Jetflag
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As a practicing Architect and trance producer (albeit a hobbyist) I hence disavow this thread.
The Trance Architecture: Where the Music Lives (and Where It Dies)
- Thread starter trancefan2020
- Start date
Julian Del Agranda
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- Jul 3, 2020
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This post is an example of "Bedroom Producer Intellectualism." It attempts to gentrify Trance music by stripping away its sweaty, primal, and communal roots to make it "safe" for the armchair listener. It reframes a Dionysian ritual as a sterile exercise in music theory.
"It is defined by structure, progression, and sustained attention."
The Reality is that Trance was not composed for the ear; it was composed for the PA System.
- The genre’s hallmark, that rolling 138 BPM bassline and the "side-chain" compression, is acoustically engineered to move massive amounts of air. The "kick" in Trance is designed to hit the solar plexus, not just the eardrum.
- Listening to Trance on headphones is like looking at a stained-glass window in a dark room. The "Sound Pressure" isn't vanity; it is the light that shines through the window. Without the physical pressure of the sub-bass, you are receiving the information of the track, but you are missing the transmission of the energy.
"Clubs... are one context. Headphones are another."
This is a false equivalence. The club isn't just a "context"; it is the Instrument.
- Trance is inherently tribal. It is designed for Entrainment, the synchronization of thousands of heartbeats and movements. The "drop" isn't a musical key change; it is a mechanism to trigger a collective dopamine release.
- Listening on headphones isolates you. Trance, by definition, is about Dissolution of the Self into the whole. You cannot "understand" a genre meant to dissolve the Ego while you are sitting alone, fully trapped inside your own Ego.
In Trance, Stimulation IS Understanding.
- You assume that "understanding" happens in the prefrontal cortex (logic). But Trance is Somatic Knowledge. You "understand" the breakdown not when you analyze the chord progression, but when you close your eyes in a crowd of 40 people and feel the air pressure change.
- Mocking the fog machine betrays a total ignorance of the atmosphere. The lasers, the fog, and the volume are not distractions; they are sensory deprivation tools used to force the brain out of "analysis mode" and into "trance mode."
If you can "sit still" for eight minutes of high-energy Trance, you haven't mastered the music, you have anesthetized it. You are treating a wild animal like a taxidermy display. Real Trance demands movement, volume, and the surrender to the chaos.
Jetflag
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Jetflag
Legendary Member
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No — What You’re Doing Is Mythologizing Ignorance and Calling It Wisdom
Your reply does not refute anything I said.It performs certainty while quietly admitting you have never meaningfully made, analyzed, or critically listened to trance music outside of a PA-induced dopamine haze.
Let’s be precise, because precision is clearly not your strength.
1. “Bedroom Producer Intellectualism” — A Term You’re Using Incorrectly
Invoking “Bedroom Producer Intellectualism” is an impressive bit of rhetorical cosplay, because it reveals something immediately:You have never attempted to produce trance, and you certainly haven’t finished a track that survives contact with:
- a spectrum analyzer
- phase correlation
- mono compatibility
- or, frankly, reality
Calling that “gentrification” is not a critique.
It’s what people say when they don’t understand how the thing they enjoy is actually made.
2. “Trance Was Not Composed for the Ear” Is One of the Dumbest Sentences You Wrote — And There Are Many
This is not poetic.
This is categorically false.
PA systems do not compose, perceive, or interpret music.
Human auditory systems do.
Every trance track that has ever existed was:
- written on monitors or headphones
- mixed at conversational volume
- mastered to survive multiple playback environments
It sounds deep only if you’ve never been on the production side of the glass.
3. The “Solar Plexus” Argument Is Audiophile Astrology
You repeatedly invoke:- “solar plexus”
- “air pressure”
- “transmission of energy”
It’s vibes masquerading as acoustics.
Yes, sub‑bass can be felt.
No, this does not magically unlock hidden musical information.
