pieces from this album. It starts us off slowly in a similar vibe to Bibolove, with some laidback live drumming by Osho drenched in echo and lots of backwards synth lines sliding to and fro. By 1:50 things have built up into traditional Uni psy-mode and are thumping along nicely. Time Cut features a lot of development and is constaintly changing and morphing. There are some great heavily filtered, phased and echoed plucked synths and a great break featuring some nice call and reply type orchestral synth lines. Again, I wasn't sold on the first listen, but I am a believer now. Next up is Adventure, which features more echo'ed piano lines (something Uni have always been good at) along with some brief crunchy guitar chords as well as some nice clean guitar parts. This is a fairly dark thumper recalling some of their earlier work. The goa touches aren't as strong as they used to be, but the track development is solid and its a good number for the dance floor as well as home listening. There are lots of thick flyby sounds floating around here as well as some nice distorted leads contrasted well to alternating clean parts (another thing Uni is skilled at). The Opened Eyes starts out epic with some slow breaky drum lines before suddenly dropping into an odd bouncing, almost swinging bass and straight kick bit. This feels a bit odd at first, but you get used to it and then at about 3:30 they straighten things out and when are suddenly in the middle of another good Uni track with all the basic trademarks we have discussed so far. La Fin finishes us off with a brief 2:38 piece focusing mostly on Osho's drumming. Some slow atmospheric stringy synth lines come in to bring the album to a moody close nicely. The end result - This album is definately a departure of Uni, yet still somehow manages to retain all the general things that make Uni, well, Uni. It is by no means perfect. In particular there are some recording issues, especially in the contrasts between the recordings of the live drums and the electronic percussion, but in the end, the quality of the music makes you overlook such issues, further proving that good music will always win out over perfectly recorded mediocre music. This album is definately different from most of the psy out there today and doesn't neatly fit into any one category (heck, often its not really even anything I would call psy). However, I suspect that listeners who are looking for something new and care more about interested and good music than genre titles will find a lot of reasons to spend some quality time with this CD.

I have absolutely no problem with lag in midi using Cubase SX 2 (or anything since VST 5 really) so I suspect that your problem is probably due to something configuration-wise rather than an inherent problem with Cubase itself. If you are using less than legal versions of SX, than all bets are off on how stable the program is of course, but I legally own my copy and it works fine. I also own Ableton Live and its a great little sequencer I use for all my live work, but I have yet to use it for actually writting music and can't really see myself considering it for that use in the near future either

Juno Reactor - Labyrinth Universal Music Japan 2004 1 - Conquistador 1 (6:02) 2 - Conquistador 2 (5:06) 3 - Giant (4:00) 4 - War Dogs (5:00) 5 - Mona Lisa Overdrive (4:45) 6 - Zwara (6:35) 7 - Mutant Message (6:10) 8 - Angels And Men (7:07) 9 - Navras (9:06) Occasionally living in Japan has some great benefits and being able to buy the new Juno Reactor album almost a full month before it is released in the rest of the world is one of them. Its been four years since the last full Juno Reactor album and finally fans can rejoice that the wait is over. Its no real secret that one of the reasons for the delay of this album was that Juno master mind, Ben Watkins, had been pulled away from work on this album to do some significant work on the music for the last two Matrix movies. The influences of working on these films definitely shows through on the album as this album is more spacious and epic than anything previous. This album also has probably uses the most amount of real instruments, orchestra elements and various vocals to date. However fans of Juno's brand of tribal, electronic music should not worry, as this album is drenched in tribal percussion and there isn't a full on bassline or minimal track to be found. In fact, if you loved Bible Of Dreams you are in luck as this album reminds me of that album , except extremely beefed up. So how does it sound? I was personally worried since the last three Juno Reactor albums have been most excellent, that there was simply no way the next album to compare. I went in with low expectations and am happy to report I was basically proven wrong on almost every point. Conquistador (I'm counting 1 and 2 together since there are essentially the same track) opens up the album in what I feel just might be Juno Reactor's best track to date. Part 1 starts use off with slow pads and orchestral flyby's drift over a quiet percussion/melody line. Some lovely Spanish influence acoustic guitar lines drift in and out at first and slowly establish the mode of the track. Some ethereal female vocals and choir elements drift in and out adding to the atmosphere. Some percussion starts to build into the shift into part 2 which drops us into full blown Juno Reactor "trance" mode. The percussion takes over and Mabi Thobejane comes in making it feel like this track is a secret missing gem from the Bible of Dreams session (although it might even be better than most of that album). Descriptions are difficult, but I actually caught myself think "this might be as good as some Shpongle stuff" so it must be good. Juno Reactor has always been and act to play add anything and everything to their sound and Giant is the "what the?" track of the album, being basically a Drum and Bass track played with real drums and some nasty bass that would make DnB purists proud. I like this track, but I feel it is also the weak point of the album simply because the recording of the drums isn't up to par with the rest of the album, or even the track. Coming from an audio background I understand just how hard drums are to record well, but the fact remains that the drums are a hair flat. Else wise it is a nice nasty track that probably would sound great if the rest of the album wasn't so well recorded. War Dogs is next and again, there is a small issue with the recording of the drums. They aren't as much of an issue as in Giant, but they still are a little flat. That said, its a small complaint here and the ethnic, somewhat Indian sounding breakdowns and vocals I love. There is some more Spanish guitar and even some crunchy guitar bits in the background (although by no means are we talking heavy metal here). Next up is Mona Lisa Overdrive, famous from the car chase seen in Matrix Reloaded. For some reason I was never super impressed with the track in the movie itself, however being able to hear it here, without the movie and a million sound effects getting in the way I can see that this is actually a good track. Again, loads of percussion, loads of orchestral stuff. Its epic and I like it. Next is Zwara, which was released as a single several month back and thus probably familiar to many fans so not much comment is needed here. Enough to say that it fits the vibe of the album perfectly. Mutant Message starts off as a moody down tempo number. Again, the usually elements are here (percussion, strings, etc) which focuses on some quiet, heavily echoed piano lines before getting thick and dirty, breaking down and getting dirty again to close it off. Together with Conquistador 1 & 2, Angels and Men makes for the highlight of the album. Similar in vibe to the opening o the album, this slow spacious number is all about atmosphere, with a simple percussion line soaked in reverb providing the base for some more angelic female vocals, a droning clean arppegiated guitar line and various flyby lines and elements. This is down tempo music at its best. Narvas closes of the album and should be familiar to anyone who has Matrix Revolutions as the closing track during the credits. Its huge, its epic and it closes the album since there is nothing that you could really follow it up with. Again, it sounds like some lost Bible of Dreams track on steroids and since this listener considers Bible of Dreams among the best albums ever, this is a good thing. The end result - Despite some minor drum recording issues with Giant and War Dogs, this is an excellent album. While fans of straight up "club" psy-trance might not get too into Juno Reactor, people who are simply fans of good music should find a lot to like here. Good stuff!!!!

