Trance And Chillout Mix 2012

Trance And Chillout Mix 2012

So my new project over the past few months (check it out in the link above) has been trying to teach myself how to use a music programming software. I encountered Fruity Loops back when it was still called that almost a decade ago, and never really could make anything of it. I didn't know anyone who was producing at the time and that was right before i had had any musical education with the exception of the recorder they try and teach you in third grade or whatever. And obviously that wasn't enough.

So having given up i moved on to other things, i played in classical orchestras, then small jazz bands, all the while learning music theory and all that. At the beginning my amazement with music and EDM pushed me to try and do that myself, but without anywhere to start i failed and ended up just exploring the genres and really getting myself familiar with all types of music and their similarities and differences. That obsession with listening to music and collecting and discovering continues to this day.

In high school i met a few people who knew how to use their program of choice, be it logic, ableton, or FL studio and i passed it off as something i thought was a cool talent. Like finding out someone can juggle really well, but it didn't make me want to force them to teach me.

So, here i am back at trying my hand at figuring out FL studio. This time around I've found a bunch of resources to refer to, and tools to use to teach myself how to produce or mix music. I'm surprised to say that i can actually build chords and use the keyboard piano with some idea of what i'm trying to do. I chose this program because its always been user friendly and really helps me learn all the components clearly without a whole pile of technical jargon being thrown at me. I have a few others i may go back to and see if i understand them more but FL is enough for me right now. And seeing as Naden creates some of my favorite music with this program at least i know its capable of that and that's enough for me.

The name I've kind of chose for now has been The Vulgar Vagrant. Intentionally a more darker name since that's what i wanted to do more of initially. For the lighter stuff tend to think of it as "V2"'s work in my head. The nickname doesn't come with the image the full name brings with it, so the name works both ways. I didn't run this by anyone but i couldn't really think of who to ask that i wanted knowing i was starting this project. I tend to be pretty secretive of stuff until I've been doing it for a while. I didn't even tell anyone i was writing this blog for like two months. I don't know why writing to the abyss was satisfying enough to me, but sometimes it is. Kind of goes with my quieter personality i guess.

On to this first mix, which was wrought with troubles. For one, the playlist of music i wanted to use wasn't adding in. About 50% of the songs wouldn't decode and just turned up blank. It seemed to be happening to 9 minute plus tracks and that really cut out my choices with trance. Once that happened, the order i put them in went out the window, and the hunt for clips was not helping, more on that later.

Because i couldn't use the order i wanted all my transitions were sloppy to non existent  I feel as if i'm trying to emulate what i hear when i listen to a track, but the musician who made that playlist intentionally hid a bunch of things from the audience to make it sound smooth so i can't use them on my end. Since then I've pulled off approximately two transitions with any sort of dignity. Its definitely something i wish someone would just sit me down and teach me in an afternoon. But oh well, its a process.

Now, at first i thought this was due to not being able to use the songs i wanted, but I've now learned i'm completely incapable of cleanly doing this yet. So this is probably one of my first goals i'd like to learn.

One thing i tried to do with this first mix was add in clips of whatever i thought was fitting. In this endeavor i came across some really freaky shit on YouTube. I was looking for some audio clips of someone talking about relaxing which led me straight to ASMR. This is some weird bottom of the barrel fringe shit right here. you're supposed to sit and listen to this person talk with a directional 3-D microphone about weird shit and tap tap tap on glass or scratch things in their house. The quality of the microphone makes it wicked realistic but the problem is, the closer you get to something being realistic the more you drop into the uncanny valley. This is the feeling you get from things that are too real, but off in a way that makes you feel uneasy. After listening to a bunch of these videos i was audibly screaming into my computer screen and yelling out how weird whatever i was watching was. It really did not sit well with me.

Although the first clip in the mix did work out pretty well, as did the others. I put in a clip of hunter s thompson at 10:45, A Cheech and Chong quote from Up In Smoke that i had a really hard time finding at 20 mins even, and wanted to add in something at the end of some chick saying "isn't that better" or something along those lines but i was too afraid to go back to that ASMR hell hole i was in an hour or two before so i left it how it was.

Its a pretty good list of songs, not completely what i wanted, but its a start.

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah (Original Studio Version)

The first time i visited my brother in norcal years and years ago, i was pretty young. He's a folk artist, and i love his music, but hadn't seen him in so long that i kind of forgot. At the time he was rooming with other kids going to UC Berkeley. One of them was a pianist, and the other a drummer/guitar player. You could really tell it was a musician's apartment because there were instruments everywhere and while sitting and eating in the living room someone would always end up picking something up and a jam session starts out of the blue. It was so cool to spend a week with college guys, just hanging out with them all the time, that was probably the first time i had done so and had a really chill time.

Me and my brother spent until the wee hours of the night catching up and telling stories after the years. And i fell asleep on the couch. When i woke up, he had left for work and one of his roommates was playing the piano. I just laid there on the couch and slowly woke up to the sun shining in though the window, and he had just started this song. It was played through perfectly and that was probably one of the best times i've ever woken up in the morning. It's not often that you get your own private singer to serenade you awake.

