Vocal Trance

What it is

A singer changes the arithmetic. Once there is a lead vocal in the middle of the mix, the offbeat open hat that uplifting trance runs at 100 has to come down, the clap has to lose most of its tail, and the sixteenth hats have to move somewhere they are not competing with consonants. Vocal trance is what the euphoric strand became around 1999 when it found chart radio, through records like Chicane's Saltwater and Delerium's Silence and then a decade of Armada and Anjunabeats releases. The songwriting is the real difference. A verse, a chorus and a bridge get built into the trance arrangement, so the breakdown becomes the second verse rather than an instrumental passage. Where uplifting trance builds to a melody, this builds to a line somebody sings, and the drum programming is organised around getting out of its way.

What it sounds like

Softer everywhere. The kick peaks around 112 rather than 118, the open hat appears on only two of the four offbeats, and the closed hat never lands on a beat at all, which keeps the top end clear of the consonants. The clap has a short plate rather than a long one. Above the drums, the same supersaw chords as uplifting trance but voiced lower and filtered, so the vocal sits on top of them rather than inside them. There is usually a piano or a plucked guitar doubling the chord rhythm, and a good deal of the production work is carving a two to four kilohertz hole for the voice to live in.

Key elements

• Two offbeats that ringOpen hats on the and of 2 and the and of 4. The and of 1 and the and of 3 get a cabasa instead, which marks the same steps at a fraction of the level and none of the length.
• Hats off the beat entirelyThe closed hat plays the e and the a and nothing else. Whatever a hi-hat would normally mark on a beat or an offbeat is here either the kick, the open hat or a deliberate hole.
• The kick leaves for the lineThe kick drops off beat 4 of bar two. In a real arrangement that happens at the end of an eight or sixteen bar phrase, under the last words a singer holds, and it is compressed into two bars here.
• A short clap with a swell in front of itA 0.8 second plate rather than a two second one, plus a half velocity hit a sixteenth ahead of beat 4 in bar two that reads as a reversed lead-in rather than as a second clap.
• A song structureVerse, chorus, bridge, mapped onto the trance arrangement so the breakdown is the second verse. That form comes from pop rather than from the club.
• Chords voiced lowThe supersaw stack sits an octave below where uplifting trance would put it, filtered at around 4kHz, leaving the top of the mix to the voice.

How to get them

• Carve for the vocalA gentle two decibel dip between 2 and 4kHz on the chord bus, sidechained to the vocal so it only happens while somebody is actually singing.
• KickThe same construction as uplifting trance but three decibels quieter and with the click rolled off above 4kHz. Mute it for the last beat of the phrase rather than fading it out; the abrupt hole is what makes the line land.
• HatsClosed hat on the e and the a only, between 38 and 60, with nothing on the beats or the offbeats. Put a cabasa around 45 on the and of 1 and the and of 3 so those two offbeats are marked without ringing.
• Clap909 clap into a 0.8 second plate, high-passed at 500Hz, no delay at all. Reverse the sample for the half velocity hit a sixteenth before beat 4 of bar two so it swells into the beat.
• Vocal treatmentDouble the chorus an octave up at low level, put a quarter note delay on the last word of each line only, and compress in two gentle stages rather than one hard one.
• Write the topline before the dropSing the chorus over the chords with no drums under it at all. If it works there, the arrangement around it is straightforward to build.

Reference points

Chicane, Delerium, Dash Berlin, Cosmic Gate, Above and Beyond's vocal records, and the Armada and Anjunabeats catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.