I posted this on a goa mailing listed earlier today, but it fits here as well... The new Juno Reactor actually came out here in Japan yesterday and I just picked it up earlier today and have been listening to it non-stop since. I'm happy to report that it is damn good. Yes a couple of the best tracks from the Matrix period are on here, but they fit the vibe of the album great. Two Digress for a minute, for people who want to complain that the Matrix tracks are "old" tracks, keep in mind that Ben Watkins started working on this album before doing the Matrix project and also worked on it during the break between the films so from his point of view the Matrix tracks are part of the same period of production. Also for me it is nice that these tracks are here since I didn't want to drop the money on two different soundtracks for only a couple of tracks. Also this pattern is pretty consistant with how Juno has released in the past anyways (for example Pistolero was released a long time before Shango came out). Anyways, some people will complain regardless, so I guess there is nothing much I can do about that. Anyways, this album definately has Juno's most heavy use of real instruments so far, but a lot of the names are farmiliar from previous Juno albums and there is a TON of tribal stuff going on as well as a lot of orchestral and vocal action as well. As usual the album ranges from semi standard straight forward Juno tracks to ambient bits to even some Drum and Bass (with real drums, athough I'm sure psy purists will complain anyways). For me the opening two tracks, Conquistador 1 and 2 might possibly the best thing Juno has put out before. Usually I am a bit cold on the new materials the first time I hear a new Juno Reactor album, but my reaction to Conquistador was along the lines of "this might even be Shpongle quality material". Angels and Men is also a fantastic ambient piece as well. All and all this listener is pretty happy with Labyrinth.

Keep in mind though that this is a psy-trance comp of "new" material and Suzuki Tsuyoshi and Ubar Tmar don't really make psy-trance these days....

Here is another new track for everyone. This one is fairly old school-ish with some tribal influences in the latter half. I was going for less anger here and more of a track you can loose yourself in in a sot of groovy meditative way so it has a lot more "space" than Anger Management did. Its also rather long clocking in at 13:50 http://www.par-2.com/choons/jikkentekinext.mp3 Enjoy!

Hehehe, I was in a really bad mood when I started that track, which is probably why the bass ended up like it did. I had gotten into a heated online discussion with someone involved with a label who was saying that old school was dead and there was no power in it. Needless to say I disagreed and that bass ended up being the result. lol

I also am with you on Delfo - Tio Mate being a nice old track. Speaking of Matsuri tracks, I am always been a big fan of Legal Mission - Alchemy, but rarely see it mentioned anywhere. I dig its slow-ish throbbing groove factor gets me everytime.