Tutorial Level: basic

How do you produce trance/dance music? That’s the question a lot people start with when they get passionate about their favourite dance style. It’s a completely natural process to want to try the hands-on approach to music and it is great fun as well as a perfect channel to express yourself.

So what do you need to make music? Given the progress of technology not much. Let’s start with a list and during the next days I’ll post more material about the actual production process.

Basic Equipment list

• A computer (the more powerful the better, any Core2Duo system will give you a comfortable start)
• An ASIO-compatible soundcard (or ASIO4ALL drivers)
• A Sequencer with VST (virtual studio technology) support (or a self-contained package like Propellerheads Reason)
• Some VST plug-ins:
  • There are two main types of VST plug-ins
    
  • Instruments: these are synthesiers or recreation of musical instruments that will allow you to play sounds.
  • Effects: these plug-ins don’t produce sounds per sé but they are used to process the signal coming from audio channels or virtual instruments.

The main choice you will have will be what type of sequencer to use - it’s important to say that this a choice largely dependent on personal preference as the level of sofistication of sequencers nowadays is so high that each and every of them will allow you to do more or less the same things. Let’s take a look at a couple of popular options (there are many more but I won’t list them all):

The Pro-line:

Steinberg Cubase: A dynosaur of sequencing and many people’s favourite. This is the one I use (although I haven’t moved to the last version yet!). It has everything you would need from a sequencer and the last version (SX 4.5) has finally introduce native side-chaining (a very in-demand feature). Cubase is quite pricey but fortunately there are versions for all pockets! This is available on both PC and Mac.

Apple’s Logic Audio: together with Cubase Logic is the most popular sequencer but due to Apple buying Emagic (that used to produce the Logic Audio series) it is now only available on Mac. Again, it offers everything you need and it is in a similar price range to Cubase.

Other sequencers:

Fruity Loops: this is a very popular sequencer which doesn’t cost a fortune and fully supports VST plug-ins. It is also responsable for many famous dance releases and can produce professional results on a lower budget than Cubase. It also has a big community of users and it’s a popular choice for people wanting to start and try out sequencing before moving to the high-end systems like Cubase/Logic/Pro-tools etc…

Propellerheads Reason: Reason is a self-contained application - meaning that you will not need (and cannot use) plug-ins but you’ll rather be using its onboard sequencer/effects/synths/instruments. Everything is ready out of the box and it’s also a good solution to get started, the limitation is that you’ll be confined within the built-in instruments & effects without being able to expand. However, it must also be said that you can use Reason as a plug-in for Cubase with a technology called Re-wire. So if you get used to Reason and decide to move to Cubase later on you can still use it as a VST effect/instrument but you’ll have to learn how to use Cubase as well.

VST - Virtual Studio Technology

VST plug-ins have become so sophisticated that nowadays you don’t need hardware to make music anymore. These plug-ins can however still be pricey but fortunately there’s a wide range of high-quality free plug-ins to get you started. In the tutorials on this site I’ll be suggesting the best free plug-ins I stumble upon and will also show how to use them!

Keep following the updates on this site as we go through the process of producing a whole trance track in future articles!

Sidechain compression is more and more popular these days and while there are many ways to do it, I have found an easy and free plug-in that you can use in any VST sequencer. The name is “Twisted Lemon - Sidekick” and it works perfectly. Since it’s freely available I’ve made a tutorial to show how to quickly compress a bassline using a simple bassdrum as a source.

What you need:

• A VST-compatible sequencer
• Twisted Lemon Sidekick VST plug-in
• About 1 minute free time

Important things to remember:

• Set Sidekick on BOTH the source and destination channels (for ease of use, set the source first and the destination second)
• If you set the source first, leave the plug-in as it is - by default it will transmit on channel ALPHA
• Activate the destination channel plug-in, set it in “DUCKING” mode and select channel “ALPHA” so that it will receive the signal from itand compress (duck) the destination sound.
• Enjoy!

Watch it here or on Youtube

About time! The website has gone through a visual & conceptual face-lift. Unfortunately during the last year I haven’t had much time to produce any new music and the radio show also recently took a hit as I am get busier and busier and I keep relocating for work reasons. I have however definitely not quit the music business nor music-making. Therefore I have decided to put the website to an alternative use while music production is low.

During the last 11 years I have gained a lot of knowledge about DJing and music production and I want to share this with you! I will start to produce music tutorials on a regular basis and I’ll try to keep them as up-to-date as possible transforming this website into a small “school of dance music”. As you can read in THIS post, this series of video will be called “DMS” or “Dance Music Secrets”.

So enjoy the new website and don’t forget to spread the news using the buil-in bookmarking functions on each post so you can share the news on Facebook and the likes

All feedback is of course welcome!

A few tracks recently have been using a sidechain trick to achieve a cool and pumping synth-sound like the one in “Fragma - Toca’s Miracle - Impetto remix” or “Robert Miles - Children - Dave Darell Remix”. Ever wondered how to reproduce that? look no further.

Here is the guide you need to produce the “sound of now”!

Watch it here on or Youtube
What do you need?

• A sequencer
• A synth (in the tutorial: Lennar Digital Sylenth 1)
• A sidechain compressor (in the tutorial: Twisted Lemon Sidekick - it’s free and great, get it now!)
• 5 minutes of time

Watch the video here! Or watch it on Youtube here

A lot of websites talk about making music, what equipment is needed, what software is needed and what techniques to use but very rarely the Pro’s give out their secrets and when they do they only explain some bits & pieces.
There is no website with FREE high-quality tutorials about dance music. There are some paid tutorials of questionable quality that try to sell their ‘high-resolution’ or ‘HD sound’…does it matter when, at the end of the day, they don’t really teach you anything you didn’t already know? Not really…

“When I started making music internet was far from being developed and access to learning resources was limited, simply put either you knew someone who was knowleadgeable about making music or you had to learn yourself”. Now Giorgio shares with his secrets with the community showing his own techniques as well as general tricks on how to reproduce certain popular sounds. The focus of the tutorials will be on trance music but “dance music” is the keywords and a lot of the techniques can be used for other genres as well.

DANCE MUSIC SECRETS kicks off now! All you have to do is sit back, relax, watch the videos and feel free to try it at home