What do you miss in music/goa/psy-trance?

[Multi-Media]

Loudness album list, sorted already by "dynamic range" lowest at first, as you can see there are severall with "0" (zero) DR;

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr

In the top 5: (careful with volume)

Style? Don´t know "noise" I guess

Edit, here a guitar one, it has been turned down 8,5db by YT:

 

[Padmapani]

6 hours ago, astralprojection said:

isnt it the xFer OTT plugin that inspired the ableton Over the top preset? chicken and the egg scenario perhaps.

i was under the impression the xfer plugin came first. anyway it doesnt matter, and youre right. it does flatten things out but when used in moderation its an easy cheat code to get a sound sounding fatter and bigger than it really is. ive not yet heard any dubstep in the -2db lufs range but then again i dont listen to much dubstep id rather keep my sanity =) (at least whats left of it )

i've heard that it was originally an ableton preset and was transferred to a plugin by xfer by popular demand of non-ableton users. but i can't be sure either.

you know i'm not a big fan of covering up mistakes in mixing, arranging and sound design with compression. if your sounds are good, just a tiny bit of compression and some saturation can go a long way to bring everything upfront.

about dubstep:

it seems more annoying is better here. i know an oldschool trashy freetekno track, which just consists of a kickdrum and a sampled circular saw, that's more musical than this.

@Multi-Media

it seems that to reach such extreme values for loudness, monotony and pure noise are necessary…

[Multi-Media]

This dubstep or what I have read in comments "deathstep" seems quite popular, I have seen many with Mio´s of views. Here one with 13Mio, it is better than the above example and must have been quite "loud" originally cause YT turned this 8,6db down. I mean I like some blackmetal what many would call noise, but dubstep is another kind of noise  It is fun to explore sometimes these weird new styles
 

Seems much of the work in this style is cutting wave files into small pieces and putting a ton of effects on.

[astralprojection]

Just checked the Youtubes you guys linked. What in gods green earth is that. The kick and snare seems fairly coherent and punchy but the rest is just distorted noise I can't imagine it sounding any better on the dancefloor. Kids these days man what can you do. I blame deadmau5. While he has some very good melodies and quite nicely produced I think it's his fault that this generation thinks squashing everything sounds good. (as far as dubstep and generic edm go anyway) 

Deathstep is a good name for it, Holy crap it's unlistenable

 

@padmapani

Yeah you may be right I will concede

[Multi-Media]

Well there was this style "industrial-noise" already 25+ years ago, here even a track from one of the better known artists named like a goa track:

Did not like it very much "back in goth/ebm days" of mine, but seems better than dubstep
 

Haus Arafna was even played sometimes in "goth" clubs

 

[Multi-Media]

There was this label named "cold meat industry" they had some finer stuff with more ambient and also (northern) ethno elements, I had a limited 2x CD compilation from them but sold it cause over album length it is too boring (single tracks work fine imho and are really dark) and also it had some collectors value (when CDs were still bought)

 

[astralprojection]

25 minutes ago, Multi-Media said:

Well there was this style "industrial-noise" already 25+ years ago,

 

 

that i can understand; it was faaar from -2db lufs - even your example "datsik + virtual riot" i can understand, it was within the range of acceptable 'musicality', in my opinion. but that "HEKLER - frequency jammer" i couldnt understand at all. and i think im just getting too old and thats exactly what my dad said about goa trance when it arrived  "how can you listen to this noise its just DUM-TS-DUM-TS-DUM-TS and everything sounds the same"

[recursion loop]

I thnk brostep was sort of cool when it just arrived, kinda "look what's possible, it's also called music", but that Helker track .... 

 

 

[Multi-Media]

Brostep? What does it mean, brothers stepping on each other ?

I made severall noise/indus/darkambient tracks many years ago...
Here one of my 1st "solo" tracks, even the video is a bit simmilar to the In Slaughter Natives one I notice now

This a bit newer: (Pics are also from me)

@astralprojection

Hope you like this more than the commercial trance I send you

[recursion loop]

16 minutes ago, Multi-Media said:

Brostep? What does it mean, 

I think it was the word invented to differentiate between the "dubstep invented by Skrillex" and the "one and only real true dubstep" nobody ever heard

Somehow you managed to make this thead end up with the Godwin's law, good job  

Nice track tho. Doesn't sound anywhere near as obnoxious as that "brostep" stuff, actually very comfortable to listen to, despite being deliberately noisy (is this what's called "Martial Industrial"?).

