Following some very positive feedback on the tutorial video on how I create trance music I also decided to dedicate today to make another tutorial of how I arranged the entire track Spirit Within You.
This video takes a detailed look at all the sections that form the track - such as the intro, the build up, the breakdown, the culmination, and the outro. It also explains how various instruments are introduced and modified during various stages of the track.
I am, by no means, saying that this is how you must make trance music - it's just at peek into how I arrange most of my tracks. When I started out making music in the 90s I found no tutorials like this and I'm hoping that this video can help some of you that are interested in making music.
Right then, here is the tutorial of how to arrange a trance song / track:
As usual, I use Cubase 5 and my trusted VST instruments Nexus2, VanGuard, and Sylenth1 - but this arrangement technique can be applied regardless of what software you use.
If this tutorial helps you out - I'd be happy to hear about it in the comments field =)
Good luck and happy music making!
The blog is being migrated and merged with multiple Imphenzia blogs so the format and content will be inconsistent for a while.
How to make trance music tutorial
Today I decided to create a tutorial based on my latest trance track "Spirit Within You". It's a detailed look at a section of 15 measures of the track where I go through each and every instrument, what notes and chords are played, which presets are used, what VST instrument was used, etc. This should hopefully give you the foundation of percussion, bassline, melody, filling effect - but it won't teach you how to arrange a full length track - that will come in another tutorial.
The video describes the following elements:
First the video lets you listen to the end result. Then I solo each instrument and describe what notes were played. You can also see exactly which presets are used in Nexus2, VanGuard, and Sylenth1. All presets, more or less, use the default settings and the default delay / reverb effects. Filter cutoff frequency is altered on a few instruments to create that classic morphing or transforming sound commonly found in trance. No additional, external, or invisible effects are applied.
In this video tutorial I use Cubase 5 as a sequencer - but the technique can be applied to any sequencer and VST instruments.
Since this video focuses on a cropped out section of the track, I plan to make another video showing how the track is arranged in terms of introducing various instruments, the intro, the chorus, the breakdown, the outro, etc.
If you like this video and, of course, if you like my music - please consider supporting Imphenzia by buying one of my albums in the album section (or on iTunes and other digital stores) - you can also gain Full Access to all Imphenzia tracks for high quality 320kbps MP3 and lossless FLAC files.
Virtual Instruments (VSTi) used
All the presets are available in the retail version of each VSTi without the need for any expansions. The exception is the percussion since I just use various percussion samples.
Have a look at the tutorial
What's in the video?
The video describes the following elements:
- Percussion (drums) - kick, closed hihat, open hihat, claps, cymbals
- First bassline (rapid 1/16 notes)
- Second bassline (offbeat 1/8 notes)
- Cluster of 5 simultaneous leads for extreme atmosphere
- Two trance gates for an even fuller effect
- Pads for more euphoria
- And a classic trance piano with delay end reverb
First the video lets you listen to the end result. Then I solo each instrument and describe what notes were played. You can also see exactly which presets are used in Nexus2, VanGuard, and Sylenth1. All presets, more or less, use the default settings and the default delay / reverb effects. Filter cutoff frequency is altered on a few instruments to create that classic morphing or transforming sound commonly found in trance. No additional, external, or invisible effects are applied.
In this video tutorial I use Cubase 5 as a sequencer - but the technique can be applied to any sequencer and VST instruments.
Since this video focuses on a cropped out section of the track, I plan to make another video showing how the track is arranged in terms of introducing various instruments, the intro, the chorus, the breakdown, the outro, etc.
If you like this video and, of course, if you like my music - please consider supporting Imphenzia by buying one of my albums in the album section (or on iTunes and other digital stores) - you can also gain Full Access to all Imphenzia tracks for high quality 320kbps MP3 and lossless FLAC files.
Virtual Instruments (VSTi) used
- Groove Agent ONE (Cubase 5 drum machine)
- ReFX Nexus2
- ReFX VanGuard
- LennarDigital Sylenth1
Presets used
All the presets are available in the retail version of each VSTi without the need for any expansions. The exception is the percussion since I just use various percussion samples.
