Hiya,
I'm like into a creativity void. It usually happens from time to time, it's normal. Last month I could express my ideas into the DAW easyly, next month I'm like lost in there.

I've been working on this today from time to time (cooking, eating, some internet waste of time like instagram or youtube...).

Just give your honest opinion: does it worth the effort or will I move on to a new track?

Kind of oldschool Goa-trance:

P.S.: I hope the link works, this is the first time doing this.

 

I'm not an expert on trance, but i like it. Reminds me of old NFS games.

 

Hi @clipper, it's definitely worth it! I think it's great if you can't get to it right away; just let it sit for a while...!
The guy from Yello has about 50 projects open. Sometimes it just takes time...!

 

Last edited: Mar 22, 2026

I've bought CDs back in the day were this would be presented/sold as a "finished track". I honestly like it as it is.

 

Whaaaaa? Creativity void my ass!

Obviously it needs tweaking and polishing, some FX, rolls, fills, etc, to give it sonic candy, but you're doing good things here.

Maybe? Not my genre, but to me, definitely worth pursuing!

 

What hits me the is the space, it is pretty unique and if i can say pro, image wise.

 

the chorus stuff makes me fly...

 

it's nice so far. i'm not a big "on purpose" trance listener, but I certainly have heard enough of it. There are some things which you will probably address anyway when you mix it, or maybe I do not know the sub-genre details well enough and you already have those appropriately done. Maybe the kick has a little too much bottom end still, or the claps are a little low. That choir chant seems a little static to me, but I'm pretty sure that was kind of the style anyway. The JP-style arp could have a little more saturation and bite to it. The highest sparkly chime/bell thing could maybe use some taming, or lowpass filter to bring it down a tiny bit, because it is sort of ear-grabbing as a separate element. The kind of thing that may or may not be genre correct. It reminds me of maybe an Orb track? But that is maybe the jp arp part.

That said, my vote is for you to finish it. If you just got past some writers' block, maybe put it on the back burner and crank out some more stuff while you have momentum going. But that is just a mindset thing anyway. I'd say finish it.

 

Have you ever been trying to find your keys or some other thing but you cant remember where it is?
you look everywhere, search up and down, retrace your steps and still, nothing. Then you say FUCK IT and give up. And then BOOM its right in front of you, where you could swear you checked before.
Inspiration is the same.
Very rarely can you force inspiration. Occasionally it will produce good results but more often than not it does not.
Food for thought.

 

Another vote for finishing it.

 

I like the overall.
I think the kick could be a tiny bit lower...
but it may be that the other instruments are a bit low (except the high-hat)
Also, some variation in the high-hat beats (delete one or two here and there, mix it up), since it is so constant.

 

Woww... I wasn't expecting this good reception; it's far more than I ever imagined, honestly. I was really expecting something like: "fuck off... move on, that's useless".
I really appreciate all your feedback and support.

The truth is that nothing in the mix was well EQ'ed cause it was just some trial after a whole month of March of having no ideas at all and writing patterns to delete them afterwards. So there was no proper EQ in any bus, just some compression/limiting and delay/reverb here and there.

Trying to answer to all of you, the best I can...

• Bassdrum is now under eq and compression. I actually like that BD. Sounds so old-fashioned... For Goa-trance, I prefer kicks like this one than those zap-alike usually found in modern psytrance, they sound too synthetic to me.
• Snaredrum (clap, whatever... it originally is a snare, but it ended up sounding like a snap or clap) is now under eq and reverb is adjusted to brighten it.
• Charles are now improved and spiced up a bit. (I hope!).
• 303 bassline has light sidechain from BD.
• The bell, yeah, @clone you were right: too long release made the sound reverberate itself. Modified. I think it sits better now.
• The choir chant is meant to be like that: eerie & haunting.
• Space, space, spaaaaaceeeeee... L/R is never enough, I always need stereo to be as wide as I can get. Hehehe
• To @pl2oph1t : that's exactly how I see it, but sometimes I really got to feel like muses were gone forever. And it actually gets the shit out of me... Cause I think: ok, this is the end, my only friend, the end... (RIP Morrison). But then, one day, they're back all of a sudden.
• Woah! Yello... Loved "Pocket Universe" album but for me, first track is pure gold, sound and lyrics. Some DJ (can't remember now) in the late 90s opened a Goa set with that track (Solar Driftwood) to continue with Tandu - New Aura. Great set, btw. Thanks,@PulseWave for mentioning, that reminded me of all I'm telling.

And finally, for all of you interested in the final result, here you are:

& screenshot of the project:

 

I felt like what holds your track back might be the way it starts out with simple patterns to build up the energy (good), but then once it gets to the meaty part, it continues doing simple and short patterns for too long, so it feels like you underdelivered. The first real melodic hook only pops up more than half way into the track.

It's not a matter of the musical content not being good enough, but just how it's all budgeted and presented over time.

If you try thinking about each section in your track and answer for yourself "OK, who's the boss in this part?" and then make everything else kind "point to" and highlight the boss, it might help you wrestle control back over the listener's attention and trance them out. Of course "the boss" should constantly change up, that's what keeps it interesting. Even a humble hihat can be the boss in the breakdown if you decide so, etc.

