The Psy Trance Learning (potentially Mega-) Thread

Pxlhg

@Luxthor said:
Here is a fine example of something-trance from the days when I was listening to it. I won't go further than this type of trance, surgical psy is too much for my taste.

IF you had read the guide I linked to you would have learned that this is Tribal (Psy), sort of invented by the artist in the video (according to the guide).
😁😂

dendy

@Pxlhg said:
so, I came across this descriptive article on /Psy Trance/ only to find that it has a few sub genres, 20!! to be exact (well, the ones listed in this article anyway). I find this very confusing and borderline stupid.🫤

@ik2000 said:
Yep… totally mad. Seems likes all you need to do is add “psy” to another genre (or country!) and you’ve got a whole new Psytrance genre. Time to start a genre folks…. I’m going with Scottishpsy… bring on the acid bagpipes (yep, I’m Scottish)

This is very common in all electronic music genres .. you have “main” genre name and then it is divided to subgenres, usually grouping part of that genre using specific sounds, track structures, etc.. people just want to be more specific, it helps them to find the kind of music they like most (many people are not genre-wide when it comes to what they want to listen, they want to listen just specific group of songs).

It’s same in techno, drumnbass, house, etc…

I found nothing wrong on that. It just helper tool tool find music i like in enormous vast ocean of new music which is created nowadays.

For example i don’t like hard aggresive harsh non-melodic psytrance full of just random bleeps and bloops - so i know i should avoid “darkpsy” and “hitek” :-)) The subgenre of psy i like most is called “progressive psy” so that is what i search on YT when i am on hunt for new music.

It’s just tool, filter.

Luxthor

@Pxlhg said:

@Luxthor said:
Here is a fine example of something-trance from the days when I was listening to it. I won't go further than this type of trance, surgical psy is too much for my taste.

IF you had read the guide I linked to you would have learned that this is Tribal (Psy), sort of invented by the artist in the video (according to the guide).
😁😂

Sorry Pxlhg, you caught me! 😂 Initially in the post, I stated Goa trance for the ‘God is God’, then chickened out after I listened to a few contemporary Goa tracks, it was nothing even close to the old school Goa. 🧐
 
Now, after more knowledge has been acquired, I am not that far from what I initially thought. It was Juno's first dip into the tribal era. For me, Amampondo was the secret ingredient for true Juno sound.

Pxlhg

@dendy said:

@Pxlhg said:
so, I came across this descriptive article on /Psy Trance/ only to find that it has a few sub genres, 20!! to be exact (well, the ones listed in this article anyway). I find this very confusing and borderline stupid.🫤

@ik2000 said:
Yep… totally mad. Seems likes all you need to do is add “psy” to another genre (or country!) and you’ve got a whole new Psytrance genre. Time to start a genre folks…. I’m going with Scottishpsy… bring on the acid bagpipes (yep, I’m Scottish)

This is very common in all electronic music genres .. you have “main” genre name and then it is divided to subgenres, usually grouping part of that genre using specific sounds, track structures, etc.. people just want to be more specific, it helps them to find the kind of music they like most (many people are not genre-wide when it comes to what they want to listen, they want to listen just specific group of songs).

It’s same in techno, drumnbass, house, etc…

I found nothing wrong on that. It just helper tool tool find music i like in enormous vast ocean of new music which is created nowadays.

For example i don’t like hard aggresive harsh non-melodic psytrance full of just random bleeps and bloops - so i know i should avoid “darkpsy” and “hitek” :-)) The subgenre of psy i like most is called “progressive psy” so that is what i search on YT when i am on hunt for new music.

It’s just tool, filter.

@Luxthor said:

@Pxlhg said:

@Luxthor said:
Here is a fine example of something-trance from the days when I was listening to it. I won't go further than this type of trance, surgical psy is too much for my taste.

IF you had read the guide I linked to you would have learned that this is Tribal (Psy), sort of invented by the artist in the video (according to the guide).
😁😂

Sorry Pxlhg, you caught me! 😂 Initially in the post, I stated Goa trance for the ‘God is God’, then chickened out after I listened to a few contemporary Goa tracks, it was nothing even close to the old school Goa. 🧐
 
Now, after more knowledge has been acquired, I am not that far from what I initially thought. It was Juno's first dip into the tribal era. For me, Amampondo was the secret ingredient for true Juno sound.

