If you’ve ever thought you might want to learn how to DJ trance music but don’t know enough about it to feel confident – whether that’s choosing your music, understanding the mixing style, or knowing which DJs to listen to for inspiration – this guide is for you.
This time, it’s personal…
This is personal for us at Digital DJ Tips. Back in the 1990s, I was a resident DJ at a seminal club night called “Tangled” that broke the trance sound in Manchester, England. We were the first on the new records, we booked all the up-and-coming producers, and for a while had the best nightclub in the city. So here’s a genre that’s very close to my heart.
Meanwhile, my partner here, Steve Canueto, created and launched the Ministry of Sound “Trance Nation” mix CD compilation series, going on to sell millions worldwide, acting as many people’s first introduction to trance music. They were mixed by the then unknown Dutch DJ, Ferry Corsten, now considered a legend in the scene – who of course is also the man behind our trance DJing course, Ferry Corsten’s Trance Mixing Masterclass.
Where did trance come from?
In the early 90s, after house music from the United States had taken the world by storm, a new sound emerged from Europe – Germany in particular. This sound added melody and harmony to the driving beats of house, with more emotional highs and lows. Songs became longer, breakdowns became important, and there was a sense of melancholy mixed in with the emotional highs as well.
It definitely felt like a sound of its time. It seemed to echo big political events like the reuniting of Berlin with the fall of the wall, the collapse of communism, and a sense that for a short while anything might be possible in Europe as old wounds were given a chance to heal – that’s how it felt to us. And that’s maybe why Germany was such an important place for this music.
Tracks like Sven Väth’s “L’Esperanza”, “We Came in Peace” by Dance 2 Trance, “Eternal Spirit” by 4Voice, “Hearts” by L.S.G. aka Oliver Lieb, “Love Stimulation” by Humate (actually an early Paul Van Dyk production), and “Perfect Day” by Visions of Shiva embodied the early sound. Influences came from UK progressive house, India’s goa trance scene, sci-fi soundtracks and early synthesiser music (Giorgio Moroder, Jean-Michel Jarre), plus the basslines and arpeggios of Italo-disco. All the elements were there for this powerful new sound to emerge.
By the mid to late 90s, artists such as Paul van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, Tiësto, Armin van Buuren, Oliver Lieb, Cosmic Baby, and Paul Oakenfold were all making music in this style and championing its various sounds, as its popularity surged to become the dominant genre in dance music. If you’ve ever listened to “Children” by Robert Miles, “Café Del Mar” by Energy 52, “For an Angel” by Paul van Dyk, “Silence” by Delerium, “Out of the Blue” by System F (yes, that “F” stands for Ferry, as in Corsten), even “Sandstorm” by Darude, and wondered what genre these all-time classics fit into, wonder no more: This is trance.
Sign up to Tuesday Tips
Free newsletter
Your weekly digest of the latest training, gear reviews, industry news, and exclusive tips and tricks to help you stay ahead in your DJing.
We collect, use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
What makes trance music different?
Musically, trance is about hypnotic rhythms, huge melodies, repetition of those melodies, big build-ups, and minimum changes to BPM or rhythm. It’s a genre that lends itself to beatmixing and sets that take the audience on a journey with lots of layered synths, harmonies, and atmospheric production techniques. It suits home listening just as much as playing in clubs.
Read this next: Memories Of DJing & Promoting At A Trance Club In The 1990s
While most people say trance tends to have quite high BPMs (maybe around 135-140), there are actually tracks as low as 120 BPM. But generally, it’s faster than house music. Goa trance sometimes had BPMs much higher than this, as did psytrance, a more psychedelic offshoot of the main sound.
While some of the biggest tracks ever made in this genre contain vocals, it’s primarily an instrumental genre. Most trance DJs use vocals sparingly and carefully rather than consistently in their sets.
When was trance biggest?
The heyday of trance was definitely the late 90s in Europe and much of the world, where it was a truly huge phenomenon with mega clubs and festivals attracting tens of thousands and tracks regularly dominating the commercial charts. The euphoric uplifting trance sound of the time inevitably burnt out though, leading to a more minimal tech house sound replacing it, at least in our club, as the new century progressed.
