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For those who produced or have production knowledge prior to 1999
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| Stephen Wiley |
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 :) |
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| Storyteller |
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. |
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| Raphie |
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 |
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| DjWoody |
| 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. |
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| Eric J |
| quote: | 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)
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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)
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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?
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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.
| quote: | 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.
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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. |
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| tehlord |
| quote: | Originally posted by Eric J
Listen to Lost Tribe - Gamemaster: |
The pinnacle of all dance music for me. Absolutely perfect. |
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| EddieZilker |
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. |
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| 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. |
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| StephenWiley |
| quote: | 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 in tracks to fill gaps when its not needed. (unless they suck and are hiding things) |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | 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 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. |
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| newtrancer |
| 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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| Eric J |
| quote: | 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 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. |
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