 

Goa is probably my favorite style of trance so i'm listening and taking notes as a fan of the genre and a person that enjoyed a lot your work:

The chorus is stunning. Epic stuff, i just loved the chord progression, the melodic arps, the tone of the synths. Beautiful. Nothing to add or change here.

The bassline and the drum patterns are also very dope. I loved both. But IMO there are some things to do tonally to get that classic Goa sound on the drum and bass part:

The drums are very fat and bright, and the kick drum has an excessive weight on low mids and sub that doesn't fit much the genre. My favorite Goa drums are generally not big, but very dirty, tight and smacky. A little bitcrushing on the highs may work well to give a little of 90's sampler vibe.

Overall i think the track could be a little more darker. Thank about early digital audio and the beauties of its imperfections. Goa Trance makes those characteristic as a signature of the genre. And i personally love when the track reproduces that 90's low resolution style with beautiful synths and melodies the way you did. And this is so little compared to what you did in general, and it's just my opinion as a listener, not a wrong or right thing. Great job, keep em coming!

 

hell yah. amazing stuff. If what you are going for is actual classic goa, i would hardly change anything. Some light mix clean up maybe. You could also extend it significantly.

If you are after a hybridized EDM / Modern interpretation then I would say the mix and sound / sample selection could use some tweaking.

 

I'd just like to comment on the pad usage here as it's something that I used to do a lot before I realized that it can be detrimental to the arrangement. What I'm specifically referring to is using the same pad throughout the song.

In my case what I realized years ago is that I did it because I was insecure about my sound design/mixing and it was a cheap way to fill out space to hopefully mask all the imperfections.
It took me a while to understand that what this was doing was flattening and suffocating the whole track, and making it feel like it wasn't really progressing. If you scrub through the song and you're just about always faced with the same pad it will feel like the whole thing isn't really going anywhere.

So what I ended up doing to give the pads a bit more potency is to reserve them only for certain sections of the track like intro/outro, break/transition while introducing a new melody or idea, or roll off/exhale to mellow out after a particularly busy section. This usually has the effect of occasionally having your ears covered with a warm cozy blanket, as opposed to having them constantly swim through water.

Only other thing I'd mention is that once you introduce those first leads they could go on a bit more as they are hypnotic and this is trance after all, but during the first break it needs something maybe a bit stronger than that bell-like melody, because to my ears that sound gets drowned out by the pad and with the two leads coming back makes it all feel like that break was done for nothing and we're back to where we started. If it helps I'd recommend Astral Projection's album Dancing Galaxy for some solid arrangement inspiration.

 

Decent tune in making, love the acidity going on and then that prodigyesk synth that comes in is nice...defo worth finishing imo - well done

 

1) The track sounds OK. Despite some production aspects that don’t quite appeal to me, it remains true to the style!

2) On creativity and emptiness:

Johann Sebastian Bach: “I was obliged to be diligent. Whoever is equally diligent will achieve equal success.”
Mozart: “There are no secrets to composition; there is only study, work, and passion.”
Beethoven: “Do not merely practice your art, but force your way into its secrets.”
Brahms: “Without skill [or technique], inspiration is just a reed shaken by the wind.”
Bizet: “I don’t believe in sudden inspiration; I believe in vocation, perseverance, and relentless work.”
Debussy: “Composing means working every day, even if the immediate result seems small.”
Bartók: “To compose well, one must schedule time, organize daily work, and not wait for the muse.”
Stravinsky: “Inspiration only comes with work.”

None of these guys uphold the mystical vision of art as a finished work that arrives to the artist through divine inspiration. That conception does exist (although many creators have described themselves as antennas capturing what is in the air, but that’s not the point here). Far beyond these undeniable statements that attest to humility and labor, all of these figures are undeniable masters (even if you don’t like the style(s) they practice) and they reaffirm something in common:

Metaphorically, your brain is a muscle that needs exercise. The more you use it, the easier it becomes to perform the tasks you train it for; the less you train it, the harder those tasks become. A professor of mine used to say that composition is 20% creativity and 80% labor. And I agree, because constant, if not daily, practice is essential. Inspiration exists, but it only flourishes when it finds fertile ground in study, discipline, daily practice, and perseverance.



Addendum: it’s true that some people turn to hallucinogens as a way to unlock the unconscious. The problem is that you never know when a chemical reaction triggered by a concoction or hallucinogenic brew (such as ayahuasca, absinthe, or similar mixtures) will/won’t, lead to serious consequences. I have colleagues who are in "bad shape" (three of them were left with permanent psychiatric disorders) precisely because they didn’t know how their physiological structure would react to exposure to these substances.

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2026 at 2:47 PM

Thanks god i never suffered from this evil. I'm the number 1 hater of pads and long decay reverbs. It's a nice way to drown your song on an ocean of sh*t that doesn't tell nothing and takes lots of space even at absurdly low levels. They can work, but it's so specific i don't remember the last song i created using those stuff.