Psytrance Discouraged

Elektron Software Overbridge
#22

…accurate phase is one thing…the right melange another…

however psytrance is created with in first place…it needs some final daw treatment…

so forget about any ob realtime approaches…mix with final rendered single content…

if u use ob, use it stand alone…import ur ob recordings as the raw backbone to ur daw and take it from there…

in case of doubts…all phase correlation makes a difference if ur dealing with exact same frequency specs…but ur kik, ur sub and ur basslines could also work in different individual harmonic sweet spots and all too tight phase relationships become obsolete and all it needs from there is well balanced mixing…

but i feel u…whenever i tried to match and catch up with truu psytrance, i lost all my inspiration, too…

just keep in mind…this genre must translate on big soundsystems in first and last place…
without tight know how, there’s no chance to get there in ur home studio…
so forget about a kik that shares the same room with a bassline and define ur tracks right from the start the way, that the kik needs no sort of correlation with ur basslines at all…

in this case, ur kick must be always out of the way and ur bassline does the low end work…
and take ur favourite psy trance track, put a low pass filter on it, turn it all the way down to just listen closely only to what happens underneath 150 hz…

#23

The way drift happens for me, sample delay, or plugins like that wouldn’t fix it, because the drift is inconsistent. Sometimes drums hit early, and sometimes they hit late. That plugin would fix latency, but not drift. Unless I’m mistaken about the terminology. But when I record parts from my Elektron boxes, the sounds on each track will hit both early and late throughout the recording.

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#24

I see, I didn’t realize it was drifting.

I thought the recordings weren’t getting aligned but just in a phase offset latency type way. Not sure why it drifts for you :confused:

#25

Do you not get drift like that? I’m not sure how it is on other grooveboxes. My machinedrum drifts a lot. I get drift on my Octatrack and Syntakt as well. When I used to use Eurorack with midi, I would get that type of drift too. The midi interface I usually use with my Elektron boxes is one that comes with Machinedrums. When I have some more cash, I’m very curious to see if an E-rm multiclock improves it. I have also been curious about the Expert Sleepers USAMO midi interface. I suspect there will still be some drift though. I’m ok with it though, using the workaround I described, but it would be nice if the drift was reduced. Especially on the machindrum.

#26

Perhaps this is an ignorant suggestion, but why don’t you just sidechain the bass and kick so there is no phase issue to begin with? A tight sidechain can be almost impossible to notice, but should effectively eliminate the theoretical problem here.

#27

I don’t get drift like that at all when using Overbridge or when I use my E-RM Multiclock. I do get it if I just use a standard MIDI interface from the computer though.

#28

producers were doing pukka goa tracks for donkey’s years before DAWs were even a thing

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#29

…ur aware of the fact that daws, as we know them, started around 1990…are u ?

avids tdm bus aka pro tools started out to rule the production world and logic/emagic was ready to work as a first frontend for that new studio standard since version 1.8…1991…

that’s all ten years before pretty much everybody then had a shot to try…
psytrance was like the progrock of four to the floor…and only hardcore dedicated freaks and/or rich kids had the options to go for it for real…it needed lot’s of gear to make it happen back then…and if u could’nt call at least 8 converters and a midsize mixing desk with at least 4 stereo busses ur own, the more u needed digital recording…aka…a daw…

and ur example is way more standard trance from the mid 90ies than truu goa/psytrance…it has some elements of it, sure, but it’s main dna not that much…even if that 303 is tryin hard on some hard trance thing…and it’s production level could not compete for a second if we’re talking todays standards in psytrance here…while there are also still some rare psytrance trax from that very same year, which still work great on big pa’s…but those all came from strong will, the luxury of lot’s of time at hand and budget or access to someone elses budget…no chance to compare the market of electronic and studio gear to what we’re used to nowadays…to daw or not to daw…

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#30

there was basic digital multitrack recording into PC/MAC programs but nothing compared to modern DAWs today. but anyway that wasn’t how most techno was done at the time even though it was theoretically available

"Sugar Rush was made in 1993 on kit that cost £300. I actually made it in a day at a friends house, it wasn’t even intended to be a finished mix but it got such an enormous reaction when it first got played that I felt I had to get it out

. . . back then there was no back up, I just mixed the track down and got it to DAT and moved on to the next record"

#31

I’m not saying you’re wrong. But that old school stuff has nothing to do with current stuff, in terms of the sound.

