Dune 3 vs Sylenth 1 vs Seum for techno/trance

[BONES]

Thanks a lot for your answers. Hive 2, I hadn t thought about it, thanks for the information. Regarding the 10,000 patches, where can we find the download link for them?

Do you have any idea how long it would take you to preview 10,000 presets? Even if you just quickly jab a key to hear it, you're looking at maybe 3 seconds per patch, so maybe 20 patches per minute. But you'll encounter sounds that warrant more exploration, so let's say, on average, you only get through 10 per minute. That means 1,000 minutes just to preview them all. That's almost 17 hours just going click, jab, click, jab, click, jab. To do it properly, you'd be spending 4 or 5 hours a day for weeks. I cannot think of a bigger waste of anyone's time.

Imagine how well you could learn to make your own patches if you spent all that time learning the instrument itself? You might only end up with a handful of patches that you're happy with but they'd be your patches, so they'd be perfect for your music. I think it would be a much better way to spend your time.

[recursive one]

Nate/Protoculture seems to have found a well deserved home at Sonic Academy.
I liked his hybrid Track tutorial not that is was Psy.

He also made a psy tutorial (I've bought it but haven't yet found the time to watch )

Yeah, 2007 was the year where it all ended pretty much.

I think there was some kind of generation shift that happened there (possibly partly what happened in the late 90s too), alot of electronic music went more or less mainstream which introduced big money to the scenes and led to a sort of lowest common denominator race to the bottom. ...

Tracks like Signum's remix of Oceanlab - Beautiful Together is in my mind as good as it ever got. I like the somewhat sad but vaguely hopeful and "genuine" melodies that were popular in that era, i can't stand the bland cyclical EDM/pop stuff, there's something about the chord progressions and general tone that's just terrible... Uplifting melodies can be good but in these cases it's more like ignorant optimism.

Yes, late 00's - early 2010's - that's when it all gone downhill, the melodies became boring and generic, too much major keys (ignorant optimism is a pretty fitting description, indeed), the tracks became too loud and too compressed, amazing sounds from hardware synths were replaced by countless layers of DAW stock synths, OTTed and sausage-fattened.

I thought people like Daniel Kandi, Dave202 and Dash Berlin were killing trance but it later it turned out that they were far from the worst.

I escaped into psytrance to witness more or less the same things few years later (except that melodies went trough the phase of extreme cheesiness and ignorant optimism and later were just thrown out).

Cheers, i'm another miserable old man (luckily without a hangover today)

[Rastkovic]

Yeah, 2007 was the year where it all ended pretty much.

For me it ended with the emergence of Electro-House, the last really good year for Trance music in my opinion was 2003. In the mid 2000s I oriented myself more towards Progressive House and also Dub Techno. But even this explorations are today history for me....

[chk071]

My musical taste somehow changes every 7 or 8 years... after listening to a good portion of Trance a few years ago, I now slowly moved to Chillout (always listened to that though), Breaks, Dub Techno, sometimes a bit of Ambient (always listened to that as well), or even Drum & Bass.

Whenever I listen to Progressive Trance, I prefer stuff that was made before 2008-2010 or so.

[4damind]

That's why I asked, for me there was nothing interesting in Trance in the last few years. The last album I bought was Astrix's "Red Means Distortion" (2010). His last studio album "He.Art" (2016) sounded strange to me, as if he had been on a trip in the jungle.
TATW I had been listening to for a while, as I quite like Above & Beyond. But the stuff there was always more EDM to me and sounded like they were all using the same templates/ideas (many people already call it "Anjunabeats" style). The most interesting thing was to see how people who are played there produce their stuff e.g. 7Skies.

It seemed to me that a lot of people were saying goodbye to Trance and trying to be successful in other genres. The typical "Trance Synth" would then no longer be so interesting and important (Virus, Nexus, Sylenth...).

[recursive one]

The last album I bought was Astrix's "Red Means Distortion" (2010). His last studio album "He.Art" (2016) sounded strange to me, as if he had been on a trip in the jungle.

It was a general style change from euphoric full-on style to more psychedelic sound promoted by Nano (Tristan) and TIP/Sacred Technology (Outsiders) which Astrix followed.

You may still find tracks having that Astrix-y uplifting vibe but these are few and far between







Also check out Digicult's The Lucid Nation and Soul Samadhi albums if you don't know them yet.

[andymcbain]

That's why I asked, for me there was nothing interesting in Trance in the last few years. The last album I bought was Astrix's "Red Means Distortion" (2010). His last studio album "He.Art" (2016) sounded strange to me, as if he had been on a trip in the jungle.
TATW I had been listening to for a while, as I quite like Above & Beyond. But the stuff there was always more EDM to me and sounded like they were all using the same templates/ideas (many people already call it "Anjunabeats" style). The most interesting thing was to see how people who are played there produce their stuff e.g. 7Skies.

The uplifting/melodic stuff is still produced by many but for me so much of it is just forgettable these days… as if there’s a lot of YouTube “how to write a trance chord progression / melody” videos being watched and not enough personal touch being put in by the producers.

To me the guy the guy that captured the spirit of the old uplifting stuff recently was Liquid Soul. Kinda psytrance light but I can see why the uplifting crowd were into it.

[Norqa]

He also made a psy tutorial (I've bought it but haven't yet found the time to watch )

Thanks for link, I de-subscribed from SA a while back. Nate's production skills are second to none.
Many years of experience no doubt.

As for mainstream Trance things haven't turned out so well, I remember hearing Communication by Armin van Buuren which at the time certainly had some utility.


Some years passed and he started to use Vandalism presets which are more Festival EDM sounds and thinking....where did it all go wrong?

Ps to recursive one
Seems like you have production chops
At least Psy hasn't fallen foul of what mainstream Trance did.

[LeVzi]

I can only speak about the music I was involved with at the time but the UK Hardcore sound emerged around when Nexus was born, everything seemed to change, alit if the time to nexus patches. Not critising, just stating the facts.

Tbh after many years around the extreme hard sound Im glad to move away from it to something more chilled out.

I think I just need Spire now to complete the set and then actually write more and hopefully my GAS is suppressed for at least a year.

(doubt it though)

[AnX]

The best trance happened years before vst synths even existed......

[excuse me please]

Stacking up Synth1 will do a nice arrangement. For leads I pick another synth.

[Passing Bye]

I don't mind people using similar sounds and genre being defined somehow, but copying someone's whole arrangement, no, that's why stuff went downhill, people stopped experimenting, now it's pretty much intro till 33 bar, this here, that there and bunch of people who shouldn't make videos teaching other how to be copycat. "Hi guys, I have been making music for 5 years", 5 years and you are teaching others, GTFO, than you hear guys music and he managed to sound like his reference track, wow, another brick in the wall.

[AnX]

Y2k = bland

[vurt]

Y2k = bland

thought they made zips?

...

[AnX]

Y2k = bland

thought they made zips?

...

You lost me there mate, but It doesn't take much at the moment