[Padmapani]

i really have absolutely no problems with hard, noisy, aggressive music. but it does have to have punch and drive. such brostep tracks have neither. not only have they been limited to death leaving them flat as a pancake without any punch. also dubstep is basically the chillout version of drumnbass, especially with that tempo. i just don't get why anyone wants to make hard-as-fuck chillout.

edit: this sort of dark atmospheric ambient in this thread is something i can fully understand. that in slaughter natives track is pretty nice. after all i did listen to (preferably doom) metal a long time ago

[Multi-Media]

23 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

Somehow you managed to make this thead end up with the Godwin's law, good job  

Nice track tho. Doesn't sound anywhere near as obnoxious as that "brostep" stuff, actually very comfrotable to listen to, despite being deliberately noisy (is this what's called "Martial Industrial"?).

Godwins law: "

“You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the participents [sic!] drags out Hitler and the Nazis.”"

Industrial splintered in so many subgenres that I lost the overview, but martial is yes, often with war themes, but I believe faster and has "march" like drums structures (or so....). I already complained in other threads about "modern industrial" which is more rave/hardstyle and not indus at all.. so I will not post about it (oops... I did it again).

What is industrial here ?? (4.5 mio views?) ALSO -9DB by YT normalization could be in the winners..
 

In German is a nice word "Etikettenschwindel"

[recursion loop]

14 hours ago, Multi-Media said:

Godwins law: "

“You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the participents [sic!] drags out Hitler and the Nazis.”"

It was a stupid joke about the content of your video.  

 

I think that song with the red-black girl might be classified as EBM or dark electro, which is also industrial (or not?) At least that's what I thought industiral was, when I was in my teens.

 

 

[Multi-Media]

@recursion loop

I don´t think other than it is also an electronic song with harder beats it has much to do with industrial or even ebm. However I am an old crumpy man, so better not listen to me 
Also - even if the OP said "what do you miss in music", I guess he meant more goa/psy - so my posts may have been a bit OT...I did not want to get into the genre discussion and better hear your words when you said "do it yourself"

[fluorosis]

On 6/22/2020 at 9:52 AM, recursion loop said:

Except that very small fraction of these melodies is any good IMO.

That was the same ratio of good to bad back in the 90's.  People simply have rose-coloured glasses and think that the past was always better, and forget that they are cherry-picking their favorite tracks from an entire year of goa-psy that was "meh" quality. I can honestly propose 10-20 tracks from the entire 90's and then decide that the 90's were better...

What is missing? Music.

No one dares take a risk anymore. We have managed to recreate mainstream society within the rave scenes. We reward conformity, punish eccentricism, etc. 
Everything is about some Big-Assed-Mafia-Festivals and their copy-paste lineups that are all based upon obvious sycophantry and court intrigue.

But what is mostly missing from ALLLLLLLLL of electronica? Music.  People study "electronic music production techniques" and I'm pretty sure that there are University courses for this new field. What is missing? Music. 

Am I referring to Music Theory? No, although you WOULD think that it would be useful for our thousands upon thousands of producers to be able to communicate effectively with trained musicians. 

Am I obliquely implying that the trance musical public is musically ignorant (aka, went from Pop or Rock directly into Trance, and thus have never left shallow-cool-kid superficial musical concepts behind, which is why most people think of Skazi or Infected Mushroom when you say "guitars in trance"... what if Segovia or Sabicas were to be a trance producer?) Yes, I suppose that I am insinuating that we are an ignorant scene who gets what we deserve, LOL.

What do we want to do about it?

How many damned posts must I read in which someone seeks something that copies 90's music ("is there anything that sounds like X-Dream or Etnica etc?")

The very idea of asking for copies of greatness ignores what made that music great in the first place:  it's originality was certainly part of it.

We are basically glorifying the idea that it's possible to a achieve a formula that isn't formulaic. Sorry mate! It doesn't work like that.

Death to the formulas.

 

See those funny black and white keys on that keyboard? Those are "notes".

Despite the Biggest Names Ever insisting that technology has rendered "notes" redudant, I can assure you that not only are they ever-relevant, but that there is an order and structure to how these notes are connected to each other!  This structure is obvious to any serious musician or MUSICAL composer who has studied their relationship. Believe it or not, any semi-competent musician or composer from NON-ELECTRONICA can tell in 1 second if you know what you are doing with those "notes" and the sad fact is, most producers are NOT even semi-competent at MUSIC, but they still proffer this idea of technology or a plugin being able to fix that.

