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The reason I think a lot of trance sounds a bit stale and samey, is that a lot of the time, it's DJ's making the progression from DJing to producing. People just want to make music now, so as a result they take whatever shortcuts they can. how often do you see unanswered posts on trance forums by people asking for tips on 'how to make a big lead' or 'how to make an A&B bassline'. They use presets as opposed to learning how to program the synth and stick to tried and tested riffs and patterns. They, and I partly speak for myself, just want to make music that sounds good when you're off your tits on drugs, which doesn't take that much originality. I too am guilty of this - but I do have some programming knowledge and try to make all my patches myself.
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this simply is not true and is yet another example of stereotyping the trance scene. you will get people asking how you make typical 'leads' and 'basses' in any kind of music. its part of the learning process to dissect something that already works really well to see what makes it work. and then once you become familar with that you gradually apply what you find out to your music and you reiterate and extend the concept until your sound is unrecogniseable from the original influence. everybody does this and not just in music. ive done this in painting. secondly, most of the people on tranceaddict.com are flat out against the use of presets and most build their own patches. you will see the same on audiopioneers.net and serious-sounds.net and generoproject.com.
alot of them happen to like supersaws or variations on the detuned spread lead but there is surprising variety in this and i dont believe the supersaw has exhausted its potential owing to the fact it is mutating in all sorts of different genres (from hardcore and hard house down to isratrance and so forth) into harder or softer kinds of tones. this discussion has been brought up before with hoovers on KVR. the hoover is just like any other type of sound from an instrument. its expressiveness comes from the player and the players ability to program that sound as mentioned in this thread. much more so than from any innate failing or cliche in that type of sound itself. theres a reason why they became cliched in the first place - because they sound fucking phat which alot of people cannot get enough of. same with the 303.
lastly, i see patterns in every style of music and i do mean every style. rock music is built on A, D, G chords. chuck berry only ever used like 8 chords and he was a riff machine and pretty much every rock song after that has taken some influence, directly or indirectly from him. even supposedly freeform type music like industrial and ambient have patterns, not necessarily musically because niether are exactly musical in the theoretical sense but thematically and structurally (or by their total absense of any structure).
additionally, with regards to dance music. you must realise that a big part of dance music is experiencing it live. many types of dance music (such as hard house) are extremely rigid with regards to form (4 bars comprising a single phrase with a small fill per phrase. 4 phrases comprising a movement with a longer fill marking the end such as a fading snare roll. each movement usually introduces a new synth hook or an extra layer and there are typically 4 movements and then a break down. a vocal sample of sorts. a crazy snare/kick roll, a 1 note riff and the whole thing starts again.) now. you can say what you want about hard house and ridicule it all you like but a good example of this form is base grafitti - house always wins. you will never appreciate this track as fully as you can until you see the devastation it causes when it drops in slinky. 1 note is all it is. alot of hard house consists of very minimal, 1 note rhymic patterns. this music is rigid precisely because its made to be performed. its made to be DJed. and its good at what it sets out to do - turn dancefloors into the aftermath of battlefields. and it gets great results when you play it out. you can keep hard house tunes in the mix for ages and get interesting builds and combinations just by having 2 tunes going together for 2 minutes or more and having the time to fuck around and get the drop perfect. and thats because of its structural rigidity. the most successful tunes will be the ones which work with most of the others. tunes that mix well are more likely to be played out. more likely to cause more devastation per dancefloor per square mile. so there is a continuous selective process going on here where clubs and DJs and artists retain the stuff that works for a specific purpose and ditches the deadweight. music becomes more specialised but at the same time more focused on a specific idea or sound. theres no room for arsey tracks in hard house. theres no room for faffing around with unnecessary bullshit. hard house is about drive. and energy. and going fucking mental. if you want technicality and high musicianship you wont find it here.
thats not to say dance music need always be rigid. alot of psy for example doesnt always have 4 phrases per movement and it is what i would consider 'arsy' to mix partly because of this. but you must DJ psy in a different way to hard house. you cannot leave it in the mix as long. you cannot always make long, seemless transitions. and with ambient psy or downtempo psy you have to mix out of the ambience at the beginning and end of each track because its always possible to beatmatch owing to the wide variety of tempos in this genre. needless to say, if you want to know why hard house is minimal and to a large extent formulaic, go to slinky with some mates, all bomb some mdma and let your inhibitions go. you may still not enjoy it if thats not your cup of tea and fair enough. but hard house is very suitable for that kind of experience and it is very danceable. you only need to see the venues packed to the rafters every weekend to see why slinky hardly plays anything other than hard house and hard trance.
there is an industry behind this that underpins it all. slinky wont play music that doesnt fit the demographic of its current clientelle. and with good reason - hard house pulls in the crowds. it sells drinks. and people are happy to buy them and go mental on a big dancefloor, rushing their head off. its good for the artists. good for the punters. and good for the bars. just the way everyone likes it. unless you arent in on that sort of thing. but no biggie. theres plenty of other specialist music out there that no doubt caters for a specific demographic of listeners with a very specific intention or social situation in mind. one which may be more on your wavelength.
there has always been this business side to art. george romney's portraits mostly form commissions. we just find that his business work has merits of its own. and it doesnt stop him from being a great portrait artist. so does gainborough. so does practically every great artist in history. and there has been specific formulas and rules to representing the human figure in portraiture. its no different now. even with cubism and abstraction - they all flourished into a formal style and it became easy to categorise artists in this way. nothing has changed. but trance is always the brunt of the musical elite. and to be honest, its getting more than a bit annoying because alot of these musical 'elitists' havent really thought the whole thing through - at least not enough to get over their own predjudice.
