trance wooki 1- electronic music style, hated and loved by many. 2- focused or detached state of consciousness. ARGH. like it matters! it's a nice word, and nice words don't need reasons to exist. they exist because somebody wrote them down or spoke them before i heard or read them. that's all. 020919 ... when darkness falls i love trance... especially morning trance on sundays. either you love it or you hate it, there's no middle point. i consider myself very addicted... 040308 ... white_wave I like to dance_in_a_trance. 040308 ... 1999-2004 trance is a standard not just a style. almost lost but never forgotten 040401 ... when darkness falls you put me in a trance... sound nice huh? 040512 ... r3v0lut10n listening to trance right now i'm experimenting some new stuff in my body 040720 ... r3v0lut10n listening to trance right now i'm experimenting some new stuff in my body 040720 ... [:T_o_x_i_c___C_y_b_o_r_g:] I mostly like any trance with vocals in it. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S IN GERMAN!! 061115 ... IGG my fave type of music. went to a psy_trance rave at the weekend...that was weird music, nothing like trance. was excellent though. MADNESS AND CHAOS! 061115 ... curious IGG when darkness falls..........is your name from the Ralph Fridge song 'Angel'? 061115 ... IGG ahhh its when darkness comes ^.^ never mind. *le sigh* 061115 ... [:T_o_x_i_c___C_y_b_o_r_g:] I could pretty much narrow it down to EBM music, just without the lyrics 061116 ... [:T_o_x_i_c___C_y_b_o_r_g:] Trance is a style of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s. Trance music is generally characterized by a tempo of between 124 and 148 bpm, featuring repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and down throughout a track, often crescendoing or featuring a breakdown. Sometimes vocals are also utilized. The style is arguably derived from a combination of largely techno and house. 'Trance' received its name from the repetitious morphing beats, and the throbbing melodies which would presumably put the listener into a trance-like state. As this music is almost always played in nightclubs at popular vacation spots and in inner cities, trance can be understood as a form of club music Origins Early electronic art music artists such as Klaus Schulze have proven to be a significant influence on trance music. Throughout the 1970s Schulze recorded numerous albums of atmospheric, sequencer-driven electronic music. Also, several of his albums from the 1980s include the word "trance" in their titles, such as the 1981 Trancefer and 1987 En=Trance. Elements of what became modern club music also known as trance music were also explored by industrial artists in the late 1980s. Most notable was Psychic TV's 1989 album Towards Thee Infinite Beat, which featuring drawn out and monotonous patterns with short looping voice samples and is considered by some to be the first trance record. The intent was to make sound that was hypnotic to its listeners, this would also lead to a strain of trance known as Euphoria being developed which caused an uplifting sensation among its listeners who became somewhat euphoric during listening. These industrial artists were largely dissociated from rave culture, although many were interested in the developments happening in Goa trance which is a much 'heavier' sound than what is now known as trance. Many of the trance albums produced by industrial artists were generally experiments, not an attempt to start a new genre with an associated culture — they remained firmly rooted culturally in industrial and avant-garde music. As trance began to take off in rave culture, most of these artists abandoned the club style. The earliest identifiable trance recordings came not from within the trance scene itself, but from the UK acid house movement, and were made by The KLF. The most notable of these were the original 1988 / 1989 versions of "What Time Is Love?" and "3 a.m. Eternal" (the former indeed laying out the entire blueprint for the trance sound - as well as helping to inspire the sounds of hardcore and rave) and the 1988 track "Kylie Said Trance". Their use of the term 'pure trance' to describe these recordings reinforces this case strongly. These early recordings were markedly different from the releases and re-releases to huge commercial success around the period of the The White Room album (1991) and are significantly more minimalist, nightclub-oriented and 'underground' in sound. While the KLF's works are clear examples of proto-trance, two songs, both from 1990, are widely regarded as being the first "true" trance records. The first, Age of Love's self-titled debut single was released in early 1990 and is seen as creating the basis for the original trance sound to come out of Germany. The second track was Dance 2 Trance's "We Came in Peace," which was actually the b-side of their self-titled debut single. While "Age of Love" is seen as the track which cemented the early trance sound, it was with this release(as a result of the duo's name), that gave the sound its name. The trance sound beyond this acid-era genesis is said to have begun as an off-shoot of techno in German clubs during the very early 1990s. Frankfurt is often cited as a birthplace of Trance. Some of the earliest pioneers of the genre included DJ Dag (Dag Lerner), Oliver Lieb, Sven Väth and Torsten Stenzel, who all produced numerous tracks under multiple aliases. Trance labels like Eye Q, Harthouse, Superstition, Rising High, FAX +49-69/450464 and MFS Records were Frankfurt based. Arguably a fusion of techno and house, early trance shared much with techno in terms of the tempo and rhythmic structures but also added more melodic overtones which were appropriated from the style of house popular in Europe's club scene at that time. This early music tended to be characterized by hypnotic and melodic qualities and typically involved repeating rhythmic patterns added over an appropriate length of time as a track progressed. Of worth to note, the album that is generally accepted as THE definition of the frankfurt trance sound, and which subsequently influenced all of the early pioneers mentioned above, was the Pete Namlook "4Voice" album. Of note, one of the studio engineers who worked on this pioneering effort was one Maik Maurice, otherwise known as ½ of Resistance D, the famed Hard Trance duo. If you are a fan of the frankfurt sound, this album is the beginning. At about the same period of time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a musical revolution was happening in Goa, India. Electronic body music (EBM) bands like Cabaret Voltaire and Front 242 came to Goa and began influencing artists like Goa Gil, Eat Static, Doof, and Man With No Name who heard the psychedelic elements of EBM, expanded on them minus the vocals and guitars to create Goa trance. Goa music is heavily influenced by Indian culture and psychedelic drugs, as seen in numerous references to both in track and album titles By the