Top 20 Best Progressive Trance Music Videos
Table of Contents
History of Progressive Trance Music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged from EBM in Frankfurt, Germany, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and quickly spread throughout Europe. Trance music is typically characterized by a tempo between 120 and 150 beats per minute along a (BPM) along a laser light show, repeating melodic phrases and a musical form that distinctly builds tension and elements throughout a track often culminating in 1 to 2 “peaks” or “drops.” Although trance is a genre of its own, it liberally incorporates influences from other musical styles such as techno, house, chill-out, classical music, tech house, ambient and film scores.
A trance is a state of hypnotism and heightened consciousness. This is portrayed in trance music by the mixing of layers with distinctly foreshadowed build-up and release. A common characteristic of modern trance music is a mid-song climax followed by a soft breakdown disposing of beats and percussion entirely, leaving the melody or atmospherics to stand alone for an extended period before gradually building up again. Trance tracks are often lengthy to allow for such progression and commonly have sufficiently sparse opening and closing sections to facilitate mixing by DJs.
Trance is mostly instrumental, although vocals can be mixed in: typically they are performed by mezzo-soprano to soprano female soloists, mostly without a traditional verse/chorus structure. Structured vocal form in trance music forms the basis of the vocal trance subgenre, which has been described as “grand, soaring, and operatic” and “ethereal female leads floating amongst the synths”. However, male singers, such as Jonathan Mendelsohn, are also featured.
Trance employs a 4/4 time signature, generally a tempo of 125 to 150 BPM, though the music can be any tempo, and 16 or 32 beat phrases. A kick drum is usually placed on every downbeat and a regular open hi-hat is often placed on the upbeat. While the majority of trance music uses the same “four-on-the-floor” beat as house and techno, in trance the kick drum is often de-emphasized to give space to the bassline, whereas in house and techno the kick drum is heavily emphasized, oftentimes being the loudest sound in the mix. Extra percussive elements are usually added, and in recent years major transitions, builds or climaxes are often foreshadowed by lengthy “snare rolls”—a quick succession of snare drum hits that build in velocity, frequency, and volume towards the end of a measure.
Rapid arpeggios and minor keys are common features of trance, the latter being almost universal. Trance tracks often use one central “hook”, or melody, which runs through almost the entire song, repeating at intervals anywhere between 2 beats and 32 bars, in addition to harmonies and motifs in different timbres from the central melody. Instruments are added or removed every 4, 8, 16, or 32 bars.
In the section before the breakdown, the lead motif is often introduced in a sliced up and simplified form, to give the audience a “taste” of what they will hear after the breakdown. Then later, the final climax is usually “a culmination of the first part of the track mixed with the main melodic reprise”.
As is the case with many dance music tracks, trance tracks are usually built with sparser intros (“mix-ins”) and outros (“mix-outs”) to enable DJs to blend them together immediately.
EDM-infused forms designed for festival main stages often incorporate other styles and elements of electronic music such as electro and progressive house into its production. It emphasizes harsher basslines and drum beats which decrease the importance of offbeats and focus primarily on a four on the floor stylistic house drum pattern. The BPM of more recent styles tends to be on par with house music at 120 to 135 beats per minute. However, unlike house music, recent forms of Uplifting continue to feature melodic breakdowns and longer transitions.
Subgenres
Trance music is broken into a number of subgenres including acid trance, classic trance, hard trance, progressive trance, and uplifting trance. Uplifting trance is also known as “anthem trance”, “epic trance”, “commercial trance”, “stadium trance”, or “euphoric trance”, and has been strongly influenced by classical music in the 1990’s and 2000s by leading artists such as Ferry Corsten, Armin Van Buuren, Tiësto, Push, Rank 1 and at present with the development of the subgenre “orchestral uplifting trance” or “uplifting trance with symphonic orchestra” by such artists as Sound Apparel, Andy Blueman, Ciro Visone, Soundlift, Arctic Moon, and Sergey Nevone & Simon O’Shine, among others. Closely related to uplifting trance is Eurodance, which has become a general term for a wide variety of highly commercialized European dance music. Notably late in the 1990s, German producer ATB revolutionized the scene of the aforementioned Eurodance with his hit single “9 PM (Till I Come)”. Several subgenres are crossovers with other major genres of electronic music. For instance, tech trance is a mixture of trance and techno, and vocal trance “combines [trance’s] progressive elements with pop music”. The dream trance genre originated in the mid-1990s, with its popularity then led by Robert Miles, who composed Children in 1996. Recently, there is also a very small subgenre called “medieval trance”, which combines medieval elements together with trance elements, e.g. Maestro Giano, Green Clouds and other artists, which are effectively a kind of “reverse Bardcore”.
United States Trance Music Festivals
Electronic music festivals in the United States feature various electronic music genres such as trance, house, techno, electro, dubstep, and drum and bass:
