"I think there is a style of music out there for every one. If you read that and are not sure what I mean or if you are saying to yourself "I can listen to anything" then let me explain a little more. I think there is a style of music that defines who you are as a person and provides everything that you've ever sought after in music. It's almost as if this style is an outward reflection of who you are. Call it a sonic expression of your personality if you will. If you're still scratching your head, then that means you have yet to run into this phenomenon, and I encourage you to hit the indie music sites on the internet for a chance to find it. Start with Soundcloud.com and just start sampling songs from all of the different genres listed. Try and listen to full songs and not just the first few seconds, too, so you get an idea of what the genre is really about. Not only may you find your style, but you'll hear music from some really talented artists. Heck, you'll even get some free mp3 downloads!

If you have discovered this genre of music, though, then you were probably nodding your head through most of the above paragraph! So let me tell you about the style that changed me forever. That style is hard trance.

Everything about this upbeat dance genre is for me. The fast tempo, crazy hooks, soaring synth melodies, phat vocals and driving techno percussion are just the perfect ingredients for a song in my ears. Once I got into listening to the genre, I was addicted. I visited all of the hard trance sites on the web, joined community forums for them and even started buying CDs from the UK! Shipping hurt money wise, but it was always well worth it once the album hit the CD player. Knowing that this was the sound I was looking for in dance, I immediately wanted to express myself in it. It was more than just writing a song, though. I wanted to write a song that showed who I was as a musician and what I could do. So I started my anthem.

Like hyperkinesis, several elements of this song just flowed right out. The melodies and rhythm synths came together particularly nice although I admit to much constructive composition on the lead melody line that plays over top the rhythm synth from the very start of the song. I wanted to come up with an epic hard trance melody and it took time getting there, but in the end I was very pleased with the result.

Several elements of the track, however, did not come so easily. The percussion is one thing I really labored over. My mentor, Steve Pendulum (a.k.a. Dirty Bass, a.k.a. Hard Funk), always told me that the pros used a multi-layer percussion scheme to give their songs that big sound. That may be easy to say but the execution is an entirely different matter. I spent much time trying to get the percussion of this track where I wanted it to be. At the time, I was VERY inexperienced in this aspect of electronic music as you can tell by contrasting this to my more recents songs like the Hampton Megamix and the soon to be released "demon drive." Nevertheless, it was a great foundation track for this lesson and I had tons of fun experimenting with different percussion possibilities. My favorite in the track is actually the break beat interlude that cuts in at 02:33.

Speaking of interludes! Another aspect of the genre that really attracted me is that there are so many elements of other styles that actually make it into the songs. The percussion described above is one example since that is a VERY techno way of producing (my mentor is a technophile). For 'Anthem E' I took the angle of inserting that break beat interlude as well as the big epic trance interlude that starts at 01:44. I thought these break downs really fit well with the hyper trance feel of this song. Not only that, it gave me a chance to show a little more of what I could do so I could live up to the first word in the title of this song. The vocoded vocals were along the same lines.

Probably the most important part of any hard trance song, though, is the build ups. I had some experience with build ups in hyperkinesis, but this didn't even come close to the level of complexity of the hard trance build up. The intricate meshwork and rhythms of synth and beats for these build ups is in-and-of-itself a huge production. Despite it's labor-intensiveness, though, it is one of my favorite things to write since I love to control the emotions of the listener with my music. The build ups for 'Anthem E' were equally difficult to write, but in the end I believe I achieved the explosiveness that the following trance melody lines needed.

Interestingly, when the track was finished and it went out for review it received a mixed bag of comments. Some loved it, but others such as several of the artists on generoproject.com really disliked it. Even beyond its neophyte production quality, several of my contemporaries had serious issues with its construction and the melody line themselves, which had never happened to me before. For me as my first hard trance track, though, I was very pleased with the end result. It said what I wanted to say about my music and really taught me a lot about writing, which is something that I had put less emphasis on in early tracks since I was working on production so heavily.

Looking back at it now is a funny thing since I have explored my music so much more deeply. It's funny that I was looking for the single track that defined me as an artist since now it's obvious to me that it's only when an artist stops producing that he or she is completely defined. It would seem that I was actually trying to limit myself by singling out a genre and a song and saying "Oh say can you see..." On the contrary, the song did exactly the opposite. It freed the musical sound that I had been looking for on the inside through every track up to this one. It pushed my writing to go to places that I had never explored before and guided me through taking my electronic equipment to deeper levels of knowledge. So whenever I hear the pounding beats, the radiant percussion and the wicked melodies coming out of speakers that are linked to this track, a feeling of sanguinity comes over me and I know that it is my anthem driving those electrons."

e-effect, 11/25/07 (1st edit 11/28/07, 2nd edit 06/18/10)