Originally posted by Trance-M
I personally don't consider that one being uplifting. Next to that uplifting back then didn't even exist. But since I was a fan of Dance2Trance I think the link to uplifting is not that hard to imagine after listening to these two from 1993 and 1994:
Depends on the era but modern uplifting has too much on steroids, antibiotics and hormones in it.
rdevito
1) Go to Youtube;
2) Search for: The Source Experience;
3) You're welcome;
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I think it's important with trance to note that this is, to some extent, inherently silly music. However, if you acknowledge that, you can get swept up in its exhilarating rush of sound. The expression I use for this double-think, this surrender to its charm, is "Putting your trance trousers on". Because even melodramatic music can be extremely well made, and the best trance music has some wonderfully complex, unique, twisted sounds in it that never get boring to listen to.
rattymouse
quote:
Originally posted by rdevito
1) Go to Youtube;
2) Search for: The Source Experience;
3) You're welcome;
I appreciate everyone's recommendations with great thanks. I just wish they were not so youtube based. I really loathe listening to music via youtube. Apple Music and Soundcloud are the streaming choices I prefer.
That said, I WILL certainly check out all youtube suggestions.
Originally posted by Omnisphere
Like anything humans touch, we tend to always a ruin a good thing. Trance is no different. Dirty games get played in the scene, backstabbing, shady/shifty deals, using bots to prop up views on social media, all giving people the illusion that everything is okay. People also not getting paid royalties either by labels or people they thought they could trust. People promised that they would get paid but then the agent decides to take back on his word and then not pay at all.
If you really want to know how the Trance scene is doing, You don't need to look far. Just see what the commercial trance scene plays and compare it to the tracks from 1990-2005. The quality tanks after that and now it's just filled with white noise, sounds low bit rate, uses noisy claps and they want to make as loud and destructive as possible because that's the only way to get the message out there.
It's this sick mentality that ruined this precious music that brought joy and happiness and helped people overcome through their struggles. It's crushing to see the greatest electronic music evermade being destroyed like this but the underground scene is doing so so far but still getting harder and harder to find those mellow tracks.
The problem with this post is that it assumes something changed from the early days in terms business; it didn't.
Clubs were always run by ty semi criminal promoters who would anyone at any chance. Labels always ripped off artists. Bootleggers would popular tracks to make a quick pound/dollar. The only difference was that it was physical records so you could track how many were sold (to a degree) but even they people got stiff which is why a lot producers just took upfront fees for a track or remix (Timo Maas got paid $2k for Doom's night and that was all he ever saw from one of the biggest tracks of the decade).
DJ'ing used to be this mystical art that not many people could do. By the early 2000's, Technics Decks surpassed all guitar sales in Europe. It became far more accessible meaning less talented people due to less barriers of entry and the quality slid. Sasha was harmonic mixing in the early 90's and why his mixes were light years ahead of anyone else. By 2005 Mixed in key was available and I remember a mate bought a set of decks and was harmonic mixing within hours. It didn't mean he was any good but the barrier to entry was gone.
I've talked about this at length but the same thing happened with the music itself. It use to take someone musically talented, with arduous dedication in terms of time, and a financial commitment in the thousands to make all the hardware producer a finished track.
Even then, you then had to find someone willing to press and distribute it, and that was hard up front investment. If the track was e, no one was going to press 500 copies at 2 quid each (cost) and piss away a grand. Sure, there were the odd idiots/bales with poor taste, but they got burned pretty quick and either disappeared or stopped making that mistake.
These things acted as a quality control filter meaning to get a track out there, you spent years of dedication, and months of work on maybe one track. I remember people like BT and PVD saying they spent anywhere from 4 months to a year on a single track. Chicane's far from the maddening Crowd took two years.
People spent time making tracks and making them well so they would see light of day (or better said, strobe of club).
Fast forward to around 2000 and suddenly you could make a track from start to finish on a somewhat ty PC, a cracked copy of logic or cubase and less than 2 grands worth of kit. And you could put it out digitally on CD's or even online for free.
It meant labels had zero risks. Just churn the out and see if makes money. They could also hide the sales figures. It meant digital labels popped up everywhere and at the same time digital file sharing knocked the bottom out of paid for music.
By 2005 record stores were all but dead and any muppet with a laptop and ableton could churn out some crap track and with the right marketing or logo design, get a few sales.
The rest of the market adapted or died. Armin, Tiesto, BT etc, all changed their sound for the new ADD generation and cashed in.
That's not to say there aren't people putting out great music or DJ's playing great sets, it's just that there's so much more crap out there than ever before due to there basically being no barriers to entry.
I will however agree that in those early days the motives where somewhat different. People like Danny Rampling and Marshall Jefferson and Nicky Blackmarket and Orbital (etc etc) did it for the love and the scene. There was something purely enthusiastic about it and there wasn't these huge sums involved, Don't get me wrong, they made a living, but not like these Vegas idiots getting paid $300k per hour to play lowest common denominator drivel. People don;t realize that Sasha was getting 2-5 grand a night at a club, maybe more at a big rave and would only play 50 to 100 gigs a year tops. Night like the hac were an absolute money pit and a lot of clubs/promoters went bust due to it not really being about money and more about music. It's why you had the rise of the corporate clubs/brands like MOS and even Cream etc.
