Why is the minimal drop so loved?

[dhollmusik]

What is the minimal drop?  Thanks to the timestamp-comments under the following video (I personally couldn't stomach watching more than a minute of this thing):

39:15 - holy shit

35:00 omg

Why does the drop at 18:00 sound so amazing

So what happens at these drops?  A very digital-sounding pitch/filter-sweep upwards, sometimes lasting forever, and when finally the beat comes in at the drop, all we've got is a flat plastic-sounding kick and bass.  It's such a massive deflater, yet people seem to love it. 

 

What happened to the drop signifying when things go all-out crazy? 

This trend of the minimal drop has long infested techno, and nowadays it's very dominant in mainstream psy.  Why do people love it so?

 

#iblamecocaine

 

 

[Tsotsi]

Personally I like the 35:00 drop. From someone that still goes to clubs, the "progressive goa" are pretty funky, they just sort of come out from underneath rather than above. Kinda takes you by surprise. Definitely a techno thing, especially those damn sweeps. I haven't heard a modern techno track that doesn't have a sound effect that just sounds like a high pitched smoke machine.

#cocaine&ket 

[Agneton]

Ace Ventura is far from the worst example of this kind of minimal drop-infested culture. Go check the average Brazil psytrance-festival video on youtube for a truely horrific experience :p promo-videos posted by artists only feature the drop-points because that's the (only) part where people go wild.

Example:
 

Edit: Missing the times where drops were called climaxes.

[recursion loop]

17:00-18:09 very cool. Massive melody in the breakdown followed by the riser effect creating the tension which you expect to be released into the same melody playing over the beat - but you get something entirely different at 18:09. Some element of unpredictability ... well, it would be so if the same trick hadn't been already used in countless other tracks, but still it gives the track good flow. 

34:00-35:05 hate all that mantra crap but the groove after the breakdown sounds massive. 

38:30-39:40. They have that arpeggiated melody rising up in the breakdown but yet again you get something entirely different when the beat starts palying. Essentially the same thing as 18:09. Good one.

I love progressive because it when it's made right it delivers the energy in the right way. It doesn't try to kill your ears with billions of notes and layers all the time, like some other goa/psy varieties do. Instead of that it creates tension and release via the interplay of intense parts and more empty/relaxed sections, and it creates anticipation and surprize by introducing the main theme not when you expect it to happen. This is what makes it really interesting

One of the very best examples ever

 

2:48  they start building the tension and then fool with your expectations at 3:42; 4:59-5:09 Wow, this is massive!!! 5:10 fooled again...  5:51-6:05 ha! fooled again... but things start coming together ... 6:20 onwards: OH FUCKYEAH!!!!!

Also the main theme is introduced very early, at 2:19 but it quickly dissapears and doesn't appear again until 6:30. With all these micro-build-ups throughout the track you expect this to happen much earlier. Frigging excellent composition 

 

Tl;dr I do like these drops and I perfectly understand why people go mad on the floor.

[Oopie]

My internal computer can't process this phenomenon. I'd say there are quite many people, if we'd like to talk about the big masses in this case, who simply only understand and enjoy the most primitive part of the track - kick + bass? All the psychedelic sweeps is just unnecessary garbage for them...  Yet it's kinda understandable - K, B & PsyFX combo usually isn't that deep, musically interesting concept that it'd move the hearts of many, yet it serves as the perfect easy flowing fuel for one's drug filled dance rituals. 

 

[dhollmusik]

7 hours ago, Tsotsi said:

Personally I like the 35:00 drop. From someone that still goes to clubs, the "progressive goa" are pretty funky, they just sort of come out from underneath rather than above. Kinda takes you by surprise. Definitely a techno thing, especially those damn sweeps. I haven't heard a modern techno track that doesn't have a sound effect that just sounds like a high pitched smoke machine.