I hold out hope for the fusions achieved when actual musicians start playing with technology and making it a tool in service to music.

What we currently have is music in service to technology.

We need to up our musical game a bit.

[fluorosis]

I think I can be a bit more helpful. 
Psytrance is missing "HARMONY".

We have melodies.  That's only a single note at a time, plus a more-or-less droning bassline.  People occasionally get jiggy with the bassline, but I will readily acknowledge that rapid chord progressions in which the bassline changes tonic notes all the time can be nauseating at times, rather like an airplane changing altitude a lot and often.

What is missing are harmony lines that go WITH that melody and imply the richer harmonic world of chords and, well, harmonies. It's common for choral works to be written with 4 parts of harmony, for example. We occasionally get accidental harmonies as the melody/lead sound may have a delay effect and we hear the leftover results of one note trailing over the next note(s).

We occasionally get *real* harmony, with a background pad sound playing gated chords, for example, but I miss richer chord options than the simple major/minor diatonic triads, like 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, suspended 2nds/4ths, secondary dominants, tritone substitution, etc. Getting beyond the basics to the deeper more complex emotions, etc.

I'm missing richer harmony. That would take trance beyond Goa trance, in my book, which is where it needs to eventually go, in my opinion.

[Padmapani]

3 hours ago, fluorosis said:

I think I can be a bit more helpful. 
Psytrance is missing "HARMONY".

We have melodies.  That's only a single note at a time, plus a more-or-less droning bassline.  People occasionally get jiggy with the bassline, but I will readily acknowledge that rapid chord progressions in which the bassline changes tonic notes all the time can be nauseating at times, rather like an airplane changing altitude a lot and often.

What is missing are harmony lines that go WITH that melody and imply the richer harmonic world of chords and, well, harmonies. It's common for choral works to be written with 4 parts of harmony, for example. We occasionally get accidental harmonies as the melody/lead sound may have a delay effect and we hear the leftover results of one note trailing over the next note(s).

We occasionally get *real* harmony, with a background pad sound playing gated chords, for example, but I miss richer chord options than the simple major/minor diatonic triads, like 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, suspended 2nds/4ths, secondary dominants, tritone substitution, etc. Getting beyond the basics to the deeper more complex emotions, etc.

I'm missing richer harmony. That would take trance beyond Goa trance, in my book, which is where it needs to eventually go, in my opinion.

you do not produce psy i suppose?

once you go in with all these rich chords, progressions and concepts that work for old music and bring it into electronic dance music you almost inevitably end up with an ultra-cringey cheesefest.

i've had the same idea a while back and wanted to bring some of the magic that i know from my prog rock background into psy and the results have all been despicably bad.

the only way i've found to do harmony in a tasteful way in our context is to use sublety. lots of it. if you want to hint at a chord, you might for instance use an arp-like melody and play the chord defining note a single time in a whole bar, you might as you mention use delay, you might use a reverb tail of a heavily filtered note, you might use the resonance of your filter to emphasize a particular frequency while playing the root note, you might use a pad that uses a waveform that emphasises a particular overtone…

if you want to go deeper and more complex and don't want to risk ending up with unlistenable shit, you go deeper and more complex with sound design.

[fluorosis]

1 minute ago, Padmapani said:

you do not produce psy i suppose?

once you go in with all these rich chords, progressions and concepts that work for old music and bring it into electronic dance music you almost inevitably end up with an ultra-cringey cheesefest.

i've had the same idea a while back and wanted to bring some of the magic that i know from my prog rock background into psy and the results have all been despicably bad.

the only way i've found to do harmony in a tasteful way in our context is to use sublety. lots of it. if you want to hint at a chord, you might for instance use an arp-like melody and play the chord defining note a single time in a whole bar, you might as you mention use delay, you might use a reverb tail of a heavily filtered note, you might use the resonance of your filter to emphasize a particular frequency while playing the root note, you might use a pad that uses a waveform that emphasises a particular overtone…

if you want to go deeper and more complex and don't want to risk ending up with unlistenable shit, you go deeper and more complex with sound design.

I don't think it necessitates an "ultra cringe-worthy cheese fest" as simplistic major/minor diatonic chord progressions are typically more cheesy than richer harmony.

Voice leading, my friend. Do you imagine that one jumps up and down like a silly Balearic rabbit?  Consecutive chords in a GOOD professional level chord progression usually share notes in common and half-step movement in resolution is ideal. One voices the chords and inversions and notes with sophistication and maturity.

