SCENE REVIEWS

An Introduction to Trance Music
The Trance Experience - Torsten Fassbender
Review by: Samhouze

There have been many occasions over the past three years I have been listening to Electronic Dance Music (EDM) where I found myself walking down the street creating beats and melodies in my head. I used to tell myself if only I knew how, I could be a great producer of EDM. The Trance Experience by well-known Trance producer, Torsten Fassbender finally gave me a chance to put my aspiration to the test.

The book itself is broken into four different sections. One is an introduction to the Trance experience going over what characteristics define Trance and set it apart from other genres such as, House and Techno.

Torsten touches on creating your own kick drums, bass waves and layers. He also includes tutorials on equalization and side chaining. By doing this he introduces the reader to the genre outlining the basics needed to understand a Trance production. It also sets the stage for the rest of the book which is three separate sessions working on his own track Wellenrausch – Nobody Knows.

In Session One, Fassbender explains the thought process that went into creating the original version of Nobody Knows. The DVD that comes with the book includes a pre-mastered version of the track as well as all the instrumental sounds used in its production. Fassbender takes each of these individual instrumental sounds (tracks) used to create the song and breaks it down into detail, walking the user through what can be done to edit and create that particular track.

He then repeats the process in Session Two for a club remix of the same song. Finally Session Three touches on an ambient chill out version of Nobody Knows. By doing this Fassbender touches on three more common Trance mixes with his original mix, club mix and finally the ambient chill out mix. Each has its own unique characteristics and can be played in different circumstances.

The book comes loaded with multiple CDs and DVDs giving the user all the files needed to complete the various tutorials in the book. However, while learning a lot about the process of musical production, I found myself disenchanted by the fact my computer being a Pentium Celeron 900 was nowhere near the Pentium 4 3.12 GHZ requirement needed to run these audio editing software demos and tutorials with success.

I also found the language used in the book, while fairly simple to understand got complicated as the book progressed. I found myself losing touch with what Fassbender was trying to put across at times.

All in all, The Trance Experience - an Introduction to Trance Music is a solid effort at introducing the average listener to what goes intro musical production in EDM.

The conclusion is simple; to take the role of production seriously, one must have a powerful computer, patience and attention to detail. Something I have but my computer doesn’t.