I had liked this song before that, it was on my iPod and all, not that i gave it too much play. I don't know which version this is, but its the one i had. But after that one day, this song had a very different meaning to me. Whenever i listen to it i've got all these emotions tied to it and always end up reminiscing through the whole song about times past. At this point i'm barely listening to the words themselves and just feeling the music while my mind drifts, touching on fond memories i've had over the years.

Infected Mushroom - Ratio Shmatio

Ah, Psytrance.. This brings me back to those dark times long ago when my taste in music was horridly narrow. Which is all thanks to this band right here. I would go weeks listening solely to them and nothing else. I had every song they've ever made or remixed and was counting the days until they released another. They were even the first electronic music artist i went to go see live. I guess its not all bad, because being so obsessed with them really kind of immersed me in the culture, whereas before i just sort of liked EDM songs here and there. There was a time at my darkest hour where i could name the song from the first ten seconds being played out of any of their 100+..

A few things that set psytrance apart from the rest of the trance-ish genres, are the really complicated melodies, high energy fast beats (which is different from trance for sure), it's got lots and lots of different interesting sounds, constant breaks and morphs in the basic tone of the song and a few other things like sounds bouncing from left to right and such. I really have noticed that i tend to gravitate to music that has a lot of energy and psytrance counts for sure. Practically every song you hear is going to have the SAME kick/drum beat, it almost is required for it to count as psytrance. The thing is, there's so much going on throughout the song that you wouldn't ever think it was repetitive.

Something interesting about them, Its a full band- guitar, bass, drums, singer and dj all together. One of their most famous songs has acoustic guitar throughout it, and others you'd almost think was metal until the beat dropped. I think its a really interesting sound to mix, and they've got backgrounds in both trance and the metal scene. It also makes for a wicked awesome performance live.

A great friend of mine is really into mainstream music, and she does like EDM a bit but she really tends to lean toward popular stuff. One of her favorite songs of all time (which really surprises me) is IM's song "Sa'eed". She got to see them this year and they happened to play it and she was so happy. Sa'eed is a great song also, its got really awesome vocals that you don't get to hear on this one. You should go give it a listen after this one. That, or Muse Breaks, that's another of my favorites.

Hed PE - Other Side

Hed P.E. (HPE) is one of my dirty little secrets. Not that i haven't told anybody that i listen to them, i have. But i wouldn't just sit in my room and play it out loud. Mostly because they have really vulgar lyrics. I know that swearing and all that wouldn't bother anyone i know, its the talk about beating and raping women, doing drugs, and things like that that i think would scare them. I can't tell if some of it is satire or not but regardless to anybody else i'm sure it would sound weird.

HPE is a rapcore band. Rapcore (sometimes called G-punk, but i call it rapcore) is heavy metal mixed with rap. I've listened to artists like Bionic Jive and HPE for more than half a decade now and they both are that type of music. (They don't sound anything alike though). Interestingly they both have political themes although Bionic Jive's has to do with corruption in america and racism, while HPE talks all about conspiracy theories and generally sound crazy in the head. I love the idea of this genre. Instead of screamed lyrics like metal, there are actual verses and such and on the other end of the spectrum instead of a play button that an artist is rapping over its an actual band. I don't know why it isn't more popular, HPE has had some small success but there are no other artists really doing it today. One of HPE's band members is a dj even (if i remember correctly).

As much as i listen to them (which is A LOT) the only times i've ever heard anyone enjoy listening to them was when i played this song. I played a few others for people a couple times and i really could tell they were not interested in it at all.

So, after talking about their style all this time, now for this song. This is actually SO uncharacteristic of HPE that every once and a while i go try and look up the song to see if its a cover or not. It seriously even sounds like its a whole other band and singer and someone accidentally put HPE's name on it. It isn't anything they would make and isn't like any other song they have. Its almost as if it were "divine inspiration" and the song HAD to be made and they were guided to write it.

I always feel like i've heard this song from a long time ago, like BEFORE i had ever even heard of HPE at all. Lots of other people say that as well, like they feel like they already know the lyrics even though the band has never existed to them at all. It really baffles me why all of this is true but for the life of me i can't figure out why. Its just a special song they have and i just accept it as that. I really love it, its got hints of a sublime feel. And an acoustic guitar that i don't hear much in their music. Its got a good message as well. Despite HPE's vulgarness, beneath all the filth there really are a lot of good messages to be found. Granted you DO have to look hard for them.

"Not all those who have eyes, will see what i'm saying. Not all those who have ears will hear a note that we're playing." -HPE  "Atlantis A.D."

Noisia - Could This Be

A new song by noisia! This one isn't out yet but it'll be featured on their new album coming out in a few weeks. The single, Tommy's Theme, is pretty good. Its much slower but its quite catchy. Its coming out on the mau5trap label, which.. surprises me. I knew deadmau5 was trancey but inches more and more towards dubstep with every song. But to be the one to release a noisia song is a pretty big step in that direction.

