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On the bass going missing in the car: that's very common, and it usually comes from two things working together. Headphones reproduce deep sub that car speakers and small speakers barely move, so if most of the bass energy sits below about 60 Hz it can all but vanish away from headphones. A...

For anyone finding this later with the same problem of melodies always coming out dark: that's usually down to the scale and the chords underneath, not the synth. A few things that help lift a trance melody: 1. Write the chords first. A classic uplifting progression in a minor key is i, VI...

Coming to this late, but it's a question most producers hit at some point. Liking lots of styles isn't a problem. "Your sound" usually ends up being a set of habits rather than a genre, and you can build those on purpose: 1. Keep a small palette. Pick two or three synths and one drum source you...

One thing that hasn't come up yet is timing and level movement, which is often why a clap feels stuck on top of the kick rather than part of the groove: 1. Nudge it. Move the clap a few milliseconds late (5 to 15 ms) so it sits behind the beat. Dead-on-grid claps often feel stiff against the...

A lot of those older progressive lines came from working in a different order rather than from some secret technique. A few habits that help: 1. Start from one patch and jam. Many of those tracks grew from a single arpeggio or sequence that was left looping while the producer tweaked the...

Late to this one, but a few things make the biggest difference when you want a kick and bass to feel like they came from the same era rather than two modern sounds stuck together: 1. Pick one owner for the sub. In most classic trance the kick owns everything below about 60 to 70 Hz and the bass...

Bumping this as it's a common wall to hit with old-school hard trance. When good samples still feel flat together, it's usually the relationship between kick and bass rather than the samples themselves. A few things worth trying: 1. Tune the kick. Find the fundamental of the kick tail and tune...

Old thread, but this one comes up a lot, so a few things that usually get you those long, clean tails behind short lead notes: 1. Keep the synth release short and let the effects make the tail. Put the delay and the reverb on sends rather than on the lead itself. That gives you the fully...

Late to this, but the synthapella idea is a nice one and a couple of technical points are worth checking when you strip the drums out: 1. Sidechain. If the pads, chords and atmosphere are ducked from the kick, they'll still pump with the kick muted, or stop pumping altogether if the trigger is...

Adding to this as it's still one of the most useful threads on the board. A DJ-friendly skeleton that works for most trance and progressive tracks at around 138 BPM, counted in 8-bar phrases: 1. Intro, 32 bars: kick, bass and hats only, with no big melodic content so the DJ can blend it over...

With no reply here yet, a general recipe that covers most big trance drops: 1. Lead: a supersaw built from 2 or 3 detuned saw oscillators (7 voices each if your synth allows), detune around 30 to 40 percent, with a short attack and a slightly longer release. Layer it with a plucky saw an octave...

That bright, slightly hollow house piano is usually a digital piano or rompler preset rather than a sampled acoustic, which is why the big acoustic libraries never quite get there. If you can't find the exact patch, you can get very close with what you've already got: 1. Start with the...