#32

not as polished maybe but many ridiculously banging tunes made with much more basic setups. the idea that any track “has” to be finished in a DAW to sound proper is misguided, at best

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#33

Just create old school goa trance instead of clinical modern psytrance.

Use some sidechain to prevent kick and bass from clashing and you’re good to go!

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#34

Can someone clue me in as to why makers of psy tutorial videos believe this is of utmost importance only in psy, as opposed to any other genre? This is a serious question.

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#35

I think you are talking about Jitter and not drift - there is a difference.

Drift is if I let the machine play along with the DAW clock and over time the machine stops hitting exactly on the grid. This is why Sync exists, the goal is to eliminate drift.

But some machines do not like to be synced. They prefer to run on their own internal clock. Their own internal clock is probably not sample perfect, and that results in jitter. Jitter is unpredictable variation in the drum hits. It can be as small as 1ms but you will still get phasing from it.

Phasing is a part of life with any drum machine I have owned. The tightest machine I have used is the Octatrack. It can record almost dead on sample accurate.

If I needed drum hits to be dead on sample accurate I would use a DAW to make music. But I don’t mind things a little looser since I don’t make music that needs to be dead on locked to the grid.

#36

Because there’s nothing like an ass kicking bassline :upside_down_face:

But honestly… I’ve been in the psy scene for 20 years now. What psy lacks is actual creativity and experiments. Not run off the mill basslines.

Agreed.

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#37

Wait a sec.

When you say “drift” are you actually talking about the clock, or is it due to free running oscillators etc.? Analog oscillators by default are free running. Many synths will let you reset them each note-on condition, but there are tricks that you can do when this isn’t available. Is THIS what you’re referring to, or do you have some kind of clock issue that we should be looking at instead?

Sorry if this was brought up already, but it just popped into my head, and when you’re trying to get a bass to line up, having the waveform at the same position/phase each time is going to be better. (in other cases, the free running behavior is desirable)

Anyway, if you’re looking for ways to remove this type of phase difference, I’ve got a bunch of ideas for you. If it’s clock problems, we can attack those in a different way.

OP says sample accuracy etc. but I’m wondering if the oscillator phases have been ruled out of the equation is all.

I’ve never made this genre before, but do enjoy listening to more of the techy side of it from the Techgnosis label. (so I get the principles) I think I’ll give it a try for science! :smiley: (I’ll use my hardware setup, and see if I can get things to line up, and then report back anything I had to do to accomplish it.)

I’m also going to be sure and use the Hydrasynth with mutators, because I’ve heard that this isn’t a good combo. I want to see if I can do it. :smiley:

Not sure if I’ll have time today, but I’ll squeeze it in somewhere this week.

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#38

Or notch filter and/or phase reverse your drum sample. You can phase reverse samples on a number of old school rack samplers as I recall, in addition to most modern DAWs which most people will be using.

#39

So can someone link me an amazing example of this in action?

Also, it still isn’t clear why the psy tutorial people are convinced this is a huge problem but only if you want to sound like a legit new psy artist.

#40

Of course it’s important in most forms of music, but especially most forms of modern electronic music.

I said “modern <genre>” because you couldn’t really do this with any deep precision in the early to mid 90s (not on a budget, anyway, and not in a basic home studio). Now all you need is a laptop and a host and you can design exactly any transient you want.

#41

it still isn’t clear by the psy tutorial people are convinced this is a huge problem but only if you want to sound like a legit new psy artist.

Because they’re making psy tutorials, not Hungarian Whistling tutorials

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