You can still find the music and clubs and DJ's that give a and are still making good music. It's just not the renaissance period where everyone was doing that which led to the sum being even more than the parts.
SYSTEM-J
All of that is just a giant "back in the day" moan we've heard a thousand times before. It doesn't explain why there's loads of great house, techno, prog and so on being made in 2018, but trance is still overwhelmingly . It's got nothing to do with vinyl, decline of physical sales, DAWs, digital DJing or any of the rest of it. It's an affliction unique to one scene and the collective direction it has taken.
SynthNinja
quote:
Originally posted by DJ RANN
+1
I'm with Rann on this one, solid stuff.
paulversuspaul
Its taken me years to think about why I love 90s trance and hate everything after so much. I think system nailed a lot in his descriptions but it doesn't answer the question of why this happened? In general, I think the trance that is still good is the stuff that has its roots firmly planted in House and Techno. Not surprisingly, these are the type of tracks you might hear a modern techno or house dj drop into a set. The stuff put out nowadays doesn't even sound anything like house or techno. Its something else entirely. To me, original trance music was stuff that was born directly out of the drug experience of taking MDMA and listening to electronic music. It was stuff that sounded amazing balls while rolling. It still sounds amazing balls if you are on MDMA. Very few house or techno tracks can even come close to achieving that OMG moment something like Age of love induces in people taking MDMA at a rave.
Why did trance end up sucking so bad? Because the type of guys who used to listen to trance in the 90s left trance for house and techno. Its no longer the music of ravers but now the music of people with bad taste and tourists. And because its fans nowadays almost don't care about a track having any roots in house and techno, quite the opposite exactly as they seem to like the garbage cheese and farty sounds, the makers of this crap keep making it worse and cheesier by the day.
A good analogy is progressive rock. I have always associated prog rock with overblown ty music until a friend sent me some deeper early cuts I wasn't aware of. Just like trance there actually were guys making really good prog rock but the genre went off the rails at some point and turned into absolute rubbish.
To the OP I would recommend listening to something that is not trance exactly but has tons of trance vibes:
Sasha and Digweeds northern exposure is the single place to start my friend. After all these years I still think it kicks major ass. Both Northern Exposure 1 and 2 are absolute musts.
Sasha 1995 Essential mix from the que club is more epic house but also fabulous and ends on a progressive trance stormer. It still might be the single best live mix for guys on drugs I've ever heard.
Paul Van Dyks MFS mix is early trance and also really good.
Digweeds 95 essential mix and his bedrock one compilation are also really good.
paulversuspaul
sorry for the second post but just wanted to add a little.
To me both Progressive house and trance were genres that were directly influenced by and evolved with the drug experience. House and techno existed long before anyone was taking MDMA at raves. the breakdowns the buildups, the arpeggios, the use of soft female vocals, etc are all that sounds great when someone has popped a pill.
Even the idea of cheesiness is something that goes against the MDMA experience. Part of whats unique about taking that drug is how it tears down the walls you have built around you. What appears to be cheesiness to us sober can be downright emotional and moving to someone on MDMA. But remove the drug use and you got nothing but morons listening to some really cheesy .
But f me guys, there is still nothing like an old school trance rave. the amount of hugging random strangers is something I still miss. I probably miss that more than the music to be honest. House and techno as good as they are musically, will always have a much harder time getting everyone in the crowd to have that OMG I love everyone moment. Not that you can't get that but trance seemed to push nearly the entire crowd into that direction.
wotyzoid
What's with all the misinformation on this board. Molly in clubs is as American as House and Techno. So much so that it was placed in schedule 1 in the 80's. Nonsense.
paulversuspaul
quote:
Originally posted by wotyzoid
What's with all the misinformation on this board. Molly in clubs is as American as House and Techno. So much so that it was placed in schedule 1 in the 80's. Nonsense.
didn't say it wasn't. But that trance and progressive were two genres in which the music was directly influenced by what the drug experience was like. When the first guys were making house and techno, no one was thinking about the MDMA experience. It just happened that by luck both genres went well with MDMA and next thing you know Raves were born. But the genres themselves were created before people were popping pills en masse. That isn't the same with Trance and Progressive House. In both cases, the genres came after the rave explosion and to me it would be unthinkable to imagine each being created if it was not for the fact that the guys making it were ravers who had taken MDMA while listening to house and techno at raves.
And trust me when I tell you this. MDMA was placed in schedule 1 in 85 and it had nothing to do with people taking it at raves since raves weren't even born yet. The reasons it was scheduled like this are very complicated but no one at the FDA at that time was even aware of the fact that people were taking it at raves because raves didn't exist yet.
