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| quote: | Originally posted by Derivative
Oh you can do that. But it will destroy headroom. What often happens is that you have lead lines playing monophonic but in harmony with the bassline (which is often root). But the more harmonisation you have, the less room in the mix you have for everything else.
Usually the two most dominant elements in a trance tune are the bass drum and bassline and these both consume masses of headroom so its difficult to keep adding layers of harmony - especially if the basslines are based on unfiltered saw waves (harmonically rich) and the bassline is a composite of loads of different sounds and the result is unfiltered (i.e. some of those massive Alphazone style kicks).
Jaia - Breathing Ocean is a good example of the former but its not harmonically complex by any means.
In modern composition this is less of a problem because you often do not have bass drums and bass instruments with so much amplitude behind them that they drown out everything else.
Another interesting thing. Try looking at how Indian music is made - particular Sitar based music - it doesn't use scales at all, but Ragas which are like scales but are based on moods and times of day. So its all synaesthetic. Sitar based music is almost exclusively comprised of melody and rhythym. There is often a drone accompaniment but there is very little harmonisation. Goa trance most obviously derives its style from Indian ragas and early trance does in many ways too.
At some point Trance (particular European trance music) began to become more focused on harmonisation and this is the point where I lose interest and where Trance began to have these huge breakdowns in order to get these lush string sections and pads in. I think its a conflict of interest because when a Trance tune breaks down for any significant length of time, you lose that kinetic energy that the song is building up. For that reason I also think that Trance is necessarily progressive.
In terms of harmonisation you should look at some modern compositions such as Ralph Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending. This is not characteristic of much of the man's work and it is one of his short peices. His symphonies are very different. The Lark Ascending has several movements which alternate between a solo violin and these wonderful harmonized string sections. The solo violin is played very fast and if you listen to it you can imagine a fledgling Lark trying (and failing) to take flight. It sounds alot like traditional Chinese music based on the Erhu and the time signitures and speed of the performance fit with that idea too. It does sound oriental in a way.
You can try to snatch some of the strings and stick a bassline and bass drum over them but something has to give. An obvious western example of doing this would be Reflekt - Need to Feel Loved which you have probably heard. That song steals the string section from a film called Road to Perdition but if you run it through a spectrum analyser and compare the sound of it to the film soundtrack you realise a few things:
1) Need to Feel Loved is noticeably quieter than most other Positiva tunes.
2) The string section has been band passed filtered and sounds it in order for the bassline and bass drum to fit.
3) If you listen to some of the remixes of this tune (I think Thrillseekers did one) then you may notice that the string section has an even narrower band bass filter on it or more of the string section has been EQed out. This is because many of the remixes have additional lead instruments, bigger kick drums and louder basslines and theres just no way you can fit all of that in without something having to give way. |
I completely agree that creating really complex harmonization eats lots of headroom. I'm not saying that it has to be done, merely that it can be (by bandpassing and eq'ing). Sometimes i feel like a track i'm working on could benefit from having one more harmony line, in addition to the bassline and melody, to help fill the track out so that it doesnt feel too open. Much of this has to do with the fact that, in the western world, the focus of music has always been on melody and harmony. Because this is what we hear from a young age we begin to believe that all music must be this way. I also have always connected trance (especially early trance and rave music) with eastern music because, like you said, eastern music is rhythmically based more than melodically or harmonically. Trance, especially early and progressive trance, is also very much like the early minimalist music which focuses more on subtle changes to create an evolving sound to engage the listener, than on a constant barrage of changing harmonization. I believe that modern trance has evolved into something completely different now. The actuall "trance inducing" effect is gone from much of the modern epic sound because focus is now put on large sudden changes rather than the slow subtle changes that used to be there. I'm not saying that one style is better than the other, just that they are different now. I don't know how i ended up where i did, but i'll shut up now.
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| quote: | Originally posted by Idoru
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i swallow |
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