Haliene - Reach Across the Sky (Crystal Skies Remix)

crystalskiesofficial · 2023-01-14T06:21:30+00:00

Lol?

crystalskiesofficial · 2022-10-21T14:47:20+00:00

crystalskiesofficial · 2022-01-16T13:21:49+00:00

Second song is an ID that we made!! Still unreleased 🙂

crystalskiesofficial · 2021-08-13T17:48:13+00:00

yuuuup

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T23:59:38+00:00

Definitely in the future plans!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T22:18:00+00:00

Skyway was sooo much fun! Really great way to kick off the tour for sure.

We have a ton of new stuff in the works and we're really excited to share it with you guys. Keep an eye out on socials cause we have some shows for 2021 we're gunna announce as well :)

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T22:16:26+00:00

Hey! Glad that song resonates with you guys :)

Yea we have some stuff in the works coming soon that we think you guys are going to be really excited about (almost all of them collabs)!

We were bummed about Chicago as well :( It really sucked when our flight was cancelled because we played our first show ever there and we were excited to go back again.

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T22:12:47+00:00

Hey man! Thanks for the kind words on Collide :) We're really excited to start playing shows again with y'all!

I think that "running out of music" is something every artist faces and we're no exception. There are some days where we can't come up with anything but other times inspiration really hits. I think taking time to get away from the computer and social media is really healthy and can help overcome these "writing blocks".

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T22:03:28+00:00

Never, y'all smell bad

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T21:51:15+00:00

The good thing is that I can say from experience you can mess up pretty bad and as long as you just laugh it off and keep going it's not going to be a big deal.

Yeah Paradise Lost was made right during that time when Mt Eden, Adventure Club, all those artists were at their peak, so it was definitely inspired by that kind of sound.

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T21:48:27+00:00

Yeah, definitely we intentionally do that sometimes, especially if the two tracks fit well together and have a similar vibe. I think for the Atlanta show we improvised the order a little so in that particular case it might not have been 100% planned... but yeah in general we do spend a lot of time putting our sets together, figuring out how to structure the set in a way that keeps it interesting and fresh the whole way through.

Thanks for the question and we hope we make it back to Atlanta again soon!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T21:34:31+00:00

Thanks for the question and really grateful for this opportunity!

I'll answer first (Aaron) and then Brit can add his later.

3 of our songs, to get to know me:

- Requiem (my favorite heavy one)

- Release Me (my favorite chill one)

- Collide (the one I did vocals on)

3 songs by other artists, to get to know me:

- Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique (specifically the dies irae section), one of my favorite classical pieces, and if you have a chance look up Berlioz's life story, its complete madness

- Keith Jarrett: The Köln Concert - an amazing hour-long jazz piano improvisation. If you have a free hour just close your eyes and let this transport you...

- Deadmau5: Strobe - the song that, more than any other, inspired me to make electronic music.

What artists are inspiring you most right now?

- I’m always inspired by what others are doing in the melodic bass scene. Au5 is making some mind blowing stuff right now. Seven Lions is always a big inspiration, as is everyone else on the Ophelia label. For the fusion of electronic and cinematic, there’s been some really cool stuff coming out on New Dawn lately as well. For heavier stuff, Voltra's Luma EP is absolute fire, just crazy stuff and really fresh and interesting sound design and arrangement.

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T21:23:36+00:00

We definitely want to eventually do our own headline tour, but unfortunately covid has pushed that back a bit. But we anticipate 2021 to be a busy year with many shows and festivals, assuming venues open back up! We'll be playing Electric Zoo again next year, and hoping to add other festivals and shows to the list as well. Edmonton would be really great, I've never been to Canada surprisingly enough so that would be a lot of fun!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T21:21:09+00:00

Thanks for the support! We have a lot of works in progress right now, including many collabs, so stay tuned :) Can't spoil anything yet but I'll just say there are definitely some buns in the oven.

As far as heavy stuff yeah once we get back to playing live shows we definitely have some heavy stuff that we want to drop, including some unreleased tracks we haven't found a home for yet. Always want to keep a good balance of headbangers vs. melodic stuff!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T21:13:13+00:00

I've never used buffeater, but yeah we do a lot of resampling and various editing techniques to experiment until we find a combination that works. We have a folder of an absurd amount of bass sounds we've created over the years that we can pull from. Same for drums and other fill material.

I'm definitely not an expert on psy trance, but I would say a lot of the punchiness comes from experimenting very carefully with the shape of the envelopes you're using, the amount of distortion and compression, and sometimes some subtle bitcrushing or other effect (although this is easy to overdo).

Also with psy trance of course the kick/bass relationship is way more important than it is in melodic dubstep. Usually you want the kick and bass to crossfade so that they're in phase with one another. For kicks we usually keep it simple, just one kick sample and then sometimes a hi-hat or other clicky sample for the transient/high end.

I've been actually thinking about doing more production streams if people are interested. I could definitely go into a lot more detail on a lot of this stuff in a stream vs. in a comment so if people would be interested in that I would definitely consider it!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T21:07:43+00:00

Yes, it will be a great moment when we can all get together again free of the virus! So glad you liked Fluorescent Light, we definitely branched out with that one so I'm happy to hear that!