If physical pressure were the arbiter of musical truth, then:
- poorly tuned festival rigs would be “more authentic” than studio masters
- tinnitus would be enlightenment
- and earplugs would be heresy
4. “The Club Is the Instrument” — A Claim Only Someone Who’s Never Studied Music Would Make
Calling the club “the instrument” is a tell.It tells me:
- you don’t understand what an instrument is
- you don’t understand signal chains
- and you don’t understand where musical intent actually resides
A club produces uncontrolled variables: reflections, masking, crowd noise, alcohol, distortion, and listener fatigue.
Romanticizing that chaos doesn’t make it essential.
It just means you prefer sensation over discernment.
5. Entrainment, Ego Death, and Other Wikipedia Words You Don’t Fully Grasp
You lean heavily on concepts like:- entrainment
- ego dissolution
- collective dopamine release
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
If your sense of ego only dissolves when surrounded by 40 strangers, lasers, and 100 kW of amplification, then your ego is not being transcended — it’s being outsourced.
Actual trance states (neurological, psychological, historical) are not dependent on fog machines. They are dependent on sustained focus, repetition, and internalization — precisely the faculties you keep arguing against.
6. “Stimulation Is Understanding” — No, That’s Just Anti‑Intellectualism With a Kick Drum
This line is the core failure of your entire position.Stimulation is input.
Understanding is integration.
They are not the same thing.
If stimulation equaled understanding:
- sugar would be nutrition
- jump scares would be cinema
- and volume knobs would be composers
That is not insight. That is how toddlers interact with the world.
7. The “You’re Too Smart to Dance” Strawman Is Pure Projection
No one argued against dancing.No one argued against clubs.
No one argued against communal experiences.
You invented that opposition because you cannot tolerate the idea that trance might reward:
- stillness
- attention
- repeated listening
- or comprehension without spectacle
That’s not a philosophy.
That’s insecurity.
Final Diagnosis (Read Slowly)
You have not demonstrated:- an understanding of music production
- an understanding of acoustics
- an understanding of trance history beyond folklore
- or the ability to construct a coherent argument without mysticism
- volume to replace clarity
- crowds to replace focus
- and mythology to replace knowledge
It survives it.
And if the music only works for you when amplified to the point where thinking becomes impossible, then you are not defending trance.
You are defending the conditions under which you don’t have to understand it.
Gijs
Senior Member
Gijs
Senior Member
Jetflag
Legendary Member
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Gijs
Senior Member
LostLegend
Elite Member
GeorD
Member
Thanks, haven't had such a good laugh in ages, I needed this. S-tier ragebait, and I bit. Good job
This piece is written with the sharp, confident tone of someone who knows a lot about audio engineering but very little about cultural anthropology or functional art. You are analyzing Trance music as if it were a static text (like a novel or a classical score) to be studied in isolation, rather than a dynamic tool designed for a specific environment. You are criticizing a screwdriver for not being a very good spoon.
You assert that because Trance is made in a studio, the studio is the only "real" environment. This is historically and technically false regarding the genre.
- The "Car Test" and "Club Test": The greatest Trance producers (Tiësto, Armin, Ferry Corsten, Paul van Dyk) famously did not consider a track finished until they heard it on a large system. If the kick didn't hit right in a club, they went back to the studio to change it. The studio is the kitchen; the club is the dining room. You do not judge a meal by how it looks in the pan; you judge it by how it tastes when served.
- Trance is mixed differently than pop or classical. Producers carve out specific frequencies specifically so they don't turn to mud in a large, reverberant hall. The "air" and "sub" are engineered for large spaces. Listening on nearfield monitors reveals the ingredients, but the dish only coalesces in the air of a venue.
- Claiming the PA is just a "delivery mechanism" is like saying a cinema screen is just a delivery mechanism for a movie. While technically true, watching Dune on an iPhone is a fundamentally different—and inferior—aesthetic experience than watching it in IMAX. The medium is the message.
You are displaying a hyper-rationalist bias, assuming that "intellectual understanding" is superior to "somatic experience."
- Assumption claim that s physical pressure isn't "musical information." In dance music, this is false. The interplay between the kick drum and the bassline at 138 BPM is a physical texture. The "groove" is a physiological phenomenon, not just a theoretical one. Ignoring the physical impact of Trance is like analyzing a roller coaster by reading the blueprints but refusing to ride it because "gravity is just somatic stimulation."
