Trance Goa Melodic Patterns

[quantum3]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post, so hi there!

I always wondered how to do those amazing trance goa patterns but never figured out how to do it. I know my question is quite vague, but please, drop me some tips so I can start doing something better.

Thanks in advance,

س[/list]

[TankEyes]

Welcome to KVR! Here's some reading for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_harmonic_scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_mode

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_locrian_scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_scale (harmonic)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminished_chord

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchopation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpeggio

If or when you've familiarised yourself with those concepts I can give you some more ideas.

[quantum3]

Welcome to KVR! Here's some reading for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_harmonic_scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_mode

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_locrian_scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_scale (harmonic)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminished_chord

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchopation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpeggio

If or when you've familiarised yourself with those concepts I can give you some more ideas.

Wow man, thank you very much!

I have been a musician for long 7 years, did a symphony and few trance goa-like stuff and other things but left the composition and music due emotional problems related to baroque music but after about 5 years of listening just the PC fan, I decided to start doing music today. Will check some of those scales, I know the other stuff.

Thank you very much for the links!

Ø3

PS: I'm looking the links... Very interesting ones. Got a lot of indian scales (I love the Indian music). I would like to know how people does so rich rithyms and polifonic counterpoints in Trance Goa. I wonder if that's made with arppegiators and delay or what else, also the resonance and filter cutoff, it sounds so complex that would take hours doing just a pattern all hand made.

I wanted to show you some of the music I did, but don't know what happened with imeem.com

[TankEyes]

Ahh ok so you've have some musical background then, that will help a lot.

I can't really think of a way of communicating the rhythms in those complex goa melodies, other than they're usually those quick syncopated 32nd to 8th notes, and are usually quantised. You could try syncing a tune up in your DAW and mimic some of the rhythms you hear with a simple synth patch like a filtered saw wave. Set the quantise grid to 32nd notes.

The melodies are usually unrelated to chord progression, and are based on a single note as the drone note that the melody gravitates to while it's moving up and down a minor or ethnic scale.

Basslines usually play the drone note with small derivations in chromatic shifts. Sometimes the melodies tonal centre will de different to the bass note's drone, for example a minor third up. They are traditionally 16th note drones.

Counterpoint wise, it's usually not based on traditional harmony technique, just two melodies running in unison at different octaves. Often the artist will use filtering and different oscillator types to help separate them.

Synthesis wise, a lot of those old goa leads are sawtooth waves with bandpass or highpass filters being automated by the artist via a midi controller knob, or an LFO. Sometimes the melodies are actually Pitch LFO's of a monophonic synth running in free mode with a quick sequenced gate. A fast REALLY HEAVY vibrato type LFO can give a nice goa lead.

FM synthesis plays a large part in goa, and is quite an advanced technique. Basically for that otherworldy goa sound there's only one rule - MODULATION! The more modulation nad LFO's, the better

A lot of what sounds like complex melody can actually be put down to the artist tweaking multiple parameters in real time or "overdubbing" automation.

I like to have a play around and record 3-4 minutes of automation recorded as midi and choose a few strong ones, then do some more with another parameter on a different midi track. Then you can mess around with the clips, combining different modulations together to create emergent results.

You have to prepare your sounds well and take that extra time to find some magic moments in your experiments.

They usually involve phasers, flangers, compression and 3/16th note synced delay.

bandpass filtered noise hits with reverb is another common sound in goa.

[quantum3]