ReFX Nexus2
- Bass | BA Trancebass 19
- Bass | Lazy Bass
- Single Layer Leads | LD Detuned Lead 1
- Epic Pads | PD Floating Away (with Trance Gate "TG" effect enabled)
- Epic Pads | PD Tranceiver
- Piano | PN Trancepiano
ReFX VanGuard
- LD Corsten 01 MS
- ARP Smuggler
LennarDigital Sylenth1
- Bank 1 | LD Follow
- Bank 2 | LD Rollback
- Bank 1 | GAT Trancentral
Groove Agent ONE
- Various drum samples accumulated over the years
The new Imphenzia music site
Following three months of development the new Imphenzia music site has been launched to start off the new year. This time it was a total re-make from the ground up of the music site and I had to learn how to develop using JQuery in order to get the visual effects, real-time updating of pages without page reloads (using “AJAX”), and at the same time keeping the development effort to realistic proportions.
During the development process I set two requirements upon myself to fulfill, 1) make the new site clean, and 2) make it very simple to use. By using JQuery and quite modern features of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) I realize that there are visitors that will experience problems with the design and functionality, namely the visitors that use old browsers or have disabled javascript. For the first time, however, I felt that it is a sacrifice for the greater good as the vast majority of visitors will benefit from a much improved experience.
I also had time to reflect on the historic designs and trends that my site has endured over the past 13 years. In recent time, for the launch of the 2008 site, it was all about content, content, content, account features, google ads, and more content. Following the trend at the time the font was small to fit in as much text and information as possible and the layout was split into three columns complicating it even further. The 2011 site is the complete opposite with much less information presented in a tidy manner with larger text and without columns. I also think that the time of content packed sites was a natural way to progress as it was expected to make use of fancy layouts and high screen resolutions, where as we’re now back to putting the visitor at the center of attention making sure that the message you want to get across is clearly visible and simple to understand.
For some time I have been contemplating over how I should release my music. In the very beginning it was only possible to purchase physical albums, then the addition of mp3 albums, then single mp3 tracks, then a “donation” to download all tracks for a period of six months. I found the various options, and how they were presented on my site, to be very confusing. What would my visitors think if I thought it was confusing? The idea of a donation, for example, would only make sense if all tracks were downloadable to begin with since a donation is giving without the expectation of receiving anything in return. Bottom line; it was very confusing.
I hope that the new site has taken a big step in the right direction to combat the issues outlined above. The album section has been totally redesigned with a clean look and a visitor can add digital albums and CD albums into a shopping cart. The donation feature has been replaced with a new feature for full access that still focuses on allowing the visitor to contribute with an amount of his or her choice and is return rewarded with longer term of access depending on the size of the contribution.
During the development process I set two requirements upon myself to fulfill, 1) make the new site clean, and 2) make it very simple to use. By using JQuery and quite modern features of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) I realize that there are visitors that will experience problems with the design and functionality, namely the visitors that use old browsers or have disabled javascript. For the first time, however, I felt that it is a sacrifice for the greater good as the vast majority of visitors will benefit from a much improved experience.
I also had time to reflect on the historic designs and trends that my site has endured over the past 13 years. In recent time, for the launch of the 2008 site, it was all about content, content, content, account features, google ads, and more content. Following the trend at the time the font was small to fit in as much text and information as possible and the layout was split into three columns complicating it even further. The 2011 site is the complete opposite with much less information presented in a tidy manner with larger text and without columns. I also think that the time of content packed sites was a natural way to progress as it was expected to make use of fancy layouts and high screen resolutions, where as we’re now back to putting the visitor at the center of attention making sure that the message you want to get across is clearly visible and simple to understand.
For some time I have been contemplating over how I should release my music. In the very beginning it was only possible to purchase physical albums, then the addition of mp3 albums, then single mp3 tracks, then a “donation” to download all tracks for a period of six months. I found the various options, and how they were presented on my site, to be very confusing. What would my visitors think if I thought it was confusing? The idea of a donation, for example, would only make sense if all tracks were downloadable to begin with since a donation is giving without the expectation of receiving anything in return. Bottom line; it was very confusing.
