quote:

Originally posted by Demoted I love all that stuff too, the stuff that borders the line between deep prog trance and prog house. You and I have probably about the same taste in prog, but I also love the more Sasha-esque type and the darker, housier, Digweedish tracks along with the more tribal. I just would rather spin more of the artists you listed

Yeah I enjoy Sasha and Digweed stuff too. I got into them before I got into the big epic DJ guys like Armin and Tiesto, whom i'm not as fond of anymore (though I did get their latest CDs because I love a lot of the tracks on them, esp the first CDs). But I think the artists I listed do have some darker and more tribal stuff, like Snake Sedrick has a great track called "Friction", and even though I didn't list them, Opencloud and Shiloh are also great. And Subsky has some darker stuff as well. So I like it when artists can produce dark and light stuff or stuff that isn't super light nor super dark either. I guess you could call it a little more mellow music. What's also good i've found is that it's not really full on, so it's great music to chill to at home as well as to practice for warm up sets, because most DJs start off as warm up DJs, not headliners. And this is where me and you will probably start up obviously...since we are newer to this.

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Originally posted by Estuera And I advise you to think about 99 again, I remember Ferry Corsten for example putting out track after track after track with the same sounds and sometimes almost the same melody...

Yeah, and look at Ferry now. He jumped ship four years ago.

The big difference is that in 1999 those sounds were brand new. Epic trance was only new. Now it's old and the sounds are old, and unbelievably they're getting less diverse.

There's also another side of this, which is apart from production, and that is musical talent. In the 90s you had to be a real musician, or something close to it, to make music. Now you can spend a relatively small amount on a couple of programs and be able to make music with no knowledge of music at all. I guess that's why the big producers of the past name diverse acts as their inspiration, where as most bedroom producers would say Armin. One group had a proper musical background, the other heard trance and jumped the easy train to making their own.

The result is that a big percentage of today's producers can't write an original melody worth shit, let alone an entire song. This isn't an attack on Jonas Steur, because a glance at my reviews on TC will show I like the guy's productions, but he's an exception.

___________________
Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

quote:

Originally posted by Spirit5 Yeah I enjoy Sasha and Digweed stuff too. I got into them before I got into the big epic DJ guys like Armin and Tiesto, whom i'm not as fond of anymore (though I did get their latest CDs because I love a lot of the tracks on them, esp the first CDs). But I think the artists I listed do have some darker and more tribal stuff, like Snake Sedrick has a great track called "Friction", and even though I didn't list them, Opencloud and Shiloh are also great. And Subsky has some darker stuff as well. So I like it when artists can produce dark and light stuff or stuff that isn't super light nor super dark either. I guess you could call it a little more mellow music. What's also good i've found is that it's not really full on, so it's great music to chill to at home as well as to practice for warm up sets, because most DJs start off as warm up DJs, not headliners. And this is where me and you will probably start up obviously...since we are newer to this.

Meh, I don't have any aspirations to be anything more than a bedroom dj really. I may send out the occasional promo whenever I feel good enough to record one, but I don't plan on being a club dj or anything more. Just spin in my room, space out, the usual. And this more mellow prog is perfecto for that.

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Originally posted by SYNthSRI Another year..another thread of 'trance is dead'. Just let it go and go enjoy whatever it is that rocks your ears this year.

I've jumped ship to a more comfy chair, and sat by eating popcorn and watching the show for a few years now and it's reached the point where it feels like watching a car accident in slow motion. I just don't like to see it go down like this. All that I see are people who are either jumping ship, or pretending it's not sinking.. and not really anyone at the side of the boat bailing out water and patching up the damage! It's the laziness and ignorance that stands in the way of improving things. Sorry but the attitude of "ah whatever.. a thread about this comes up every few weeks" or "ah just listen to what you like and don't worry about it" is just a passive attitude that shows little awareness or concern for the damage that your so called favorite music has been taking.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J There's also another side of this, which is apart from production, and that is musical talent. In the 90s you had to be a real musician, or something close to it, to make music. Now you can spend a relatively small amount on a couple of programs and be able to make music with no knowledge of music at all. I guess that's why the big producers of the past name diverse acts as their inspiration, where as most bedroom producers would say Armin. One group had a proper musical background, the other heard trance and jumped the easy train to making their own. The result is that a big percentage of today's producers can't write an original melody worth shit, let alone an entire song.

^you're dead on there. Well said man.

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Bass Skidz | Shambhala Music Festival | Noble House
WWW.DJNEMESIS.COM :: MYSPACE.COM/DJNEMESIS

Last edited by DJ NEMESIS on Jul-11-2006 at 00:59

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Originally posted by Demoted Meh, I don't have any aspirations to be anything more than a bedroom dj really. I may send out the occasional promo whenever I feel good enough to record one, but I don't plan on being a club dj or anything more. Just spin in my room, space out, the usual. And this more mellow prog is perfecto for that.

Yeah true but I just have aspirations myself to DJ sometime at a club or bar, considering there's so many in my area and it would be a fun thing to do.

