What are your negative and positive thoughts on the music of Trance?

[SouthernHemisphere]

Hey I want to start a post on people's opinions on the genre of trance and how people taste are. You can share your music to see what your thoughts truly are. And how they are. I would love to hear the listeners or the fans of the genre mostly. And I mainly want to know about the negatives. And also mostly about Uplifting Trance/Orchestral Trance.

[UltimateOutsider]

The bad:

• It's very easy to make bad Trance, so there is a lot of bad Trance around.
• A lot of Trance tracks are too long for my taste, and it often feels like it's more in service to some kind of formula or DJ consideration than what's best for the track.

The good:

• When it's good, it's great. I legitimately love a lot of Trance tracks, but it's tough for me to name individual artists or even songs, because I usually listen to DJ mixes or compilations and just groove on the good tracks when I hear them.
• A good Trance track *to me* conveys a feeling or paints a picture with sound in the absence of lyrics.
• Even though I'm familiar with a lot of the "tricks" to boost excitement, I do enjoy the emotional rollercoaster of a well-executed Trance track, building up to euphoric release, and repeating just enough to give you that rush without becoming boring.

[SouthernHemisphere]

The bad:

• It's very easy to make bad Trance, so there is a lot of bad Trance around.
• A lot of Trance tracks are too long for my taste, and it often feels like it's more in service to some kind of formula or DJ consideration than what's best for the track.

The good:

• When it's good, it's great. I legitimately love a lot of Trance tracks, but it's tough for me to name individual artists or even songs, because I usually listen to DJ mixes or compilations and just groove on the good tracks when I hear them.
• A good Trance track *to me* conveys a feeling or paints a picture with sound in the absence of lyrics.
• Even though I'm familiar with a lot of the "tricks" to boost excitement, I do enjoy the emotional rollercoaster of a well-executed Trance track, building up to euphoric release, and repeating just enough to give you that rush without becoming boring.

Music can be any duration. For me having short music is to fast and not allowing the elements to breathe in and show their characteristics more. This is why I love trance because each section of the track allows those elements to have it's own part and make them effect the track making it sound powerful and lively. And I don't like the DJ's that does not allow longer minute tracks it's defeating the purpose of trance in the first place if they don't accept 10 minutes or 7 minute tracks. They might as well go to the mainstream genre to do that sort of thing. This is what is killing trance, everyone want's things to fast and to quick that they don't actually want to feel. They just want that energetic rush when listening to music without no emotions. That's not real music and that's not real love that's just taking advantage of something that they can have at each second. True some lyrics in trance nowadays are not "creative" and just lazy lyric-sing. I only would love the genre if there was people who are serious in making the change and want the people who don't love it or making it worse "Take them out" of the genre.

[recursive one]

The bad:
- Same presets, same patterns, arpeggios and loops, same track structures all over the place. Some people are selling Ableton and FL templates and stems, this should be banned and criminally prosecuted.
- Ridiculous amount of layers, extreme compression, unreasonable emphasis on the upper midrange. I have no idea why this became “industry standard sound”. Most of trance released after 2010 is just painful to listen to in headphones.
- “Vocal trance”. Lame melodies, poor singing. I don’t mind singing in trance but it must be something different to a generic pop song. Various remixes on Delirium’s Silence and some other Delirium’s songs are good examples of vocal trance which is anything but crap (though the originals are not trance).
- Major keys. I hate these stupidly happy melodies which may be found in a major portion of uplifting trance tracks and when it is combined with “symphonic” arrangements sounding like amateurish attempts at Disney soundtracks it becomes even worse.
- EDMization. Drop-riser-drop-riser-drop-riser-the track ends. Where the fvck are the melodies?

I mostly stopped listening to “normal” (non-psy) trance around 2014 or so. Around this time it seemed that the genre is deadly stagnant and is sticking to a generic formula absorbing most of what I don’t like. There still were some fine releases at this time but they mostly relied on the ideas which had been used to death before 2010.

The good:
When trance is done right it becomes one of the most evocative, powerful and emotional forms of electronic music.

Actually trance was my gateway to electronic music in general and the classic trance sounds like supersaws, plucks with massive delay, acid sequences, huge pads still are sending shivers down to my spine.

[choomaque]

I think people who like trance music are the ones to which aesthetics is an alien thing. They also probably wear socks and sandals and probably fond of many other things that is considered to be ugly. Ugly genre for ugly people.

[choomaque]

Whenever I browse FL studio "song exchange" forums to give some feedback, and see "trance" in the topic title or description - I skip.
When I hear no more than two seconds of that uninspiring trancy arpegio - I skip.

[Bunny_boy]

Tarnce

[seangm]

I think people who like trance music are the ones to which aesthetics is an alien thing. They also probably wear socks and sandals and probably fond of many other things that is considered to be ugly. Ugly genre for ugly people.

Haha. In your earlier posts above from 2017 it seems like you were a Trance fan but apparently not anymore. What changed your opinion?

[Bombadil]

I have none. It's a non-entity for me.

[PatchAdamz]

I have none. It's a non-entity for me.

Thats positively entrancing.....

[mystran]

I mostly stopped listening to “normal” (non-psy) trance around 2014 or so. Around this time it seemed that the genre is deadly stagnant and is sticking to a generic formula absorbing most of what I don’t like.

I know this is going to be a bit controversal, but I think at this point what we call "psy" is actually what remains of "true trance" in the sense that where "normal trance" started shifting towards more mainstream friendly elements and consequently attracted more audience that is no longer interested in the "trance as a state of mind" aspect but rather just wants to have fun together, while what we now call psy just kept optimizing the formula that allows one to sink into a trance-like state.

For what it's worth, I don't really mind listening to modern "mainstream" trance either... but like it arguably lacks all the qualities that make my own body dance almost involuntarily.

[foosnark]

The main thing that bugs me about trance is there are apparently 27,132 different subgenres, like Optimistic Squirrel Frontside Ollie Cybertrance and Moderately Shy Lithuanian Ambidextrous Beryllium Carrot Trance and Lightly Grilled Windows 7 Home Premium Trancecore, and I can't tell any of them apart.

Also I had a roommate who got into trance for a while and I swear every single thing he listened to was deadly boring. I know there's good trance out there, there has to be just because there's so much of it... but he was amazingly successful at avoiding it.

[VOODOO U]

Uplifting trance is when it doesn't play.

[zerocrossing]

My negative thought is that it sucks. My positive thought is that it positively sucks.

[Shabdahbriah]

I mostly stopped listening to “normal” (non-psy) trance around 2014 or so. Around this time it seemed that the genre is deadly stagnant and is sticking to a generic formula absorbing most of what I don’t like.

I know this is going to be a bit controversal, but I think at this point what we call "psy" is actually what remains of "true trance" in the sense that where "normal trance" started shifting towards more mainstream friendly elements and consequently attracted more audience that is no longer interested in the "trance as a state of mind" aspect but rather just wants to have fun together, while what we now call psy just kept optimizing the formula that allows one to sink into a trance-like state.

For what it's worth, I don't really mind listening to modern "mainstream" trance either... but like it arguably lacks all the qualities that make my own body dance almost involuntarily.

^^^ This ^^^