Solstice (’97 Mix)
Classic late-90s trance in A minor: 909 drums, a squelching 303 acid line, a piano breakdown and a supersaw anthem.
- Key
- A minor
- Tempo
- 137 BPM
- Length
- 3:49
- Tracks
- 14
- Loudness
- -12.7 LUFS
- True peak
- -1.0 dBTP
The prompt
/wavelength Make a classic trance song, 90s era.
The track
Solstice is built the way trance records were made around 1997 to 1999. A Roland 909 kit keeps four-on-the-floor time, an off-beat bass sits between the kicks, and a 303-style acid line squelches as its filter is opened and closed by hand. A pad is chopped into a sixteenth-note rhythm by a trance gate.
The song has two melodies over one eight-bar chord progression (Am, Am, F, F, C, C, G, E). The first is a riff that arpeggiates each chord in a 3+3+2 rhythm, the shape of the era’s supersaw leads. The second is a slow, singing theme that the piano plays alone in the breakdown. In the second drop that piano theme comes back as the anthem on the supersaws, with the acid line running underneath.
| Time | Section | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 0:01 | Intro | A 909 kick under a soft supersaw pad, closed hats from bar 5. At bar 9 the acid line arrives with its filter almost shut. |
| 0:29 | Groove | The off-beat bass, clap and open hats come in, and the trance-gated pad chops the chords into sixteenths. The acid filter keeps opening. |
| 0:57 | Main | Sixteenth hats, a crash, and a pluck that teases the lead riff through a filter sweep. The acid peaks at its brightest just before the breakdown. |
| 1:25 | Breakdown | The beat stops. A grand piano plays the slow theme over a broken-chord left hand, in the dream-trance style of the mid 90s, with the pad behind it. |
| 1:53 | Build | A 909 snare roll speeds up from quarter notes to 32nds and rises in pitch while the supersaw riff opens up under a noise sweep and a riser. Then two beats of silence. |
| 2:07 | Drop A | Everything at once: the supersaw riff with an octave layer on top, the gated pad, bass and full drums. |
| 2:35 | Drop B | The piano's theme returns as the anthem on the supersaws. The acid line comes back underneath, a ride cymbal lifts the drums, and the pluck keeps the riff going an octave down. |
| 3:03 | Outro | The leads drop out, leaving acid, bass and the gated pad for DJs to mix out of. The pad returns softly as the kick and hats fade away. |
How an agent sees it
render --png draws it: sections and bars, the loudness contour, a spectrogram of the mix, and every track's notes over its level.Instruments and patches
Synths (CLAP and VST3 factory presets by name)
| Track | Patch | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Serum 2: BA - 303 Punchier (+24 semitones) | The 303 line: a two-bar sixteenth pattern with accents and slides. Its Acid Ladder filter cutoff and resonance are automated through the whole song. |
| Bass | Surge XT: Trance Seq Bass (+12 semitones) | Off-beat eighths, ducked under the kick |
| Gate Pad | Surge XT: Viva La Trance | Chords through a sixteenth-step trance gate |
| Dream Pad | Altitude: PD SuperSaw Dream | Held chords in the intro, breakdown, build and ending |
| Pluck | Altitude: PL Trance Break 1 | Teases the riff before the breakdown, an octave down in drop B |
| Supersaw | Surge XT: 96 Osc Supersaw | The lead: the riff in the build and drop A, the theme in drop B |
| Supersaw Octave | Altitude: LD JP Support | The lead an octave up |
| Lead Body | Altitude: LD Trance Spectrum (+12 semitones) | Doubles the lead for weight |
Samples and built-ins
| Track | Source | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Kick | Legend 909 kit (built-in sampler) | Four-on-the-floor, and the trigger for sidechain ducking |
| Drums | Legend 909 kit (built-in sampler) | Clap, closed and open hats, ride, crashes, tom fills |
| Snare Roll | 909 snare played chromatically (built-in sampler) | The build roll, rising in pitch and speed |
| Piano | Grand Piano (built-in sampler, Bitwig multisample) | The breakdown theme |
| Noise Sweep | White noise through an automated band-pass filter | Sweeps into and out of each section |
| FX | Built-in FX | Risers, impacts, reverse swells, sub drops |
Mix and master
- Faders set from each track's measured loudness, then ridden section by section so the breakdown sits 5 to 6 dB below the drops.
- Sidechain ducking from the kick: bass 9 dB, gate pad 6, acid 4, pluck 3, leads 2.
- Shared effects: a Hall reverb (3.8 s), a dotted-eighth ping-pong Echo and a short Room.
- Every track and bus cuts to silence for the last two beats of the build.
- Master: a 25 Hz high-pass, a gentle glue compressor (1.8:1) and a true-peak limiter at -1 dB.
- One second of silence before the song for streaming platforms.
Download the song
The whole song in one file: the job Wavelength renders, the script that wrote it, its notes, every revision and the review comments, in the open song format. Render it, change it, or ask your agent to make it its own:
wavelength render solstice-97.wavelength
wavelength unpack solstice-97.wavelengthTracks whose plugins you don't have play built-in stand-ins, so it renders on any computer; with the same plugins it sounds as you hear it here.
Download solstice-97.wavelength 15.3 MB · Licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: share and remix it, credit the song.