Trance is arrangement-first music. The groove is deliberately simple — rolling offbeat bass under a four-to-the-floor kick — so that a long breakdown and a released main theme can do the emotional work. Subgenres differ in how hard the drums hit and how much of the energy comes from melody versus drive.
132–145 BPM. Progressive trance at 132–136, uplifting and vocal trance at 136–140, tech and hard trance at 138–145.
| Kick | Punchy and short so the offbeat bass can occupy the space between beats. |
|---|---|
| Bass | Rolling offbeat 8ths or 16ths, usually a single filtered saw or sub with tight envelopes. |
| Pads | Wide supersaw or string layers providing harmonic bed across whole bars. |
| Lead | A pluck, saw or vocal line built from a memorable 4- or 8-bar motif, delayed and widened. |
| Transitions | Snare rolls, filtered risers and impacts marking every 16- or 32-bar boundary. |
In trance the breakdown is the song. Sketch the chord progression and lead motif before you build the groove, then work backwards to the intro so the build actually points somewhere.
Offbeat bass loses power when it is wide or long. Use a short decay that ends before the next kick, keep it mono below ~120 Hz, and let the pad provide the stereo width instead.
Hold back an octave lead layer, a counter-melody or a percussion loop until the last drop. It is the cheapest way to make a repeated section feel bigger without raising the level.
Each subgenre has its own prompt engine, tempo range and arrangement template. Open one to see example prompts and start a sketch.
Euphoric trance anthems with emotional melodies
Building melodies with euphoric breakdowns
Psychedelic trance with rolling basslines
Cafe Mambo / Cafe del Mar sunset-to-sunrise terrace trance 1995-2002 – warm uplifting trance with Balearic emotional warmth, atmospheric breakdowns, Spanish guitar lead motifs, soaring strings, melodic but restrained (NOT festival EDM). Saltwater / lineage – the sunrise terrace anthem sound.
Fast romantic trance-house with a driving four-to-the-floor groove, offbeat mono bass, wide supersaw motifs and close vocal fragments.
Sketches are delivered as separated 48 kHz WAV stems, so you keep the parts you like and replace the rest in your own session.
Most trance sits between 132 and 145 BPM. Progressive trance runs slower at 132–136, uplifting and vocal trance at 136–140, and tech or hard trance at 138–145.
Club-oriented trance typically uses 32–64 bars between the drums dropping out and the main drop, long enough to resolve the chord progression twice and build tension once.
Yes — generations can be delivered as 48 kHz WAV multitracks, so leads, pads, bass and drums arrive on separate tracks ready for your own processing.
Pick a subgenre, describe the groove you want, and get an editable multitrack starting point back.
Start creating