The Song Planner

Big Room Trance

tagStarted c. 2011Peak 2012-2015Last big hit still active in trance-mainstage crossovers

Located in 1 route

Electronic / Dance → EDM / Festival / Mainstage

Big Room Trance adapts trance's long breakdowns, arpeggiated lifts, and euphoric lead melodies to the harder, simpler drop structure of big-room EDM. The tempo and arrangement can still feel trance-rooted, but the drums hit with festival-house force and the drop is written for immediate impact rather than hypnotic development. It sits between trance brands such as Armada, the W&W/Mainstage Music school, and broader EDM festival programming where trance drama needed to compete with big-room house volume.

History

The style emerged as trance DJs moved onto mixed-genre festival mainstages during the EDM boom. Armin van Buuren, W&W, Dash Berlin, and festival-trance producers kept trance's emotional breakdowns while adopting sharper drops and more compressed synth leads. Some longtime trance listeners saw it as a dilution of classic trance, but it gave trance acts a workable vocabulary for 2010s festival crowds and fed later hybrids such as big-room techno and future rave.

Defining artists

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Essential listening

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← Explore Electronic / Dance

Sources

  • Relentless Beats W&W Bigfoot release note https://relentlessbeats.com/2014/01/w-w-to-release-bigfoot
  • Shazam W&W Bigfoot release listing https://www.shazam.com/song/1357066385/bigfoot/music-video
  • Martin Garrix Tremor page https://martingarrix.com/music/dimitri-vegas-martin-garrix-like-mike/
  • Recording Arts Canada big room overview https://recordingarts.com/record/evolution-of-house-music/big-room/