Making Psy-Trance tunes, any tips

sprig

sprig

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A shout out to all you technical bods out there. I noticed that quite a few of you write Psy-Trance stuff. I am getting into it and wondered if people wouldn't mind sharing a few tips.

I've got Reason on the PC which is pretty good. It's got a Subtractive synthesizer in it and I was playing around with that to make some interesting noises. I wondered if it is possible to make most of the Psy-Trance noises with this equipment or do I need a better synth?

I really want to make the sort of growly, grungy, dirty noises you might hear in GMS stuff or in TIP stuff (mainly X:Dream, E-Rection). When I read the manual I understood quite a bit of it but it started to lose me when it was going on about some wave modulation stuff (combining 2 waves together and off-setting them).

Anyways, if anyone is willing to give me a couple of pointers it would be much appreciated.
 
im in the same boat as you mate, really like playing around with reason 2 and cool wave edit pro 2, but i dont have any controllers (synth keyboard or pads or whatever) of any sorts and im getting abit bored just clicking away with a mouse. ive found that i can make my own samples from any audio source which is alot of fun, i dont know anything about the finer details which make up good sound engineering, all i know is it a helluva lot of fun!! oh, and if anyone has any old hardware they wanna sell, please keep us in mind! :lmao:
 
mmm, i think it can be done with the subtractor, reason is a brilliant tool and I love it but you might find yourself (i do) struggling to get the subtractor to punch the way those gms lines punch. If you have reason 2 you'll have the maelstrom (scuse spelling) synth which I think is capable of such things but for me its a new way of working and i'm only just getting into it. The maelstrom is great for long evolving pads and atmospheres.

TIP 1: A good tip might be if you're looking for something and you're not sure what try making just some odd, wierd noise with one of the sound sources (synths, samplers, drum machines), stick it through effects then sample that, reverse it and stick it back in your tune using a sampler and just see what u get, can be inspirational (can also be a load of shite). Try this with drum loops, well try it with anything and everything.

TIP 2: If you want a good kicking kick drum and the reason ones dont do it for u go to infected mushrooms website and down load the one on there ... v nice and lots of kick : ).

TIP 3: When creating effect chains try processing the right channel seperatley from the left for instance have a synth going into a delay. have the right chanel of the delay going into a phaser while the left goes into the left chanel of a second delay, then have the left chanel of the second delay going into the other chanel on the phaser, now have the 2 chanels phaser going into the mixer then play a few notes, nice!!! (example nicked from reason website!!!!)

i am very much a learner but I would have thought these are good tips.
 
Thanks all for the info. so far, those tips sound pretty good, I'll give them a try later.

:lmao: :punk:
 
Hey Embalmer,

I downloaded that kik drum from Infected Mushroom and it is superb. I think I need to get hold of a copy of Sound Forge..... and my physics textbook!!!

Now onto Tip 3..... :hehe:
 
mmmm, makes the room shake when compared with the heaviest reason kick drum. You should be able to apply the infected mushroom concept of creating a kick drum to the subtractor or maelstrom. Its hard to get it as good as infected have though, lets face they know exactley what they're doing and u might need some added processing to get it right, compression or eq or both!!!
 
Yeah, I've been subscribed to that list for a couple of years now. It's about as busy as this forum. Chris 'Cabbage' has a rant or two on there, but I think most of the folks aren't in the UK. Some excellent info there, rants from music philosphy thru technology to gear selling/swapping, news, and useless top 10's

K
 
thanks for the offer ~ed~, im actually looking for a Roland JP8000, i know i could probably go for a virus C, but the roland is a legend and i like the sound, it also seem to go for good prices 2nd hand.
 
u can make squelkch sounds by tking a basic wave form liike a saw, pitching it down very very low so you can hear the oscillations seperately, wacking the resonance up and play around with sweeping the filter settings thenadd any appropriate effects
i thikn this might be noe of the sounds ur referring to , maybe
 
me too. music,music,music.........
seems we ALL in the same boat. Im still trying to save for my supernova or virus indigo.
Maybe 1day we will all do some sort of psy collaboration heh...........
Good luck to all of us...........godspeed
 
Pedz, make sure you keep looking on E-bay, that's where I picked up my JP8000 from with original box and manuals for 500 quid. Don't pay anymore than that, sometimes cheaper. A brilliant piece of kit :)
 
hey pedz....was speaking to Cosmosis after he played at the liquid connective outdoor thingy, and he was saying lovely things about the JP-8000. That and Traktor, as he could put real high quality (96khz) tracks on there, much higher than CD, so it sounds much better. Anyway...ranted off topic again
 
The JP 8000 is a great synth for Trance - especially if you stick the output through a nice chopped up gate. I have had one for about 3 years - I picked it up second hand for 500 squids.

Should also look out for the JP 8080 - which is a rackmount version of the 8000 with an extra oscillator for really spazzing those soundz out.

Shouldn't be much more expensive than the JP 8000 second hand.

Good luck !!! Jamez
 
cheers guys!
hey sprig, have you tried the IM kick thru the redrum thing? I put the pitch up and added a few deep bass kicks and now ive got this super slippery kick with a deep base resonace, schweet!!
 
pedz,try this for a kick. hook up your mic to the pc rite. then open a recorded like ......... any 1 and kick the mic. stamp on it also. Gives some really different sounds :D
 
Pretty much, when making psy trance lines you should be modulating at least one thing constantly. The choice of things to modulate depends on the synth you are using, filters, pulse width, pulse width modulation, x-mod, sync are just a few of them... Just start with a decent sound and twiddle each knob one by one to see the effect it has on the noise..
 
Thanks guys,

I understand what you mean Spudblud, I've just been playing around some more and worked out that pulse width modulation thing and had some great results. I also modulated the amplitude to get a really bouncy effect which I need to have more of a play with. There is much I need to learn...

I also got a copy of sound forge and had a go at making that kik drum sound. There seems to be a gap in the instructions because they do something really important that they don't explain (I suppose they might have left that out on purpose). I haven't used sound forge at all before so I don't know the capabilities of it. If anyone else has had a go at it, did you have trouble?

Cheers again
 
I bet I have twice as much to learn! :D

I have managed to get some great kiks the Infected way. Never managed to get one sounding exactly like the example they give cos I guess I can just download it... I dont reckon they have missed anything out in the instructions I think the key is in the bit where they say "play around with the pitch bend until it sounds like you want it to".. they probably mean, spend ages playing around with the pitch bend..

I havent tried it but maybe looking at their kik in a frequency analyzer thing might help.

Its often worth layering two or more kiks compressed at different levels to get new kiks. You can keep on going adding new kiks to get different kik sounds.. I heard once that Front 42 (i think thats what they are called, ancient techno band) would often have up to 40 different kicks going on..

Anyway, hope that helps!
 
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