I'll talk to you both in one go 😁 I'm quite old(61) for listening to stuff like this at all and the genres are extra confusing when you just get thrown in to it all. There are elements of all electronic music that really speaks to me but I do not want to be bound by rules even if I can find that tempting to just try, once or twice. Anyway, I have no history and I don't recognise any names. It's all fun though, even with the confusion.

Not about Psy but there was a documentary on Swedish TV not long ago about the history of some of the electronic stuff started, like those Royksop guys in Norway and Bjork etc. Very interesting.

dendy

@Pxlhg
I'm quite old(61)

oh man i am sometimes stressed by mine 46, thinking i am already too old :-)) You are giving me hope :-)

but I do not want to be bound by rules even if I can find that tempting to just try, once or twice

I can relate to this very much. In general in am not big friend of genre boundaries - At the end, my music is absolutely out of standard subgenre boundaries/templates (which often leads to people who actually listen psytrance a lot do not like my music cause it’s to weird non-standard for them lol).. i tend just use musical elements i like not taking too much care about if i am inside genre definition..

For listening, i found it sometimes handy just to find faster new music to listen.

Pxlhg

@dendy said:

@Pxlhg
I'm quite old(61)

oh man i am sometimes stressed by mine 46, thinking i am already too old :-)) You are giving me hope :-)

😂😂

Luxthor

@Pxlhg said:

@dendy said:

@Pxlhg
I'm quite old(61)

oh man i am sometimes stressed by mine 46, thinking i am already too old :-)) You are giving me hope :-)

😂😂

@Pxlhg, Ben Watkins - “Juno Reactor" (66), is older than you, and who started this depressing theme?! I’m 51 and feel like 31, so who cares. 😂

@dendy I really thought you had around 30ish. But we all here are open-minded and young-spirited; music is a cure for the soul.

Pxlhg

@Luxthor said:

@Pxlhg said:

@dendy said:

@Pxlhg
I'm quite old(61)

oh man i am sometimes stressed by mine 46, thinking i am already too old :-)) You are giving me hope :-)

😂😂

@Pxlhg, Ben Watkins - “Juno Reactor" (66), is older than you, and who started this depressing theme?! I’m 51 and feel like 31, so who cares. 😂

Sure! It's all relative. The people I surrounded myself with for most of my life would not have accepted none of the electronic genres, nor I. I discovered I liked (some of) it, late in life - guess that was what I was referring to. Happy you feel younger, personally I feel (and behave) like 127 and a half. 😳 😂

dendy

@Luxthor said:
@dendy I really thought you had around 30ish. But we all here are open-minded and young-spirited; music is a cure for the soul.

well, i have one son but my wife is always saying “i don’t need more kids, i have already two”

🤣🤣🤣

jwmmakerofmusic

@Luxthor said:

@Pxlhg said:

@dendy said:

@Pxlhg
I'm quite old(61)

oh man i am sometimes stressed by mine 46, thinking i am already too old :-)) You are giving me hope :-)

😂😂

@Pxlhg, Ben Watkins - “Juno Reactor" (66), is older than you, and who started this depressing theme?! I’m 51 and feel like 31, so who cares. 😂

Ben is 66 already?! 😳 Juno Reactor is one major part of my late childhood/early teens. Now I feel old. 🤣 Kidding, I'm only 39.

jollyDodger

@dendy said:

@jwmmakerofmusic
consider myself pretty adept at sound design, and while the kick and bassline seem relatively simple to create (I probably could craft the specialised kick in NS2's Obsidian and give it some sauce with an EQ, then Beef or Knock),

Yet you can’t be more wrong here :-))) kick and bass (and how they play together) is very tricky part of whole track… there is much more behind that it looks..

1/ kick

First - forget Obsidian.. without multiple rounds of resampling you won’t get result as needed and this method isn’t ideal for beginner cause you can get lost on the way with partial results, make mistakes which are impossible to fix in later stages. Also there is problem that because of some dsp optimalisations, very short envelopes sounds differently during playback and after rendered. Not usable for this at all.

Instead of, use just Drambo as kick synth and then resample it as wav .. This is important, it’s always better to use final kick as wav, here because of transient is very importsnt it plays always same with sample precision. Maybe in most cases even directly from synth it will be ok, but wav is just safe bet. You really doesn’t want fluctuating transient of kick

notice also how my kick looks in audio editor.. i set 1/16 grid intentionaly.. your kick should not be longer than this, in some harder styles like darkpsy and hitek it’s even shorter, really just knock in first 1/16 with just few ms tail during 2/16

this us importsnt because 2-4/16 are allocated for bass

You doesn't need much other processing on such kick, i would say it's even contraproductive to apply any cause it can introduce various unwanted phase shifting issues.. to fit kick with bass sonically, use just transposing of kick.. in semitones or fine pitch tweak.. if you want eq, just tune eq and then resample result again to wav.

