PLEASE READ THIS REPLY DS! i know its long but its worth it i promise! not like the other essay length crap posts i normally write. honest.
Quote:
Is anyone here bored of the same kinda shitty 909/808 loops?
The same kinda detuned mega leads?
The same kinda 'oh my god my soul is part of the universe' kinda pads?
The same kinda dull songwriting?
The overuse of compression, effects and virtual plugin 'phatning' techniques?
The squeeky clean and sterile digital recordings?
The oh so pathetic vocal stutters?
The even more pathetic and meaningless lyrics?
The fact that trance is not a 'live' genre and never will be in the true sense.
The fact that alot of people make it in smelly bedrooms whilst at university (often under the influence of drugs) and that the euphoric feeling they get whilst writing the tune....just cannot be achieved unless you use the same drugs.
The fact that very few people can make money within this genre now (I was hoping that would mean more talented musicians would dominate....but I was wrong).
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heh, you are listening to the wrong trash DS
most of the good stuff doesnt even have lyrics. trance is mostly an instrumental style. most of the trance works that do have vocal performances tend to have wordless vocals where the voice is used in an instrumental capacity. i distinguish 'trance' from 'cheesy banging supersaw pop.'
i think you have been listening to too much of the latter - too much lazard and delerium. not enough hallucinogen and humate. you will find plenty of trance that has none of the 'qualities' you listed above in quote.
trance is more a state of mind and a set of principles. although when it became commercial in the late 90s it kind of drifted into many different sub styles and the volume of work produced exploded.
these days, your average psytrance tune is more trance than trance is. but. the good stuff is still around - you just have to go underground to find it.
i suggest checking out the following (some of these are psytrance but broadly, the same basics apply to all of them - ill explain afterwards):
tiesto - suburban train [you'll like it for the analogue instruments (in fact, if you could tell me what instruments you can identify in this track id be grateful). think of a long day, train ride back home when the sun is coming down and the click click! noise of the tracks. you'll 'get it'.]
nexus 6 - silicon sound (protoculture remix) [no supersaws here. no 'megaleads' no 909 percs. no cheesy vocals. this is a bit of a psytrance classic. an amazing clean electric guitar sound and a wandering melody are really the icing on the cake of this little gem of a song. the original nexus 6 version you would hate. protoculture is a bit of genius though and this is the result.]
hallucinogen - LSD [classic of the genre, especially when you consider this was made in the early 90s. it has a teebee arp in it but dont let that put you off. think of a trip thats going slightly sour. no supersaws]
beathackers - transpose [in my opinion a psytrance classic. nearly every instrument is a 303. yes i know. theres 909 percs too. dont let that put you off! alot of the 303 parts are very complex, consisting of several teebees, panned in different direction through different filters. some are even slightly out of tune for an electronic scream effect. think of 10 angry teebees being tortured on a wrack and this song as the artful arrangement of their tortured screams.]
humate - love stimulation [if you like 80s stuff then this is trance...but it sounds really...80s]
M.I.K.E - sunrise at palamos [bit of a classic. alot of choral stuff which you might have fun with trying to emulate on virus.]
paul van dyk - for an angel [production wise its really showing its age (is that?! no! compression noise on the bass drum!? nooooo!) but its still one of the great melodic trance tunes. it does have a teebee acid line but it slips in and out of this dark slumber. its lovely. listen when stoned enough that your brain feels like it has pins and needles and you are dosing.]
castle trancealot - indoctrinate [one from the old skool. funky bassline that you wont ever see in trance today]
voice of cod - just a ride [brilliant use of bill hicks samples. you just have to hear it. yes it has a 'heart at the centre of the universe' pad and a VB-1 bassline. but the important thing is that it works. this IS 'trance.' the type of tune that you can listen to for 8 minutes and it feels like 4.]
humate - bedrock [another humate classic]
protoculture - silicon sunrise [crazy LFO white noise effects. a kick drum and bassline that ducks out for like 30 seconds in the whole of 8 minutes. production wise showing its age but another psytrance tune that feels half its actual length. no supersaws. no cheesy crap.]
fatali - city of god [melodic psytrance classic with crunchy 303s. squelchy 303s. really high ones. and really low ones. its another 303 bonanza but dont let it put you off - just check out how many different sounds you can get out of a single oscillator, single filter synth. teebee fury!]
