Planar Crystal

I am currently working on a psytrance piece.  This piece is somewhat inspired by groups like Infected Mushroom, Ott, and Shpongle.  It is still a work in progress and may be so permanently.  I am using the creation of this piece to help me learn Reason better.

(Note: The latest version is above in a more recent post.)

I started by listening to some psytrance songs to get a better feel for the type of music I wanted to create.  I decided Heavyweight by Infected Mushroom was close to the feeling I wanted to create.  I picked up a simple kick snare rhythm from another song and started working on that.  I set up a couple of kick tracks with one set up as a straight 4/4 beat and the other a somewhat more complex rhythm.  I then set up a snare track to complement the kick.

I set up a track for the hhats and combined hhats and snare and sent to an outboard processor (Lexicon Vortex flange delay effect).  It took me a while to figure out the correct configuration that would allow me to send output to the processor and record the input while monitoring it.  I kept generating feedback loops when I would try to monitor the effect.  I ended up having to go through a mixer with a headphone output to listen to it.

I also figured out how to use Reaper's folders so that I could group all of the drums under one master track.  That way I can "collapse" the folders down so they don't take up so much space as well as control the overall drum volume with a single envelope.  That makes this much more powerful for producing music.

I then used Dune to create the introductory bubbly bass synth sound and played a few notes until I found a groove that sounded good.  I used Reaper's MIDI editor to add filter sweeps to the sound.  I went through my collection of samples and tried to find some that would make good sweeps to be used before a transition.  I put a few sweeps at different spots throughout the song.  I also added some background sound effects with a drone generating plug-in.

Next I wanted to get some analog synth in the song so I went to the Motif and figured out how to send the output from the arpeggiator to Reaper to record an arpeggio while listening to the instrument.  I recorded the MIDI sequence into Reaper then used Reaper to play back the sequence to the Waldorf Pulse Plus.  I modulated the sound of the Pulse with the filter knobs while it was playing and recorded the result directly to Reaper.