{"id":4337,"date":"2024-09-04T11:49:29","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T02:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/?p=4337"},"modified":"2024-09-04T12:08:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T03:08:21","slug":"plasmadancer-tyfth-live-012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/?p=4337","title":{"rendered":"PlasmaDancer &#8211; TYFTH Live 012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Iyq8Ghcepdo?si=X2C5nbqNIzmahI-R\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You know a TYFTH Live roundup is late when the next installment&#8217;s already happened, but there&#8217;s plenty I&#8217;ve wanted to say about this one for a while. As the most melodic set I&#8217;ve played for years there was a lot I was trying out to make it a bit more TYFTH-friendly, so let&#8217;s have a little look back at how it went.<\/p>\n<p>Of course one of the big goals of the set was to bring some more attention to the Chinese scene. After a few years of really top-quality releases it was probably overdue, but it was the release of show-stopping compilation <em>Thoughost <\/em>that really convinced me to give it a go. It&#8217;s so refreshing to see a new scene&#8217;s artists take on melodic freeform in a way that isn&#8217;t just chasing the sounds of Transcend, Substanced et al &#8211; something the Japanese scene fell into for a long while. Anyway, while I&#8217;m no expert on the melodic side of things I did my best to highlight some of the strongest tracks I&#8217;ve happened across so far, while still aiming for a smooth set that rewards a few listens.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to <em>Thoughost <\/em>I had a few tracks in mind right from the start, but it was Joulez&#8217;s beautiful <em>Initiate the Massacre <\/em>that really got the inspiration going. That intro is just superb, and I wanted to focus on the first half of the track before the atmosphere switches up. Although it took a heck of a lot of work to find the right track for that first transition,\u00a0I couldn&#8217;t be happier with the way <em>Helix <\/em>slowly takes over. I really had to restrain myself not to overdo the transition, mind, and for a while was practicing a version where <em>Initiate the Massacre <\/em>came back in for a while. One of those times when less is more, I think.<\/p>\n<p>One of the great things about putting the set together was the chance to use some favourite melodic tracks that I haven&#8217;t been able to fit in anywhere else &#8211; <em>Meteorite <\/em>is the first of those, as well as <em>Into the Light<\/em>, while jumping forwards a little the <em>Phoenix Down &#8211; Invoker\u00a0<\/em>combo is one I&#8217;ve been sitting on since last year.<\/p>\n<p>The first &#8216;new tracks&#8217; transition is an example of something I worked hard on in the set, as I wanted to have more control over when and where the notoriously long melodic breakdowns would appear in the set. To help me with that I used quite a few breakdown sections as intros, or tried to time the previous track to finish halfway through a breakdown. That&#8217;s a nice way to keep the energy up (as with <em><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap\" dir=\"auto\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color\" dir=\"auto\">Universe Outsiderz<\/span><\/span><\/em> into <em>Garnet<\/em>), but there&#8217;s also beautiful harmony potential aplenty when you mix melodies and strings\/pads between the tracks (see <em><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap\" dir=\"auto\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color\" dir=\"auto\">\u6c89\u200b\u6e0a\u200b\u4f4e\u200b\u8bed (Whispers of Looming Shadows) <\/span><\/span><\/em><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap\" dir=\"auto\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color\" dir=\"auto\">into\u00a0<em>Dagor Dagorath<\/em>)<\/span><\/span>. <em>Into the Light <\/em>and <em>Now Or Never <\/em>is similar, but here a combination of melodies and vocals. I don&#8217;t even like the vocals that much (it&#8217;s the Morita filters that get me), but the tracks work so well together that I couldn&#8217;t resist. The fact that I&#8217;ve known about the\u00a0<em>Attitude Problem<\/em> transition for a long time helped too, and set things up for a more authentically TYFTH darker section.<\/p>\n<p><em>Recall <\/em>is another example of &#8216;shortening&#8217; the breakdown, but in this part I was also trying to demo how effective a melodic track can be as a contrast in a darker sounding section. It took a lot of experimenting before I happened upon the combo with <em>Access to your Soul<\/em>, and that crossover point at the final part of <em>Recall&#8217;s <\/em>breakdown makes the change in atmosphere a lot more subtle than I would have expected.<\/p>\n<p><em><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap\" dir=\"auto\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color\" dir=\"auto\">I Think We Can Go To The Moon <\/span><\/span><\/em><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap\" dir=\"auto\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color\" dir=\"auto\">turned out to be the perfect intro for <em>Whispers<\/em>, so I repurposed a section of <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/finrg-recordings\/plasmadancer-betwixt-between\">the Betwixt &amp; Between tribute<\/a> to help get through that section. I might have done some key locking\/adjusting the first time around though, as something certainly sounds a bit off in this version. Either way, it gets us into the final section of the set, which I&#8217;m very happy with. The brilliantly-titled <em>Lonely Ray <\/em>is slightly shoehorned in at the end, but a beautiful track to finish on.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This was one of the most enjoyable sets to put together for a while, thanks largely to the inspiration of hearing new Chinese sounds, taking me right back to the early days of mixing Japanese freeform with FINRG. If this mix does a similar job of bringing more attention to the Chinese scene, then that&#8217;s mission accomplished. For now, at least &#8211; I&#8217;ve already got some darker Chinese tracks in mind for the long-in-the-works FINRG set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know a TYFTH Live roundup is late when the next installment&#8217;s already happened, but there&#8217;s plenty I&#8217;ve wanted to say about this one for a while. As the most melodic set I&#8217;ve played for years there was a lot I was trying out to make it a bit more TYFTH-friendly, so let&#8217;s have a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1309,10,5,4,12,1,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-finnish","category-japanese","category-mixes","category-uk","category-uncategorized","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4337"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4340,"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337\/revisions\/4340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thankyouforthehorse.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}