I hope that the new site has taken a big step in the right direction to combat the issues outlined above. The album section has been totally redesigned with a clean look and a visitor can add digital albums and CD albums into a shopping cart. The donation feature has been replaced with a new feature for full access that still focuses on allowing the visitor to contribute with an amount of his or her choice and is return rewarded with longer term of access depending on the size of the contribution.
About the new album release "Duplicate My Soul"
On the 19th of March 2010 I started working on a new track under the project name "Logic Surface" (I always have random names of my tracks until they are finished and I can name them appropriately depending on their character). I nearly completed the track on the 19th but on saturday 20th March I also managed to complete it fairly early in the day. As I named the track "False Awakening" I started to add tracks released after Illusion into my winamp playlist and as the total duration grew to 1 hour, 11 minutes, and 51 seconds (including 4 bonus tracks) it hit me - it's time for my next album to be released! By the evening on the 20th "Duplicate My Soul" was released and available for anyone to get as an mp3-album or as a physical album with artwork and the complete works.
So, in addition to creating "False Awakening" what did I do for this release during the 20th March?
Over all I'm very pleased with achieving all of this in one single day from spawning the idea of releasing an album to actually releasing it.
What to expect from Duplicate My Soul
Most of the tracks are of true Imphenzia character with a melodic and uplifting sound. The main 9 tracks are all trance styled with what most probably would refer to as a classic (or retro) styled Trance which was more popular in the late 90s. I haven't been on for following trends or releasing what is currently hot or not, I'd rather create the type of music I love as there are still quite a few out there who appreciate this style. The one exception is probably track number 9 named "Vapour Trail" which was a very experimental track incidentally enough also casually released in silence on imphenzia.com in retrospect 2 years after it was created =) Following the 9 tracks of trance is the first bonus track "Theme of Decimation X" which was originally created for the intense retro shooter game "Decimation X" by Xona games. It fits the over all mood and is very much in line with my normal music that it qualifies as a bonus track on the album. The last three bonus tracks are chilled out downtempo edits of some of the tracks featured on the album.
The name of the album comes from the first track on the album with the same name. The name was selected for two reasons. First of all it is a tribute to my first child (a son) so it is in a sense duplicating my soul, and secondly because the track and all the music of Imphenzia really does reflect my soul and the music I create.
For those of you who are curious of what type of equipment I used to create the music on this album I use the following:
Computer:
Quad Core Intel 2.4 CPU with 4GB Ram running Windows 7 x64
Master keyboard:
Roland FP-7 (88 keys hammer action) and an Evolution MK-226C
Sound card:
Motherboard's own soundcard believe it or not (with ASIO4ALL drivers)
Sequencer:
Steinberg Cubase 5
VST instruments:
Mainly native Cubase instruments, reFX Nexus2 (plus expansion packs) and reFX VanGuard (plus expansion packs)
Finishing off this post, here is the promo video for the track featuring clips from the first four tracks and a quick preview of how the artwork was created:
I hope you enjoy this release!
Imphenzia Soundtrack Video Showcase
Creating music for Imphenzia Soundtrack is great fun as it offers such a variety from my normal Imphenzia trance music. I've put together a new Youtube video to showcase the different styles:
The music still targets independent game developers (indiegames) with very competitive pricing and it's royalty free ofcourse.
The music still targets independent game developers (indiegames) with very competitive pricing and it's royalty free ofcourse.
State of Confusion remixed by Adraw
A while back I was approached by Adraw through Soundclick who expressed a request to remix State of Confusion. I'm always welcome to remixes so naturally I accepted the request. Some time went past where I didn't hear much about it but little did I know what was to come. The remix is now finished and will be released under Emona Records but you can already listen to the entire track on Adraw's Soundclick page for this remix.
To help promote this track, I've put together a preview video that you can watch as well:
To help promote this track, I've put together a preview video that you can watch as well:
