ZoomDagaZoom - Zoomdagazoom (goa-trance)

[ZoomDagaZoom]

Goa-trance submitted to your careful scrutiny. I am an amateur producer looking for hard criticism to improve my skills, so please burn it down (although my ass enjoys feathers as well). ROCK ON

https://soundcloud.com/zoomdagazoom/zoomdagazoom


Polyverse Manipulator
Apple Alchemy
Apple Retro Synth
About all the other native modules of Logic Pro X
MPC Live (only for a little sample editing on this one)
For dynamic processing, EQing and other FX I also use native Logic modules

[wagtunes]

Well, I'm no expert and this is just my opinion (so take this with a tiny grain of salt) but, to me, the low end is anemic. In fact, most of the sounds are thin and lifeless. Musically, it's kind of interesting. I'm not sure what this needs. Maybe one of the goa experts like Recursive can chime in and give you more direction.

[recursive one]

Very nice track, I love how if fluctuates from total madness to more melodic parts and back.

The production is good overall, I think the kick/bass needs to be tighter and groovier but it's really a rabbit hole. Many cool sounds tho, you seem to be quite skilled at sound-design.

I don't think it's goa, rather kind of freeform/suomi psy, but genre definitions in psy are yet another rabbit hole

goa experts like Recursive

Wags, stop calling me an expert, I can't finish a freaking track in few months already

[wagtunes]

Very nice track, I love how if fluctuates from total madness to more melodic parts and back.

The production is good overall, I think the kick/bass need to be tighter and groovier but it's really a rabbit hole. Many cool sounds tho, you seem to be quite skilled at sound-design.

I don't think it's goa, rather kind of freeform/suomi psy, but genre definitions in psy are yet another rabbit hole

goa experts like Recursive

Wags, stop calling me an expect, I can't finish a freaking track in few months already

That's because you're a perfectionist.

[recursive one]

That's because you're a perfectionist.

Unfortunately

[ZoomDagaZoom]

Thanks for having a listen and commenting guys.

@Wagtunes, I also feel like the low-end could have more bite to it but quite unsure as to how to add that without losing clarity / tightness there. I was thinking about purchasing a plugin like Serum but I am not sure if throwing money at it will solve the problem. Do you guys think that using different plugins than the native Logic ones actually gives a better sound in the low-end or is it better to stick with what you have and deepen your knowledge of that? Ive been experimenting with Alchemy for quite some time but am unable to achieve the "true" goa groove with it (as Recursive also noted).

@Recursive; that is nice to hear, I spent quite some time in the mixer and the MultiMeter for this one so glad to hear the mix is improving. I was wondering what kind of plugins you are using for your low-end. (Also checked out your stuff on SC and was impressed). Seems like theres some psy-talent roaming these forums!!!

[ZoomDagaZoom]

O yeah by the way, the stack I was thinking of as a new set of tools to manage the low-end is:

- XferRecords Serum; for the bass because it has an intuitive GUI and supposedly a lot of clarity
- Sonic Academy Kick 2; for having more fine grained control over the kick (now using Ultrabeat)
- XferRecords LFO Tool for more fine grained control over the side-chain (now using stock Logic compressor with FET circuit to keep some of the transients)

Let me know if you have any XP with this and if so, what you you think of it.

[fastlanephil]

It sounds like you have a handle on it. Lots going on here.

It’s not what I normally listen to but like bebop jazz I can appreciate the work that goes into the product.

[recursive one]

I was wondering what kind of plugins you are using for your low-end.

I mostly make basses with Sylenth. I process it with Saturn and a Overtone PTC-2A to add more presence and more low end, then resample single notes and try to align the phases of the kick and the bass as precisely as possible. But it's just my method, I know people are using Serum, Hive, Massive, Trillian and whatever else as a bass synth, Waves TransX or Cubase Quadrafuzz instead of Saturn and whatever eq they may have. I'm more and more convinced that psytrance bass doesn't really depend on specific plugins, there is a sequence of steps which you can recreate with an arbitrary plugin chain if your monitoring is good enough to properly hear the results.

A couple of tutorials which I think teach essential things about psytrance bass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSzP2_AO0DQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcMoh1T7_Ak

For kick I suggest you to find good samples and use them if you are a beginner. Start with choosing a nice kick sample and design the bass to blend well with the kick. If you design both kick and bass from scratch without much experience you may easily get lost and never arrive to a really working k/b combo. I like kick samples from Psytrance bass tools pack by Function Loops.

You surely can't go wrong with Serum and Kick2, they both are highly rated by psy producers but probably you may want to explore your DAW stock stuff first. I'm a PC guy so I never tried Logic but it seems well packed with synths and effects.

(Also checked out your stuff on SC and was impressed).

Thanks

[ZoomDagaZoom]

It sounds like you have a handle on it. Lots going on here.

It’s not what I normally listen to but like bebop jazz I can appreciate the work that goes into the product.

thanks man!

[ZoomDagaZoom]

Thanks for sharing the knowledge man. Saturn looks really nice, especially cool that it is possible to create a varying multiband setup and even apply separate FX to the different bands. Very versatile. And then the UI.... wow! I think Im going to add that to my stack for the low-end. Maybe purchase one (think Im gonna start with Saturn), produce another track with it and then purchase another one and work incrementally that way.

Based on what you said, I was wondering:

- What kind of tool do you use for monitoring when matching the phases of the kick and the bass? Do you just match EQ's or do you have both signals going through the same bus and add an EQ to it?
- Is it correct that you match the phases of the kick and bass after applying the FX chain to your bass? And do you apply more FX after that?

[Mushy Mushy]

I always buss kick & bass together and monitor the combined waveform via LFO Tool. For bass it's always Serum which allows for every harmonic to be adjusted independently. Then I add a midrange exciter/saturator to make it cut through on smaller systems.

[ZoomDagaZoom]

good stuff, another good reason for me to get LFO Tool
also, controlling the harmonics independently is actually one of the reasons I wanted to get Serum, I heard of people taking out the fundamental on the first note after the kick to give the kick more room without sacrificing the bass. Is this also how you use it Mushy? Are there other reasons that one would want to control the harmonics independently?

[Mushy Mushy]

good stuff, another good reason for me to get LFO Tool
also, controlling the harmonics independently is actually one of the reasons I wanted to get Serum, I heard of people taking out the fundamental on the first note after the kick to give the kick more room without sacrificing the bass. Is this also how you use it Mushy? Are there other reasons that one would want to control the harmonics independently?

I try to avoid sidechain so by being able to control the harmonics I can avoid conflict with the kick and also boosting for small speakers.

[recursive one]

- What kind of tool do you use for monitoring when matching the phases of the kick and the bass? Do you just match EQ's or do you have both signals going through the same bus and add an EQ to it?
- Is it correct that you match the phases of the kick and bass after applying the FX chain to your bass? And do you apply more FX after that?

I route kick and bass into the same bus and use Smexoscope on that bus to watch the resulting waveform. This is covered in detail in the tuts I linked.

There are many ways to align phases. Your goal is basically to avoid phase cancellation when the transient of the first bass note overlaps with the kick tail, for that you may shift the starting phase of the osc within the synth itself, or add a phase alignment/sample delay plugin at the end of the bass processing chain - the latter is typically preferable since the processing you use on the bass channel may influence the phase (Satrun will likely do).

Anyways, waveform visualisation and phase alignment are helpful but what you hear is still the most important