Trance

Armin Van Buuren is probably the most influential DJ in the history of music. The rise of the DJ as an influence on music is pretty interesting to me. I was a mobile DJ from 1987-1992 and back then DJs were just people who performed in the background not people out in front of huge crowds.

Before the rise of raves around 1988 it was the remixers who were the most famous in the background not DJs. I think the best remixers eventually went on to become famous DJs so that makes sense (Francois Kevorkian, Paul Oakenfold, David Morales, etc.). I think also the great DJs from BBC (especially Pete Tong) during the rave era were very influential. England was the epicenter of rave music in the 1988-1992 time period. Leeds & Manchester were huge centers of massive raves. Rave music in that era was actually a hybrid of Kraftwerk sounds, Chicago House & London Acid House.

After the rave era it was really Oakenfold who was the godfather of modern Trance. He produced a lot of remixes of mainstream artists like Madonna & U2 that became huge club hits. Of course there was also Paul Van Dyk & DJ Tiesto who spread the gospel.

Personally I was never a fan of Vocal Trance which is most of Trance. I still believe Progressive Trance has the best chords. The godfather of Progressive Trance was Sasha and his 1999 EP Xpander. Amazingly it is 25 years old and still one of the best Trance songs.
 
nitrene said:
Armin Van Buuren is probably the most influential DJ in the history of music. The rise of the DJ as an influence on music is pretty interesting to me. I was a mobile DJ from 1987-1992 and back then DJs were just people who performed in the background not people out in front of huge crowds.

Before the rise of raves around 1988 it was the remixers who were the most famous in the background not DJs. I think the best remixers eventually went on to become famous DJs so that makes sense (Francois Kevorkian, Paul Oakenfold, David Morales, etc.). I think also the great DJs from BBC (especially Pete Tong) during the rave era were very influential. England was the epicenter of rave music in the 1988-1992 time period. Leeds & Manchester were huge centers of massive raves. Rave music in that era was actually a hybrid of Kraftwerk sounds, Chicago House & London Acid House.

After the rave era it was really Oakenfold who was the godfather of modern Trance. He produced a lot of remixes of mainstream artists like Madonna & U2 that became huge club hits. Of course there was also Paul Van Dyk & DJ Tiesto who spread the gospel.

Personally I was never a fan of Vocal Trance which is most of Trance. I still believe Progressive Trance has the best chords. The godfather of Progressive Trance was Sasha and his 1999 EP Xpander. Amazingly it is 25 years old and still one of the best Trance songs.
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Here's a question... train a specific AI model on all that, and every other piece of work ever composed. I wonder what kind of new music it will come out with? And will we like it? My guess is yes. I know it has already been done, but we're still in the early stages of everything AI.
 
vanzandt said:
Here's a question... train a specific AI model on all that, and every other piece of work ever composed. I wonder what kind of new music it will come out with? And will we like it? My guess is yes. I know it has already been done, but we're still in the early stages of everything AI.
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That would be interesting and probably less controversial since it isn't some famous artist that the mainstream would latch on to. The real question can AI speed up the natural evolution of underground dance music? I'm sure some young DJs who understand ChatGPT probably already tried that.

I was fortunate to be a DJ at the time of massive change in dance music. Since the advent of Trance around 1995 there hasn't been much new except maybe Dubstep which is interesting but very repetitive much like Drum 'N Bass that was really an expansion of the stuff Roni Size did in the early 1990s.

Even though Progressive Trance started in 1999 with Sasha (and to a degree his DJ partner Digweed) it didn't really get popular in the clubs until around 2005 with the success of Deadmau5 & Inpetto.

When I was a DJ there were a lot of different types of dance music that all existed at the same time:

1) Synth Pop mainly from the UK. There were some US, French & German artists as well.
2) Italodisco mainly from Italy, Germany & Belgium
3) Industrial Techno from Germany (although Cabaret Voltaire were British)
4) Hip Hop mainly NYC, NY & Compton, CA.
5) Freestyle mainly from Miami, FL. It was almost exclusively a Latino influenced music scene.
6) Hip House aka Chicago House, although it was popular in London as well
7) Techno House aka Detroit House, also very popular in London
8) Garage House aka NY House, also very popular in London
9) New Beat mainly from Belgium & Germany. Similar to Industrial but much slower BPM.
10) Acid House aka London House didn't last long but it was quite popular when it came out.

With the exception of Synth Pop & Hip Hop most of those genres merged into what was referred to as Rave. At the time Rave was a massively popular genre from 1990-1992. The 2 songs that started the Rave scene were Eon - Spice EP & 808 State - Cubik EP. I remember they both came out on the same day in 1990.
 
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