#cocaine&ket 

indeed...prog is lost in the K-Hole

 

[dhollmusik]

53 minutes ago, Agneton said:

Ace Ventura is far from the worst example of this kind of minimal drop-infested culture. Go check the average Brazil psytrance-festival video on youtube for a truely horrific experience :p promo-videos posted by artists only feature the drop-points because that's the (only) part where people go wild.

Example:
 

Edit: Missing the times where drops were called climaxes.

jesus wept, that is far removed from psychedelic trance.  Even the lazy Terence McKenna samples sound so out of place.  And with the promo video highlighting only the photogenic girls...I don't wanna sound snobbish but it does all seem quite superficial, i.e. existing or occurring at or on the surface / appearing to be true or real [psychedelic] only until examined more closely. 

Psychedelic means to dissolve the mind while expanding the consciousness.  In music (rock, trance etc) it usually signifies multi-layered elements, trippy otherworldy cosmic hypnotic vibes, progressive structures (progressive as in like prog-rock, for some reason 'progressive' means entirely the opposite in EDM, where it more denotes something minimal).

I suppose that's what most people think psy-trance is now.  Just like how progressive in electronic dance musik has come to mean the opposite of what it meant in rock, now we've got psychedelic coming to mean the opposite of what it meant at the advent of psychedelic goa trance.

At the very least, it's interesting to observe.

[dhollmusik]

43 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

17:00-18:09 very cool. Massive melody in the breakdown followed by the riser effect creating the tension which you expect to be released into the same melody playing over the beat - but you get something entirely different at 18:09. Some element of unpredictability ... well, it would be so it the same trick hadn't been already used in countless other tracks, but still it gives the track good flow. 

34:00-35:05 hate all that mantra crap but the groove after the breakdown sounds massive. 

38:30-39:40. They have that arpeggiated melody rising up in the breakdown but yet again you get something entirely different when the beat starts palying. Essentially the same thing as 18:09. Good one.

I love progressive because it when it's made right it delivers the energy in the right way. It doesn't try to kill your ears with billions of notes and layers all the time, like some other goa/psy varieties do. Instead of that it creates tension and release via the interplay of intense parts and more empty/relaxed sections, and it creates anticipation and surprize by introducing the main theme not when you expect it to happen. This is what makes it really interesting

One of the very best examples ever

 

2:48  they start building the tension and then fool with your expectations at 3:42; 4:59-5:09 Wow, this is massive!!! 5:10 fooled again...  5:51-6:05 ha! fooled again... but things start coming together ... 6:20 onwards: OH FUCKYEAH!!!!! 

 

Tl;dr I do like these drops and I perfectly understand why people go mad on the floor.

 

 

 

[recursion loop]

2 minutes ago, dhollmusik said:

 

 

 

Okay, that's pretty much me when I see people going mad about some generic neo-goa "so many layers, so much acid, truly psychedelic" and such

To each their own

[dhollmusik]

42 minutes ago, Oopie said:

My internal computer can't process this phenomenon. I'd say there are quite many people, if we'd like to talk about the big masses in this case, who simply only understand and enjoy the most primitive part of the track - kick + bass? All the psychedelic sweeps is just unnecessary garbage for them...  Yet it's kinda understandable - K, B & PsyFX combo usually isn't that deep, musically interesting concept that it'd move the hearts of many, yet it serves as the perfect easy flowing fuel for one's drug filled dance rituals. 

 

i agree with your observation: for instance techno already had the monopoly on the kick+bass+fx combi.  It looks like what modern psy is doing is adding the build-up style of dubstep-drops (which were in vogue a few years ago) with the minimal-techno beat-drops which are still in fashion, then adding the odd 'psychedelic' factory-sound, or corny voice samples referencing drugs that no one takes anymore.

I know I've linked this before, but it's still so bang-on:

 

[dhollmusik]

3 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

Okay, that's pretty much me when I see people going mad about some generic neo-goa "so many layers, so much acid, truly psychedelic" and such

To each their own

haha, well you may also have a point there.

