Hot Topic - Techno Or Trance?

What's the easiest to make? Techno or trance?

This was touched upon by another topic on the trance production forum and it really, really interests me. I'll post a link to this on the techno forum too.

I'd love to know your opinions.

This is a massive topic. I don't want to cause pointless arguments so we have to be as constuctive as possible. Explain yourselves TECHNICALLY... IN NO OTHER WAY......

Any other type of explainations will be removed.

Talk about how long it takes to program that synth pattern or how hard it is to make those drum loops work together.

Perhaps we might actually get further than the old 'techno vs trance' arguement here :=]

I hope so..

I started this and i was afriad id start an argument

But i personlly think trance is harder to make, i find melodies hard to make, they either sound like a little kids TV program or really cheesy or just plain weird, probably because i cant play the keyboard so i dont have much idea really.

I find beats pretty easy to constuct, there are alot of options when creating new beats/loops and its pretty easy to change things around and try new things without it sounding cheesy

ye id agree that trance is harder to make as the melodies and everyut5hing come into account too,but on the other hand a really havent tried to produce techno so i know nothing :lol:

Good start...

Right OK let me continue and get this going the right way:

I'm gonna play the devils advocate and come from the other side...

Percussion is the key to most techno. be it melodic or percussive. You say percussion is easy to make? I swear to you it isn't if you're making techno. To make drum patterns to go with trance is as easy as pressing the off beat hi hat and the off beat clap. It's so easy to do.

Yes the key with trance is without doubt the melodies.

But the key with techno is the percussion. You try making techno percussion and you'll be in trouble... Or indeed melodic percusion for techno.. Something trance people dont realise....

very interesting indeed...

Im sure i said this too you before Mark,imo Percussion is the most important part of any track,if you dont have the percussion right then the track doesnt sit right.
When you play a track it;s always the percussion that the ppl move to

I would say percussion is harder to do than a melody at times too

Id say trance is harder to make technically, as the sound quility you have to get out of it is unsurpassed by any other style of music. But techno can be equaly as hard to make becuase it is not structured like most "standerd" music, and it relies heavily on drumloops and percusion, which, to say the least, are solid to do themselves.

in my opinion theres no difference: its easy to make shit trance, its easy to make shit techno. its harder to make quality trance and techno.
and production is the same with either, you still have to spend fuccing ages working out eq and compression, theres no quick fix for that...

and i think it takes about the same amount of time to work out percussion and melodies:, with melody, once youve worked out the way you write a riff (with notes an octave or two apart apart on 16s, theres only a few rhythms that work properly) then its not long before your rockin.
and its more or less the same with percussion, once you have played around with rhythms for a while you find a way to create a groove that works. if you put in the time, it will all come naturally...

i think that techno is harder to make than trance... the key to trance is in the melody. if u can create a tune with a fantastic melody then most people don't even think to give the hi-hats much thought.. with the exception of a few, who are more on the tech-trance side though!

the key to techno is everything, the kick has to work with the bassline, the bassline has to work with the percussion, its one big circle that goes round and round!

i do think that techno producers have it easier than trance in a sense though.....if your a techno producer and u make a dodgy tune its considered as 'experimental', if your a trance producer and u make a dodgy tune its considered the biggest cheese on the planet!!


just my thoughts

Most people know trance as that melodic stuff just frenzying around with high pitch tunes, and little groove...

Well, thats the light side of trance, the happy trance scene...

As a trance lover i am, i've been beamed to the dark side. And let me say that dark trance is the best groovy trance ever..

To corroborate my theory, listen to these tracks, if you can find them:

Skazi - Animal
Skazi - Alive
Hallucinogen - Gamma Goblins G.M.S. RMX

Just to name these 3...

Party animals? sure!

Got any pills mate? :D

"as the sound quility you have to get out of it is unsurpassed by any other style of music." ... can't be true, bloody hard to get it to sound right but very few tracks have amazing production, it's always a compromise, particularly in the more melodic tracks.