Wow man, I'm amazed by your reply. I've done that thing about the drone. Had to look in the Internet what's the drone in musical terms. I'm copmposing a new track right now. Let me see if I can upload a bit of it to somewhere. When I used to compose music I wasn't aware of forums and Internet, so I was quite isolated in that period of time. Now I see there are lot of tutorials to use synthes and effects. Now exists that youtube thing too. I have been learning photography and photoretouching for 5 years, working for 2 years, and still working of that. I learnt lot of stuff by using the Internet in the image area, now I'm wanting to learn lot of things in the music area now tehre are so much tutorials, but hard to find something related to trance goa. The other day I learnt how to use Toxic and Sytrus, very interesting stuff. Mmmhhh... I will show you some of my very old compositions because I'm in mac, and the stuff is in FL without render, but I have an old stuff renderized that's pretty nice I think Just few minutes Okay, I just used a little program for mac called Hijack to record the audio. I'm quite new at mac, don't know if there is something to record audio. I don't have an Audio Editor either! The piece of track you will listen I made it Juanary 2004. I was doing Trance Goa since year 1999 without knowing what was Trance but this little recording is from when I met the Trance. Just imagine, I'm from Argentina and here there is not Trance Goa or Psychedelic, just few people know this music from about 1 years ago in my country, there are some Trance Parties but just a very small amount with good stuff. People here don't like listening to Trance Goa Well, I think the file is uploaded...

Here it's: http://www.mediafire.com/?iyywy1mmdif (there is a bit of pipe organ, I love it! )

Let me know what do you think of this bit.

Thanks,

Ø3

[TankEyes]

Argentina doesn't have many much of a psy scene eh? Ahh it's a pity. Australia's scene is good but we don't get many internationals flying all the way over here often, we have some talented home grown talent here though.

I'm not really into psy and goa anymore, but it's influences can still be heard in my music. (Tell me what you think of my latest tune in this thread)

I'm guessing you're familiar with isratrance and psynews? Some great psy forums both with music production sub forums, btw. A lot of the established artists post there.

On to your tune. Cool man! is this your new stuff or the old stuff? It's got heaps of goa attitude to it. The mix is a bit messy but that will come with practice (are you mixing without monitors?). A lot of beginners don't understand structure and energy but you've obviously got that down well. The organ part is epic, well done Try to think of your mix as a big stage, and visualise all the parts as 3d spheres or elipsses in the stage, so they each have their own space and depth. Think of words like pulsating and morphing, sliding, tearing, you know, psychedelic stuff

Keep it up man and stay true to your own sound.

[quantum3]

HAha... Crazy, man. Well... that was the old track, in fact it was the last thing I did in terms of music and it's name is 'Epic'! I don't know what kind of monitor you refference, I just have a couple of non professional monitors/speakers and a $40usd headphones. I wanted to buy a Sony Professional ones, but those are not in my country anymore... You know, in Argentina sometimes you have what you need, but most of the time the options are just a few brands, just like with the Trance Goa/Psytrance thing that we don't have that music either. I don't know what do you mean with 'energy', you mean giving strenght to the music? Music is the best thing in the world, it's pure energy and managing that energy is very important in every aspect of life. I always think that music that people listen gives a very accurate profile of the people spirit because music pulses the soul and the emotions. Music can make you violent, meditative, sad, or just chill/happy. I always want to put the mind in some of those states when doing music, it's the most important thing to me. I don't know what about the structure, I always fail in the structure meaning the formal aspect of the music, you know A-B-C-A etc...

I tryed to visualize the music in many forms, like a 3D spectrographer being look through a camera photo. If you know a bit about photography you will know that there is something called depth of field, which is managed by the diaphragm located in the lens. What it does is focusing a certain area of depth that can be wider or tighther depending on the aperture of the diaphragm. All what's before and beyonf the focused area looks blurred but and it's known as bokeh. Well, imagine all the frecuencies being seen through a camera lens, you can focus in just few frecuencies and then, the others fade to blur, then you can focus in other frecuencies or you can modify the aperture of the diafragm in order to focus other frecuencies/sounds/melodies. I visualize it that way, but cannot apply it to music! I'm quite anxious, wanting always to do the most adrenaline part of the music. However, the idea of spheres is quite interesting. I'm thinking something like many spheres, one inside another, like an onion.

Your tune sounds nice, it reminds me to an album by Steve Reich, 'Music For [number] Musicians' or something along those lines. I like how you gradually develope the structure of the tune, like a growing flower since it's just a seed.

Well, will check out those sites you tell me. Thank you very much for the assistance and the communication, man.

See you around!

Ø3

[JediMind]

I think TankEyes managed to hit everything spot on. After you're done making your sounds, you have to find a nice (preferably unusual) scale to work with.