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Originally posted by weymouth It's just that every other producer is producing the same exact sounding tracks, that isn't your fault but it is annoying for the fans. If you, Alex Stealthy, Mike Foyle, and Leon Boiler all created a new single and asked the fans to try to tell who made which, it would be difficult to the average listener. Take your set from ASOT 250 for example: Jonas Steur 01. Fable- Above [Intuition Recordings] 02. Estuera Vs. Mr. Sam Feat. Kirsty Hawkshaw - Split The South (Jonas Steur "Revision Flow" Bootleg) [CD-R] 03. Mr. Sam - Split (Jonas Steur Remix) 04. T4L - Maximus [Blackhole Recordings] 05. Dawnseekers - Gothic Dream (John Johnson Remix) [Platipus] 06. Bolier & Coenraad - The Mighty Ducks 07. Kyau Vs. Albert - Kiksu [Anjunabeats] 08. Jonas Steur - Sonrisa [Intuition Recordings] 09. Governor Pres. Orjan - Arctic Globe (Festival Edit) [Intuition Recordings] 10. Re:Locate Feat. Menno de Jong - Spirit [Galactive] 11. Fable - Nightshift [Intuition Recordings] Some good songs in there, I like most of them as individual songs but put them into a set and there is no progression, energy, or even much change. I remember listening to that set after the classic hour(tough act to follow) and losing interest about 3 songs in because it seemed so similiar. Maybe they made yah play like that, I don't know, but trance used to have energy and hypnotic sounds and in it's place is orchestra energy trance. Maybe my beef is with the DJs and not really the copying producers and I wish I was less ignorant about the entire process but this conversation is good for the scene.

It's a radio show playing the newest tracks, so the setup is different than a setup for a live audience.

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Longest (classic) Trance playlist on YouTube (5000 tracks released up to and including 1997), click here

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Originally posted by Trance-MB It's a radio show playing the newest tracks, so the setup is different than a setup for a live audience.

no actually it isn't very different. take a look at Armins ASOT episodes and then look at the tracklists from the recorded sets from different venues. almost the same tracks played.

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Originally posted by RebeL9 no actually it isn't very different. take a look at Armins ASOT episodes and then look at the tracklists from the recorded sets from different venues. almost the same tracks played.

That's because Armin choses tracks for ASOT he likes, reflecting his taste. But I think when he plays a set at an event like Sensation he prepares his tracklist a bit different.
But some ASOT episodes come close to that. Also I noticed some episodes have softer tracks at the start and harder tracks at the end.
It also is a matter of taste. A tracklist can be bad on the radio and excellent for a live audience.

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Longest (classic) Trance playlist on YouTube (5000 tracks released up to and including 1997), click here

So the problem is labels releasing too much garbage made by non-musicians who happen to obtain some audio warez? I guess I get a little upset when people even subtly suggest that ambitious kids trying to make music using their humble setups and short educations should not bother, people should always be encouraged to at least try I think, or there is no hope for things getting better.

The problem looks to be moderation, you guys seem to desire more professional musicians with traditional music training, records that are more a product of imagination and less a product of reason presets. What confuses me about that is the whole nostalgia thing. When I look up reading material off of places like hyperreal, from around the time when people still used the word Rave, I am not seeing professional musicians and formally trained artists. Instead I read about these anonomous pranksters, hiding behind hundreds of aliases, stringing together goofy samples from star trek teleporters and such. I am not reading much material that backs up this idea that your musicians of old were so much more professional and had such a superior musical background, althought it does look like making music back then was a larger investment than it is now. It seems in the glory days there were alot of these ambitious kids doing their own circuit bending and using these antique noise making machines for purposes outside of their intended use, generally playing around with electronics to make fun noises come out. The artists seemed alot like a small niche of music/tech enthusiasts rather than snooty music virtuoso types. Maybe doing the same thing with software isn't quite as glamorous, obviously it doens't require quite as much expertise to slings bits around in a predesigned interface as it would to say, wire up pathes for your giant modular synth.

It sounds like many of you are looking for improvements in the industry's systems of exclusion, you want labels to exclude the music you dont like, you want shops to exclude the labels you dont like, you want parties to exclude DJ's you dont like, you want clubs to exclude the subcultures you don't like. So you have to find out who are the best excluders! The question seems to be which DJ/label/producer deserves the hype and glory. There looks to be a demand for labels which are much more discriminating in who they sign. I for one appreciate how low cost and easy it is for a startup to get going in the music world today, because one of those startups may become your next innovator/pioneer in spite of 99 others which suck, but not if we go around telling them that they should be excluded.

So which labels are the good ones?, it seems we are in need of an elite tier of prestigous labels which gets more support than the ameteur internet music circuit. Maybe we need a list of which labels are worthy and which ones are the copycat digital ones. Really think the best thing we can do is just to keep trying to find the good stuff, and keep sharing with each other our ideas of what is and isn't good music. We keep this dialog going and eventually we form our little camps surrounding our different tastes, and those little groups we form help to dig up the best tunes for each corresponding taste, as listeners that is really the only thing withon our power to do, just keep digging and sharing until we have a big enough crew to hype up the tracks we consider "best".

A lot of the producers from the rave era who emerged as genuine artists and not novelty bollocks were proper musicians. Liam Howlett of The Prodigy is classically trained on the piano, for example.

___________________
Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

Who fucking cares if their proper musicians? The music is the final test, and if the music sucks, then there. I think copy/paste is bad but you can't say "Genuine Artists," because that is assuming there is only one good approach to art that can be appriciated. What if I told you that only people who play real instruments should be counted?

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http://www.myspace.com/djsentinelmusic