Any realtime processing on kick can i troduce some problem which is hard to identify and fix in final mix.

2/ bass

use just saw as basic oscillator, sharo decay and low sustain on filter envelope.. Again also vass needs significant transient - some people layer it whit highpassed kick, inpreffer just shaping with amp envelope and eventually applying FAC transient.

Now important detail is solving problem of low frequency fight between kick tail and 2/16 bass.

I usually apply hipass filter automation (12-24db filter, freq around 100-200hz) on that step to bass, so when kick takl is playing , this bass note really cointains just high frequency content - it preserves groove but doesn’t fight with kick bass. Low spectrum is provided by kick anyway.

For bass , right notes are super important. They build proper groove.. forget just fixed 1/16 quantised positions - you need to play a lot with micro shiftings to left or right, changing velocity values (with velocity mapped to filter cutoff) to get proper groove.. melody itself should run on base note like D,E or F with just occasional jump few notes or octave up ..

It’s a lot if elaboration to get proper kick + bass groove, but if you do it, 60% of your trsck is done :-)

Then it comes to hihats and snares.. another chapter

Really good advice here. I would stress that your kick needs to be tuned really carefully to fit into the track. I spent time at the back of the studio, of several of the london psytrance artists 30y ago. I remember very little from then, apart from, days tuning kicks, and not being allowed to touch anything apart from the filter cutoffs 🤣

Now I have all the knobs and they are in a futuristic pocket sized device I can afford. Many of these artists were trustifarians. Not that I’m a jell bitch of some of the talent then. The parties were epic though, turbosound, dats, UV fluoros and a bowl of punch in a field or warehouse.

Birdpie

@jollyDodger said:

@dendy said:

@jwmmakerofmusic
consider myself pretty adept at sound design, and while the kick and bassline seem relatively simple to create (I probably could craft the specialised kick in NS2's Obsidian and give it some sauce with an EQ, then Beef or Knock),

Yet you can’t be more wrong here :-))) kick and bass (and how they play together) is very tricky part of whole track… there is much more behind that it looks..

1/ kick

First - forget Obsidian.. without multiple rounds of resampling you won’t get result as needed and this method isn’t ideal for beginner cause you can get lost on the way with partial results, make mistakes which are impossible to fix in later stages. Also there is problem that because of some dsp optimalisations, very short envelopes sounds differently during playback and after rendered. Not usable for this at all.

Instead of, use just Drambo as kick synth and then resample it as wav .. This is important, it’s always better to use final kick as wav, here because of transient is very importsnt it plays always same with sample precision. Maybe in most cases even directly from synth it will be ok, but wav is just safe bet. You really doesn’t want fluctuating transient of kick

notice also how my kick looks in audio editor.. i set 1/16 grid intentionaly.. your kick should not be longer than this, in some harder styles like darkpsy and hitek it’s even shorter, really just knock in first 1/16 with just few ms tail during 2/16

this us importsnt because 2-4/16 are allocated for bass

You doesn't need much other processing on such kick, i would say it's even contraproductive to apply any cause it can introduce various unwanted phase shifting issues.. to fit kick with bass sonically, use just transposing of kick.. in semitones or fine pitch tweak.. if you want eq, just tune eq and then resample result again to wav.

Any realtime processing on kick can i troduce some problem which is hard to identify and fix in final mix.

2/ bass

use just saw as basic oscillator, sharo decay and low sustain on filter envelope.. Again also vass needs significant transient - some people layer it whit highpassed kick, inpreffer just shaping with amp envelope and eventually applying FAC transient.

Now important detail is solving problem of low frequency fight between kick tail and 2/16 bass.

I usually apply hipass filter automation (12-24db filter, freq around 100-200hz) on that step to bass, so when kick takl is playing , this bass note really cointains just high frequency content - it preserves groove but doesn’t fight with kick bass. Low spectrum is provided by kick anyway.

