trance

The tradition & historical record

Trance is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) that emerged from the techno and EBM scene 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 (BPM), 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.

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Trance music”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

trance is genre of electronic dance music, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ¹

The source record links this tradition to 32 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ¹