Help me with goa melodies

[HiEnergy]

Phrygian melodies go really well with fifths instead of full chords btw.

So what you're saying is if the song is in the key of Cmajor (ionian), you'd play a C phrygian or that you'd play an E phrygian?

Guess I'd play a drone or pad in C-G in that situation. It's just way less dissonant than having an E drone.

[nuffink]

Phrygian melodies go really well with fifths instead of full chords btw.

So what you're saying is if the song is in the key of Cmajor (ionian), you'd play a C phrygian or that you'd play an E phrygian?

Guess I'd play a drone or pad in C-G in that situation. It's just way less dissonant than having an E drone.

If we accept (for the moment) that a continuous root is enough to ground a mode, the C drone would reinforce the Ionian mode and the G drone the Mixolydian.*

I guess you don't particularly like Phrygian after all.


*In C major.

[HobbyCore]

Phrygian melodies go really well with fifths instead of full chords btw.

So what you're saying is if the song is in the key of Cmajor (ionian), you'd play a C phrygian or that you'd play an E phrygian?

Guess I'd play a drone or pad in C-G in that situation. It's just way less dissonant than having an E drone.

If we accept (for the moment) that a continuous root is enough to ground a mode, the C drone would reinforce the Ionian mode and the G drone the Mixolydian.

I guess you don't particularly like Phrygian after all.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The point I was about to get at.

[napalmbob]

I prefer Aeolian for Goa, gives it a more "end of the world" feeling.

Back to melodies: like everyone has said, goa is a simple but full on style of dance music (shits on euro/euphoric trance anyday) and I loves it to death.

Adding to whats already been mentioned on using arps - having the notes NOT all the same length is a good trick too as it makes the arp jump around more unexpectedly.

Easiest way to write around a note is to fill a piano roll of 16th notes then drag them up and down according to your scale.

Also, use the delay to add to the melody, pingpong delays are the tits. Also try a multitap and pan those taps around.

And use some non-fuzzy distortion on a simple plucky 303 sound for that classic lead sound.


Like I said, it is rather simple music, but it still kicks ass.

[Rottweiler]

wow guys, great knowledge here, thanks!

i wanna more more more !

peace


edit: im really interested in this topic. i want to put the feeling of energy and freedom into my melodies, but unfortunately im better at writing dark,broody,aggressive things [maybe this is the effect of 3 years of drum and bass production ]

[HiEnergy]

I just put up an example for what I meant when talking about Phrygian mode.


The mp3 is in the player at my virb.com page (see signature). It's called 'phrygisch'.

The track is in b-flat, my favorite key.
The phrygian melody kicks in after the drop at around 00:54.

Have fun!

[mystran]

I thought I might throw another take on what I'm thinking about all this:

Actually, even the "drone" needn't be totally static. It still essentially works as a drone if you put (say) 16ths (on 4/4 beat) as something like (assuming E based mode on C major):

| e,e,e,e, f,e,e,e, d,e,e,e, f,e,g,e | f,e,e,e, d,e,e,e, f,e,g,e, f,e,d,g |

(it should be noted I'd personally like G raised to G# in most contexts, which accounts to making the mode out of harmonic A minor rather than C major)

The key here is that when you build harmonics, you'll treat whatever little variation you've got in the bass as if it was static drone on E, and you'll treat this E like if it was the tonic of the scale.

But ofcourse you don't even need to keep that drone static on E, though it rarely moves that much in most of psytrance.. usually it mostly goes to VII or V and then comes back, or something.. (note that I'm counting E as tonic=I so VII would be D and V would be B) it's really just a form of the most elementary cadence I-V-I. It isn't totally uncommon though, to keep the bass simply as a "true" drone, and simply build harmonics using whatever melodic layers you have above.

Just like in major/minor, I/IV/VI will include the drone naturally, while for II it makes the cord a 7th (which is fine). For dominants (I'll count V/VII) it's a bit more problematic (well for VII it's 9th which isn't totally bad) but what you might hear done is drop the drone by a single note (to VII) when you got a V or VII and keep it static otherwise. Just don't release tension unintentionally..

This is not really any different from working with major and minor scales (which for "natural minor" are actually just different modes of a given set of 7 notes); there is nothing fundamentally different between major and minor.. it's simply where you put your tonic, which will then have an effect on how you build your harmonics.

All that said, a huge amount of psytrance basically ignores all the above, and just goes on a tonic-only ride, maybe occasionally tripping to dominant (or more often sub-tonic to be exact), instead choosing to concentrate more on rhythmic elements and interleaving of different motives and sounds. I guess the point isn't making it totally chaotic, but rather just a bit too challenging to follow consciously, because if you then let your mind drift a bit, you'll find yourself following some elements while other elements spin around it in a way that is hard to explain in written form.

That's how I currently understand it anyway...

...

Oh and I might make my own practical tips: for high-res synth sounds, make filter (even radically) responsive to velocity (or use another form of accents for other types of sounds), then work the velocity values of the arp suggest rhythm and/or grouping of notes different from what the melody itself would suggest. If you have a melody which doesn't follow the 4/4 pattern of the beat (say it groups to 3/16th) you could then accent (say) every 5th note (in practice more non-deterministic, manually placed accents work better though) to create yet another layer of rhythm. When you have two or more accents on consequential notes, you might want to put more accent on the second one (and yet more on third and so on). But getting off-topic from melodies and harmonics... and I still don't know anything about psytrance.

[Rock Hardbuns]

Actually, even the "drone" needn't be totally static.

Going out side the scope of trance for a bit..
In traditional drone music, in places where it sort of matured, they actually started to skip the drone all together and just play multi-layered improv. The rhythm and pitch of the drone is "assumed" and not played, which makes the music sound like complete nonsense to listeners who don't know how to "hear" it.

I think Arabic music is like that sometimes. And some of the stuff from the Balkans.

[SimplyWiggins]

The track on youtube referenced at the start of this thread sounds pretty much like anything quickly made in Propellerheads Rebirth (ah the old days!)

But following the rest of the comments here I thought I'd add my favourite indian style scales which are quite atmospheric when used in drone music.

Imagine a long E Major chord - drone drone... then compose a melody using this scale

E,F,G#,A,B,C,D#,E

or, in E minor - drone drone... then use this scale

E,F#,G,A#,B,C,D#,E

The first one is a little similar the spanish/flamenco phrygian mode

The second, I think, is closer to an Indian raga scale (without the quarter tones).

Hope this is helpful

SW

[Rottweiler]

i will try these, thx

anything other than scales which can make thing dreamy and trippy?
im not into technical tricks, cause im good at that.

[am closer to an engineer than to a musician]

thx

[qa2pir]

http://www.musicuploader.org/MUSIC/778601207503242.mp3

This one's pretty much a 3.5 minute goa melody all through.

Fast tapping 16ths, some longer than others to accent a rhythm. Circulating between modes (from phrygian to aeolian and back, then aeolian again, then dorian, ionian and then back to aeolian, back to phrygian and then concluded with aeolian). I used the aeolian melody (based on a simple I-VI-VII chord progression) as a lead motif and let the others be more chaotic. All the other modal melodies have no chord progression (I-I-I if you will) which makes them more menacing, mindless and chaotic.

I don't know if this is good, but it's an example of strikingly goa-ish melody, IMO.

[Rottweiler]

thats cool, PM sent