I generally work with something like:
G A Bb C# D Eb Gb G etc. to get a sort of Etnica feel to it. I'll upload a short demo, give me a minute

Edit: here you go. I'm more of an ambient-goa fan, but you can easily add a beat to this. If you like this you should also check out

I'll share some more stuff if you want

[TankEyes]

Nice one JM. It was beginning to feel like a private email there

Quantum: Sounds like you have a great attitude and some great insights there into your creative process. You know, with Argentina having the small scene - smaller pond, not as many fish You could even get involved in the organisation of the parties if you wanted to, isratrance would be the place to get in touch with people in your area. Just an idea in passing.

Thanks for your comments about my little tune. I'll have to check out Steve Reich.

Energy in dance music, for me, is the idea of lifting the listener from the bassline arousal state of "im bored", to the switched on state of "holy crap this is awesome!!". It's akin turning the tempo of a tune up without actually increasing the BPM. It's that all important question: "what can I do to increase the energy in this tune without overcrowding the mix or ruining the theme?". It's a fine art I'm only beginning to understand on a conscious level. I'm waffling on here. I think I just like the sound of my own um, typing.

See you around pal and good luck with the goa.

[quantum3]

I think TankEyes managed to hit everything spot on. After you're done making your sounds, you have to find a nice (preferably unusual) scale to work with.

I generally work with something like:
G A Bb C# D Eb Gb G etc. to get a sort of Etnica feel to it. I'll upload a short demo, give me a minute

Hi mate!

I should try that scale... It sounds pretty good. I got a flute made in India few days ago, so I'm getting some fun with it. I wondered because the flute has 7 tones and 12 semitones, exactly the same than the occidental music scale. I thought I would play indian music with the flute you know, hahaha... What's weird is that indian music structure is based in the same order than the occidental scales. In fact, that order was created, as the Vedic Writtings says, with the creation of the Material Universes (the Vedic Writtings were written about 5000 years ago!).

I got this scale while playing in both senses of the word. I wasn't trying to do it indian/arab-like but it sounds quite that style: A B C E F G# A

It took me quite a lot of time figuring out the notes, specially one which sounds a bit off tone (G#). Probably the flute is not good because all the other notes are exact.

Tbanks for sharing your thoughts

Ø3

[ZenPunkHippy]

If you haven't already investigated alternate tunings for instruments, soft synths are ideal for this. Check out the official site for SCALA - you will find thousands of files that can be imported in to soft-synths that understand the format (Alchemy, Zebra and Albino 3 all support alternate tunings). More info here:

http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/

Energy in dance music, for me, is the idea of lifting the listener from the bassline arousal state of "im bored", to the switched on state of "holy crap this is awesome!!". <...> It's a fine art I'm only beginning to understand on a conscious level

Can't add much more to this statement, but something I discovered recently may be useful (it's quite new to me):

The most subtle changes can help with raising the energy levels of a track. After messing around with Drumazon (the 808 drum machine clone from D16 Group) playing a fairly simple 1 bar loop with a bass line and lead synth, pitching up the "Claves" channel by just a few cents made the same loop seem much "higher" when switched in after four bars at the lower pitch. Something I would normally overlook, but works great.

Peace,
Andy.

[quantum3]

Hey mate, thanks a lot for the info, very interesting. Will read it later, it seems a bit complicated and I'm not wishing to go into that level right now, but later I will do it. I always do it at the and, haha.

It's right what you say about microtones, I have found that playing the flute is really good for figuring that what you say. For example, you can handle the amount of dramatism of a minor chord by moving the third a bit to the major chord or a bit to the minor chord. I guess it cam happen the same when doing a dimished/augmented chord respectively. For example, in a minor chord, if you move the third more up will sound less sad, if you move the fifthy a bit closer to the third, then it will sound more dimished-like. I'm very interested in microtones too, but they're quite subtle in some kind of music. If you play the flute or similar, such a violin, you can notice all those subtle pitchings making a huge difference.

Thanks for replying and giving assistance!

Ø3

[quantum3]

By the way JM, nice tunes you passed! They sound great!