Trance Discussion

[ph00tbag]

This is the thread for discussing the various genres of Trance. Let us know what you've been listening to, and talk about your favorite artists, or perhaps any parties you've been to lately with your favorite DJs.

For the curious, Trance music is a genre that arose in the early 90's as an outgrowth of rave music culture. It combined aspects of Techno, House, and Ambient music, focusing on hypnotic or entrancing rhythms and trippy sound design. As a whole, it is characterized by repetitive, arpeggiated melodies, heavy use of filter cutoff modulation, often in the form of "acid" sounds, and ethereal, slow-moving pads.

Trance can be divided into two major extant genres nowadays. One is Melodic Trance, which is usually just called Trance. This genre is heavier on simple melody lines, as the name entails, and makes heavier use of "supersaw" synths, a synthesis style that uses multiple detuned saw waves to create a hissy, buzzy effect in the the upper harmonics of the note. More often than not, music in this genre is described as "uplifting" or "happy." However, more nuanced emotions including, but not limited to, love, wistfulness and remorse are often explored.

The other major genre of trance is Psychedelic Trance. Psytrance, as it is often called, focuses more on trippy sound effects and arpeggiated synth-lines, although lately "Progressive" Psytrance has ventured into the more melodic styles usually attributed to Melodic Trance. Usually, this genre is either more aggressive, or more somber than Melodic Trance, although genres like Full On and Morning Trance can be goofy, or uplifting, respectively.

That's all I have for you for now. Let's talk Trance Music!

[azerty]

I'm definitely no expert in trance, but I wish I were, there's a lot of awesome-sounding stuff buried deep within the annals of this genre. I take particular delight in the uplifting/epic/anthem trance subgenre/movement, with its raging supersaws and its obnoxiously long breakdowns. It's basically typical melodic trance, except super-magnified and jacked up on steroids to ridiculous extremes.

Spoiler Most of the below songs have breakdowns longer than 2 minutes:

[ph00tbag]

So-called "Dutch" Trance is also one of my guilty pleasures. The long breakdowns aren't really that bad, though. It's actually something that happens in really every genre of dance music, really. Even Psytrance does it. Check this thing out.

[ChocolateChicken]

Trance is FOR SURE my absolute favorite genre of electronic dance music. Unlike most other EDM genres, the composition and structure behind trance makes even the most generic of trance songs still more fun and interesting to listen to than most other genres of dance music. Plus it is probably the type of dance music that has the biggest focus on composition than all the others.

136bpm for life.

There isn't as much trance being produced today than there was a few years ago when dubstep/electro house became popular, followed by trap, and currently big room house; it's kind of a shame considering how much potential trance has, but jumping on bandwagons is pretty much what the EDM scene does.

[HMage]

I've been following trance since 1999. It's still my most favourite genre.

I'm totally against the trippy psytrance and I really wish it had a different name — it carries little similarity to normal dancefloor trance and just confuses everyone who's talking about the genre.

The genre name became so loaded by now that if I say "trance music" in a room of 20 random people, every one of them will be thinking of music that is almost unrelated to each other. It even goes to a ridiculous level that some people I know called Scooter as trance..

For those reasons, most artists, like Above & Beyond, Andy Moor, Lange, BT, Thrillseekers and others stopped calling their music trance and don't even mention the name, but didn't stop making the music with same values and approach.

I'm very glad that BT is back to trance after he's done mentoring Porter Robinson, I'm very glad that Above and Beyond remain the example of persistence — any other trio would just fall apart by now since 2001.

As a composer, I still don't have the skills and experience to make even a passable trance track — I suck at melody and melody at breakdown is where the magic happens. No matter how sick the beats are, this music must remain music if you remove all the beats and get rid of EDM bassline.

It's common in to see artists having classical music background — Paavo of Above & Beyond is a cellist and composed musicals before trance, BT is a classical pianist, Gareth Emery has classical music education too, for example.

This kind of music _requires_ that you make a melody that sounds beautiful, catchy, memorable and danceable. At the highest point of the track it's common to have another melody supporting the main one.

It's not unusual to hear some elements of orchestra supporting the breakdown — flutes, non-lyrical choral voices, violins, pianos, horns, orchestral drums and others, with all required skills to make this sound pleasing and memorable as well.

It's a tall order, and without it it's just a variety of house with potentially boring and obnoxious break.

With all that, trance is still dancefloor and DJ-friendly music, and that means 4/4, predictable mix-in and mix-out sections at start and end of the track — this is also a major turnoff for anyone who's listening to trance at home while sitting, so most releases include a radio-friendly version without those sections and arrangement shortened to fit 3 minutes.

