Feeback and question about "progressive" dungeon synth
Jun 10, 2022 10:09:41 GMT -5
Post by persimmonlove on Jun 10, 2022 10:09:41 GMT -5
Hello everyone,
I've been drawn to dungeon synth for a long time, but also listen to a lot of progressive rock and study indian classical percussion. For me one of the most enjoyable things about music is the way that your mind follows fluctuations in a regular pulse, i.e. odd time signatures, shifting time signatures, and polymeters. Most of this music is very fast -- bands like Meshuggah have very interesting rhythmic structures, but the music is annoyingly aggressive. What's the rush? Why play fast when you can play slow, soft, nice music. My favorite thing is how, when you hear a melodic line or phrase played in odd time, it plays off of the "grid" of your bodily sense of time, as well as the grid that frames the music. In this way, musical phrases constantly re-contextualize themselves and have shifting relationships to each other, and I love this effect.
I have stated making some dungeon-synth-esque music that emphasizes odd and shifting time. For me, this fits in with the timbres and feeling of dungeon synth: comfortable, atmospheric, nostalgic, but somehow still off putting or meaningful.
I am just looking for some feedback and discussion about this, and how other people see it. One thing for me is that I'm very much not interested in making "classic" dungeon synth, but rather using the language of dungeon synth to create something different and new. Here are some examples of tracks I made with that in mind. They are all made using only hardware, no computer was involved at all, although I heavily use nanoloops for iOS. They are fairly raw and unmixed.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMsQPDFQF2c (a basic ambient track with a slowly developing melody and atmosphere. Some odd time signatures)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wknPo_qQXlQ&t=600s (this one is much "cleaner" and has less of a dungeon synth feeling. Each synth voice plays in a different time signature, so there are 8 time signatures going on)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NqDWCXxcD4 (this one is still processing as I'm posting this but should be done soon. It's much longer, and the melodies begin out of phase (on different odd beat cycles) and then get into phase with eachother. Kind of hard to hear imo, but whatever)
My plan is to gather some more music and make a small album as a test. I do have some worry that not following the aesthetics of DS could reduce interest, but I guess that's ok.
Ok, cheers everyone.