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"dark" & "light" are illusions/delusions...
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ocelot
ocelot
Started Topics :
94
Posts :
783
Posted : Apr 16, 2005 02:39
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The thing about psychedelic trance is the TRACKS- individual unique journeys with their own stories etc... some of which we may feel are masterpieces.
I like tracks that make me feel like a master created them- like someone who really knew what they were doing did them. This makes me hot.
SOme other people really like tracks that make them feel fresh and new and excited and stuff...
Other people like things for other reasons etc...
Maybe i'm just being wishfull here but it would be great to be able to have dialogue about individual tracks or sets without needlessly invoking these cartoons of Dark or Light... I'm not so sure these are even the real boundaries of trance if they ever were...
I remember when the debate was "minimal" vs "full-on" in terms of minimal composition or thick composition. the minimal was techier and focused on "psychedelic" sounds but the "full-on" melodic or goa trance was firmly entrenched as THE psychedelic music. It was "fast, furious, and spiritual as hell..."
The minimal was "cool" etc...
anyway- these and other imaginary boundaries like "dark" and "light" fade away as they are silly and besides the point.
When we all come together in the fractal formation there will be full color representation. Nothing will be excluded. If you (general you as in "one") have a problem with anything specifically- best to get over it now:)
the alternative is to segment into ten million microscenes with no influence on this tumultous planet as we spread ourselves too thin.
This is a pathetic petty vision and we are capable of much more...
Commodity fetish aside- TRANCE ISLAND
Trance culture, trance exchange programs, alternative trancer travel agencies, hostels, artist-coops, etc....
ideas? Feedback? complaints? praise? offers to buy my computer? (a 3.2ghz P4 800mhz fsb 1 md l2 cache, 1.5gigs of RAM, intel865perl mobo, gigabit nic, 256mb nvidia 5200 agp video, Maudio delta1010lt soundcard, pioneer DL DVD+-RW, 48x cd burner, 19" benq lcd, antec 450w ps, coolermaster cavalier case...) |
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Hidroponik
Arahat
Started Topics :
27
Posts :
1075
Posted : Apr 16, 2005 08:42
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i have to agree with you bro. "quit yer bitchin and enjoy the music" is a pretty nice philosophy to live by. i have been a MUSIC fan since I was around 5 years old. My father was a drummer and he taught me how to count measures before i could even do math.
music has encompassed my life ever since. i have my tastes in psychedelic music as well as non-psychedelic pop stuff, and so does the next guy. i really focused my energy into the psytrance scene because i was drawn to a certain tribal feeling that i never felt at warehouse and massive raves.
there was an openness on the dancefloor that i hadn't witnessed yet out in the west coast, until my first desert trance party.
everybody in front of the speakers danced to every single dj, all the way until the last dj. each dj represented their own personal flavor (which ran through almost all types of trance music and even some slower, funkier tech stuff) until the afternoon sun starting cookin the equipment.
to me, that is the trance experience. from beginning to end or until you reach enlightenment. any kind of music can do that for you if you just open up and let it, there's no genre that is better than any other.
the beauty of it is that it is up to the listener to interpret the frequencies as they please, nobody can tell them how to digest its message. |
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Demi
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
21
Posts :
276
Posted : Apr 18, 2005 06:36
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last time i was debating on this topic 2 some ppl i said we never see one state of the day - its constant change of the light of the Sun and the Moon and the strars and the objects - so its never one colour - its colorfull, multi grey or fluoro... You cannot really feel the morning if you havenot gone through the night stuff! Its not gonne be complete. What are we afraid 2 hear? to see? if you know the questions and answers, spontanously, common sense, 6th sense, 7th, deeper... etc
i was kinda glued 2 fluffy stuff 4 the last couple years i spent in Florida. meanwhile after dj Teo sets in Goa my attitude got stabilized *)) the guy is is the God in night time sets. he can play for hours and kill but then make fly like a butterfly...
thank you
 www.vertigo-records.com
***POOJA GROUP*** |
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offthenutboom
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
55
Posts :
928
Posted : Apr 18, 2005 16:34
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I personally have always promoted all kinds of trance music. I mean if we just concentrate in one part of the vision, the vision will just remain incomplete and unbalanced. Music paints a sound story reflecting our enviroment, history, and reinforces our mystical archetypes. It is an opportunity to deconstruct our conditioning through an alternative perception to reach the light  after the darkness. It all has to be told for the story to valid, complete and enlightning.