mid-1990s, trance, specifically progressive trance, which emerged from acid trance much as progressive house had emerged from acid house, had emerged commercially as one of the dominant genres of dance music. Progressive trance set in stone the basic formula of modern trance by becoming even more focused on the anthemic basslines and lead melodies, moving away from hypnotic, repetitive, arpeggiated analog synth patterns and spacey pads. Popular elements and anthemic pads became more widespread. Compositions leaned towards incremental changes (aka progressive structures), sometimes composed in thirds (as BT frequently does). Buildups and breakdowns became longer and more exaggerated, and the sound became more direct and less subtle, with a more identifiable tune. This sound came to be known as anthem trance. Immensely popular, trance found itself filling a niche as 'edgier' than house, more soothing than drum and bass, and more melodic than techno, something that made it accessible to a wider audience. Artists like Paul Oakenfold Paul van Dyk, DJ Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, Above & Beyond and Armin van Buuren came to the forefront as premier producers and remixers, bringing with them the emotional, "epic" feel of the style. Many of these producers also DJ'd in clubs playing their own productions as well as those by other trance DJs. By the end of the 1990s, trance remained commercially huge, but had fractured into an extremely diverse genre. Some of the artists that had helped create the trance sound in the early and mid-1990s had, by the end of the decade, abandoned trance completely in favour of more underground sounds - artists of particular note here include Pascal F.E.O.S. and Oliver Lieb In the mid 2000s, other new bands like Tony Reed and Synthetik FM began to fuse rave styles of music with synthpop and new wave and use the new medium of the internet to distribute their music. As trance entered the mainstream it alienated many of its original fans. As the industry became bigger, record labels, clubs (most notably Ministry of Sound) and DJs began to alter their sound to more of a pop based one, so as to make the sound more accessible to an even wider, and younger, audience. Female vocals in particular are now extremely common in mainstream trance, adding to their popular appeal. Trance developed alongside the increasing use of the drug ecstasy in the club scene. Ecstasy invokes a feeling of intense optimism and goodwill, and when taken while listening to loud trance music the feeling can become euphoric and highly energetic. [citation needed] The structure of trance music came to develop, deliberately or not, so that it became ever more effective at provoking these euphoric feelings. [citation needed]The metronomic beat, simple distorted waveforms drenched in large amounts of reverb, and long build-ups with snare rolls leading out of a breakdown all trigger a huge predictable response from ecstacy users.[citation needed] At the end of the 1990s, it is likely that a large number of clubbers in clubs such as Gatecrasher in Sheffield and Passion in Coalville (both in the UK) were using ecstasy.[citation needed] Trance songs were included in the heroin flick, Trainspotting. Trance employs a 4/4 time signature, and has a BPM of 130-160 beats per minute, somewhat faster than house music. Early tracks were sometimes slower. A kick drum is placed on every downbeat, a snare or clap on each second beat, and a regular open hi-hat on the off-beat. Some simple extra percussive elements are usually added, but, unusually in dance music, tracks do not usually derive their main rhythm from the percussion. Trance is produced with keyboards, computerized synthesizers, drum machines, and music sequencer software connected via MIDI. The 909 drum machine is widely used to create the drum sounds. The unwavering drum mechanism may be constantly tweaked with for effect, with the Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release (ADSR) all given liberal treatment. Synthesizers form the central elements of most trance tracks, with simple saw sounds used both for short pizzicato elements and for long, sweeping string sounds. Rapid arpeggios and minor scales are common features. Trance tracks often use one central "hook" melody which runs through almost the entire song, repeating at intervals anywhere between 2 beats and several bars. Much, but by no means all, trance music contains minimalist vocals. Trance records are almost invariably heavily loaded with reverb and delay effects on the synth sounds, vocals and often parts of the percussion section. This provides the tracks with the sense of vast space that trance producers tend to look for in order to achieve the genre's epic quality. Flangers, phasers and other effects are also commonly used at extreme settings - in trance there is no need for sounds to seem in any way authentic, so producers have free rein. Like much dance music, trance tracks are usually built with sparser beginnings and ends to the tracks in order to enable mixing more readily. As trance is more melodic and harmonic than much dance music, this is particularly important in order to avoid dissonance between tracks. 061116 ... reVent That was a good read. One thing I'd disagree with though -- that the producers purposefully try to add reverb/other effects to make the listener/druggie raver trip some more. And that the reason trance developed was thanks to increasing use of ecstasy. I don't support this argument. Sure, your average underage raver goes to the party to take drugs (I'd say ecstasy but nowadays there are so many possible combinations I lost count) with his/her friends, sit in an e-puddle and receive light shows, but that raver may not care about the music at all, be it trance, techno, jungle, etc. They probably don't even know what the hell the DJ's playing as long as their high. Some of them may have never heard that music before and would not listen to it if not at the party. As long as the music has a constant beat, bass, some melody, twinkly sounds, euphoric synths, and there's someone to rub his/her back, the raver's in heaven until the drug wears off. Every genre can be associated with a certain drug, but it's not the drug that defines the genre or makes that music come alive, although any sort of music, be it trance, house, or rock, may 'invoke' euphoric feelings and enhance the experience. I've been listening to acid house, old-skool trance, and newer melodic/vocal trance and I don't need drugs to experience the symphonic beauty that each track offers. I understand that this is not true for everyone that goes to EDM parties. But most people that I know can listen to their favorite tracks and love them any time of day, with or without the use of controlled substances. The bottom line is, if you need drugs to make you enjoy music, then that music is not for you. 061116 ... dammit! paragraph 2, line 8: their they're 061116 what's it to you? who go blather from