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theres a mix of genres in there but broadly the same essense. trance is music based on repetition and drone instrumentation. you may hear alot of supersaw ministry of sound crap that gets dumped into the trance section at your local record store. many would argue thats not trance at all but a brand of pop. even psytrance which is mostly underground has a few commercial acts that have distanced themselves enough from the idea of trance that some of us refer to it as 'isracheese'. im thinking of astrix and infected mushroom in particular. and yes this brand of psychedellic cheese seems to emanate from israel in the same way that unsubtle, banging hardcore just 'seems' to emanate from amsterdam. strange phenomena i know.
the basic idea with trance is that it is based around percussion, in particular the kick drum which is constant. trance doesnt really break or drop that often because it is this constant, hypnotic beat that drives many songs.
typically the bassline consists of 16ths and weaves around the kick drum for a seamless and constant stream of sound. pads typically assume the role of drone instrument. in a similar way that sitarists are accompanied by a sitar drone and tablas.
the fundaments are rhythym and melody. increasingly in trance there is harmony although originally it was kept much simpler. the basic idea is that, if you let yourself; in the right frame of mind, you can lose yourself in the hypnotic rhythym. its very hard to explain except to say you have to listen to the right songs, at the right time for you to find it profoundly affecting. when i mean 'right' i mean you have to leave all of your predjudices of the style of music at the door.
there is in many cases a necessarily progressive element to trance. melody rises and falls in crescendo and diminuendo. non musical, noise based sounds fade and flip between left and right of the stereo field. but there is an overall arc to this repetition and often its a kind of long, bolero type crescendo where the track increases in intensity to a climactic point before tailing off. its this movement that i find captivating and very difficult to explain when its done 'right.'
its like classic greek tragedy. you know someone is going to die - many times its wholley predicatable - its a formula, endemically linked to renaissance as well as modern theatre and story telling but its a formula that for some reason consistantly works. theres something about the rise of the protagonist. the waking period. the fall and the tragic resolution. and similarly in good trance there is this parallel kind of resolution. and likewise i cant explain why the formula works - but i assure you it does - if you let it. if it catches you at the right moment.
and its a valid reason for the necessary obscurity in art - if i could explain the inner workings of this type of music, i wouldnt deem it necessary to spend hours every day trying to create/recreate/study this type of music - and yet thats what i do. why does every other trance song have a teebee arp in it? why is the 909 bassdrum such a decisive part of modern dance music? why are detuned string like leads and spaced out evolving pads such a staple? i dont know. but it just 'works.' my explanation is nowhere near an adequate decription of what trance is and how it works, just a few dusultory comments to encourage people like you to get underneath the surface and really work to find something good underneath all that gatecrasher/ministry of sound filth.
the effort will be rewarded. but you wont find the good stuff from your average tower records. you will have to listen your way through hundreds of trance recordings, many of which are in my humble opinion generic, retrograde and boring before you finally uncover that one gem that makes the whole experience worthwhile.
its in the nature of the volume of art produced that most will be mediocre. i appreciate that your post contains alot of heavy irony and that your predjudice is meant in an amusing and non offensive way but really! give it go. you never know what you may find yourself liking.
also, with regards to drugs - its true that certain drugs can make trance sound 10 times better and when you trip whilst listening to some of those psytrance tunes your brain will be flipping over in your skull at how the sound seems to echo from every direction at once. but this is unfair because all music sounds better when you are tripping. that said, this style of music does work when you are slightly out of it. drink till you are merry or smoke till you are feeling your brain start to slacken up and you may (or may not) find the experience of listening to trance more enjoyable.
with regards to finding out about trance music. typically i found most of the records ive got through parties and so forth. from then on you learn about places and people to go to where this music is thriving.
if you want to hear some psytrance tunes and buy some records i recommend checking out
www.chaos-unlimited.co.uk. for information about news and events in the scene try
www.psyforum.co.uk
current news on trance i would recommend
www.tranceaddict.com although i admit to disliking most of the music that is popular at this site. i tend to like more of the older tunes and the odd track that pops in now and then underground. i would also check out
www.juno.co.uk if you want to buy some classic and current trance as well as many other different styles of dance music.