Pre-95 Trance production

[medicatedpsycho]

Hello guys hope you're all having a good week?

I know this question has possibly hundreds of answers but i'm going to ask it anyway and hope you guys can at least point me to some of the stuff i don't know.

I would like to know of any equipment (samplers, synths, compressors and reverbs and such) that was most popular with early 'first wave' pre 1995 trance producers would have been using?

I know stuff like The SH101, TB 303, JUNO's, TR909 but apart from that i'm a little stumped. I was thinking Virus and JP8K but they didn't come out until mid to late 90's.


Thanks for any help.

[EmptySet]

ensoniq samplers

[sam]

Eventide effects and even the DP-4 was a favorite.

Some of us back then used Matrix 12 oe Xpanders.

[Sir Ruff]

Interesting query... I was listening to some old Harthouse stuff the other day and kind of wondering the same thing.

I imagine it's the usual plethora of "common" Rolands, plus other ubiquitous monosynths such as the SCI Pro-1, Odyssey, Mono/poly, etc. A healthy dose of moog, perhaps, but I have the sense that Japanese makers had more inroads into the European market than American ones.

EDIT: I feel like there was a healthy dose of Juno/JX all over the place for pad sounds.

[Hugo76]

I love much of the stuff from that period. I was trying to find one of my old Spicelab cd's, I remember Oliver Lieb listed his gear in the sleeve, but unfortunately I couldn't find it. I came across this picture of his studio, though, but it's apparently from 2007:


According to discogs, Gerald Becker (Virtual Symmetry) "(...) produced all of his work on the Ensoniq ASR-10 only."
I find that hard to believe, though.

[medicatedpsycho]

Thanks guys, the main reason i asked is for research, i'm writing an article on classic trance (or at least i've been asked to) followed up with a tutorial on 'how to produce classic trance' of course the i would love to do this using the hardware but unfortunately this is a tutorial for software emulations. Although i will be using software i wanted to stay as true to the genre and limitations of the gear as i could, no point me trying to replicate the super saw from the JP or the Hyper saw of the TI and such.

D16 Classic Pack
Korg M1
Korg Mono/Poly
Korg Polysix
Korg MS20

so far and i'm now looking into software emulations of the synths you guys have mentioned, a pointer to any effects and processors would be great to.

thanks for all your help

[Bitexion]

Sure you can replicate a super saw, it's basically nothing more than 4-5 sawtooths in unison with unison spread adjusted as pleased. Almost any VA synth can do that.

[StepLogik]

I had breakfast with Oliver Lieb (Spicelab) after one of his live PA's at a rave in Louisville KY. He was a BIG fan of the Juno-106 (which shows up in lots of his tracks, obviously). He's probably one of the greatest EDM producers, ever.

For his live show he used a Kawai Q-80 MIDI sequencer.

[Hugo76]

I had breakfast with Oliver Lieb (Spicelab) after one of his live PA's at a rave in Louisville KY. He was a BIG fan of the Juno-106 (which shows up in lots of his tracks, obviously). He's probably one of the greatest EDM producers, ever.

For his live show he used a Kawai Q-80 MIDI sequencer.

Wow, that is very cool, I'd love to meet the man. And yes, totally agree on his talent. Especially the albums and tracks he did as L.S.G., fantastic stuff.

[synthparts]

One of the founders of trance is Cosmic Baby who used the classic Roland setup of 101, 303, Junos, Jupiters, 808, and 909 as well as Moog Source, Prodigy, and Minimoog.

[Stab Frenzy]

So basically any synth made before 1995?

[ninja6485]

I had breakfast with Oliver Lieb (Spicelab) after one of his live PA's at a rave in Louisville KY. He was a BIG fan of the Juno-106 (which shows up in lots of his tracks, obviously). He's probably one of the greatest EDM producers, ever.

For his live show he used a Kawai Q-80 MIDI sequencer.

he uses a Q-80? He was in Louisville KY?!? What was he like in person?

I remember Oliver Lieb listed his gear in the sleeve

this album art was my genesis into synthesizers

Cosmic Baby, at least on stuff like stellar Supreme is like 90% sh101, M1 (afaik), & 808. Or at least that's what it sounds like. There's something important in the way they did it that I think is lost in modern Daw production.

aside from bluchel and lieb, you can't miss mijk van dijk: the dancers are rediculous, but he basically plays schoneberg live, giving us info on how it's done along the way:


he talks about it a little in this, but it's in german...looks like he's using a computer to sequence things. I want to say they aslo show Oliver Lieb's studio at the time somewhere in the same documentary, but I can't find it anyore. He has his gear on shelves!

there's also this:

[Bitexion]

Re: Gear list on sleeve. In other words, be a f**k millionaire.

[ninja6485]

Re: Gear list on sleeve. In other words, be a f**k millionaire.

yes...when I saw it, I thought: "Hey, all of this stuff is pretty old by now, I bet it's dirt cheap! maybe I'll see if I can get ahold of it..."

[Hugo76]

@ninja:
Excellent, thanks for posting

There were a lot of brilliant trance producers in this era, people like Sven Väth, Ralph Hildenbeutel, Matthias Hoffman, Simon Berry, Ramon Zenker etc etc.