'Daybreak', new trance EP

[elcalen]

Hi! I'm Ben, long time lurker here, finally made an account to share a couple new trance tracks I made. My new EP, titled Daybreak, is up on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/benenkindle/sets/daybreak) and Bandcamp (https://benenkindle.bandcamp.com/).

I still consider myself very much a beginner and an amateur at producing this kind of music, so be gentle.

These tracks were made with Reaper using only native linux plugins (except LoudMax which I used as the final limiter... it does have a native ladspa version, but Reaper doesn't support ladspa...) The main synth is U-he Hive, with one or two instances of Surge and Helm tossed in the mix, as well as some sounds from an old Korg N1R hardware module I happened to have around. I used a lot of Airwindows plugins, miscellaneous plugins from TAL, Dragonfly Reverb, Sitala, etc, plus some of Reaper's bundled plugins and community JSFX plugins. There's a lot of software I discovered through browsing these forums, so thanks for that, folks!

[mirens]

Nice tracks! Did you have any problems or bugs with reaper?

[milo]

Solid work! This is musically interesting, and I think pushes outside the boundaries of trance a few times. The orchestral portion of the last track, for instance, and the piano cadenza in another. Overall the album sounds more like late 80's techno in a way (that's a good thing, IMO).

I also like the album artwork. It is simple, and effective.

[elcalen]

Nice tracks! Did you have any problems or bugs with reaper?

Thanks! I encountered very few serious problems with Reaper, once I'd figured out how everything works and got the workflow configured to my liking. Occasionally I got some stuck notes in Hive, but I don't know for sure if that was an issue with Hive or with Reaper.

Solid work! This is musically interesting, and I think pushes outside the boundaries of trance a few times. The orchestral portion of the last track, for instance, and the piano cadenza in another. Overall the album sounds more like late 80's techno in a way (that's a good thing, IMO).

I also like the album artwork. It is simple, and effective.

Thanks again! I try to go with wherever the flow takes me, while still keeping tracks fairly simple structurally (I'm still learning electronic music production, after all). That said, modern trance is a very varied field with tons of subgenres. And I'm very bad at classifying my own productions.

[Basslint]

Not to toot GNU/Linux's own horn but if anything, to compliment your work, I think you have showed many people that you can make trance music on GNU/Linux

I think your music is trance, with touches of synthwave (the punchy drums, the funkier basslines).

[modusjonens]

Thank you for sharing this -- really enjoying it so far!