Could somebody please explain the intricacies of electronica music

[TrogL]

I'm talking the stuff you hear in gay clubs or on the two dance channels on Sirius XM. Writers include Deadmau5 (who's known more as a DJ) and Cedric Gervais (of "Molly", one of my current favourites, I even named the latest dog after it (she was rescued from a puppy mill and didn't have a name or even a collar) before somebody got around to telling me "Molly" was code).

Back in the day, I knew it as trance, garage, house, jungle and techno (not that I ever really understood the difference between them). Now there's a bewildering variety and everybody's talking about dubstep but I don't hear any real difference. I listen mostly in my truck which does NOT have subs so maybe that's got something to do with it.

Can I get some help here?

[HopeHoops]

1. It's technoshit. No talent required. Set up a sequencer and pull your cock in front of a camera.

Seriously. There's no talent involved. I can run a sequencer off of the laptop I'm typing on. It's crap. Play a guitar, a trap set, a sax, a keyboard, anything, ANYTHING, and that's music. Just running a repetitive loop on an electronic piece of shit isn't "music".



Disclaimer: I've been a musician for 40 years and still have my original guitar, but not my violin - no clue what happened to that.

[arcane1]

2. I have no freakin' idea, and I've even asked DJ friends

All the styles sound the same to me, except for dubstep, which sounds like all the others but at a slightly slower tempo.

[MiddleFingerMom]

3. I call them all the illegitimate children of disco. With all those children, it's obvious...

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... that disco DIDN'T suck -- at least not all the time. It at least occasionally had some
procreative sex.
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I find it horribly UNcreative. I used to go to sleep with the radio on... and every Wednesday,
I would almost wake around midnight when the all-night techno show would come on. I'd be
too lazy to get up and turn it off and drift off, only to wake up HOURS later... unable to tell
if the same damn song was still playing or not. EXACT same tempo and EXACT same bass
drum BOOM-BOOM-BOOM backbone.
.
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[LynneSin]

4. I have no clue but I was stuck listening to this crap for an hour before the Madonna concert

I've always wanted to see Madonna in concert but I will admit I'm a bigger fan of her older music than the current one. I still remember back with her Blonde Ambition tour she had the Beastie Boys as her opening act.

So anyhow on this tour her opening act is basically some DJ spinning electronic music for well over an hour. I swear to god I'd rather listen to someone with bad gas for over an hour than to sit thru that stuff again. Maybe I'm just an old person but I like songs where I know the lyrics. I could never dance to this club music but I do appreciate the fact that there are people who like this stuff.

But geez, if this was a rock concert the worst that would happen is I'd be stuck with 30 minutes of a band that I might actually like (since opening act tends to be similiar to what the main band is). Having never attended a concert by someone who was a pop singer I guess I should have expected this.

BTW this is the guy that opened last night for Madonna. He was just beyond awful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laidback_Luke

[OriginalGeek]

24. Lol, when I saw the Beastie Boys 6 years ago

their opening act was a dog circus. It was kinda hilarious and my daughter loved it. (It was her first concert ever - she loved the Beasties and I do too so I took her for her birthday). There was another musical act in between the dogs and the Beasties but I don't even remember who.

as to the OP question, I recently had an 18 year old girl (daughter of a friend) try to explain to me what dub-step was and the lesson ended up with her throwing her hands up in frustration and hollering I'd never get it. I think she was right. I honestly could not tell what made a techno song dubstep or not.


But that's OK...despite my best efforts, she can't figure out the difference between old school Florida death metal and brutal technical death metal. Kids!

[hifiguy]

5. I gotta stick up for electronic music here

at least some kinds. And I am an old phart who has played bass guitar for 40 years as of this month.