To give examples, here's a batch of tracks that I think are good examples of what I've just described:

* We Are Lucky People by Lange
* Flying Blue by Daniel Kandi & Ferry Tayle
* Answer42 & Juventa — Like Those Eyes (Juventa Remix)
* Estiva — Death Of Me (Ferry Tayle Remix)
* BT — Skylarking
* Lange — Destination Anywhere
* Gareth Emery — Citadel
* Oceanlab — Sirens Of The Sea (Above & Beyond Club Mix)
* Thrillseekers — Savanna
* Andrew Bayer — England

Spoiler Youtube:

We Are Lucky People


Flying Blue


Like Those Eyes (Juventa Remix)


Death of Me (Ferry Tayle Remix)


Skylarking


Destination Anywhere


Citadel


Sirens of the Sea


Savanna

[Captain Ironhelm]

It even goes to a ridiculous level that some people I know called Scooter as trance..

[ExoBassTix]

It even goes to a ridiculous level that some people I know called Scooter as trance..

Not sure if Trance or Hardtrance.

On that matter, I present to you my all-time favorite Hard Acid Trance track:


Nice 'n' dark

[ph00tbag]

I'm totally against the trippy psytrance and I really wish it had a different name — it carries little similarity to normal dancefloor trance and just confuses everyone who's talking about the genre.

I kinda disagree. They all come from very similar places, and early on, there was a lot of cross-pollination between the two. Paul Oakenfold started out as a Goa DJ, and started working Prog Trance into his sets, and I'd say it was actually the combination of Nitzhonot Goa with Prog Trance that led to the Epic Trance explosion in the late nineties.

Even now, Protoculture started out as a Prog Psy producer, and has switched completely to Epic Trance (and his Epic Trance is actually some of the most detailed and interesting I've heard in a long time--go figure). I've been steeping myself in Psy long enough to have become distinctly aware that it all exists on a pretty messy spectrum.

Except for Infected Mushroom. F that guy.

[HMage]

Infected mushroom is IDM, isn't it?

(EDIT): as for psy and acid trance — it should and must be separated. I follow the definition of trance that labels use when submitting to beatport, audiojelly and the selection on di.fm/trance. Everything else is adding to the confusion on the name and deserve a different name to avoid that.

[ph00tbag]

Infected Mushroom is Full-On Psytrance. Lump them in with GMS, 1200 Micrograms, and the like. That stuff is fun, but it's not particularly trancey, even if it very clearly shares its roots with Psy. Even so, every so often, someone from the Full-On crowd will put out something that's actually really good, Like IM's Noise Maker. That one gives me chills.

But aside from those acts, I find it too easy to draw similarities between Psytrance as a whole and Trance as a whole, particularly in light of their shared heritage, to just say that they're outright different genres, and ought to be named different things. Both draw influence from Goa. Both draw influence from Acid Trance. Both draw influence from Tech Trance. Epic Trance drew on the melodic elements, Psy drew on the rythmic elements. Epic Trance emphasized the pads and chord progressions, Psy emphasized the arpeggios and acid. But it's only because most people who listen to either genre refuse to acknowledge the common roots that the similarities between the two are deemphasized. (Of course, it doesn't help that a lot of Epic Trance artists try too hard to be housey rather than trancey; Above and Beyond and Ferry Corsten, I'm looking at you.)

I'd recommend you check out stuff like these tunes to really see where the genres intersect.

Spoiler Dates range from 1994 to 2013:

Personally, I think that by writing off Psytrance and Acid Trance, you're really missing out on a lot of astoundingly good stuff. It really shouldn't matter that they don't have a really involved and beautiful breakdown.

[HMage]

But aside from those acts, I find it too easy to draw similarities between Psytrance as a whole and Trance as a whole

Similarities — yes.

Belong to same genre — no.

But I digress, it's just my personal opinion. Other than that, trance is the kind of music that I feel at home.

Speaking of which, I've just finished "Best of Trance 2013" compilation mix. It'll be played on bronyradio on sunday 12th 21:00GMT.

But it's only because most people who listen to either genre refuse to acknowledge the common roots that the similarities between the two are deemphasized.

Was I that categoric? Sorry, it was just wishful thinking in written form. To each their own, and it's two decades late to try to do anything about it anyway :p

(Of course, it doesn't help that a lot of Epic Trance artists try too hard to be housey rather than trancey; Above and Beyond and Ferry Corsten, I'm looking at you.)

You're almost quoting Ishkur's guide to EDM.

