One synth to rule them all?

[TweakHead]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm being serious about music for the last couple of years. But it took me an entire year to get an EP to an almost complete state - that's what I was doing on the mac. That's the best music I have done so far, but, like you say, I'm not willing to show it until it's fully finished - which I imagine will happen sometime this year.

But I have other stuff I don't mind showing. Been doing this for a while and I think my productions are nothing to be ashamed of. Overall I feel that this started as an hobby for most of us, but later it gets more serious. And one step in that direction is actually showing the music and stand by what you do. So I can totally get Berni's point here. It's quite easy to lose focus, get dragged into endless experimentations and never get anything done. I know that because that's how it was for me, for a very long time. I was studying fine arts to, so I couldn't really focus much on it, anyways. But things started to change once I got into the mindset of composing real music, whole tracks, the whole story, and then figuring out how to build a set from those creations, the bigger picture. Doesn't matter if you're planning on making profit from music, playing gigs, just sending some tracks to compilations or selling them on the web; what's important is that you get into the right frame of mind, so as to make something of the time you've invested in this music thing. Could even be just to yourself, but it's always good. Changes everything

[MBTC]

I do get what you're saying, and agree with a lot of it when putting myself in the shoes of others. It's just that in my particular case, getting something done or making something of the time invested with music is so contrary to my real goal. As you said, it's easy to lose focus and get dragged into endless experimentation.... BUT WHAT IF THAT'S MY GOAL? I want to get lost, I want to escape from my regular work tasks.

I started music at an early age (drumming since age 5... real drums, not toys, actually), and because I felt "always on display" whenever friends of the family came over (my family were all professional musicians, so every time we had company over to the house, there was this obligation that we start gigging for the enjoyment of our friends, etc) I felt like a circus monkey, and decided I did not want to perform for others' enjoyment, because it would strip me of a passion that I loved -- making music.

Also started software development at an early age. In college I wanted to change to a non-computer science related discipline, because I did not want "corporate greed" to strip me of a passion that I loved -- developing software. Well eventually I realized it was my best money-making talent, and decided to cave in and capitalize on it anyway, and have been there ever since. And yes, real-world corporate greed and all of that has put a major dent in my enjoyment of programming, to the point where I rarely if ever choose to do it in my free time.

So.... what's my creative outlet? Music. The one thing I can do, my way, on my own terms, without feeling obligated to let others in unless I really want to (and like I said, occasionally I do, I just don't let others talk me into doing so).

One of the things I like most about my hobby is that the moment it starts to feel like work, I can just walk away. If I want cognitive stimulation, I get that already, every day, from writing code (probably too much of it). When I make music, it is a relaxation exercise only, and if I start heeding the advice of others, I am now back in the position of doing some work to appeal to their ears instead of appealing to my own sense of relaxation.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone should take the perspective that I do. Anyone who wants to better themselves as a producer of music really needs to get their stuff onto other ears and understand how it impacts other listeners. Measures of success vary from individual to individual. My measure of success is to see how much I can do things my way when it comes to music :P and if others end up liking what I do, then it's icing on the cake but not something I will pursue. My measure of success is not one that I would necessarily recommend to others. Success according to most musicians should probably include some element of approval from others.

But do know, that I understand the level of satisfaction that most want to achieve. About 7 years ago or so, I starting paying incrementally more attention to the feedback I was getting from people about my music, which at the time I had gotten into a habit of sharing. The stuff I was uploading started out pretty rough but got progressively better, until I finally nailed one track where the comments were overwhelmingly positive. I got comments like "great stuff! would have bought it if on iTunes" and "this one is going on my iPod for sure!".... stuff like that. That was a great feeling, and gave me a taste of the euphoria that the really great producers must feel on a regular basis. I saw it as kind of the pinnacle of my music sharing, it wasn't going to get any better than that, so I just stopped doing it

[MBTC]

Switching gears back to Komplete for a moment, I'm really liking the sound of much of this stuff but I've been a little taken aback by how much of a CPU-eater much of it is, especially synths many of the pack-in synths are running in Reaktor.

If you just load an empty project, and add one instance of Reaktor with Prism for example, what does your CPU meter read (not playing notes, just idle)?

[Berni]

Originally Posted by TweakHead

What? It was just the name of a patch dude!

Be a little patient, my mac is on repair right now. The glass of the monitor got smashed, so it's getting a new one plus some inner cleaning (while I'm at it) and a new disk as well. After moving from Spain to this country with all my life in boxes, this had to happen to delay things even more. Will be back in action pretty soon, and I'll through some tunes for you guys to listen then.

Forgive my confusion, I thought you had made some mind blowing trance

[TweakHead]

No worries mate. What kind of trance are we talking about here? I make psychedelic, mostly. Think it's still possible to come up with original ideas for it.

[Berni]

Originally Posted by TweakHead

No worries mate. What kind of trance are we talking about here? I make psychedelic, mostly. Think it's still possible to come up with original ideas for it.

Well anything that isn't the generic crap I am hearing right now. I just listened to the 'trance' top 10 on Beatport which included artists...above & beyond, ferry corsten & armin van burren & it was abysmal.
I REAALLY wish someone would come up with some original trance. I was playing it back in the day before it was even called trance...it's now music for kids doing there first E.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by Berni

Well anything that isn't the generic crap I am hearing right now. I just listened to the 'trance' top 10 on Beatport which included artists...above & beyond, ferry corsten & armin van burren & it was abysmal.
I REAALLY wish someone would come up with some original trance. I was playing it back in the day before it was even called trance...it's now music for kids doing there first E.

