Psytrance

[mrdos]

I recently got a Nord Modular G2 and among other things, I'm trying to get into the territory of some of the sounds made by Psytrance bands.

Does anyone have any recommendations on where to get started or things to think about when getting into making patches for these kinds of strange sounds?

[Electromagnetic Wave]

Hi mrdos,

1st : Congratulation for the G2!

Please never write 'psytrance' and 'IM' in the same sentance in 2015 ;P

To start, you can tell us what kind of sound you try to reproduce exactly. What you tried yourself with the G2. What you don't understand.

If you just want to download and use patch from other users and you think you can find all stuff you need to be ready to use NOW ... I think the G2 is not for you

But with a little perseverance, a lot of people are going to help you here

[varice]

to the electro-music forum mrdos

I live not too far away up here at Toledo Bend about 60 miles south of Shreveport…

I’m not familiar with the synth sounds of Infected Mushroom (something I need to correct, I guess). But, for what it’s worth, I’ve been told by Electromagnetic Wave that some of the variations in my “mono monster VM” G2 patch come close to sounding like synth sounds they use in some of their tracks. The latest patch (posted 27FEB2012) is here:

http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-9258.html

BTW, which Infected Mushroom album is your favorite, or at least two or three tracks, so that I can check them out?

[mrdos]

Varice: great to meet you! That's excellent that you aren't so far away! I actually grew up not too far away from Shreveport, so I know the area.

Thank you for the patch recommendation, I will check it out.

I will recommend several IM songs for you that I really like, that I think are standouts and have some really neat sounds that will make you scratch your head.

The Messenger 2012
Frog Machine
Heavyweight
Saeed
The Rat
Stretched

These guys are truly mad scientists with the sounds and production, and musically have done some incredible stuff, independent of genre, IMHO. Let me know what you think!


Hey Electromagnetic Wave: Thanks for the welcome!

And no, I'm not looking just for patches to use right away. I mean, I definitely am enjoying this resource as a way to learn, but in my music and the things I do with other people, I always make all my patches from scratch. For a long time this of course was on hard-wired synths, but I would get pretty deep with mod matrices. Then I got into modular soft synths, and that eventually wasn't enough, so I had to get the G2 There is nothing out there that compares to it, IMO.

That said, seeing what some people here have made, it is really incredible! It is a very deep instrument and there is a lot to learn.

As for the kind of sounds I'm going for, well, it's hard to describe the sounds, and I guess that's the thing. But, if you know some of the more hard-to-name synth sounds in IM's records, and other artists like Hallucinogen/Shpongle, Astrix, GMS, etc, that's some of it. I'm able to get some of the sounds, but some of them I think they do some serious processing (particularly some of the formant sounding stuff... some of that may be synthesizer; and some of it may be vocal samples routed through the G2's audio processing).

Definitely some of the sounds on IM The Supervisor, as well as the other later albums, particularly that formant stuff.

A lot of the sounds I'm going for are those talk-y, psychedelic kind of sounds. While the rule of thumb with these sounds is "simple is better" (e.g. start with a sawtooth and a bandpass filter), this will only get you so far.

The thing is, a lot of the example patches I find are either duplications of hard-wired synths (like the Nord Lead), which I can easily build, or more complex patches which emulate analog instruments like plucked strings, etc, and those don't quite fit with the genre I'm doing; so what I'm going for are complex, different types of patches that fit in the progressive electronic area and can't be done on any other synth. I know it's going to be a lot of experimentation, but I figured, since I know these guys are doing a lot of it with this synth and are doing a similar style to what I do, it could be a starting point.

Oh, and I say Psytrance because IM still calls themselves Psytrance; check out their soundcloud page I just think Psytrance has evolved. But they and others have always fused other genres with it, and that's what keeps it good.

[mrdos]

Varice: Very nice patch! This is a very nice lead sound. I dig it. Thanks for making it!

[mrdos]

Here is a sound I have been very interested in figuring out.

The Rat at 0:58 https://youtu.be/hBW5u-f2pPw?t=58s

And basically the same sound, back in Ratio Schmatio at about 3:45 https://youtu.be/qlRLzKDjX1I?t=3m45s

It's a sort of very plasticky, kind of formant, mid-to-lead type sound. I have a feeling it's a G2 patch.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Electromagnetic Wave]

[marioisaac]

mrdos,

checkout patches made by user named Bantri, he has some Infected Mushroom patches. The Deeply Disturbed and Merlin are very close to the original IM sound.

http://electro-music.com/g2patches.php?owner=bantri

[Electromagnetic Wave]

yes the 'The Deeply Disturbed' patch from Bantri is nice! Bantri made this one based on Infected Mushroom sound but I'm sure Erez dig this forum a lot in the past and adapted the patches for them.

[marioisaac]

Indeed the Deeply Disturbed Patch is very nice, and a great way to learn how to implement this kind of sounds on the G2.

I forgot to say, but Infected Mushroom recently released a plugin that achieves the Vocal Effects int heir tracks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bQ38URFzOc/


Here you can see how some of their Vocal FX where done in the past:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZme7yK_648

I also remember Erez saying once, that they used to sample crazy voices made by Duvdev, pitched them correctly in Melodyne, and played with the Formant Knob in Melodyne. Sonds like it's the same thing their plugin does, in a more simplified way.