Psytrance is a fast, hypnotic offshoot of trance, usually around 140 to 145 BPM, built on a driving four-on-the-floor kick and a rolling bassline that fills the gaps between the kicks with straight sixteenth notes. Over that go squelchy, psychedelic leads, arpeggios and modulated effects, with long builds, breakdowns and atmospheric layers for the trippy, driving, festival feel. Here is what each part is and how they fit.
Works in any DAW, with any synth and any drum sounds, hardware or software. Nothing here needs a particular plugin.
Psytrance, short for psychedelic trance, is a fast, hypnotic offshoot of trance, usually around 140 to 145 BPM. It is built on a driving four-on-the-floor kick and a rolling bassline that fills the gaps between the kicks with straight sixteenth notes, with squelchy, psychedelic leads, arpeggios and modulated effects layered over the top. The long builds, breakdowns and atmospheric layers are what give it the trippy, driving, festival feel it is known for.
It grew out of the Goa trance scene in India in the 1990s and is often associated with European and Israeli producers, though the sound has since spread worldwide.
The ingredients are consistent from track to track. Get the kick and the rolling bass locked together first, then the psychedelic leads and effects are what you build on top:
| Part | Typical | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 140 to 145 BPM | The fast psytrance range, driving and hypnotic |
| Kick | Four on the floor | One short hit on every beat, the anchor everything leans on |
| Rolling bass | Straight sixteenths in the gaps | The hypnotic low pulse that locks to the kick |
| Psychedelic lead | Squelchy and modulated | The trippy synth line that carries the hook |
| Arpeggio | Fast repeating pattern | Adds motion and shimmer over the groove |
| Effects | Modulated and evolving | Filters, LFOs and pitch tricks for the psychedelic feel |
| Breakdown | Strips back, then builds | The atmospheric lull before the drive returns |
| Atmosphere | Pads and textures | Layers that fill the space and set the trippy mood |
The rolling bassline is a run of straight sixteenth notes that sits on the offbeats, in the gaps between the kicks. The kick lands on the beat and the bass fills the three sixteenths before the next kick, so the two together make one continuous run of sixteenths. It is straight, not a triplet or a shuffle feel, and that even, machine-like roll is the defining sound of psytrance.
Every bass note is exactly one sixteenth long and falls exactly on the sixteenth grid. There is no swing, no triplet lilt and no dragging behind the beat. That evenness is the whole point: it is what makes the low end feel like a single hypnotic engine rather than a groove you tap your foot to. If you find yourself reaching for swing or a shuffle, you are drifting toward a different genre.
A psytrance bass note is short, usually the root of the key, and the same note is retriggered on each sixteenth rather than moving around. Keep it in one register and let the rhythm do the work, not the melody, so the bottom stays clear and the roll stays hypnotic. The bass can shift to follow a chord change now and then, but for long stretches it simply holds the root and pulses. The general rules for writing a low part that locks to the kick and stays out of the mud are in the how to make a bassline guide.
Give each one its own slot in the same run of sixteenths: the kick takes the beat and the bass takes the three sixteenths in between. Because they never hit at exactly the same instant, the low end reads as one continuous roll instead of two sounds fighting. Most producers also sidechain or gate the bass to the kick so the bass ducks out of the way each time the kick lands, which keeps the bottom clean and drives the pumping, rolling motion.
The kick is tight and short so it clears quickly, and the bass envelope is short too, so every sixteenth is a distinct pulse rather than a smear. If either sound rings on too long it bleeds into the next slot and the roll turns to mud. Shorten the release on the bass until each note stops just before the next one starts, and the pattern locks into that clean, driving pulse.
Because the kick and the bass share the same low frequencies, many psytrance tracks sidechain or gate the bass to the kick, so the bass dips for a moment on every kick and swells back between. That pumping motion is a large part of the feel and it keeps the two from ever piling up on the same instant. It is a common move rather than a rule, so reach for it when the low end feels crowded. There is a walkthrough of setting that up in the sidechain compression guide.
The psychedelic leads are squelchy, constantly modulated synth lines and arpeggios: a resonant filter sweeping, LFOs wobbling the pitch or the tone, and effects like delay, phaser and pitch modulation moving under the note. The point is that almost nothing stays still, which is what gives the leads their trippy, liquid feel.
Build the lead from a resonant synth and then keep it moving. Automate or LFO the filter cutoff and resonance so the tone morphs across a phrase, bend the pitch, and let delay and reverb smear the tails. A static patch played straight will not read as psytrance no matter how good the notes are, because the genre lives in the modulation as much as the melody.
A lot of psytrance motion comes from arpeggios, fast repeating patterns that run over the groove and add shimmer without a big melody. Feed a chord through an arpeggiator, set it to sixteenths, and let the same modulation tricks work on it as it plays. There is a full walkthrough in the how to make an arpeggio guide. Over longer sections, strip back to pads and textures for a breakdown, then build the energy back up so the drive returns with more weight than it left.
Everything above is a set of decisions you can make by hand, and it is worth learning to make them. The slow part is the rolling bass itself: programming a run of straight sixteenths that locks to your kick and stays hypnotic for minutes at a time without going stale.
REHEAT is a bass instrument that writes the note movement for you. Pick a groove and it generates the rolling sixteenth-note bass movement psytrance is built on, locked to your kick, and then you either drag it straight into your DAW as MIDI or play it live through your own bass synth with the REHEAT MIDI DRIVER. Either way the roll stays locked to the kick, and it runs as an Audio Unit, a VST3 and an AAX.
The point is the same as this whole page. What matters is the part, the notes and the rhythm, because the part survives every later choice about the sound. REHEAT gives you the rolling sixteenths; what you play them through stays your call.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. Everything above still works by hand in any DAW too, which is rather the point of writing it down.
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