Glossary
The words people use in the room.
Trance has its own vocabulary, and most of it is never explained anywhere. These are working definitions for the terms that come up in the book, in tracklists and in any thread about a record you're trying to identify.
They describe how the words are actually used rather than trying to be exhaustive. If you want to hear the differences instead of reading them, the companion playlist runs chronologically, and the timeline shows which era each strand came out of.
Arrangement
How a Trance record is put together, and the parts a crowd reacts to.
- Breakdown
- The section where the kick drops out and the arrangement thins to pads, a melody or a vocal. It resets the room's attention and sets up whatever comes next.
- Build
- The rising section after a breakdown. Layers, filters and often a snare roll accumulate tension while the arrangement withholds the beat you're waiting for.
- Drop
- The moment the full arrangement returns after a build. In Trance it usually resolves a melody rather than introducing a new one, which is why it reads as release rather than surprise.
- Riser
- A sound that sweeps upward in pitch or brightness through a build. It signals the arrival of the drop without stating the beat.
- Phrasing
- Trance arrangements move in regular eight and sixteen bar blocks. Predictable phrasing is what lets a DJ mix long and lets a crowd anticipate the next change together.
Sound and production
The specific noises and techniques the genre is built from.
- Supersaw
- A stack of detuned sawtooth waves played as one voice. It is the wide, shimmering lead sound most people picture when they think of the genre.
- Gate
- Rhythmic chopping of a sustained sound, usually a pad or chord, so it pulses in time. It turns held harmony into rhythm.
- Sidechain
- Ducking a sustained element in time with the kick so the low end stays clear. The audible pumping became part of the aesthetic rather than just a mixing fix.
- Acid line
- A squelching, resonant bassline whose filter is swept while it plays. It carries over from acid house into several strands of Trance.
- Arpeggio
- A chord played one note at a time in a repeating pattern, usually sequenced. Sequencer records made this a lead instrument rather than an ornament.
- BPM
- Beats per minute. Trance generally sits in a faster range than house, and the exact tempo shifts by era and subgenre rather than being fixed.
Subgenres
The strands the sound split into, and what separates them.
- Uplifting Trance
- Melody forward, major key, large breakdowns. The strand most people mean when they use the word Trance without qualifying it.
- Progressive Trance
- Patient arrangements, gradual change and less emphasis on a single big melodic payoff. Closer in feel to progressive house than to uplifting.
- Psytrance
- Faster, rolling basslines and dense psychedelic sound design, grown out of the Goa scene rather than the European club circuit.
- Goa Trance
- The earlier psychedelic strand associated with the Goa party scene, built around layered leads and long hypnotic arrangements.
- Tech Trance
- Harder, drier and more percussive, taking its low end and drum treatment from techno while keeping Trance phrasing.
- Vocal Trance
- Trance arrangements built around a sung topline. The vocal usually carries the breakdown and the lead answers it after the drop.
- EBM
- Electronic body music. Harder, colder machine music that taught European club floors to take a relentless kick for hours, and one of the routes into Trance.
Scene language
Words you'll hear in the room, the forum thread or the tracklist.
- Anthem
- A record a scene agrees on. Anthems get treated as common property, which is why crowds react to the first bar rather than the drop.
- Classics set
- A set built from older records, usually programmed in rooms where the crowd knows them. It is as much a shared memory exercise as a DJ set.
- ID
- An unreleased or unidentified track in a tracklist. Asking for an ID is the most common exchange in any Trance community.
- Weekly radio show
- The genre's main discovery channel. A DJ-hosted weekly episode functions as a release calendar, a chart and a shared listening appointment.