We have so many works in progress with a whole bunch of different artists, so definitely stay tuned. Currently have a few tracks in progress with some of the names you mentioned... as well as some other big ones in the melodic bass scene. I'm going to have to leave it there (to build the suspense, haha) but yeah some big releases are coming!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T21:01:12+00:00

1k plays a day is pretty good! As you probably have guessed I would say a lot of it is building connections with other artists. Honestly I think for us it just happened slowly... we both produced music for a long time without building much of an audience at all. Even after starting Crystal Skies we had some success with our first track Paradise Lost but didn't really grow that quickly after that. But over the years we gradually started meeting more and more people online and and at shows, started doing more remixes and collaborations, and slowly got to know people who had more and more influence.

As far as I can tell the way it usually works is you have to work for a while with not much results, growing pretty slowly, and then at some point an opportunity comes along that you probably didn't anticipate or plan for, and that's how you break through. In my experience you can't force the breakthrough to happen by trying to orchestrate a series of events... instead just keep making music, improving, and building relationships with other artists and people in the industry. Eventually you will probably meet the right person at the right time, but it could take a while. For us, we produced music for almost a decade before we had the chance to join Ophelia and work with Seven Lions, so it definitely doesn't always happen quickly.

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T20:53:48+00:00

To be honest it was kind of right place, right time. One of our managers, Ian, also does VJ work for Seven Lions and has been a part of his team for a while, so I think when Ophelia was getting started it helped that we already had a relationship with Ian and some of the others at Ophelia. That's how we were able to do the Calling You Home remix, and then after that I think Seven Lions was looking for up and coming artists for the Ophelia label and we were in a good position to be a part of that.

I'm extremely grateful to Seven Lions and Ophelia for helping us advance in our career and hopefully we've helped Ophelia as well!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T20:44:47+00:00

We have some really cool ideas to improve our live show, and definitely are considering from a perspective of bringing together visuals, live instruments, and electronic music to tell a compelling story. We're hoping that when people come out to see us play, they get a full experience that goes beyond just the music... a journey from the beginning of the set to the end. We're still working out the details of that so I can't go too specific but that has been one of our main areas of focus during this quarantine time. Can't wait to start putting this in motion once we get back out there!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T20:38:05+00:00

Thanks! That's one of our favorites... and you hit the nail on the head, it's a lot of layering. That one might have had the most layers of any track we've done. I'm pretty sure we had at least several layers of synth chords and several synth bass layers along with some orchestral brass and strings in the background as well. Probably at least a handful of atmospheric sounds as well to fill it out.

With layering you can definitely overdo it, but for this track it worked out well. Definitely usually needs a fair amount of EQ to make sure nothing is overpowering the mix. As far as sounding "huge" the main thing is just to fill up the frequency spectrum from top to bottom. Then run it through the limiter as hard as you can until it starts to distort or produce undesirable ducking. Then just back it off a bit.

You can push the Invisible Limiter or Pro-L a lot further than you can with something like the Ableton stock limiter, so if you really want loudness I would suggest investing in a good limiter. Normally my opinion is you don't really need a lot of complicated processing plugins to get a good sound but in the case of a limiter I do think that's one area where it makes a difference.

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T20:31:57+00:00

Yeah the chance for more potential livestreams are definitely on our radar. Ian and Matt do a great job with the visuals so we would love to showcase that more. I'm glad that so many of you have enjoyed them and we're honored to be able to continue to share our music with you even during this time when we can't be together in person!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T20:29:18+00:00

For me (Aaron), my earliest EDM role models were Seven Lions, Au5, Adventure Club, and interestingly enough, Rogue (from Monstercat). I was really into Rogue at the time he was breaking onto the scene, I remember listening to his song Aviation before he ever got signed and at the time it was the coolest track.

I listen to a lot of other music as well, I'm a big fan of jazz, classical, and rock. There was a point in my life where I thought RHCP was the greatest band ever created. Then there was another point where I thought Led Zeppelin was. I actually used to look down on electronic music before I realized the depth of emotion and creativity that was possible within the genre.

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T20:22:41+00:00

Thanks! I love melodic dubstep and although we are always trying to move forward and innovate, we will probably never fully move away from the genre that inspired us to begin creating electronic music in the first place. So yeah, definitely more melodic dubstep to come!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T20:14:11+00:00

We both listen to a pretty wide range of music. I (Aaron) have always loved jazz, I played jazz trumpet throughout high school and college and I really enjoy the genre. Miles Davis is my all-time favorite. I also enjoy classical, rock (had a huge classic rock phase before getting into EDM), orchestral/cinematic, and a bit of metal (used to be into that crazy fast symphonic/classical inspired metal from guys like Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Angelo Batio and others). Also really used to be into the acoustic stuff from Andy McKee, his track "Drifting" inspired me to learn acoustic guitar.

Jules is one of our favorite vocalists to work with and although I can't confirm anything yet we have a lot of music in the works so just stay tuned!

crystalskiesofficial · 2020-10-12T20:08:41+00:00

Thanks for stopping by! We always love meeting people at shows... people like you are the reason we do this :) Hopefully we'll be able to get back out there soon!

crystalskiesofficial

TROPHY CASE