Another thing that's buggering me for a while is that there are a lot of attempts to slice trance into very small categories that don't actually make sense to me. Ishkur's done a great job categorizing them but at same time had a side effect that now there are 100500 trances like "Hi-NRG Epic Orchestral Uplifting EuroTrance" nonsense. It's like calling each track their own genre.

Personally, I think that by writing off Psytrance and Acid Trance, you're really missing out on a lot of astoundingly good stuff. It really shouldn't matter that they don't have a really involved and beautiful breakdown.

I'm not writing it off. I just wish there was more clear separation from the two to avoid confusion. Do a social experiment — gather a room of 5 people, from different social circles, and ask them to give examples of "trance music". You'll be surprised. That's what I'm talking about and wish it was avoided 20 years ago. Better though just to call music I love something else. Names and labels are just words, after all.

This thread is gonna devolve very very fast if we both continue this, I recommend we just post links to examples from now on.

[EDIT]: I've added youtube embeds to my previous post.

[ph00tbag]

Well, the reason it wasn't avoided 20 years ago is that DJs played them all together 20 years ago. This is what I'm saying. They were funtionally the same genre back then. The differences hadn't calcified. And honestly, they're the same genre now, and rather than be upset that there's so much variety contained within the name, "Trance," maybe that should be embraced.

In other words, I guess I fundamentally disagree that there should be separation. The shared heritage ought to have more of an impact on the way people write their stuff; I should have trouble telling the two apart when I get to the border between them. On the other hand, there should be more clear a divide between prog house and trance, for instance. This is really the opposite of the current situation, where there's all this stuff that has sidechained sustain basses and pads with simple melodies getting called trance, and then a bunch of stuff with plucked rolling basses with gated pads and arpeggiated melodies getting called house. If you want something that should have been avoided 20 years ago, this prog house stuff is what should have been avoided.

[HMage]

rather than be upset that there's so much variety contained within the name, "Trance," maybe that should be embraced.

I'm not upset.

In other words, I guess I fundamentally disagree that there should be separation.

In the real world, there is separation — di.fm/trance doesn't play psytrance and di.fm/goapsy doesn't play trance. beatport.com/trance doesn't have psytrance and beatport.com/psytrance doesn't have trance.

Just take a listen to these links above to hear how different they are.

This separation has a valid necessity and it has already happened.

You seem to be coming from psytrance side of things and using academic approach without any real-life considerations how this music works on a dancefloor. Trance didn't originate from goa/psy. It's just house that got more focus on melody in 1993. In my history books, trance and goa-psy had nothing in common and psytrance was added later in 1999 — by this time gatecrasher in UK was all the rage and trance was in official UK top 10 charts. (reference and reference and reference and reference).

The only strong opinion I have about goa/psytrance is the fact that, to most people, it promotes drugs, which I am strongly against.

[ph00tbag]

In the real world, there is separation — di.fm/trance doesn't play psytrance and di.fm/goapsy doesn't play trance. beatport.com/trance doesn't have psytrance and beatport.com/psytrance doesn't have trance.

Jordan Suckley - Take No Prisoners is listed as one of the top ten Trance tracks on Beatport, and it's one of the tunes I listed as an example of music that spans the gap. It has a rolling bassline, acid, atmospheric effects. It is entrancing, but also uplifting. The Protoculture remix of Oxygene, and Sun Gone Down are both listed as Psytrance at least once. I don't really know how these things disprove my point.

You seem to be coming from psytrance side of things and using academic approach without any real-life considerations how this music works on a dancefloor. Trance didn't originate from goa/psy. It's just house that got more focus on melody in 1993. In my history books, trance and goa-psy had nothing in common and psytrance was added later in 1999 — by this time gatecrasher in UK was all the rage and trance was in official UK top 10 charts.

This is absolutely incorrect. According to the links you yourself provide, Trance music in Europe started in Germany around '89 to '90 with artists like Sven Väth and Klaus Schultz, and had more to do with EBM and Techno than with House. The House influences came later when artists like PVD and Sasha picked it up in their sets. But this same music that was picking up House influences in Europe was also being played in Goa, where it was picking up Psychedelic Rock influences. And even then, DJs like Paul Oakenfold were playing both styles in their sets. I can't stress this enough, Paul Oakenfold played both. Go look back at his sets from the nineties. Trance Nation America 1 has Epic Trance and Minimal Psytrance in the same album.

I dunno, at some point the spacey, hypnotic elements of Trance got crowded out by it being played alongside so much Prog House, and the Prog House started picking up Trance melodies, and European Trance artists started ignoring what was going on with Psytrance entirely. Maybe it's because Psytrance had indeed gotten really cheesy and preoccupied with its own weirdness at the time, and Full-On wasn't able to mix well with contemporary Epic Trance. But that was the mid-aughts. This is 2014, and it's totally conceivable that Take No Prisoners could be mixed with, for instance, Agressive Progressive (Burn In Noise Mix), with a little bit of pitch shifting. People just refuse to now. And that's a damn shame.