- Trance is "functional music." Its purpose is to induce a state of movement and emotion in a crowd. If a track is intellectually complex but fails to move the dancefloor, it is a bad Trance track. Criticism values "complexity" over "efficacy."
- Comparing the love of intensity to a toddler's worldview is reductive. Humans have sought altered states of consciousness through rhythm and volume (drumming, chanting) for thousands of years. It is a primal, sophisticated human technology for social bonding, not "lack of intellect."
This post mocks the idea that the club is an instrument because it introduces "uncontrolled variables."
- The DJ is a Conductor: In Trance, the track is not the final product; the DJ set is. The DJ uses the club's acoustics, the EQ, and the volume as performance tools. They "play the room." A track that sounds dry and boring on headphones might be the perfect tool for a DJ to layer with another track to create a specific moment in a warehouse.
- The "reflections and masking" the post complains about are part of the genre's aesthetic. Trance relies on "washy" reverbs and delays that blend together in a large room to create a hypnotic atmosphere. The "cleanliness" the mainstream demands is actually antithetical to the "Trance state," which thrives on a wall of sound.
- This is the fundamental force of the universe: individual and the group. How to be together when apart and how to be apart when together? The post views music consumption as a solitary, intellectual act. Trance is inherently communal. The "ego death" in Trance is about dissolving the barrier between self and other. You cannot achieve this alone in a bedroom with headphones, no matter how good your phase correlation is.
- This isn't "bedroom producer intellectualism"; it's anthropology. A rave is a modern ritual. The "fog machines and lasers" are set and setting. Dismissing them is like dismissing the stained glass and incense in a cathedral and saying, "Real religion only happens when you read the Bible alone in a silent room." It misses the point of the gathering.
This comes from an Audio Purist, and Audio Purists often make terrible Dance Music historians.
They are judging a participatory event (the rave) using the metrics of solitary analysis (the studio). They are correct that the music is made with precision, but they are wrong about why it is made.
They believe that if you can't hear the details, you aren't understanding the music. The truth of Trance is that the details are engineered specifically to disappear into the wash of the experience, serving the higher purpose of the collective groove. They are looking at the brushstrokes with a microscope and complaining they can't see the painting.
facade1984
Senior Member
What on earth is everyone even arguing for/against right now. In 3 sentences or less preferably please
The environment of Trance music is not merely a recreational space, but a sophisticated exercise in collective cybernetics and temporal suspension. Unlike the frantic, short-term dopamine loops of modern pop or the aggressive nihilism of harder techno, Trance operates on a strict teleological structure, an architectural ascent toward the sublime. It functions as a secular liturgy where the DJ acts as a conductor of tension, utilizing long-form progressive structures (often 8 to 10 minutes) to gradually strip away the ego of the listener. Through the hypnotic repetition of arpeggiated melodies and the deliberate subtraction of percussion during the "breakdown," the genre forces a moment of suspended reality, a sort of breathless, shared vulnerability, before the inevitable resolution of the drop reintegrates the crowd. It is, in essence, the emotional ghost in the machine: a testament to humanity’s ability to extract profound spiritual resonance from the precise, quantized logic of computer code.
Jetflag
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- Jul 17, 2020
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Suprème leadership on how everyone should listen to trance
íf their aura isn’t toxic
use of pedantry and AI allowed
facade1984
Senior Member
Gijs
Senior Member
As someone who was admitted to the Royal Conservatoire in the Hague at age 14, completed his bachelor and master in a combined three years and then went on to promote cum laude with a double PhD in the fields of music psychology and musical analysis just this year, I can assure you that there is in fact a preferred way across all musical genres. So although I don't have "Suprème leadership", I am most certainly the highest authority here.
My thesis was titled On the Psychology Behind the Optimal Musical Experience and its results were very conclusive. I have found out that humans most prefer listening whilst hung upside down: the sound comes from a phone held with the right hand, played at around 82 dB directly into the right ear. The optimal audio here is obtained via YouTube to 64 kbps MP3 converters. With the left hand, a garden hose is held which sprays water into the left ear (pressure irrelevant, the water only needs to hit the ear drum). Lastly, a strobe light was placed 10 cm in front of the listener, flickering at 47.6 Hz and at a brightness of 4587 lumen.
