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-- For those who produced or have production knowledge prior to 1999

For those who produced or have production knowledge prior to 1999

Have some questions here if you have time....the most detailed answers you can give would be awesome Thank you a bunch in advance. I ask these questions because I'm trying to fuse 90's Trance with modern day music.


How were productions generally done? (ie. Today we have DAW's, etc. What was the majority production medium back then? SSL boards? Neve boards? Renting out studios? ....etc)

What was the average track count? I've heard around 10, with tracks today using 20,30, and even 40. Obviously the track count had to be lower because of limitations due to hardware, but about what was the average? I feel this limitation of only being able to use so many tracks fueled a lot of the creativity we see from music back then. (but also involved a lot of time consuming bouncing)

What were the average synths and romplers used? I'm going to guess Virus, JP8000, Roland JV's and JD's, 303, etc. Anything else in there that seems to be forgotten about?

Finally, what are the main differences YOU see from Trance production back then and Trance production now, and what words of wisdom would you give to someone trying to fuse classic and modern day Trance.

Again, thank you

I've been producing since 1995. It took me up until about 2001 or so to get my first hardware synth. A virus B, which I sold about 18 months later so I could pay for a nice vacation.

For me back in the day everything was purely sample based. Scream Tracker 3 is still epic.

Trance used to be simple and hypnotic. Now it's quite complex.
Check out Funagenda & Mark Knight - Antidote. It's exactly that old sound while the track itself is quite new.

It's not as much the gear, it more they way it's produced. I was thinking about this the other day. 20 years ago we did stuff on Atari ST (Cubase) or ScreamTracker (PC)

Typical house/dance sound was MIDI, no plugs, less samples
so it sounded very organic and not as much overproduced as nowadays music.

i would advise you this book http://www.alibris.com/search/books...mming%20secrets REALLY good on 80/80 style midi programming

I didn't produced back then, but I used to hang out with local producers. Most of my friends used either Cubase or Cakewalk. At school they used to teach Digital Performer. Like storyteller said, lots of sampling went on.

Re: For those who produced or have production knowledge prior to 1999

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Originally posted by Stephen Wiley How were productions generally done? (ie. Today we have DAW's, etc. What was the majority production medium back then? SSL boards? Neve boards? Renting out studios? ....etc)

Most of it was hardware based, obviously. You had a bunch of synths, usually output into a mixing console (Mackies were very popular), and everything was run via MIDI straight from the synths. We would bounce some parts to audio, but its not like there was a "bounce" function. You just recorded the audio live. Most of the early dance music was not run through high end, it was very sort of DIY. Most producers back then really didn't have the cash to rent out high end studios, and you can hear it in those productions.

quote:

Originally posted by Stephen Wiley What was the average track count? I've heard around 10, with tracks today using 20,30, and even 40. Obviously the track count had to be lower because of limitations due to hardware, but about what was the average? I feel this limitation of only being able to use so many tracks fueled a lot of the creativity we see from music back then. (but also involved a lot of time consuming bouncing)

I mean track counts were not really all that different from today. if you are talking about really old stuff like DJAX Upbeats and early techno, some of those tracks were just a drum machine and a 303, maybe 5 or 6 tracks tops. But the tracks themselves were also very simple. Even early trance was really simple and didn't deviate from this all that much. back in those days you had to do it al in one shot. You didnt really have the luxury of saving everything as much as you had today. I mean you could save your patches, but you had to save it individually. Each synth, each effects processor, and god forbid your cat jumped on top of the mixer and pushed down some of the faders or change the position of a knob.

Many tracks were produced in a couple of days, or maybe even in one night.

Certain producers like BT did have more tracks, but their productions were not as dense as they are today, nor were they as squashed dynamically. Basically if you wanted more tracks, you had to record each part, because you didnt have the amount of synths to do it all live nor the amount of channels available on your hardware mixer.

quote:

Originally posted by Stephen Wiley What were the average synths and romplers used? I'm going to guess Virus, JP8000, Roland JV's and JD's, 303, etc. Anything else in there that seems to be forgotten about?

Roland JV series was popular. The Korg M1 was featured on countless house tracks, and you can hear that M1 piano patch in loads of tracks from the era. The JP-8000 really didnt come into vogue until the supersaw era of tracks, around 1997. There were a lot of samplers used back then as well, obviously the AKAI series samplers were standards in most producers studios. And there was still a fair amount of vintage synths in use as well.

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Originally posted by Stephen Wiley Finally, what are the main differences YOU see from Trance production back then and Trance production now, and what words of wisdom would you give to someone trying to fuse classic and modern day Trance.

