The idea behind your music project - present yourself!

Oct 7, 2022
149 Posts
132 Thanked
Bremen
Website
trance.jonasfaupel.com
Hello,

I had the idea to make a little thread where all producers can present their music project and the idea behind it. I think this is very interesting. Well, I will go first:

First of all my name is Jonas, im 23 and im producing music since im (dunno) 12 or so. I made my first steps playing random bs on some yamaha keyboard and then got into DAWs later on. I acctually come from the techno scene and used to produce a lot of techno. I once thought this was the pinnacle of "electronic music" but as I got older I realised that its acctually not at all. The wohle techno stuff just became totally frustrating. Everyone produces the same stuff ... I mean: head to your next club of choice and listen to some DJ set. Can you spot a single track and name the producer/artist? I bet you dont. The creative space in techno is filled. Creativity is gone, music isnt fun anymore. Its just the same dark, bass heavy stuff over and over and over again. I was always interesed in the 90s, especially when it comes to music. 90s techno was different, there was so much awesome stuff. Everyone did their thing. You had more melodic and happy sounding stuff but on the other hand the more dark and 303 type techno. Just pure power. Once listening to enough sets from (for example) Marusha, WestBam and some other "Techno" DJs back from the day I realised: Wait, thats not techno, thats trance. So I startted digging more in the internet, listened to more sets, track etc. and realised: holy cow this stuff is way more fun. Acctually, I listened to trance back when I was a kind but never active. I just did beacause there were those cheap ass samplers filled with dream trance esque stuff and it was the best I could get (no internet back then for me to be honest).

Now to the music project itself:

Arround 2019 I started producing my first trance track (it was really bad) and basically gave up. I also produced hardstyle a lot so I kept doing this. Now some years later I gave trance another chance and revived "United Trance Division". The idea behind it was first to have other producers join this project, but here I am still alone. I kept the name because its so lovely cheesy altough one might think there are more people involved. I honestly never really liked new trance but the 90s stuff: damn, this takes me to another level. One day I was just playing arround in Ableton trying to do some stuff and after some hours I eneded up with my production "Ultimate Fantasy". I think I wanted to produce yet another techno track but things took another turn so I ended up with hamburg styled trance / hard trance. Pretty minimalistic. I got attention from "TranceClassics" on YouTube and very good feedback from a friend whos a huge hard trance fan. I realised: this was the beginning of my trance trip! I wanted to revived the old 90s sound from back in the days and love it because its music from an age where I wasnt even born. I think that its very important to keep the knowleded on how to produce this stuff alive, otherwise no one will be able to reproduce the stuff from the 90s in the future. The whole Idea behind "United Trance Division" is to reproduce stuff from back then. Thats also why some productions might not be overly creative or "something new", but rather stuff you listen to and think "oh yeah dunno I think I heard this before". Im not trying to reinvent the wheel, im trying to deliver pure, basic 90s sound. Well, at least I am trying because technology is definetly in our way. Making stuff sound oldschool isnt easy and mostly expensive (cough Roland Cloud cough), but its well worth the money. Trance is culture, culture is important so its worth every penny and even if there is only one person in this world who loves it, its already worth it.

Now its your turn! I am happy to read about your project and the story behind it.

Greetings,

Jonas :)
 

IXM

Senior Member
Oct 18, 2021
397 Posts
218 Thanked
POLAND
great initiative. and awesome start, techno in attitudes, switch with me. Great conditions for something really big. you will do what you think! techno basics are doing their thing, your tracks have always been a bit darker (can't belong to your old tracks). classic trance? in my opinion classic trance is today. All in all, I wonder what characterizes classic trance? Maybe someone with more experience can tell me? all in all, great idea and good music

use techno ;)
just a little
 
Oct 7, 2022
149 Posts
132 Thanked
Bremen
Website
trance.jonasfaupel.com
great initiative. and awesome start, techno in attitudes, switch with me. Great conditions for something really big. you will do what you think! techno basics are doing their thing, your tracks have always been a bit darker (can't belong to your old tracks). classic trance? in my opinion classic trance is today. All in all, I wonder what characterizes classic trance? Maybe someone with more experience can tell me? all in all, great idea and good music

use techno ;)
just a little
Do you mean that my trance productions are a bit darker or that techno is darker in general?

Well Classic Trance in my opinion can be characterized by old synths, a less blown arrangement and sounddesign. Back in the days the possibilities to produce music werent to big and you can hear that simplicity in older productions. But overall I guess its really the sound design. Classic Trance is also a bit more techno-y because of the similar drum programming (TR-909 and 808).

Greetings
 

Jetflag

Elite Member
Jul 17, 2020
2,702 Posts
2,169 Thanked
As a hobbyist musician I like to indulge in different things/projects (ranging from dark ambient to ska-rock) but I can do a rundown of the "act" of my previous release here under my Avalon 62 moniker.


So, At around 2001 I got heavily inspired by how music acts could weave together a journey or story via a specific selection of (often own) tracks. notable examples for me are albums like Chicane's Far from the Maddening Crowds (also dubbed the soundtrack for an average day) Behind the Sun, System 7's Seventh Wave, Paul van Dyk's Out there and Back and stuff like Tiesto's Nyana.