To each their own is the best response, to be fair

[recursion loop]

All in all I understand why progressive/minimal can be not appealing at all to someone. I listen to many different kinds of psy/goa/chill and prog is my favourite variety overall - but still there is too much of that generic stuff that relies on tried and tested patterns invented by someone else and doesn't add anything new or interesting. Ofc, if all you have is the kbbb, swooshes and occasional synth stabs, it may be very boring - but not necessary. Some people manage to pull off terrific composiitons of very few elements

I think it's way harder to write good minimal track because it requires actual composition talent. When all you need to do is to impress the listeners with all the acid/squelchy/trippy/SFX kind of stuff your synths can do things are way easier

 

Classic track, one of my all time favourites. 3:28 - goosebumps

 

[dhollmusik]

13 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

All in all I understand why progressive/minimal can be not appealing at all to someone. I listen to many different kinds of psy/goa/chill and prog is my favourite variety overall - but still there is too much of that generic stuff that relies on tried and tested patterns invented by someone else and doesn't add anything new or interesting. Ofc, if all you have is the kbbb, swooshes and occasional synth stabs, it may be very boring - but not necessary. Some people manage to pull off terrific composiitons of very few elements

I think it's way harder to write good minimal track because it requires actual composition talent. When all you need to do is to impress the listeners with all the acid/squelchy/trippy/SFX kind of stuff your synths can do things are way easier

 

Classic track, one of my all time favourites. 3:28 - goosebumps

 

Good post, and I do indeed prefer that track to the one you linked before, nice disco stylings.

The creator of that Psytrance-is-shit video is Loud, and his album is funnily enough listed on Discogs as being prog, and even has some minimal drops.  But as you say it's possible to do minimal stuff well, like here from 6:30:

 

 

[dhollmusik]

This minimal drop from techno is pretty nice...from 2:40: the percussive hi-hats dropping with the kick/bass make it still danceable without feeling deflating or anti-climactic:

 

[recursion loop]

56 minutes ago, dhollmusik said:

The creator of that Psytrance-is-shit video is Loud

I know  Actually I even somehow like the Psy-is-shit track, at least like it more than some "serious" tracks in that style (ofc it can't exist without the video). When someone has talent this somehow shows up even in deliberately stupid creations like this one.

I have mixed feelings on 5 billion stars but that Goblins track is awesome in every aspect.

The Beroshima track sounds a bit generic to me at the first listen but it has the tension/release structure done right. Nice one.

[dhollmusik]

4 hours ago, recursion loop said:

I have mixed feelings on 5 billion stars but that Goblins track is awesome in every aspect.

I've only heard Goblins & Green Star.  Impressed by both.

 

[staffan]

Y'all need to listen to  real drop music. =))

Killargh!!!

 

[Padmapani]

i have no idea why people go wild to something like that when at a festival or when listening at home, but i understand it in clubs with shitty pa's and the dj playing deep into the red. then it's the only time you'll actually hear and feel the kick and bass and it's not disappearing in a horribly limited mess.

that said i do use the "drop" to kick and bass in my own tracks. but i don't see those parts as a climax, but rather as a starting point to build toward a climax or even as a sort of break. if a simple kick and bass is the climax or your track, it's most likely a very boring track.

[Basilisk]

I've always disliked build-ups that don't deliver... now you can hear entire sets of this sort of thing, apparently. I tend to look for some combination of complexity, nuance, and style in whatever music I am listening to, and the bog-standard umpa-lumpa psy-prog with stripped-down returns is exactly the opposite of this. But, much like triplets/offbeat bass, people seem to absolutely adore the stuff.

Incidentally, it is funny as hell that some of the same parody videos are still doing the rounds years later... Loud's "10 reasons" video has 4.5 million views by now! And people seem to have taken it as an instruction manual, not a warning? I wonder if anyone has ever dared to drop it at a festival...

