Medea
Aedem/Medea
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Posted : Feb 7, 2008 23:08
i can make multichannel midi-files from my tracks and share them if someone needs, but this seems to be absolutely useless, because this file would contain very uncertain information about what is going on in the track ))
if you want to analyze someone's track structure, you better listen to it attentively and notice how it flows... Make notes, use paper and pencil, very usefull tools for brain-organising, btw -)
http://soundcloud.com/aedem
EYB
Noized
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Posted : Feb 8, 2008 17:32
someone got a midi file for a kick pattern???
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3l3ctromonk
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Feb 8, 2008 18:55
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Posted : Mar 24, 2008 00:14
Quote:
On 2005-02-24 02:33, Meta wrote:
Yeah, most psy trance songs probably wouldn't look terribly interesting as a plain MIDI file. A lot of 16th notes.
Franky, from a strictly MIDI perspective, most Psy-trance songs would probably look almost exactly like all those Euro-Trance songs... the sonic difference being all of the effects, gating and automation put upon relatively simple structures.
Mmm, I don't agree. Certainly the sounds are a big part of psy trance, but I can think of a lot of complex tunes which it would be nice to study via MIDI - especially older goa stuff. Of course, you'd have to do a lot of work to turn a MIDI file into aomsehting that sounded like a record, but if a song has a strong tune you could play it one general midi intruments and still recognise it.
anigbrowl
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Posted : Mar 24, 2008 01:09
Quote:
if you want to analyze someone's track structure, you better listen to it attentively and notice how it flows... Make notes, use paper and pencil, very usefull tools for brain-organising, btw -)
Yep, the best method...also, take your favorite track and load it in some audio editor. My favorite thing is to use Adobe Audition (aka CoolEdit). Load the track you like an put it in the multitrack window. If you highlight 4 or 8 beats it can calculate the BPM for you, but this isn't necessary.
Next, go through the file and put a marker at every change you think is important in the music. Make sure they are lined up with the beats. This takes maybe 1 hour or so for a typical track.
Then go through every market, and split the audio file on the market. Now the track is split into maybe 20 or 30 sections of 8 or 16 or 32 bars (usually). Lock the clips so they stay in time on the timeline...then drag different sections to differnt tracks (but while they are locked,they stay in the correct time).
Of course this doesn't show you all the individual tracks of a mix. But it's an easy way to see how the song break down over time and get a feeling of the shape.
It annoys me when people say 'there is no point' or 'it's all just 16th notes', because this is just not true. Maybe it seems like that at first, but you try putting some 16th note rhythm with a cool sounds just moving the pitch bend up and down - sometimes you get nice results, but you won't get a tune.
If you look in any guitar magazine, every month you'll see chords and/or sheet music for popular rock songs and ballads. Of course if you play this it won't sound like the original recording or your favorite guitarist. But it's a good tool for learning to play the tune. So just because trance has a lot of effects and production tricks, it's still interesting to study and learn the music of others. Unfortunately, electronic music magazines tend to focus 99% on the technology of making the sound, because their role is to sell lots of advertising for expensive keyboards with exciting sounds/ exciting synthesis technology.
And trance people love the cool sounds...but I bet with some of your favorite tracks you can hum or sing 'la la la' for the main tune. It's not easy because most psy/goa tracks are using some middle eastern or indian scale, and not the usual harmonic progressions we know from pop and rock (or even classical) music. That's why it sounds exciting and different, but there are also different rules for constructing these tunes and if you don't have great musical talent it's not always simple to understand.
Some rock music is useful. A lot of older metal, for example, is modal and uses a similar scale to goa, the phrygian scale (E Major, or E-F-G-A-B-C-D). so it can be useful to study some metal to get ideas, but unfortunately metal has a very different rhythm concept from dance music. I kind of like Iron Maiden sometimes
Better non-trance music to study is (surprise) Indian music. Definitely learn something about Indian classical music because it's beautiful, but actually it doesn't have that much to do with psy and goa - the rhythms are different and usually much slower. Instead listen to indian folk music...and one of the best places to hear cool indian music (and to find MIDI) is in Bollywood films. Yes, the silly romantic musicals with the big dance numbers! Look around...there are quite a few sites with general-midi version so popular indian dance songs, and if you do some research on Bollywood music (try youtube) you can find many more. This music is very very popular so there are lots of examples.
Of course when you get a midi file designed for general-midi and play back from your computer it sounds fucking awful. And many of the arrangements to too 'pop' for our taste. But get it into a sequencer, and instead of trying to select the right instruments to make a nice arrangement, just find 1 or 2 tracks which work nicely together. Put some good instruments on, add a delay, and now you are getting somewhere...midi film music from india is especially good for string backgrounds and accompaniments that can give the 'exotic' feeling to your music.
The new melodyne (available in 3rd quarter 2008) will do polyphonic analysis...although this will still have problems with psytrance (because of delays, many layers etc), it will still be useful. Many tracks have sections where all the instruments drop out to expose a new phrase or there are sections with just basic percussion, some chords and a lead sound. You can cut out that short clip, analyse it with Melodyne and learn something useful.
There is a very old sample CD with both audio samples and midi files called 'psychedelic trance and goa' that you can still buy online for maybe $40. I don't have a copy but I heard quite a lot of great tracks were made using this CD for some of the source material. And for sure, it would be good as a study tool. OK, so this is not the 'best' way to to do it...but many people cheat a little bit.
Some years ago I bought an old Kurzweil k2000...I was playing with it on the first or 2nd day, listening to the factory patches (made around 1988), when suddenly I heard a very trancey, cool sound...sounded so familiar...I had to think for a while but then I put on one of my Hallucinogen CDs, and surprise, the exact same sound for the lead on one track.
So if Simon is happy to use a cool factory patch or something, then you shouldn't criticize someone just because they want to study melody and chords by looking at examples. For me making good sounds and doing production is very easy, the difficult part is to hear the melody and harmony correctly, much more than the technical stuff of programming the patch and recording or mixing. I'm a good engineer, not so good as a musician. I have a lot of sympathy or anyone who wants to put in the effort to actually study how a melody an arrangement works as a musical composition.
anigbrowl
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Posted : Mar 24, 2008 01:24
just to add on the indian music midi front, 'bhangra' is another good style to search for - this often combines indian (especially punjabi) music with a hip-hop groove that's very dance-friendly. One of my favorite tunes...
