Acid Trance
Trance · 1992 · 135 to 145 BPM
Acid trance puts the TB-303 to work in the service of ecstasy rather than grime: long acid lines, resonance rising with the track, straight kicks and background pads. Between 1993 and 1996 it sat at the heart of the Harthouse sound and the German rave scene. Hardfloor wrote the genre's monument with Acperience 1, a track claimed equally by acid techno and trance, exactly the kind of hinge point between styles that this map favors. Its long, patient builds turned the 303's raw squelch into something closer to a slow, hypnotic euphoria than a purely dirty acid workout.
19 reference tracks
- Hardfloor: Acperience 1 (1992)
- Union Jack: Two Full Moons And A Trout (1993)
- Emmanuel Top: Turkish Bazar (1995)
- Art Of Trance: Madagascar (1996)
- Tilt: Butterfly (1997)
- Kai Tracid: Dance For Eternity (1998)
- Rebuke: Along Came Polly (2019)
- Age Of Love: The Age Of Love (Charlotte de Witte & Enrico Sangiuliano Remix) (2020)
- Above & Beyond: Screwdriver (2021)
- Armin van Buuren: Computers Take Over The World (2020)
- Rank 1: Strobo (2025)
- Hardfloor: Trancescript (1993)
- Union Jack: Cactus (1994)
- Art Of Trance: Octopus (1995)
- Union Jack: Red Herring
- Emmanuel Top: Fusion
- Union Jack: Fromage Frais
- Art of Trance: Stealth
- Union Jack: Papillon
At a glance
- Tempo: 135 to 145 BPM
- First appeared: around 1992
- Machines: Roland TB-303, Roland TR-909
- The sound: Roland TB-303 en montée de résonance, Nappes planantes, Automation de filtre longue
- Labels: Harthouse, Le Petit Prince, Important, Acid Test, Bonzai, Platipus
- Key artists: Hardfloor, Emmanuel Top, Union Jack, Sourcerer
Producing Acid Trance
Work between 135 and 145 BPM with no swing: the pulse comes from the TB-303 itself, its accents and slides doing what quantization cannot. Keep drums fully quantized and let the acid line breathe over 16 or 32 bar spans, since the real tempo is the slow rise of the filter resonance. A 909 provides the carpet, kick on every beat, clap on two and four, open hats on the offbeats, its kick slightly shorter to leave room for the 303 in the low end. Write the 303 line as 16 steps on tonic and octave with two or three accents and a slide per bar, cutoff opening slowly over 32 to 64 bars while resonance climbs toward a whistle. Add slow filtered pads holding a static minor chord and a dotted eighth delay on the acid line.
The full production course, in French: tempo, drums, bass, sounds, arrangement, mix, plugins and machines, and a step by step start.
Frequently asked
What is Acid Trance?
Acid trance puts the TB-303 to work in the service of ecstasy rather than grime: long acid lines, resonance rising with the track, straight kicks and background pads. Between 1993 and 1996 it sat at the heart of the Harthouse sound and the German rave scene. Hardfloor wrote the genre's monument…
What tempo is Acid Trance played at?
Between 135 and 145 BPM.
Who are the key Acid Trance artists?
Hardfloor, Emmanuel Top, Union Jack, Sourcerer.