The idea formed to do something similar. So where Aerium was just single tracks, Avalon 62 would be a journey, I got the name from various sci-fi and Nasa references by the way in where planets where often dubbed "epsilon something something" of so. first thing I did was create a specific library with samples/presets/synths etc. that would suit a fast paced/dreamy/atmospheric (tech) trance esq style that I thought would fit a journey through "planet Avalon 62" if that makes sense. and next thing was just well, get to work. The First EP was actually sort of a testbed of the aforementioned library and style and resulted in a release on the now defunct Canadian label Aurora Digital. The Waveskimmer E.P.

Next was actually what I would dub the first proper Avalon 62 release: Alphanumeric. A 10 track full (mixed) album that had to be played from track 1 to 10 in alphanumeric sequence out on Andy Tau’s Futurestate Records.

Problem with such a project for me at least is the amount of creative bankruptcy that resulted at the end. It happens when you spend to much time on one single thing. That combined with trying to get into Uni, getting my Architect title, moving places every year..and after that Working, relationships, children, more moving, new jobs etc. Only allowed for time and energy for one single (Aerium) release every year or so.

But in 2020 I finally decided to pick it up again, first via the birth of my first Son, after which I just had to make something fun and uplifting, and then the Paracosm release.

I’ve still got some projects in the pipeline, which I’m currently finishing, but aside from that for now at least no new major projects under that alias. Time to rest a bit again.
 

LostLegend

Senior Member
Dec 5, 2020
843 Posts
973 Thanked
Liverpool, UK
Website
www.beatport.com
So I started messing around with music in the 90's.
I took Music as one of my GSCE subjects in school and I hated it. We had this fossil of a music teacher who had no passion for the subject at all.
Most of the lessons revolved around learning how to read and write music manuscript (I've forgotten most of that by now) and learning all the Italian wordings like Glissando, Arco, Pizzicato, Mezzo forte and the like. None of that interested me, I just wanted to make music, not score a film.

I completely flunked the class, but I did pick up enough music theory to get the bug and do my own thing.
I started out with a Playstation game called 'Music' believe it or not. It was basically a midi sequencer with a disc full of one shot samples and I believe it was the brainchild of a producer called Cold Storage who worked on the Wipeout video game soundtracks for Psygnosis before moving over to Codemasters.
I moved onto the sequel 'Music 2000', then the PC version when I got my first PC in 1999 for my IT college course.
It was incredibly primitive, but was enough to really ramp up my interest in making music and sequencing electronic music.


Picked up a non-so-legit copy of Reason 1.0 in 2001 and that was when I really got into the producing side of things, trance was still big news, tunes were made and lots of fun was had.

However around 2009-ish I fell out of love with producing. Trance as a genre was all over the place, the community was so fractured, I had some difficult stuff going on in my life and also had some bad experiences with the music business.
It wasn't an overnight thing, I was making music less and less over a period of time to the point where I bought a new laptop and didn't even bother installing any music software on it.

Fast forward to 2016, I started listening to trance again after stumbling across a few podcasts. 2018 I started to get the 'itch' to produce again and bought a copy of FL Studio mobile for my phone and started making little loops and song ideas and I was hooked back in completely:


Bought a new PC and a copy of Ableton in Feb 2020, then lockdown happened - doesn't seem like nearly 3 years ago does it?
 

Recharge

Elite Member
Sep 26, 2020
1,004 Posts
544 Thanked
Age
38
I started messing with music production some time after I started djing about 2/3 years ago Found it very frustrating, almost gave up a few times and then I found Will, he has an tutorial youtube account EDM Tips and thanks to his videos I started copying Lane8, Ben Bohmer and a lot of progressive house and and thus I found I actually love making more deep chill melodic progressive. I think I still have a lot of trance music influences since that what I listened all my life.

This one was coping Lane 8, but I changed it a lot some time ago and made it my own, not just a copy
https://soundcloud.com/lq5vxcb1rzbn%2Fdj-recharge-rhythm-of-life
I used the same tutorial for this one, but went in a completely different direction and it was a turning point since before that I rarely ventured outside Will's tutorials and was trying more to copy and learn from it:
https://soundcloud.com/lq5vxcb1rzbn%2Fdj-recharge-be
Somewhere in-between I started making some really unique songs. This was from a Charlotte De Wit tutorial and after I made most of the song I based in around a few samples. There is a theme behind the song and I don't think I ever told anyone what is it. It's a critique on all political sytems, that fail the people sooner or later. Thus The System Always Fails:
https://soundcloud.com/lq5vxcb1rzbn%2Fdj-recharge-the-system-always-fails-original-mix
This one is completely my idea and one of my most favourite songs. Super hard to mix in a set, otherwise I would of play it a lot more. Actuyally another really cool song, that I think flew under the radar since at that time I was writing a song every week, sometimes two and sharing them here. I really wanted to make a science-y song just like there is some in psy trance or progressive house, The sound is really unique and this is one of my most experimental songs
https://soundcloud.com/lq5vxcb1rzbn%2Fdj-recharge-the-nothingness
There are more stories or ideas, behind most of my songs. But this is a good start I think.

Edit: Forgot to mention I very often lead into the vocal samples I use and build the songs around them.
 
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