Dymanics for sure. Things were not as squashed and there was less obsession with loudness and filling up every inch of the spectrum. Tracks were also simpler and a lot dirtier. The "cleanness" of today's sound was not present, and you can clearly hear this if you put a modern track up against one from back then. They sound "dull" and not as polished. Some of that was due to mastering for vinyl, bot some of it was also using "cheap" equipment.

Thats one of the main problems you are going to have if you are trying to produce 90's style stuff in a modern production environment, because the DAW era produces very "clean" sounds, and you have to work to inject some of that "dirt" that you got from running synths with (by todays standards) crappy conversion and running them through cheap mixers (like the Mackie series). Thats one of the reasons that people want the vintage hardware, because it naturally injects some of that "dirt" into your productions.

Without getting into a genre debate, what you call "trance" today was not trance back then, not until the late 90's. So I feel its unfair to compare the two eras in this way because it doesnt make sense.

Listen to Lost Tribe - Gamemaster: Its just a pad, two synth lines, a bass and some drums. No sweeps (well one tiny one), no noise uplifters, no "supporting" elements, just pure, straightforward and in your face. Thats how things were done back then and somewhere along the way things started getting more "refined". Part of that was due to the maturing of the music, but another part of the availability of better quality equipment at cheaper prices put that level of technology into the hands of the average bedroom producer.

Re: Re: For those who produced or have production knowledge prior to 1999

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Originally posted by Eric J Listen to Lost Tribe - Gamemaster:

The pinnacle of all dance music for me. Absolutely perfect.

A good movie to watch on this would be "Better Living Through Circuitry". They cover a lot (however briefly among the cut-scenes to throngs of people doing the Caterpillar dance) of how the underground/bedroom producer made records from inception, to getting it down to tape, to having the record pressed.

If you wanted to go top-notch, you'd work out the sequence material ahead of time. You'd take your sequencer and gear to a studio, SMPTE time-lock it to a clock track, then run one track at a time through the studio mixer and record other instruments and vocals, there. You'd either be recording to analogue tape or to ADAT.

I know someone who's still an ardent fan of ADAT, even though it digitizes the signal. When it first came out, though, it had quite a few people who didn't like it, presumably because of aliasing.

After the recording was over, you and/or the engineer would mix down to DAT and send the DAT off to a mastering engineer.

i started producing in the late 90s ,back then i noticed most people used pro tools or cakewalk.

if you want to mix old trance with new trance just make like a long epic track with like a 64 bar melodic breakdown that keeps you guessing ,like most of people allready said trance today is more complex and over produced sometimes ,when back then we just had the one constant beat for the 7 minutes now theres so much more to think of when you have more options sometimes its not as easy as you think.

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Originally posted by newtrancer i started producing in the late 90s ,back then i noticed most people used pro tools or cakewalk. if you want to mix old trance with new trance just make like a long epic track with like a 64 bar melodic breakdown that keeps you guessing ,like most of people allready said trance today is more complex and over produced sometimes ,when back then we just had the one constant beat for the 7 minutes now theres so much more to think of when you have more options sometimes its not as easy as you think.

right but i have the "less is more" mentality when it comes to production. i think one of the reasons i enjoy trance from that decade is that it wasnt stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey full of sounds. it seems these days people don't understand the beauty of silence and just like to put shit in tracks to fill gaps when its not needed. (unless they suck and are hiding things)

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Originally posted by StephenWiley right but i have the "less is more" mentality when it comes to production. i think one of the reasons i enjoy trance from that decade is that it wasnt stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey full of sounds. it seems these days people don't understand the beauty of silence and just like to put shit in tracks to fill gaps when its not needed. (unless they suck and are hiding things)

I think there's room for a variety. I've found, lately, what draws me into a song has less to do with architecture and more about the mix. I'm as big a fan of Keysora as I am Nick Cenick (sorry for any unwanted spot-light but...). They're two completely different styles but each is good at creating space in the mix.

yeah i got what u mean rank1 airwave , faithless insomnia ,and robert miles children are all great examples of this using 1 synth or just 1 main melody or motif to tell your story in a song (the whole question and the answer thing.Is very useful.

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Originally posted by StephenWiley right but i have the "less is more" mentality when it comes to production. i think one of the reasons i enjoy trance from that decade is that it wasnt stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey full of sounds. it seems these days people don't understand the beauty of silence and just like to put shit in tracks to fill gaps when its not needed. (unless they suck and are hiding things)

That's because the trance of that era is progressive house today. Thats how it is classified on Beatport and other digital download sites.