IMO there are two main elements that distinguish good trance from bad: good melodies and good mix quality. Sadly those are the two things that only a few seem to really know how to do well. The drums are relatively simple so it's too easy to throw in a drum loop and some bassline that's been heard a gazillion times elsewhere, and out pops a generic turd with nothing special about it.

If you don't like AvB though, in general I doubt you'd like anything I've ever created. He, Markus Shultz, Paul Van Dyk,etc. are some of the best around in their genre. Thing is that appreciation of a genre varies, so if you don't like it then you don't. I'm the same way about 99% of R&B, and although I like some dubstep, watching every 12 year old out there who saw a youtube vid on how to create a wobble doesn't take long to get old.

The trance I like to listen to takes melody and crafts it into emotion, and combines that with a really clean mix. It's getting harder to come by these days as the EDM crowd is a fickle floozy that likes to chase after the newest thing, so less people are creating good stuff.

[TweakHead]

Originally Posted by Berni

Well anything that isn't the generic crap I am hearing right now. I just listened to the 'trance' top 10 on Beatport which included artists...above & beyond, ferry corsten & armin van burren & it was abysmal.
I REAALLY wish someone would come up with some original trance. I was playing it back in the day before it was even called trance...it's now music for kids doing there first E.

Know exactly what you mean with "generic crap". But if you're after good produced trance, you need to avoid beatport - as it's just a showcase for the commercial trends. I personally like some of the new high tech (real fast) psytrance. It's maybe a bit to fast for most people,and maybe not your cup of tea, but those guys are exploring new territory in sound design for sure: such things as bombax, virtuanoise, oxidasi, kindzadza, so forth and so on. I still think Eat Static and Simon Postford and some of the old masters still deliver mind blowing music - Shpongle is like candy to the ears imo.

Did you have another name back in the day? For how long have you been producing music? Please enlighten me. I was lucky enough to catch the psytrance scene when it was still very cool in my country, which is portugal btw.

[TweakHead]

Originally Posted by MBTC

IMO there are two main elements that distinguish good trance from bad: good melodies and good mix quality. Sadly those are the two things that only a few seem to really know how to do well. The drums are relatively simple so it's too easy to throw in a drum loop and some bassline that's been heard a gazillion times elsewhere, and out pops a generic turd with nothing special about it.

If you don't like AvB though, in general I doubt you'd like anything I've ever created. He, Markus Shultz, Paul Van Dyk,etc. are some of the best around in their genre. Thing is that appreciation of a genre varies, so if you don't like it then you don't. I'm the same way about 99% of R&B, and although I like some dubstep, watching every 12 year old out there who saw a youtube vid on how to create a wobble doesn't take long to get old.

The trance I like to listen to takes melody and crafts it into emotion, and combines that with a really clean mix. It's getting harder to come by these days as the EDM crowd is a fickle floozy that likes to chase after the newest thing, so less people are creating good stuff.

Yeah, not so much into the melodic stuff myself. Even though I don't like it when it just feels like random fx flying around - it needs to be musical, but I've grown to like the real alien like sort of music. It's a matter of taste. Also think the mix is key, but don't necessarily agree that having emotional melodies is an essential part of trance music.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by TweakHead

Yeah, not so much into the melodic stuff myself. Even though I don't like it when it just feels like random fx flying around - it needs to be musical, but I've grown to like the real alien like sort of music. It's a matter of taste. Also think the mix is key, but don't necessarily agree that having emotional melodies is an essential part of trance music.

I probably should have mentioned the fact that there are a lot of different variatons of trance which still qualify as "trance", I just think of trance and psytrance as two different genres despite the term trance being present in both.

Not that Wikipedia is the end-all defining source of music definitions, but I think the definitions put forth there do a reasonable job of representing how I think of the two genres, and how others I know and have collaborated with think of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trance_music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_trance

I do like psytrance too, but I feel their musical goals are different:

I think of good psytrance as sort of an assault (in a good way) on my ears of some creative use of FX-heavy sounds, that mostly strives to identify itself by originality of the sounds themselves and arrangement of them.

Trance I think is more like traditional music in the sense that it tends to stick to a base of standard "instruments" (sound categories), like an analogish bass sound, plucks / stabs, lush supersaw pads, usually that evolve slowly, dreamtrance synth patches, 4 on 4 drums with an aggressive kick, arp synth sounds that aren't "too" far out there and alien, etc. The creativity comes into play not so much with the sounds themselves but the melodic arrangement, the way tension is built up and released, etc.

Maybe a bigger defining factor is that with trance, there tends to be sort of a recurring anthem that identifies the tune. That anthem and other melodic parts could be then taken out, and a gazillion remixes created of the track using different genres. For example, you could take a basic trance song and come up with a psytrance or hardstyle remix of it, while retaining the basic roots. On the other hand you rarely see the converse being done -- a psytrance track is rarely remixed into an anthem trance track, because there's less raw material to work with and it wouldn't make much sense to do it? It could be done but it wouldn't be preserving the original most likely, if that makes sense.

Again not trying to say my definitions are the way things are, that's just how I view the difference.