However, it’s notable that when the huge EDM boom hit the States in the early 2010s, a lot of the tracks being made contained many of the elements that had made trance music so popular in the previous decade – think the big breakdowns, melody, huge synth lines and pounding beats of Avicii, Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Skrillex, and Swedish House Mafia. Additionally, many DJs who had ridden the first wave of trance in Europe successfully moved into the EDM scene, Tiësto being the biggest example of this.
Is trance making a comeback?
Trance never really went away. Armin van Buuren’s long-running A State of Trance radio show still throws huge parties worldwide. Belgium’s Tomorrowland, while multi-genre, is still dominated by trance or trance-adjacent genres. Artists such as Above & Beyond, Ferry Corsten, Paul van Dyk, Marcus Schulz, Aly & Fila, Gareth Emery, and John 00 Fleming continue to push the sound forward, and even techno DJs like Nina Kraviz have been incorporating trance elements into their sets.
Excitingly, right now there’s an undeniable UK trance resurgence, driven by young British talent like Ben Hemsley and Hannah Laing, who are blending trance with house, techno, and rave. This new generation grew up with trance via their parents (yup, my generation) and are reinterpreting it rather than simply reviving it.
The scene is commercially massive right now: Hemsley sells out 30,000 tickets across UK tours, A State of Trance returned to London in 2025 with these young artists alongside established names, and major festivals like Creamfields, Warehouse Project, and new events like Ewan McVicar’s Pavilion Festival feature significant trance content. Maybe the genre’s sincerity appeals to audiences tired of more “knowing” club culture, and the aforementioned cross-pollination from artists like Nina Kraviz and Bicep has normalised trance again. Who knows, maybe this will lead to a resurgence stateside too, just as happened with EDM all those years ago.
Sign up to Tuesday Tips
Free newsletter
Your weekly digest of the latest training, gear reviews, industry news, and exclusive tips and tricks to help you stay ahead in your DJing.
We collect, use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
How do you mix trance?
To do a good job of DJing trance music, you need to learn techniques which are very different from those used in other modern genres. Beatmixing is extremely important, and the beatmixes tend to be long and drawn out – sometimes over many minutes, definitely not seconds. This also means that keymixing and especially making sure your basslines roll properly (and don’t clash) is very important to create a seamless journey in a trance set.
It’s important to understand the various sub-genres you’ll be playing and to be comfortable mixing between the wide BPMs those genres typically use (all the way from warming up at 125 BPM to around 150 BPM towards the end of a set).
Read this next: The Lost Art of Long Tracks: Why It’s Good To Let Music Breathe
EQing is very important, both to create the tension and release necessary for the emotional side of trance DJing and also because the best trance DJs wear their influences on their sleeves, playing tracks from 30 years ago alongside modern tracks. Thus, competent EQing to smooth those things out is not optional.
On top of that, trance DJs need to be comfortable using effects such as filters, flangers, phasers, and echoes (again, as glue to hold sets together but also to add a final sheen to the big soundstages that typically define trance productions).
Finally, trance tracks are long, and modern attention spans are short. So trance DJs playing to modern dancefloors need to know how to turn eight to nine minute songs into four to five minute songs (both ahead of time and live) in order to keep the interest high throughout their sets.
Should I Learn To DJ Trance?
Trance is a genre well worth learning. It rewards you with harmonic mixes that sound truly amazing due to the melodic nature of the tracks in the first place. It teaches you so much about musical composition and how different completed songs can nonetheless be put together to make something much bigger than the parts you’ve used.
Our tutor Ferry Corsten says, “If normal DJing is like assembling sentences to make a chapter, then trance DJing is like assembling chapters to make a book.” You’re dealing with really notable, outstanding finished tracks in the first place, giving you the chance to build something much bigger if you know what you’re doing with them.
If you do want to learn more about every aspect of becoming a trance DJ, then you should take a look at Ferry Corsten’s Trance Mixing Masterclass, our course with the undisputed trance great, in which he shares all his secrets about DJing this fantastic genre.
Phil Morse
