Having grown up listening to electronic music and very little else, was it any wonder then that it was only a matter of time till I discovered Electronic Dance Music (EDM)??
April 1996 to be exact. About middle to late that month.
(There were one or two events around that time that make it memorable).
Now, keep in mind that I have not been listening ONLY to Trance for the past 18 years, but its safe to say that the bulk of what I have been listening to has been electronic of some kind or another.
Anyway, what is trance?
I really like the Wikipedia opening paragraph, so here it is with a few edits by me;
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s in Germany. It is characterized by a tempo of between 125 to mid 160 beats per minute (BPM), repeating melodic phrases, and a musical form that builds up and down throughout a track. Trance is a genre on its own, but also will include other styles of electronic music such as techno, industrial, house, pop, chill-out and classical music.
A trance refers to a state of hypnotism and heightened consciousness. This drifting sensation is portrayed in this genre by mixing many layers and rhythms to create build and release. For example, a characteristic of virtually all trance songs is the soft mid-song breakdown, beginning with and occurring after the orchestration is broken down and the rhythm tracks fade out rapidly, leaving the melody, atmospherics, or both to stand alone for anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. Often they are accompanied by vocals that have been described as “grand, soaring, and operatic” and “ethereal female leads floating amongst the synths”.
While my all time favorite type is vocal trance, followed by chillout, followed by orchestral trance, I’m actually going to start you out with a pretty basic trance track just to get the feel of it.
(You would not believe the amount of time I have taken to try and pick this first trance track).
This track is around 15 years old, but this version is a newer remix. Its one of my favorites of just very clean Trance.
The other reason I am sharing this version is that its pretty short. As you will come to see, most trance tracks are rather longer than the usual 3-4 minute radio tracks we normally hear.
Remember, its 15 years old. Its not very complex. Just a basic beat, some happy/bubbly synth / strings to keep things moving along… My point is, this is where we started and given what’s come before it, you can see (hear?) why I was attracted to it.
(And now you have some idea why I wanted to give some background to my love of Trance and not just throw you into it – I have, in a lot of ways, grown up with electronic music, so it really is running deep in my mind).
As we move forward, I hope that you can appreciate where we have come from and the progression it has taken.