Of course, this is something that is slowly eroding due to economic pressures, which does not encourage spreading knowledge and strong community bonds. And a lot of ppl are incorporated into the community @ large without a proper understanding. In part, these regulatory efforts are a result of the attachment to the material and a continues erosion towards a shallow and superficial understanding of the celebration.
So instead of instant gratification and selfishness through the economic system... I buy therefore I want it this or that way. Or If I do not sell it this way I will not make enough money... We should put money aside and provide tolerance and selflessness and build this events for the right reasons to create a stronger community with an organic and multidimensional bond. We do what we do because of the joy we feel doing it, not just because it can be sold or purchase as a service or for a profit, or because there is be some kind of material gratification behind it. And this is the toughest part of all, to make it right from the beginning and create a free standing independent culture with a different perception of a whole world and free of attachements. And because the same reason time does not collapse and we do not transcend, fear and attachments, our culture will continue to be unbalanced.
My two.5 cents
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offthenutboom
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
55
Posts :
928
Posted : Apr 18, 2005 22:28
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Psycosmo
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
42
Posts :
787
Posted : Apr 19, 2005 05:52
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Great thread!
I agree, these labels are only holdin us back. There is more to this music than the light-dark dimension, or the progressive/minimal-fullon dimension. How about describing sounds in term of wet-dry, jagged-smooth, flexible-brittle, sharp-blunt, warm-cool, spacious-tight to name just a few dualities that we could use to categorize sounds, and I do think that some categorization is important for descriptive purposes.
The main thing is that what counts is whether or not it sounds good. In the words of a well known musician "if it sounds good, it is good"
I have my preferences of course but I know that they only hold me down by leading me away from sounds I would like if I thought to give them a chance.
Thats all I got to say for now |
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Cosmos Mariner
Started Topics :
5
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132
Posted : Apr 19, 2005 07:03
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sometimes i think the only distinction between "light" and "dark" happens on isratrance...
sound is vibration |
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Hidroponik
Arahat
Started Topics :
27
Posts :
1075
Posted : Apr 19, 2005 09:35
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excellent thread. |
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Alixr
Started Topics :
1
Posts :
4
Posted : Apr 19, 2005 11:10
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I agree that "dark" & "light" are not the best ways to describe music, as those terms are heavily loaded with different meanings for everyone. That said, I do like it when "sinister" & "angelic" sounds are interwoven into one track, playing off each other and creating a strange yet beautiful harmony...
Let's all remember to respect each other's tastes. I often see people trying to convince others to like their particular flavor of beats for such & such reason. I trust my body to tell me whether a sound vibes with me or not. What vibes with me may not vibe with another. Just because I might not like a certain sound doesn't mean I need to "get over it" and accept it. Maybe I just don't like it and it doesn't have to mean anything more than that. It's OK that we enjoy different sounds.
The beautiful thing about psytrance is the variety of styles it can be expressed as, invoking many different feelings. There's something there for almost anyone to enjoy. I don't want to see the community spread any thinner than it already is, so as long as the people who program lineups include a balanced variety of sounds, attendance will naturally consist of a wider cross section of the trance community as a whole, and in the process help to attract new faces. 
This seems to be the trend lately, hope to see it continue beyond trend into standard. |
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offthenutboom
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
55
Posts :
928
Posted : Apr 19, 2005 18:54
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But, why not look beyond what we think is psy trance? Why not search for music that is trancey and psychedelic beyond what others are defining for us as psy trance. Instead of closing our minds in a redundant box, why not expand horizons and bring some freshness to the dance.
Catalogization of this music has been a result of marketing. Positioning, message... This sounds all too familiar in todays scene.
The term dark in itself is a marketing proposition for a specific group of ppl. I could do a SWOT and prove how this positioning came about. I mean almost all comps are one dimensional nowadays. Many parties are one dimensional, nitch and targeted. Comps used to cover a wide spectrum of sounds, kind of the best of the best on that instant in time as well as parties. What drove the story was the personality of those playing
I personally prefer varied comps with killer psychedelic tracks. It will provide more flexibility on the spectrum of sounds I can play. This comps are the palettes of the DJs. If we only different shades of one color the vision we paint will be monotone.