 I'm familiar with arpeggiators and delay effects, and it's true that one must take care for the space of a mix, but this is tangential, I would say.

What I generally feel in most "formula" prog and fullon is this minor triad "sigh" as the only harmonic context beyond the bassline indicating the key we are in. I need a little more to FEEL actual human emotions.  I sincerely doubt that anyone in their right mind would call the superlocrian mode "cheesy", or any other modes of the harmonic minor scale, for example.

Don't confuse poor initial compositional results and first attempts with a bad conceptual approach. Honestly, you should just work on your prog-rock attempts more and after significant effort you may find that you have something amazing. No one said that achieving the next level in psychedelic trance was easy. Maybe you will bring some cool new fusion to this world!

I think that one will pass through many throw-away melodies and harmonic structural ideas before one arrives at something that SOUNDS good. One must be ruthless and not settle for the first thing that comes along. Often times one can recontextualize the chords with regards to the bassline, "counter-tonic", relative-major/minor,  recontextualizing a sustained minor triad as the 3-5-7 of a new 1, etc. The chord voicings and the VOICE-LEADING are what will determine the meaning (context) of a melody, and this can be as subtle or as obtuse as you make it.

Honestly, I think that the reason most dark psy features very little melody is this fear of "oh that's cheesy" when one first even begins messing around with a synth. One must embrace the initial cheese, study music more, and then improve the cheese until it's a 3-year aged fine parmesan lol...

[fluorosis]

but no, I'm no producer nor musician... just a picky whinger who likes to babble on and on about topics I know fuck-all about... that's why I like forums, lol.

[recursion loop]

10 hours ago, fluorosis said:

Honestly, I think that the reason most dark psy features very little melody is this fear of "oh that's cheesy" when one first even begins messing around with a synth. One must embrace the initial cheese, study music more, and then improve the cheese until it's a 3-year aged fine parmesan lol.

 

I think a cheesy and lame melody is a cheesy and lame melody regradless of the genre and a great melody is a great melody regradless of the genre.

Psytrance has some restrictions, you typically will have less chord/keynote changes and more repetitive patterns because you don't want to lose the hypnotic momentum, but still you can have your melodies and harmonic sturctures as sofisticated as you want.

Okay the last one has all cheese in the world but still sounds very cool

[Padmapani]

On 7/13/2020 at 11:11 PM, fluorosis said:

but no, I'm no producer nor musician... just a picky whinger who likes to babble on and on about topics I know fuck-all about... that's why I like forums, lol.

damn, i wanted to challenge you to make a psy track that actually sounds good and uses an epic progression from some sort of prog rock track

[fluorosis]

 

I'll note that no one said "epic progression from some sort of prog rock track" except you, so that's your challenge, lol...

Mine is to utilize multi-part harmony without resulting in a cheese fest, as you put it, right?

Ok, I'll try. It will probably take me a long time. I'll update you with my likely sorry results and you can judge if the implementation was bad or if the idea was simply a non-starter from the get-go.

[Multi-Media]

13 hours ago, Padmapani said:

damn, i wanted to challenge you to make a psy track that actually sounds good and uses an epic progression from some sort of prog rock track

Progressive Death/Doommetal mixed with Psytrance could be interesting 
As long it does not just put a beat and some 303 "under" the metal I recon...
There were some attempts even mixing blackmetal with indus/techno, but what I heard was pretty half-hearted (not gone the whole way..tststs)

[Padmapani]

15 minutes ago, Multi-Media said:

Progressive Death/Doommetal mixed with Psytrance could be interesting 
As long it does not just put a beat and some 303 "under" the metal I recon...

i did try to steal from tool too but failed in the same way. even when using the general idea of the gorgeous melody from lateralus as a guide it ultimately sounded too happy and cheesy.

[Padmapani]

1 hour ago, fluorosis said:

 

I'll note that no one said "epic progression from some sort of prog rock track" except you, so that's your challenge, lol...

Mine is to utilize multi-part harmony without resulting in a cheese fest, as you put it, right?

Ok, I'll try. It will probably take me a long time. I'll update you with my likely sorry results and you can judge if the implementation was bad or if the idea was simply a non-starter from the get-go.

cool, it will be interesting at the very least.
it seems recursion loop is right and the only answer to "what are you missing in psytrance" is to make that music yourself