[HMage]

It's not about mixing, it's about how crowd perceives the music, you can't play Agressive Progressive (Burn In Noise Mix) alongside trance because it's different enough that crowd won't pick up any clues and hints in the track and will just leave the dancefloor — something that no DJ wants to happen.

Any DJ with experience had that happen to him as soon as they played something obscure no one in the crowd knows and sounds too different from what they expect.

[ph00tbag]

It almost seems like your argument boils down to "if I've never heard of a tune, or can't classify it's structure in relation to something that is familiar, then I don't want to dance to it." This is what's really foreign to me, since Psy tolerates the subversion of expectations. Perhaps at an Epic Trance party, that's the mood, but coming from Psytrance, I can't say that I would dance to, if you want something that really walks the line, Protoculture - Terra Tronics, but not Jordan Suckly - Take No Prisoners, if they appeared in the same set. Maybe it's because Psytrance subverted my expectations as to why kinds of cues to look for, since that's kind of its shtick.

[HMage]

I forgot that you're from USA and trance isn't big in USA.

Nevermind, If you want to continue this PM me, we'll talk there.

[ChocolateChicken]

I like Above & Beyond's "Home" and "Good for Me" alot, but I haven't heard much else from them at all. Those two songs are some of my all-time favorite trance songs.

And earlier HMage mentioned "Skylarking" being a trance song, and while it does have trance structure, isn't it more accurate to say it is house with trance structure because of its 128bpm?

[HMage]

And earlier HMage mentioned "Skylarking" being a trance song, and while it does have trance structure, isn't it more accurate to say it is house with trance structure because of its 128bpm?

Trance doesn't have strict BPM limitation. It can be from 114 to 140. DJ decides what BPM all tracks will be at in the end.

[Freewave]

In the real world, there is separation — di.fm/trance doesn't play psytrance and di.fm/goapsy doesn't play trance. beatport.com/trance doesn't have psytrance and beatport.com/psytrance doesn't have trance.

Jordan Suckley - Take No Prisoners is listed as one of the top ten Trance tracks on Beatport, and it's one of the tunes I listed as an example of music that spans the gap. It has a rolling bassline, acid, atmospheric effects. It is entrancing, but also uplifting. The Protoculture remix of Oxygene, and Sun Gone Down are both listed as Psytrance at least once. I don't really know how these things disprove my point.

You seem to be coming from psytrance side of things and using academic approach without any real-life considerations how this music works on a dancefloor. Trance didn't originate from goa/psy. It's just house that got more focus on melody in 1993. In my history books, trance and goa-psy had nothing in common and psytrance was added later in 1999 — by this time gatecrasher in UK was all the rage and trance was in official UK top 10 charts.

This is absolutely incorrect. According to the links you yourself provide, Trance music in Europe started in Germany around '89 to '90 with artists like Sven Väth and Klaus Schultz, and had more to do with EBM and Techno than with House. The House influences came later when artists like PVD and Sasha picked it up in their sets. But this same music that was picking up House influences in Europe was also being played in Goa, where it was picking up Psychedelic Rock influences. And even then, DJs like Paul Oakenfold were playing both styles in their sets. I can't stress this enough, Paul Oakenfold played both. Go look back at his sets from the nineties. Trance Nation America 1 has Epic Trance and Minimal Psytrance in the same album.

I dunno, at some point the spacey, hypnotic elements of Trance got crowded out by it being played alongside so much Prog House, and the Prog House started picking up Trance melodies, and European Trance artists started ignoring what was going on with Psytrance entirely. Maybe it's because Psytrance had indeed gotten really cheesy and preoccupied with its own weirdness at the time, and Full-On wasn't able to mix well with contemporary Epic Trance. But that was the mid-aughts. This is 2014, and it's totally conceivable that Take No Prisoners could be mixed with, for instance, Agressive Progressive (Burn In Noise Mix), with a little bit of pitch shifting. People just refuse to now. And that's a damn shame.

I agree with a lot of this. It was in Germany that Trance took off especially with labels like Eye Q and Platipus and with musicians like Sveth Vath and Paul Van Dyk. That early stuff is a lot more hypnotic and relaxing then what came later. The UK mostly got involved with the lower bpm's of Progressive House (what Hmage is referring to as the lower bpm's of Trance which isn't necessarily the best name for it). This is all the stuff that compilations like Global Underground which featured trancey "house" in the bpm range of 122-130 from dj's like Nick Warren, Paul Oakenfold, and Sasha. But other guys like BT were doing a mix of progressive house (all the stuff on Ima), breakbeats (check out Love, Peace, and Grease), and more straight progressive trance (Flaming June). In the end these were all very different version of "trance" in the most general way.

