PSYCHEDELIC FREESTYLE

By way of background please take on board the following concepts :-

1. The various styles and subdivisions of dance music are based on the tempo or speed of the beats, commonly referred to as BPMs (beats per minute).

2. The various BPMs work in octaves just like musical keys. In other words 120 BPM is one octave higher than 60 BPM and is exactly double the speed. In some styles of dance music it is normal to feel the slow pulse and the fast pulse one octave higher at the same time. This is particularily important for drum n bass and dub.

3. Within the octave divisions, the various tempo bands are like diferent musical keys. The basis of freestyle is the evidently sensible idea that no inventive musician should restrict himself to just one or a few musical keys, when there is a whole spectrum available. Keys in music are analogous to colours in the light frequency spectrum. What painter would limit the number of colours?

4. Some people superficially relate dance tempos to human body rhythms such as the heartbeat and walking. We believe this is bogus as dance music covers the complete spectrum of tempos and people can get off on many different tempos from slow hip hop and dub through to fast jungle and hardcore.

5. The essential dance music tempo bands are :-

6. Apart from a narrow bandwidth of 90 - 105 BPM the 16th note or 32nd note pulses of these tempos fit within the accepted bandwidths of Alpha and Theta brainwaves. This is a far more valid bio-link up than that made with heartbeats etc. For a discussion of Alpha Waves, that we have already featured before go here.

7. We have always been "psychedelic" in orientation, having been throuroughly brainwashed by people like Hendrix in the late 60s. As psychedelic means expanded awareness we feel it strange that in dance music terms the psychedelic concept has been somewhat restricted to the subdivision known as psychedelic trance. We feel that a truly psychedelic approach should be able to embrace the full spectrum of tempos and musical keys and make mind expanding uplifting dance music in a variety of tempos and rhythmic styles. For a further discussion of this go to our "sounding off " pages here.

8. Thus in some respects our goal is to make drum n bass that trance people can get off on - psychedelic techno that junglists can groove to and so on, and to tie it all together in one fully integrated and wondrous sound! A lofty goal and one that we intend to pursue further!

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To communicate with us: :-) s777@a-wave.com.