One of my favorite artists of all time, these guys have done SO much work. They produced Hadouken!'s whole recent album. And have done music for movies, DDR and so many other things. They have their own sound which has always been definable as their own style but they've definitely gone darker (which i'm quite a fan of) lately. The beginning is kind of chill but still has a lot of energy. But i really I like this song because of what starts at 1:24, the drop is nice and all. But that crisp rim shot instead of a snare is awesome. You really rarely ever hear that in tracks.

It hadn't really occurred to me that they were making a full length album when i heard the single, but now that i think about it i'm really excited for it to come out. It's going to have some great work on it. I'll have to take another look at that mau5trap label now that i have an idea of what they're releasing. It would be awesome to have that whole collection on my iPod. I'd probably set it as a playlist and come back to it on random all the time.

I started writing this after hearing it only once, so the more i listen to it the more i hear. Im sure by the end of tomorrow ill have listened to it tons because i absolutely love it.

Fenech-Soler - Lies (Doctor P Remix)

Doctor P and Flux Pavilion are the two artists i want to talk about today. They both got together to start a label called circus records a little bit ago, and i noticed a change in their music since then. They really stepped up to the bar a few years ago and started making music that was really good quality. Flux Pavilion made it to 56 on the UK's top 100 singles with his track 'bass cannon' (there's a pretty cool music video along with that too). I can't wait to see what's to come from both of these guys in the future, because it seems like every other day that i'm on youtube they've released a new hit.

I was dead set on doing a Flux Pavilion song, seeing as they're getting real huge. I just met some people a few weeks ago who were in love with his midnight run song. And that's an excellent song, but this one i didn't notice how much i was listening to until i was trying to make this decision. I haven't ever really skipped over this song every time it comes up in a playlist for basically as long as i've had it. So its gotten quite a few plays.

This is pretty far from hits Doctor P was making several years ago. Yes, sweet shop is a classic, and i will always like that song, but i have to admit it sounds really generic. This song is different, I love the lyrics, and the melody. I really, really like the singing Fenech Soler does on the original, but the plain drumming in the background leaves me wanting more. That could be because i heard this version first and this one has so much more going on. But i just find it more interesting than the original, its as if he re-added parts that were missing in the first place. Of course i know that his type of music would be more about him and his voice, and Doctor P's remix has a lot to do with the beat and other elements in the music, so inherently fenech's is going to have less to it. But its so goddamn PLAIN. Differences here and there are one thing, but this just sounds so extreme to me.

Sometimes i wonder if there's any jealousy involved between artists. I think there has got to be someone out there who had their song remixed only to realize the other person's version is far, far better (i can think of quite a few examples). Do they get angry that someone else messed with their hard work? Do they go around saying things like ''oh those techno freaks ruined another one of my songs again'' to each other? I have no idea. I'm sure that there are tons of people who LOVE when a song of theirs is remixed perfectly. But what about those people inevitably on the other end of the spectrum. What if people prefer to listen to Doctor P's version of the song, but fenech is the one who's talent is in the singing. Is that something he would care about? I don't know, these are things i wonder.

Tritonal Feat Soto - Piercing Quiet (Air Up There Remix) (HD)

I apologize for the week or so i took off. I have a final tomorrow and haven't had any time at all to devote to this. I have been choosing songs i want up here though so there's a list that should make it onto here in the near future.

This is a kind of recent favorite of mine, i haven't listened to it too much lately, but i heard it first just a few months ago. One thing I've learned about trance is that if i'm going to really get an idea of what the song really is like I'm going to need to devote the 7-10 minutes to how long it inevitably is, to listen to the whole thing. If you just skip to the middle, or listen to the beginning and stop there so much build up and other parts that you've missed along the way that you can't possibly have an opinion on the song.

Its just due to the nature of the music and this song is a great example of that. The first thirty seconds basically NOTHING is going on, its about as simple of a beat as you could possibly have. It reminds me of that beat everyone makes with their mouth when they're imitating techno. It gets slightly more interesting after that, still very simple though. And melodies and vocalizations are introduced very slowly. I like that when the verse comes in, the beat draws back to emphasize her voice, which is quite nice. (Christina Soto is famous for featuring on some great trance tracks). And i think the melody in the middle perfectly compliments her, credit for this is due to Air Up There, the guys doing the remix. I think the tweaks done by them really fits her singing style more. I like their version tons, but i do have the original as well because i can't decide which one is better. The original is definitely more upbeat, and more danceable. But this one has a heavier beat and is smoother sounding.

You have to refrain from "getting bored" or something like that in the beginning and concentrate on what the artist is painting with his music. It's all necessary to invoke the emotion he intends. I think its something you have to get used to, because some types of music just get to the point. Where commonly with trance it's the opposite. Its definitely where the songs in this genre get their length.

I've found this song and others are really great for background music. Ill play it while studying or doing other things where my mind is elsewhere, because its not too distracting. But at the same time it has enough to kind of half-listen to. It really lets you read (for example) and pay attention to the material, and there isn't an uncomfortable silence or anything. Late night driving is another favorite time to listen to trance for these reasons as well.

If you're interested the song i very nearly did in place of this one is Robert Babicz - Dark flower (Joris Voorn Remix). Another really great track i actually heard about the same time as piercing quiet.