Anyway, silly question in the first place I reckon, you can put all your skill into creating either. If you've got no musical background writing melodic trance is going to be a bit tricky to make it really interesting though and if you've not got a good library of samples then making techmo is going to be hard work.

I find that it's impossible to do either without getting toa point where you hate what you've done for some reason takes a couple of months after writing a track to be able to listen to it objectively.

Never released any techno mind you and got a few trance tracks kicking around, but that's only because I've been experimenting with techno for the past year but i've been fiddling around with trance since I was born.

What I have noticed is that after producing so much dance music, getting a chunky mix right for a pop tune is a piece of piss, we've done this rock ballad which musically was really tricky but sound wise the mix went like a dream ... sounds a lot better than 95% of the stuff coming out of pro studios for demo's and if only I could play the guitar like a genius instead of like me then it'd be quite lovely...

Have I just waffled?

ups, i answered this in other topic and then I found this one. Well I will just paste the stuff here:

Well im producing over 6 years now. And I still found harder to produce quality techno then trance. Melodies are easy to get or is it just me with music background.
Not to mention, trance is all about generated sounds and techno is all about percussion that basicaly cant be generated with machines, only bought on expensive CDs. Dough techno is easy if you just use loops :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by log:one

in my opinion theres no difference: its easy to make shit trance, its easy to make shit techno. its harder to make quality trance and techno.

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i really agree with logan here. :shock: :D :shock: :D

also i think that techno is very trial and error and trance id more of an instinct.

I think that its down to the skillz of the creator. I find techno a total bitch to make cos its where my passion lies, yet sometimes, ill go write a trance track as the "easy" way out or just to mess about. This is no critism, just what i do. most artists on this forum could write a track in a few minutes and say this "style" is trance , but i dont think this is possible with techno

Trance has a formal structure, the basic beat and melodies arent that hard to come up with considering some of the patches available lately.

I think its a pointless exercise to write trance that doesnt "stand-out" cos its so formatted.

Witht the techno, theres more space to do whatever you want, and for it to go wrong. Also, there is a barrier cos anything that sounds "cheesy" in any way dont sound acceptable, this why i belive it more percussion based cos its imposssible to create "cheessy" percussion (well almost BOSSANOVA 05 anyone?)

Techno is hard cos you have to come up with a backbone for a track that isnt melody..it has to be something else but what??

As for percussion vs melody I think that both are equally as difficult or easy depending on the person. Ivebeen step sequencing drum machines since i was a kid yet still find precussion in techno hard, keeping the beat moving without using the 1/2 bar clap and 1/4 open hat.. its the same with melody, anyone ever tried to make a pile of cheese in order to make some fast money for studio equipment? well it isnt that easy even tho i know a lot of ppl would sit bak and think it would be a breeze....

got a light?

Hmm this is a good one, and somthing i have often wondered myself..
I am a techno producer but i have to admit to having engineered quite a few trance tracks fo other people under different names.

i find techno easier to make but i think that is beacause i love it, and i can really feel it and get into the groove. When making trance music im not so into it and therefor not as inspired.

On the other hand i think it had taken me longer to understand how to work techno and learn some of the bizzare 'throw away the manual' production techniques i use to make it. Trance is much more straight up, much less lighter on the processing, but probably more precise..

i think its down to what you love.. if you love something and you have a certain understanding of music production the thing you love will come the easiest..

"What's the easiest to make? Techno or trance?"


I love techno, but I think trance is harder to make. But it depends on what kind of trance or techno you're talking about.

Well I have (tried, lol) to make both, and the best one I have done was Techno, but I can't really comment as I havent been doing it long, I suppose it's what your best at. Obviously someone who makes really good trance and never techno isn't going to make a track as good as someone who makes really good techno. I dont expect Flutlicht could make as good techno as say Marco Bailey, but then Marco Bailey couldn't make a trance beast tune like Flutlicht can, but theres always one exception to the rule....Andreas Kramer, thats why he is da boy!

But out of my experience in making either, I have to say techno was easier.

marco bailey used to do trancy stuff hence those flat trancey basslines...

yeah, he used to be on bonzai