[dhollmusik]

Just now, Basilisk said:

people seem to have taken it as an instruction manual, not a warning? I wonder if anyone has ever dared to drop it at a festival...

Much like Orwell's 1984. 

i bet it has been dropped in a set  

[recursion loop]

1984 seems now being implemented step by step by my country's government.

Seems that people are confusing drop with climax. They are not the same thing. Drop is the release after the tension/buildup, climax is, well... climax. The main point of the track when everything comes together and blows your socks off (or at least supposed to do so... Sometimes it just blows). Climax may happen at the drop but this can make the track sound very predictable. Better tracks tease you with few drops before the climax actually happens

 

Do listen to that EClip track i posted. It has one real climax at 6:30 and multiple drops before it.

[Padmapani]

2 hours ago, recursion loop said:

1984 seems now being implemented step by step by my country's government.

Seems that people are confusing drop with climax. They are not the same thing. Drop is the release after the tension/buildup, climax is, well... climax. The main point of the track when everything comes together and blows your socks off (or at least supposed to do so... Sometimes it just blows). Climax may happen at the drop but this can make the track sound very predictable. Better tracks tease you with few drops before the climax actually happens

 

Do listen to that EClip track i posted. It has one real climax at 6:30 and multiple drops before it.

i think most governments are doing this…

i agree. a "drop" is or rather used to be a different thing. but now when reading discussions with producers of other electronic music most (esp. those that make more commercial stuff) almost use the term interchangably with "chorus" or any main part of the track. it's been so overused that it almost lost its meaning.

 

i like the "drop" at 3:42. it's a not even posing for a climax, it's just a clever way to switch from one section to another and actually goes into a break.
e-clip has sacrificed some of the magic his early works had and picked up more elements from what's more popular now, but he's still a very good musician. 

[Imba]

As much as I don't like such minimalistic drops I perfectly understand need for them. It is all psychological. Some top notch producers told me they don't like it, some of them hate it but they see need for it regarding crowd, so they make them. If you want to play and be big, you need to make some compromises otherwise you can play only on local parties. If you can combine your love with business, that's success.

You make tension, then you put it down, put some primitive beats for stomping than start building again. Imagine 8 minutes track of constant full power and melodies, you get tired after 20-30 minutes. Mood changes are good and people love them.

 

I always like to give people to listen to my most favorite live set ever which is this one:

 

 

We should really study Burn In Noise, technicaly and mood wise he done it to perfection. His music is super powerful with tension builds for over few minutes just like in Goa Trance, yet here and there he put them 'boring drops'. It is different kind of power, different drive, different mood which is needed for the mind and for the body of dancers.

 

I am in process of doing experiments with my own music. Making different version of already released music, example my album... now whole album have it's own remixes or edites with different 'drops' or 'build ups' and some of them work way better than original ones. I know it's up to each ones taste but there is some science in it

[recursion loop]

On 11/25/2019 at 11:42 PM, Imba said:

You make tension, then you put it down, put some primitive beats for stomping than start building again. Imagine 8 minutes track of constant full power and melodies, you get tired after 20-30 minutes. Mood changes are good and people love them.

This! I wish more producers would realize this. 

Sometimes i think that large part of newschool goa is made for people with very short attention span who just skip through few random parts of a track, like "3:15 cool acid,  5:25 yeah, powerful stuff, 6:30 well, some melody, okay must be a cool track... Can't be arsed to listen to the whole thing, time to move on, cat videos won't watch themselves".

 

Progressive is not supposed to be listened like that, you really need to listen to the whole track from the beginning to the end. If the track tells a story that's the only way to actually hear it.

Some of my favourite examples. If you just skip to random parts, chances are you won't hear much except for the beat and some random synths or samples but when listented from the beginning to the end these tracks unflold in some inetersting ways

 

[recursion loop]

Superbeast, I can't understand shit of what you are trying to say.