That being said, I was listening to one of my old mixed CD's last night, and while the music on the CD certainly generated fond memories, the production quality was clearly inferior to the tracks of today. This was especially evident when listening through mastering grade monitors and conversion, things that i did not possess when I made the CD's in the first place..

I think sometimes its easy to get "good 'ol days syndrome" and judge those old tracks more on how they affected you as a fan, rather than looking at them objectively for what they were.

That doesn't mean that they were bad tracks, far from it, but it does mean that if those same tracks were sent to labels today, they probably would not have been as highly received as they were in their day. You'd likely get the standard "arrangement and ideas are good, but the production quality is not up to snuff" type reply.

All that really means is that the genre has changed, the standards have been raised, and expectation from both labels and fans alike is different now than what it was back then.

well production quality is obviously going to be better. that is a given. but in todays world where we want to generate the composition and arrangements of the yesteryears, we have the best of both worlds. production quality isn't as good and that goes without saying, however; the composition in my opinion is far better. used to have some true genuises writing dance music who left when vinyl died and i could name names all night long.

I think the main aesthetic difference is that older trance used less elements and this resulted in a less full sound. Most of the energy was concentrated up in the top mids rather than covering all frequencies evenly. Modern trance is a lot fuller sounding because people have the ability to fill the whole spectrum.

Some people percieve that as low production quality, but I like the complete lack of noise sweeps and fancy layering. I think all of that gets really distracting and usually just annoys me.

Its not at all about the gear IMO, although the gear did impose limitations which led to the sound. Its still very possible to get that sound from modern DAWs.

i used to use fruity 3.5 and before that moplug tracker going way back

I remember my first studio session in the band I was in c1988

We ended up in Arkantide Studios in North London somewhere and took two 10 hour night sessions as it was much cheaper that way. There was a massive desk, 24 channel TAPE recorder, racks and racks of gear, and EMU Emax sampler with CD-ROM!!!!!

It took us 20 hours, �800 (that's 20 year old money don't forget, maybe �1500-2000 now?) and many takes to record and vaguely mix 3 tracks.

A few years later I was running an Atari ST Pro24 setup with a D50, DX7 and Ensoniq SQ1. That setup cost me nearly �3k back then and is considerably less powerful than an iPhone app I would imagine.

We have it so easy these days it's ridiculous.

Check out the specs of a Fairlight compared to it's retial price back in the day.

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Originally posted by kitphillips Its still very possible to get that sound from modern DAWs.

Of course. But knowing the limitations I think is important if somebody wants to truly limit themselves from lets say a track perspective. ie. No more than 12 tracks per track.

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Originally posted by Stephen Wiley Of course. But knowing the limitations I think is important if somebody wants to truly limit themselves from lets say a track perspective. ie. No more than 12 tracks per track.

Sounds like a forum challenge, although i'd suggest 8 channels as that's what the home recordist was mostly limited to back in the day.

I have plenty of old songs that hold no more than 4 tracks but still sound well.

Me and a buddy tried getting into production back in 95-96. At the time we got a computer with Cubase, Akai S3000 sampler and a Roland synth (can't remember which one). And that cost a fortune for us too! (Akai was itself $3000 I think)

We ended up selling it all 6 months later becuase we just didn't have the time to learn how to use it all. Was very hard to get going for us with no expeirence at all, and even finding the time back then. We just didn't realize the effort that was invloved.

Not a producer back then and even now, so I could easily not be qualified enough to make this post, but I have been listening to Trance music since many years and I have 3 issues/points that I would like the producers here to address or take in consideration.

1) My impression is that too many producers to simplify their work and increase the quantity of releases, mostly think in term of track structure instead of focusing on the single elements. I am not saying that back in the days music wasn't formulaic at all, but today it seems like producers voluntarily put a creative cage around themselves when they develop a new track.

Let's take Der Dritte Raum - Hale Bopp for example:



How many different elements does this track have? Few, but still you have the catchy melody almost constantly in loop that stands out easily and all the other elements are built to support and emphasize it. Also the track just flows so naturally, not like it is constrained by a structure that the producer wants to follow at all cost.

2) Obviously we are talking about music that is developed for the dancefloor, which is already a fairly big limitation, however this does not mean that you cannot try to create an auditory experience anyway. Try to at least make me feel something when I am listening or dancing, I am not a robot.
On the other hand however don't take yourself too seriously, this is still music for the dancefloor. You can be as artistic as you want, but you will not change the history of music with your tracks. So have fun and try to transmit it in your tracks. Don't be a robot yourself, producer.