You guys do have a point that GOA trance / Psytrance is a very different variant from what happened in the UK and in Germany (and Europe). Also be aware of Psybient another Finnish variant of Psytrance called Sousamandi to make things more confusing. As stated its very dependent on psychedelic drugs and imagery, characteristically dependent on acid synths, samples, and long arduous thick tracks. Just because it's very different, came from a different region (Goa- Islands outside of India), and have very different audiences doesn't mean there are not connections to "traditional trance".

After all, as stated Paul Oakenfold was a big name UK dj touting the stuff (before he got into Balearic Beat music of Ibiza in the early 90's and brought it back to UK), then he got into GOA, then started doing lower bpm trance and progressive house for those Global Underground comps, and then into more straight forward high energy remixes and sets like those captured in 98's Tranceport which had a massive impact in the UK and America. Trance really was one of the biggest genres from 98 through 2000 until dance music really underground and back into stuff like Minimal/Microhouse/Tech House which blurs the line even further. Obviously its still a decent sized fanbase even if its not "new" or Dubstep popular. Going back to Goa, Sven Vath was also a Goa DJ too so there's that german crossover as well.

That's why splitting the hairs of Trance into subgenres gets SO messy as there's just so much crossover and no clear discernable variations half the time but it is clear that one dj's version of trance is very different from anothers ajnd the audince often have their own ideas of what they like (from slow chilled to fast euphoric).

Anyway I've picked out some essential tracks of each period of traditional trance and linked out to some more outside variants on my list here:
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/TheScient ... t__trance/

[Freewave]

I forgot that you're from USA and trance isn't big in USA.

That's kind of a big generalization. Trance is still quite large but its never been as big as it was briefly in the 98-00. Surely stuff like Big Beat and House was just AS popular at the time. Biggest issue with Trance is there are not many artists / dj's to really make it a LOCAL scene here like the UK, GOA, Germany, Dutch have (obviously Bt was an American as were a few other well knowns, but the Us is a big place).

That's not to say that local dj's weren't incorporating it into their sets (like i was). Definitely like any surviving genre there are people still listeing to it and seeing trance acts (Stars in Autumn just posted a pretty great lineup he saw the other night incidentally of (Above & Beyond, Dastik, BT, and Pretty Lights). If we have to import great trance music in to USA we can now easier then ever (thanks to places like Beatport which i saw a friend of mine help get started up).

[HMage]

That's why I stopped mentioning this genre anywhere but in this forum. It adds to confusion, not clears it.

[Freewave]

Well it helps that trance in any forms carries some common charcteristics. 4/4 beats, 130+ bpms minus any breakbeats, arps, and has some hypnotic grace to it. Parent genres are as useful as "rock" or "metal" ase a descriptor (Dubstep and House are just as varied) but most people will still have an idea what trance will sound like even if its very varied in style and subgenre.

I was going to link the top 200 trance songs initally posted by a guy name binary finary but sadly his channel and his great youtubes with samples of each got taken down. There's just no permanance even for brief clips of songs on youtube. Atleast text and lists never die.

[ph00tbag]

I usually just try to be very precise to avoid confusion. But honestly, I don't mind the ambiguity of it as long as I'm not being fed Prog House that's called Trance (I really just don't like Prog House). Like I said, I find most of it all listenable and danceable. Maybe I could just go through and say exactly what separates each genre of Trance that's extant.

Would take a damn long time, though.

I like Above & Beyond's "Home" and "Good for Me" alot, but I haven't heard much else from them at all. Those two songs are some of my all-time favorite trance songs.

And earlier HMage mentioned "Skylarking" being a trance song, and while it does have trance structure, isn't it more accurate to say it is house with trance structure because of its 128bpm?

I would argue Skylarking is more House music. I don't find it particularly trancey. I love BT, but I do partially blame him for the blurred lines between House and Trance. Then again, if it weren't for him, we wouldn't have Flaming June.

[ChocolateChicken]

Trance kick drums are my favorite type of kick drum than other kick drums as well. They are usually longer and less tonal than house or DnB drums. Also, the attack transients of house and dnb kicks tend to be more subtle and barely heard in the context of the songs, while the transients of trance kicks are more noticeable and sound awesome. Lots of trance kicks usually have a more hard-hitting impact while most other house kicks tend to be nothing more than a little click or something. Boring.