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mono mono
Onnomon
Started Topics :
5
Posts :
314
Posted : Apr 19, 2005 21:30
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"dark" seems to be lousy term for music that doesn't use what's typically called "musical" passages. That is- distinct musical notes from scales, modes, whatever. From what I can hear "dark" refers to tracks where the tonal centering of the sounds, mostly in the mids and higher, is not clearly defined . That's not to say there might be an accent note here and there, but usually the only set of notes is contained in the bassline. And, unfortunately, more often than not, the foreground sounds are usually the same variety of FM synth tweaking, for this sub-genre of a sub-genre.
Here's is bit of a theoretical discussion concerning the varying degrees of tonality a sound can have.
There's a continuum of tonality, tonality being frequencies that correspond to what we call notes. For example, something like a straight sine wave at 440 Hz (cycles per sec) has an extremely distinct pitch which corresponds to musical note A. Something like a square wave at 440 Hz has a strong 440 Hz component but also has lots of other frequencies, none of which correspond to any note (with respect to concert pitch tuning), but it still sounds like an A note. On the opposite side, something like noise (choose your color: white, brown, pink...) has much more content of non-musical pitches compared to the musical pitches within the noise. Noise is considered non-tonal. You can filter noise (remove frequencies outside a certain range of freq) around a musical pitch frequency and create a more tonal noise, suggesting a note. These are easy examples, where it gets really interesting is when you take say samples, like the dishwasher starting up. The dishwasher creates a complex array of frequencies varying over time, there's also some degree of tonal focus of these frequencies, because the motor spins at constant frequency, once up to speed. The dishwasher also puts out a whole lot of other cranky bits of sound. What's great about samplers is that you can shift the dishwasher sound frequencies over to standard pitch frequencies, then combining that with more straighforward instrument notes, create melodies that are subtle and complex because of the huge spectrum of frequencies involved. With the proper blending you can create of fairly psychedelic sound which hints at a melody. This is what I find most interesting.
By the way, the pitch standard has changed over the years. In Mozart's time concert pitch A was 421 Hz, a slightly lower note than now. Different piano manufacturers have adopted their own tuning base but it was standardized in 1939. Kind of reminds of the BPM race, or the "hot mastering" race over the years.
As far as i'm concerned notes and non-notes both work well and have their place. I prefer to mix both though.
-dean
P.S. I also think "progressive" is lousy term for describing the "building and layering" nature of certain 4/4 types of music. In general "progressive trance" is really "smooth trance" because it's not too jarring. Compare and contrast to "smooth jazz". There not unlike each other in ways. I like to reserve the term "progressive" for it's more common usage of "innovation", which "progressive trance" isn't necessarily.
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mono mono
Onnomon
Started Topics :
5
Posts :
314
Posted : Apr 19, 2005 21:42
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I might add that sometimes this tonality concept is sometimes referred to as "stochastic pitch" and has been explored since the early 20th century in orchestral music by people like Charles Ives, John Cage, Iannis Xanakis (who coined the term), and Georgi Ligeti among others. One of my favorite works is Ligeti's "Atmospheres", written in the 1961 (god bless the internet!), and is pretty famous because it was used in 2001: A Space Odyessy. This is all about tonal clustering and creating "globs" of notes which evolve of time.
-dean
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Cosmos Mariner
Started Topics :
5
Posts :
132
Posted : Apr 20, 2005 22:15
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while clearly as americans we are the leading intellectuals of the trance world , perhaps this thread belongs in the general forum?
sound is vibration |
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offthenutboom
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
55
Posts :
928
Posted : Apr 21, 2005 00:10
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It is on the General Forum already he he |
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DeSerT.StOrM
Started Topics :
1
Posts :
108
Posted : Apr 21, 2005 21:34
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very good post mono mono. i also like the bit on the end about progressive, id have to say i agree with you.
The words dark and light are confusing names, because everyone has different definitions and connotations for the words, and everyone reads into things differently.
Language Destroys Thought! |
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