As much as this seems overstimulating, it's actually surprisingly calming and the 538 volunteers who agreed to help out with the study unanimously described this way of listening as "unparallelled bliss", especially when presented with trance songs.
, almost as good as TEHONE, or whatever his name was, threads.
Jetflag
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This Conversation Is Over — You’re Arguing Theology, Not Music
At this point it’s clear that you are no longer defending trance music.
You are defending a belief system built out of metaphors, rituals, and second‑hand mythology — and you are doing so while repeatedly demonstrating that you do not actually understand how trance is made, evaluated, or even listened to outside of spectacle.
So let’s end this cleanly.
1. You Keep Confusing Purpose With Exclusivity
Yes, trance functions well in clubs.
No, that does not make the club its only legitimate epistemological environment.
A screwdriver analogy only works if:
- the screwdriver ceases to function outside one room
- and anyone examining the metal, balance, or torque without using drywall is “missing the point”
That is not how tools work.
That is not how music works.
That is how dogma works.
2. Name‑Dropping Producers Is Not an Argument
Invoking Tiësto, Armin, Ferry, and PvD does not help you — it hurts you.
Those producers:
- wrote, arranged, edited, and refined their tracks alone
- at moderate volumes
- on monitors and headphones
- with obsessive attention to detail
Yes, they checked tracks on large systems.
That is verification, not authorship.
The fact that you think this proves the club is “where the music exists” tells me, unequivocally, that you have never finished a track, never A/B tested mixes, and never meaningfully evaluated translation across systems.
You are describing quality control and mistaking it for ontology.
3. “The Medium Is the Message” Is Not a Get‑Out‑of‑Thinking Card
Quoting McLuhan does not absolve you from understanding signal flow.
A cinema screen does not change the film’s narrative structure.
A PA system does not add musical intent.
They scale an experience — they do not define it.
If they did, then:
- badly tuned rooms would produce “better trance”
- distortion would be “more authentic”
- and ear fatigue would be enlightenment
You don’t actually believe that — you just haven’t thought your claim through.
4. Somatic Experience Is Not a Substitute for Comprehension
You keep asserting that physical impact is musical information.
No — it is a carrier of information, not the information itself.
The groove exists whether or not your chest cavity is involved.
The fact that your preferred way of accessing it requires overwhelming stimulus does not elevate that method — it merely reveals your dependency on it.
This is not anthropology.
This is anti‑intellectual romanticism.
5. You Are Arguing Ritual Because You Cannot Argue Structure
Notice what you never do:
- You never discuss harmony
- You never discuss arrangement
- You never discuss long‑form tension management
- You never discuss why certain trance tracks fail on dancefloors despite being loud
Instead, you retreat into:
- “ritual”
- “tribal”
- “collective”
- “primal”
These are vibes, not criteria.
They are what people invoke when they cannot articulate mechanisms.
6. The DJ Is Not an Alchemist — Stop Pretending Chaos Is Mastery
Yes, DJs play rooms.
No, this does not retroactively make acoustic inconsistency a virtue.
Reflections, masking, and wash are tolerated side effects — not sacred properties.
If they were essential, trance producers would simulate bad rooms in the studio.
They don’t.
Because they know better.
7. The Ego‑Death Argument Finally Gives You Away
This is the core failure of your position:
That sentence is not about trance.
It is about you.
If your sense of transcendence collapses without a crowd, volume, lasers, and social reinforcement, then what you are experiencing is collective intoxication, not understanding.
There is nothing wrong with that — but stop pretending it is the only valid mode of engagement.
Final Statement (Read It Thrice)
You have:
- never made trance
- never critically listened to it outside maximal stimulation
- never articulated a coherent technical framework
- and never advanced beyond metaphor and ritual language
You are not defending trance from “purists.”
You are defending your dependency on an environment that does the work for you.
Trance does not fear scrutiny.
It survives silence, repetition, and focused listening just fine.
This conversation will not progress further because you are no longer engaging with arguments — you are preaching a creed.
And I do not debate theology.
No more pearls before swine.