For bass , right notes are super important. They build proper groove.. forget just fixed 1/16 quantised positions - you need to play a lot with micro shiftings to left or right, changing velocity values (with velocity mapped to filter cutoff) to get proper groove.. melody itself should run on base note like D,E or F with just occasional jump few notes or octave up ..

It’s a lot if elaboration to get proper kick + bass groove, but if you do it, 60% of your trsck is done :-)

Then it comes to hihats and snares.. another chapter

Really good advice here. I would stress that your kick needs to be tuned really carefully to fit into the track. I spent time at the back of the studio, of several of the london psytrance artists 30y ago. I remember very little from then, apart from, days tuning kicks, and not being allowed to touch anything apart from the filter cutoffs 🤣

Now I have all the knobs and they are in a futuristic pocket sized device I can afford. Many of these artists were trustifarians. Not that I’m a jell bitch of some of the talent then. The parties were epic though, turbosound, dats, UV fluoros and a bowl of punch in a field or warehouse.

dendys kicksynth in drambo can be used realtime, without sampling, with a few modifications.

Birdpie

@Birdpie said:

@jollyDodger said:

@dendy said:

@jwmmakerofmusic
consider myself pretty adept at sound design, and while the kick and bassline seem relatively simple to create (I probably could craft the specialised kick in NS2's Obsidian and give it some sauce with an EQ, then Beef or Knock),

Yet you can’t be more wrong here :-))) kick and bass (and how they play together) is very tricky part of whole track… there is much more behind that it looks..

1/ kick

First - forget Obsidian.. without multiple rounds of resampling you won’t get result as needed and this method isn’t ideal for beginner cause you can get lost on the way with partial results, make mistakes which are impossible to fix in later stages. Also there is problem that because of some dsp optimalisations, very short envelopes sounds differently during playback and after rendered. Not usable for this at all.

Instead of, use just Drambo as kick synth and then resample it as wav .. This is important, it’s always better to use final kick as wav, here because of transient is very importsnt it plays always same with sample precision. Maybe in most cases even directly from synth it will be ok, but wav is just safe bet. You really doesn’t want fluctuating transient of kick

notice also how my kick looks in audio editor.. i set 1/16 grid intentionaly.. your kick should not be longer than this, in some harder styles like darkpsy and hitek it’s even shorter, really just knock in first 1/16 with just few ms tail during 2/16

this us importsnt because 2-4/16 are allocated for bass

You doesn't need much other processing on such kick, i would say it's even contraproductive to apply any cause it can introduce various unwanted phase shifting issues.. to fit kick with bass sonically, use just transposing of kick.. in semitones or fine pitch tweak.. if you want eq, just tune eq and then resample result again to wav.

Any realtime processing on kick can i troduce some problem which is hard to identify and fix in final mix.

2/ bass

use just saw as basic oscillator, sharo decay and low sustain on filter envelope.. Again also vass needs significant transient - some people layer it whit highpassed kick, inpreffer just shaping with amp envelope and eventually applying FAC transient.

Now important detail is solving problem of low frequency fight between kick tail and 2/16 bass.

I usually apply hipass filter automation (12-24db filter, freq around 100-200hz) on that step to bass, so when kick takl is playing , this bass note really cointains just high frequency content - it preserves groove but doesn’t fight with kick bass. Low spectrum is provided by kick anyway.

For bass , right notes are super important. They build proper groove.. forget just fixed 1/16 quantised positions - you need to play a lot with micro shiftings to left or right, changing velocity values (with velocity mapped to filter cutoff) to get proper groove.. melody itself should run on base note like D,E or F with just occasional jump few notes or octave up ..

It’s a lot if elaboration to get proper kick + bass groove, but if you do it, 60% of your trsck is done :-)

Then it comes to hihats and snares.. another chapter

Really good advice here. I would stress that your kick needs to be tuned really carefully to fit into the track. I spent time at the back of the studio, of several of the london psytrance artists 30y ago. I remember very little from then, apart from, days tuning kicks, and not being allowed to touch anything apart from the filter cutoffs 🤣

Now I have all the knobs and they are in a futuristic pocket sized device I can afford. Many of these artists were trustifarians. Not that I’m a jell bitch of some of the talent then. The parties were epic though, turbosound, dats, UV fluoros and a bowl of punch in a field or warehouse.

dendys kicksynth in drambo can be used realtime, without sampling, with a few modifications.

i have to update that info. it's consistent, but the attack of the amp and/or pitch envelope does a fade in.
saw that after bouncing.
i try to modify the attack of those further and post the results.