How to make EPIC orchestral Trance Like Armada & Above & Beyond | Live Electronic Music Tutorial 330

How to Make Orchestral Trance Like Armada & Above & Beyond

In episode 330 of his live electronic music tutorial series, WeMakeDanceMusic founder Mikas builds an orchestral trance track from scratch in real time. Running at 132 BPM, the session blends string sections, brass and organic orchestral textures with driving electronic elements, mixing the whole thing as it’s built so the track sounds full by the end. Everything is captured as a downloadable template you can open and keep working on yourself.

What you’ll learn

• Shaping orchestral pads with envelope and reverb to add depth and a smooth tail
• EQing your reverb return so the low end doesn’t clutter the mix
• Programming and balancing trance percussion around a kick at roughly −10 dB
• Building a sidechained bassline and using sidechain compression across the arrangement
• Recording a live piano lead and turning a MIDI part into an arpeggio with Sylenth1
• Separating the creative process from arrangement and mixing

1. Set up monitoring and shape the opening pad

Mikas starts by switching to headphones and flattening the response curve so the mix translates cleanly when he moves to speakers later. He begins with a trance-ambient pad in Alchemy, then adds envelope so the sound decays smoothly into the next note instead of cutting off abruptly — giving the pad a natural tail rather than a hard restart.

2. Add reverb and EQ the return for dimension

To create space, he drops his own “Silver Verb” preset on the pad — a large, texture-rich room. The key step is EQing the reverb signal: the return is crowded around 200 Hz, so he high-passes it (cutting up to around 500 Hz) so only the airy, ambient upper content remains. Without EQing your reverb, that build-up makes the whole mix muddy as you stack elements.

3. Control the pad and clean the low end

Pads take up a lot of room, so Mikas pushes the pad back in the mix and trims its low end aggressively. He stresses that a crowded 60–200 Hz (even up to 400 Hz) region dooms a mix — you can’t compress your way out of frequency clashing later, so clean the low end early before the bassline goes in.

4. Program and mix the trance percussion

He routes both kicks to a dedicated bus and sets them to sit around −9 to −10 dB, his standard reference for a workable mix. From there he builds the kit: a gritty 909 snare with grain, a deep-tech hi-hat, a rolling hat tucked in the back, and a 909 clap on the first beat. Delay on the hats and clap (around 5/10 settings) widens the stereo field and adds groove. His mixing trick: pull everything down, then raise elements one by one against the kick to find air and space.

5. Build the sidechained bassline

Mikas takes the lower keys of the chord progression for the bass, raises it an octave so it sits up for the intro, then sidechains it to the kick — feeding the kick signal into a compressor on the bass so it pumps in time. He later copies that same sidechain to the other elements so the whole track breathes together.

6. Record the piano lead and craft the MIDI melody

For the lead he loads a Legacy acoustic piano (Yamaha Studio) and records it live, sending it to reverb and a ping-pong delay so it isn’t dry and flat. He treats this as background activity rather than the primary hook, then cleans up stray notes and uses polyphony to layer ideas — recalling the 16-part hardware Supernova synth he used to layer on.

7. Create the arpeggio with Sylenth1

After browsing presets that feel too cheesy, Mikas builds his own arp in Alchemy and Sylenth1, plays with the filter for movement, and trims the lows. He notes that mixing different synth sources — different oscillators and engines — gives the track a richer, fuller character than relying on one instrument.

8. Layer pads and separate creativity from arrangement

He layers an Anjuna-style pad for variation, tries the piano and pad together for a strong groovy breakdown, and tests an extra arp on top. When the arp sits poorly at the front, he leaves it as a quiet driver in the back rather than forcing it. Throughout, Mikas keeps the creative stage about inputting ideas only — arrangement, mixing, mastering and promotion come after.

Get the project file: Mikas turns each session into a full template you can open in Logic Pro X, Ableton Live or FL Studio — complete with samples, MIDI and a mastering chain. Download the template →