<original><pony><Psytrance>Sonic Rainboom - The Shadow King

[ph00tbag]

This one takes a while to get where it's going, but I certainly think it's worth it. But then again I'm usually in the minority over whether this kind of music is interesting.

Let me know what you think here or in the video comments!

[Element6]

I think you did a great job of keeping the song interesting despite its length. There's always something new going on and it's like a story is being told; I like it. The vocal samples were well-timed throughout too, and they were handled well. I believe that positively contributed to the storytelling. You certainly know how to put a track together.

~5:32 has to be my favorite part. I didn't expect the sudden intensity during my first listen, nice!

I can't say I've heard of psytrance before. Would this song be an accurate depiction of the genre? I find it intriguing even while it's not quite similar to the music I typically listen to.

Overall, great work! I enjoyed listening to it.

[GumsOfGabby]

You've got a nice idea here ph00tbag, but I think this track can be condensed A LOT!

"This one takes a while to get where it's going, but I certainly think it's worth it. But then again I'm usually in the minority over whether this kind of music is interesting." - I don't it's the length of a track that bores people, but rather the content. If you have the same bassline playing for 10 straight minutes (like in this track) things get boring VERY quickly. I think you could work on the track's structure so sum up your ideas into ~4 minutes, unless you're going to add different progressions.

To help keep things interesting, try modulating your synths in anyway that sounds good. It's more fun to hear an evolving sound than just a static one playing the same thing for 10 minutes if you get what I mean.

I also liked the part around 5:30 and the ideas in the track. But unless you have more moods to stuff into it, I would say this needs to be shortened.

[ph00tbag]

Element6: Inasmuch as any single track can accurately depict psy as a whole, I'd say this track covers a lot of it. Psytrance casts its net pretty wide. It's probably best represented by Hallucinogen's LSD, but it can range from the classic goa sound of Astral Projection, to the brooding music of Atmos; from the bright, melodic sounds of Protoculture, to the downright terrifying aural landscapes of Cybernetika. It includes both the stoic minimalism of Cosma (where a lot of the inspiration for my track came from), and the wacky absurdism of GMS (Seriously? A horse?). It can be proggy, like the stuff by Christopher Lawrence, or cheesy, like Infected Mushroom's output (yeah, that's what psy aficionados call cheesy). I dunno if any of that stuff interests you, but I encourage you to check it all out if this track struck your fancy. There's a lot to find in the psytrance genre.

GumsofGabby: I know what you mean about varying the bass, and in a lot of past compositions I've done that (Vicarious Tripping under my jex alias is a prime example), but I didn't really want the bassline to be a focus of the track, so I didn't change it up unless I was changing the fundamental. The thing that's supposed to be interesting is the way the sounds are introduced and evolved. And the sounds are evolved and modulated, it's just that they do so subtly and slowly. I wasn't really going for anything exciting. I wanted something more meditative. King Sombra bode his time, slowly chipping away at his wasteland prision, so does this track bide its time until it can break out.

I guess it comes down to compositional preference. There's some times when I want the track to have an overload of details to be changing all the time, but sometimes I just want to keep things simple.