Here is a classic by Underworld. One of the most famous track they produced can be considered a "divertissment" (yeah, blasphemy).



If Underworld developed their life changing album without thinking like authors, why would you? Stop consider yourself an author/artist and start to think like a craftsman having fun.

3) Better music is different than better production quality. I know I am good at stating the obvious, but not many producers out there seem to realize this difference.
You can have the most polished music ever, but if your tracks do not have a soul and do not feel like a sound/dancing journey you are doing it (partially) wrong.
As many of you mentioned the complexity of tracks have escalated in the last decade, yet the majority of long term Trance listeners would like to use a time-machine and jump back to the 90ies.
Could be that the producers are just too concerned about producing the best sounding music, instead of focusing on the music itself. In 100 years do you think people will remember more Charlie Chaplin or Michael Bay (now you can bet that Bay will direct the Citizen Kane of the 21st century.... mmm probably not ) ?

This track is from 199fucking3. It sounds good even today (at least relative to the year it was produced), yet the author did not sacrifice the overall quality of the production just to sound good.



So just stop stuffing your tracks just for the sake of stuffing and overproduce just for the sake of overproducing and overpolish just for the sake of overpolishing. Do something because it makes your track a better one and not because this is how music is produced in the 21st century.

I can share my experience on this.

Back when I got signed and I got my first advance, anno 1996. All I had was two synths (Korg x3, Roland XP10) plus my pc and its soundcard running cakewalk. The mixer was a CR1604. I invested in some fxs such as a midiverb from alesis, a zoom fx, and a crap behringer compressor.

When I got the jv1080 in 97 it opened a brand new world of possibilities, because of its waveforms, multi-out, and its expansion boards. I kept that thing for almost 7 years.

Basically all was done with cakewalk triggering the synth and sampler parts (I later got an s2000), all synths going to the mixer, eventually sending to the midiverb and zoom fx's, while I had the behringer remotely compressing drums or other parts.

that hardware cost me back then about 8000 euros. Now I have zillions more features with that money spent on virtual instruments and plugins, and the computer and screen that go with it.

Still if you ask one of those bedroom producers how to use that stuff properly without sounding generic, they mostly don't know what resampling, layering, sound design is. They wouldn't care recording sounds with a microphone and a portable recorder as plug-in x already has that same sample. They don't even have the patience to read the manual... oh yeah I forgot, there was none as they use illegal copies.

That is the problem today. You got those kids all doing the same sounds, the same structures, the same instruments because they all get it off the same torrents.

You can't even imagine how many rising stars use cracked software, get gigs, make money, and NEVER pay for their software. Us loyal customers pay for their lack of responsibility.

And sound-wise, some of you gus are right, we're going back to the roots of the sound, in a polished version. By roots I mean 1992 and not 1999. Better generation if you ask me.

quote:

Originally posted by Lolo I can share my experience on this. Back when I got signed and I got my first advance, anno 1996. All I had was two synths (Korg x3, Roland XP10) plus my pc and its soundcard running cakewalk. The mixer was a CR1604. I invested in some fxs such as a midiverb from alesis, a zoom fx, and a crap behringer compressor. When I got the jv1080 in 97 it opened a brand new world of possibilities, because of its waveforms, multi-out, and its expansion boards. I kept that thing for almost 7 years. Basically all was done with cakewalk triggering the synth and sampler parts (I later got an s2000), all synths going to the mixer, eventually sending to the midiverb and zoom fx's, while I had the behringer remotely compressing drums or other parts. that hardware cost me back then about 8000 euros. Now I have zillions more features with that money spent on virtual instruments and plugins, and the computer and screen that go with it. Still if you ask one of those bedroom producers how to use that stuff properly without sounding generic, they mostly don't know what resampling, layering, sound design is. They wouldn't care recording sounds with a microphone and a portable recorder as plug-in x already has that same sample. They don't even have the patience to read the manual... oh yeah I forgot, there was none as they use illegal copies. That is the problem today. You got those kids all doing the same sounds, the same structures, the same instruments because they all get it off the same torrents. You can't even imagine how many rising stars use cracked software, get gigs, make money, and NEVER pay for their software. Us loyal customers pay for their lack of responsibility. And sound-wise, some of you gus are right, we're going back to the roots of the sound, in a polished version. By roots I mean 1992 and not 1999. Better generation if you ask me.

Brilliant post.

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