This isn’t something an amateur musician should admit – but I don’t have a good ear for what goes on in musical compositions, apart from odd time signatures. I'm a very accomplished 'air drummer', even though I've never picked up a pair of sticks.
After giving a recent album release a few listens this week, I’m keen on trying to make a Psytrance song. It’s not at all a genre I’ve tried, but creativity towards the unknown has struck lately.
I’m not even a huge fan of Psytrance, but have listened to a lot over the past 20 years. It doesn’t really seem to have changed much. My thoughts were always ‘oh it would SO EASY to make’. As I analyse the opening track of the album below though, and give it a go in recreating, it really is quite complex beyond the simple beats.
There does seem to be a common compositional theme though. I’m interested mostly in learning about the instrumentation and sequences… the drums I can work out on my own.
Short-bar repetitive hook for the verse, a lead in to a drop, silence with something solo, then back into the kick/snare/kick/snare routine.
What’s typically going on with the music ? Are chords being played, with separated notes (ie I mean as a sequence rather than actually a chord), or are they just runs up and down a chosen scale ?
I’m not at my workstation at the moment, but am thinking .. it MIGHT be easy, with some of Reason’s tools.
144 BPM – Check. I find this a bit weird honestly, that so much of this genre is exactly the same tempo. Makes it easy for seamless transitions at doofs and raves I would imagine.
As boring and uncreative as it seems, maybe I can just run an instrument (or 10!) through Scales & Chords Player to keep in key & scale and silence the off notes, load the sequencer with MIDI and hit the ‘randomize’ button, or whatever that sequencer feature is called.
Take a break with some randomly drawn notes in the Matrix.
I have DLD Tech’s AS-16 sequencer, that’s just a CV output machine with a bunch of knobs. Instant riff in there too.
Then add some random slow filters for fade-in pads, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x the drums on the last verse bar. And…. Silence… 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 back into the verse
Add some mystical or hallucinogenic-experience spoken word samples.
And publish ! Check my bank balance for the Spotify royalty of $0.000001 to drop into my account.
I’m not trolling here, just trying to be light-hearted, and start a conversation with like-minded people. I can appreciate the work that goes into some Psytrance, and would love to hear how Reason Psytrance composers approach their work, and the (stock) Reason instruments they use. A link to one of your favourite pieces would also be welcome.
PS: I don’t have many after-market soft-synths, but I do have Expanse Would be just as happy to use Thor, for a chance to learn a bit more about it properly.
So here’s the album that’s inspired my latest project, from an Israeli artist known as FADERS (aka Orr Kopel). The first track starts unrolling at about 1 minute 30 seconds, after the cheesy spoken word intro about the ‘Storyteller’. I am LOVING this track. And that run before the first drop at 3:10…. This is repeated with more bars later. Is he just running through a scale here ?