How is trance music written?

[Syndrum]

Im intrested in producing trance music, and i have all the equipment(Synth, computer, micro logic, and fx unit). Ive tweaked around with some stuff iv created and all that. But what i still have not figuerd out is exactly how to write trance music. Can that even be done? How do the profesionals do it? Do they just creat the tracks on their computer and pray to the lord they never loose them or what? Im kind of confused and at a dead end so any help would be super kind!

[Lord Thathidge]

I do the trance thing (amongst other ventures) and use Reason.

I don't how others out there produce it but how I produce tends to vary.

I sometimes play about on one of my synths with pads or lead type sounds for a while until I find a chord progression or lead melody that I like and work from there layering other sounds/effects/drums etc until I get a basic structure for my track, then spend months on end tweaking it and never being happy with it 100%.

Other times an idea for a bassline, lead melody, drum track or whatever will simply pop into my head and I'll work from that.

I don't really think that there is a general formula to adhere to as such although most 'trance' type tracks are generally structured the same:

Lead in + break + big euphoric section + lead out.

If you're relatively new to production, be prepared for months of not being content with what you are doing.

I've been producing music using computers for about 3 years and it's only in the last 6 months that's I've really actually wanted to play the stuff I've been churning out to friends etc.

You will become extremely critical of what you do...

...it will become an obsession...

...but a thoroughly enjoyable one!

[VSTerrestrial]

yeah.... this is SOOO tru. I'll make something and be like "Damn this is awesome" the next day it becomes, "This is pretty cool" after listening to it for a week, "Yeah this ok but not great." and when I finally show it to a friend it becomes, "Yeah, I tried but this just sucks. Don't mind me."

I only hope one day I'll be less critical of myself.

[d_johnno]

I'm exactly the same, except for me in the evening I'll be working on something and it'll be really great, and then when I open it up the next morning, little gremlins have come in the night and turned it all to crap. Happens almost every day. the little b*******s must be pretty busy.:mad:

[Lord Thathidge]

So you're familiar with the crap production gremlins also?

They came into my studio on the night before last and turned what was to replace 'café del mar' as the number one trance tune of all time into the equivalent of Scooter's f*cking logical song!

Green b*astards!!

[KJDunleavy]

I`ve just come back from a short holiday, and when I listened to a few projects I had been working on before I went away it became apparent that I had been infected by the little darlings too.

They have turned some seriously groundbreaking material into something resembling a backing track for Boyzone.

This has been happening for 4 years now and I have had to come to terms with the fact that the little fackers will never go away, only very seldom does one of my tracks escape their terror.

[Fumbling on Ecstasy]

I think we all know those gremlins. I tried spraying some pesticide around my computer, but it still didn't seem to work. Fukkers

[Lord Thathidge]

Pesticide is not the answer D.

What you need is to enlist the help of the ’minute men'.

What or who are the 'minute men?' I hear you all chorus.

Well, you know when you put something down on the table in front of you just for a second and look away, when you look back that item has miraculously disappeared. So you spend the next few minutes looking for the damn thing all over the place and then you turn back to where you thought you'd put it and its there, staring you in the face. The 'minute men' are to blame.

They take things and hide them and then put them back where you left them a minute or two later, which, quite co-incidentally, is the average attention span of 'crap production' gremlins, hence, if you can catch the 'minute men' in the act, instead of squishing 'em, you can actually employ them to watch over your studio and should the gremlins appear, the minute men can simply re-locate your studio for a couple of minutes until bored sets in and the gremlins p*ss off! The minute men are happy because they are doing what they do best and what they are good at and you are happy because all your tracks remain as outstanding as the day you first composed them.

It’s a win/win situation friends.

I learnt this the hard way since I have about 10 tracks which are unfinished do to gremlin intervention which has rendered them soulless, synth fuelled, europop!

These tracks are currently under consideration as backing tracks for Gareth Gates…

[Fumbling on Ecstasy]

Thatridge,
Sure your minute man hypothosis would work well in theory, but you're ignoring Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection.

What will eventually happen is that crap production gremlins with shorter attention spans will naturally be selected agianst and die so that only gremlins with longer attention spans reproduce. This is contingent upon the fact that crap production gremlins need to change songs into crap to survive. So in theory, employing minute men as protection against gremlins only breeds gremlins with higher attention spans, meaning they're more effective. It's the same principle as using antimicrobial soap. You only strengthen the strain by allowing the more resiliant bacteria to reproduce while killing off the weak.

D

[KJDunleavy]

I see, so by trying to find away to destroy them we will only make them stronger and more resiliant to further attempts to exterminate them!!

hmm, well going by this theory the only two possible ways to proceed would be to either ignore them and live with it, or to find away to turn them to our advantage while keeping their present state of evolution in check.

well, right now finding a solution is way beyond my range of thought.

Anybody else have any ideas?:confused: