Mixing 'older' trance (late 90s - mid 00s)

[TW1306]

I've been struggling to achieve a genuine 'classic' trance sound - something that could be mistaken for a record released at the time - and I think it mostly comes down to a lack of knowledge on mixing/mastering. I've not been able to find any resources or info on contemporary production and mixing techniques so was wondering if anyone would be able to give me some tips? Stereo/reverb balancing and basslines are two things in particular I have difficulty getting right, even though in theory trance basslines can be pretty simple in many cases.

Attached are the most recent full-length tracks I've finished; I don't know what I'm missing or doing wrong but I couldn't get them to sound authentic, as with any projects I've started since then.

https://soundcloud.com/spatial-sound/fl ... al_sharing

https://soundcloud.com/spatial-sound/un ... al_sharing

I have a very minimal setup (a laptop, DAW, and some beyerdynamic headphones), so everything I do is 'in the box'. Absolutely any advice would be appreciated, I've been working on music for almost a decade and really want to make good-quality tracks.

[i need Help]

First of all, your tracks sound good.

TL,DR:
If you want a late 90s - mid 00s sound, work as closely as possible within the technical and audio quality limitations of the time.

Full Commentary:
As to your post about getting an authentic 90s sound, it always has been and always will be my opinion that if you want to sound like a certain era of music, anything shy of getting as close to the working environment of that period is going to be an approximation of the sound.

If you want an “authentic sound” indistinguishable from the actual late 90s to mid 00s, use the hardware and software that was available at that time. Anything else is going to be emulating the sound of the 90s as you’ve seemingly already have done but aren’t satisfied with.

The next best thing would be to become intimate with what it was like producing back then and work within those limitations.

This sounds extreme and I could go one and on with examples, but one of several things to consider is the performance of your computer. Theres no way a machine back then could run 100s of tracks or massive, multi-gigabyte HD sound libraries with no issues like today’s computers can.

Think of the limitations that imposed and what it meant for the sounds a producer could get.

One example from my experience (using Reason 2.5):
Automation kinda sucked back then lol. It was MIDI 1.0 CC values, which means your automation would “stair step” because you only had values from 0-127 and couldn't do partial values.

Compare that to today’s infinitely smooth vector/algorithmic automation.

I’m sure I’ll never find it (I’ll look though lol) but there’s a TY video of someone (Ferry Corsten I think but might of been Armin Van Buuren) talking about the limitations in the 90s and how they had to creatively work around them. An example they gave was the limited polyphony of MIDI back then and how they had to overdub audio in order to make a single instrument play big chords. Think of what this means: some notes in a single chord probably had slightly lower audio quality since they weren't bouncing flawless 32-bit floating point audio like we do now without even thinking (or knowing lol) about it.

Compare that with the massive chord stacks you can do in one soft synth, then duplicate it 3 more times with different synths lol.

They also pointed out how you couldn’t even turn the hardware off lol. There was no instant recall of patches, settings, so on. Their studio was “on” for 4-5 days straight until they finished a track and could turn stuff off (this is more pre 00s. You’re timespan of ‘late 90s to mid 00s’ is like the epicenter of the digital revolution when DAWs started taking off lol).

- The End -

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

I am huge fan of late 90s EDM and first synths i'd use if wanna produce such sound are Synth1 and V-Station, but imho very useful for 90s sound - Firebird,T-Force Alpha,PG-8X,TAL Noisemaker,Pneuma ... all free.
Check my free stuff,some may work for you:
https://velltone.wixsite.com/velltone/about-5
https://youtu.be/Vccfs4gwwAs

[TW1306]

As to your post about getting an authentic 90s sound, it always has been and always will be my opinion that if you want to sound like a certain era of music, anything shy of getting as close to the working environment of that period is going to be an approximation of the sound.

If you want an “authentic sound” indistinguishable from the actual late 90s to mid 00s, use the hardware and software that was available at that time. Anything else is going to be emulating the sound of the 90s as you’ve seemingly already have done but aren’t satisfied with.

Thank you very much for your reply, I hate to admit it but I know you're right; as much as I've tried to get my hands on contemporary sample collections (e.g. Akai, Vengeance Clubsounds) and emulation plugins (Synth1) it's still difficult to replicate the authentic feeling. I've always thought about having a hardware studio (though the knowledge to use it is a different matter) but with my budget and living space it's just not feasible unfortunately - I know that second-hand synths can get pretty expensive and as a student I don't have the luxury of a permanent space, let alone enough to pack some synthesisers and speakers in,.

I would certainly love the opportunity to work with proper gear (and maybe someone who knows what they're doing more than I do ) but I just don't know how that would be possible

[i need Help]

Velltone Music mentioned V-station, which is apparently free now if you haven't snagged it already.

https://downloads.novationmusic.com/nov ... n-software

***TRIGGER WARNING: GIVING MY PERSONAL OPINION ON ANALOG VS DIGITAL***

I have one analog* synth (Nord Lead A1r) that I bought on a whim years ago. To be honest I guess I’m just spoiled buy how convenient soft synths are so I rarely use it, though I’m trying to change that.

What I use more often is the few analog signal processors I’ve got (a dual tube mic pre, a Lexicon FX unit, and a pair of channel strips). I bought all of them second-hand (mostly P2P but the Nord and one of the channel strips I got used from Guitar Center) so nothing really broke the bank.

The reason I got them is solely to send signal out of Logic, impart some of that sweet sweet analog imperfectness that IMO you can’t really emulate ITB, then bring it right back into Logic.

I don’t even really process the signal too much like with the tube pre, just taking out of the box is enought to “season to taste” as it were lol.

All that to say, for the late 90s to mid 00s sound you’re after, you don’t need an entire “90s-esque” studio. A cheap 4-5 channel outboard mixer that you use in this way might do wonders. For example just send your 2-3 synths that make up a chord stack or main melody out of the box, sum/mix it then record it back in.

Anything to just get the sound out of the box with all it’s sample-accurate perfection and into the analog realm might be at least one if the things you feel is missing from your sound.

*Yes I know it’s an analog modeled synth lol, but I argue it’s still true analog in a sense because it’s not 1s and 0s traveling through the audio cables. It’s electrical current, and electrical current = imperfect = yummy harmonic distortions, ever-so-slight frequency variations, stereo image smearing, etc.

[The Chase]

Your tracks sound a lot like the turn-of-century trance music from my formative years. You're closer than you think. The only immediate tweaks that come to mind are less compression and more reverb, if we're talking the period I'm thinking off, before the big Armin Van Buren/ASOT sound tookover .

Old trance does sound a little more *distant* than the digital renders of software. You might want to bounce tracks through an old channel strip or the like, to let every track breathe a little in the analog realm.

[TW1306]

All that to say, for the late 90s to mid 00s sound you’re after, you don’t need an entire “90s-esque” studio. A cheap 4-5 channel outboard mixer that you use in this way might do wonders. For example just send your 2-3 synths that make up a chord stack or main melody out of the box, sum/mix it then record it back in.

Anything to just get the sound out of the box with all it’s sample-accurate perfection and into the analog realm might be at least one if the things you feel is missing from your sound.

That sounds simple enough (though I admittedly have no idea how to go about doing that), but I do think there's another underlying problem, e.g. often it's a struggle just to make a decent-sounding kick+bassline that mix well together - even a simple saw pluck bass common across so many tracks of the time (Moonman - First Light has a general example of what I mean) is difficult for me to mix (and resorting to using samples has the same result). It's difficult to build off of that when the most basic (no pun intended) elements don't sound good together.

As an example of what I'm trying to say, here's a short loop (I want to stress, not a finished project) where I tried to make a simple kick and pluck bass together: https://soundcloud.com/spatial-sound/fi ... al_sharing

There are innumerable trance tracks with sections consisting of just the kick + bass together with no other elements, and those sections still sound good whereas I can't seem to make it work.

[eax]

I myself miss the days of the old System F, Nalin & Kane, etc

In terms of trying to stay close to the old limitations that another user posted, a good starting point is recording at 44.1k @ 16bit on merely 8 tracks, instead of rendering the master from a higher rate like most of us do now days. Obviously sound wasn't as crisp as it is now and that's one of the things that I think made trance so warm back then as well, plenty of analog mastering I'm sure. Which brings me to my next point, one of the things I always try to keep in mind when doing an EP or Album is finding the mastering chain that gives me the sound I'm looking for and use it for each track to make them sound like they're of the same space. As you may be aware too, old school drums were sometimes insanely harsh on the ears at loud volumes because a lot of times producers didn't really know about compression/glue so that could be something to explore as well (within reasonable limit).

Edit: Also the Roland JP-8000 was a classic trance synth if you find some decent samples of it.

[TW1306]

a good starting point is recording at 44.1k @ 16bit on merely 8 tracks, instead of rendering the master from a higher rate like most of us do now days.

Thank you for the advice, unfortunately I don't really know to go about doing that - in the first place I don't 'record' anything, I do everything in the box right now, with sequencers too. How would I do that with Reason?

[rafa1981]

Get an old rompler too. The Korg M1, the Triton or Purity could do the trick. Old trance has a lot of rompler sounds too.

[rafa1981]

Probably you are not into that old stuff, just for illustration purposes
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7eASGt7uw9o

[rasmus_b]

You will struggle to get an authentic 90's trance sound if you are completely in the box. It's just too clean. I would buy a small secondhand outboard mixer and a hardware reverb from that time period (e.g. an old 8 channel Mackie mixer and an Alesis QuadraVerb). This will get you the sound you are looking for and it's a lot of fun to work with hardware!

Run individual tracks from the DAW through the mixer, add reverb and other FX to taste, and record back into your DAW as audio tracks. I wouldn't worry too much about sample rate and bit depth... the default settings on you sound card will do just fine.

Note that you would also need to get a sound card with at least 4 outputs if you don't have one already (8 ins and 8 outs would probably be ideal in the long run).

[TW1306]

Run individual tracks from the DAW through the mixer, add reverb and other FX to taste, and record back into your DAW as audio tracks. I wouldn't worry too much about sample rate and bit depth... the default settings on you sound card will do just fine.

Thank you very much for the advice; unfortunately I, er, don't really know how to do that...
I haven't actually recorded with Reason before (having had nothing to record), so how would I go about recording from an outboard mixer when the audio is already coming from Reason itself?

Also, having not worked with hardware before, how would an outboard reverb work in FX chains? A lot of the time I use 'parallel' FX (if that's the term), to avoid adding reverb to an existing echo for example; would that be possible with an external mixer + reverb setup?

Just to be clear, I'm not dismissing the suggestion at all (in fact I would love to work with contemporary hardware) but being a novice I'm just not completely sure how to get it set up.

[T-CM11]

*Yes I know it’s an analog modeled synth lol, but I argue it’s still true analog in a sense because it’s not 1s and 0s traveling through the audio cables. It’s electrical current, and electrical current = imperfect = yummy harmonic distortions, ever-so-slight frequency variations, stereo image smearing, etc.

Write that down with pen on paper, scan it and attach it to your post. Analog bullshit > digital bullshit

[rasmus_b]

I haven't actually recorded with Reason before (having had nothing to record), so how would I go about recording from an outboard mixer when the audio is already coming from Reason itself?

You can playback and record multiple tracks at the same time with Reason or any other DAW. If you want to learn about this stuff, Youtube is your friend.