A lot of it is repetitive and uncreative, but there are some outstanding electronic performers out there. I am a big fan of Felix da Housecat, Alex Gopher, Ferry Corsten and especially Armin van Buuren, who is an extremely talented keyboards player/arranger as well as being one of the world's highest rated DJs. The Orb, Moby, Zero 7 and Thievery Corporation are all first rate as well, as is Japan's Ayumi Hamasaki, though she's more techno-pop.

Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is crap - applies to electronic music as well as it does to everything else.

ETA: Ayumi Hamasaki "M" (Above and Beyond Remix)

[TrogL]

6. Agreed, I absolutely love the stuff and I'm 57

I've got 5 rock stations on preset in the truck and found myself constantly switching between them trying to find something, anything listenable. I stumbled on the dance stations by accident and can listen to a single station for hours at a time. The only time I switch stations is if they've got a long set I've already heard or a DJ who's really into trance (I like the harder stuff) or it gets homophobic or violent.

I think part of it is I'm a really big fan of minimalist music eg. Steve Reich, Phillip Glass which makes you really, really listen to what's going on. Being a church organist, I'm heavily into baroque music with makes you listen for structure. Most dance pieces are simply passacaglias with a heavy beat. There's always some sort of sub-text going on in the background often with five musical ideas going on at the same idea. That's why a piece can go on for ages. They've stated the themes at the beginning, then play with variations.

There's also the incredible dynamic range absent from most popular music. Granted it's going from 85 db to God knows what but when they do one of their trademark whiney-siren, singlebass-doublebass-32ndnotebass-snareroll crescendos to dead silence, I'm just about ready to cream my pants when the subs kick in with the downbeat.

[hifiguy]

7. Oh lordy lu, the commonalities are so many between us.

I am a huge fan of Philip Glass, particularly Akhnaten and the music for Koyaanisqatsi. Studied theatre and classical organ for a few years in youth (11-14) before discovering prog rock and seeing that Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman were playing the modern version of the Mighty Wurlitzer theater organ albeit in more boxes and without pipes. I wasn't able to listen to Bach for pleasure for years - apart from Virgil Fox's performances - after getting so much of it drilled into my head as practice material. Bach's Passacaglia and Double Fugue in C minor as played by Fox is probably my single favorite piece of music in the world.

[TrogL]

16. Keith Emerson actually got me back into classical music

I'd walked away from it in boredom, then heard Pictures at an Exhibition, then went out and bought Brain Salad Surgery. Got into synths at University eg. VCS3 and listened to a lot of Pink Floyd.

I don't remember BWV582 being a double fugue. What's the 2nd subject?

[hifiguy]

21. I may well have misremembered but I could swear I have

seen it described as a double fugue. But I've been wrong before.

[TrogL]

22. You're right

The second subject starts in the left hand right at the beginning. It shows up in the pedal later on.

[cyberswede]

10. I listen to it at work...

I have a "Crystal Method" Pandora station, and it fires up Philip Glass, DeadMau5, Daft Punk, The Prodigy, etc.

It's excellent music to work to.

[Ron Obvious]

11. Agreed...

Agreed. I also have to stick up for some electronic music here, particularly the Germans: Klaus Schulze, Ashra Tempel, Tangerine Dream as well as, say, Jean Michel Jarre or Vangelis.

I find that the very repetitive nature of a lot of the music introduces a kind of trance state which is either very relaxing or excellent for reading and working to.

Short rule of thumb: when they added the beat underneath in the early 80's electronica became techno and the genre went to shit.

Here's Klaus Schulze's Crystal Lake from Timewind:

Floating from KS' Moondawn:

Vangelis' Blade Runner Blues from the movie Blade Runner:

[WCGreen]

13. The music is what drew me into the Blade Runner....

[hifiguy]

15. Don't get me going about the Germans!

I bought my first Tangerine Dream LP in '74 or '75. Still have it. Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, not to mention the likes of Can and Amon Duul II, who weren't strictly electronic - I have it all. Klaus and Lisa Gerrard released a mind-blowing 3-CD set of live material called "Danke" a couple of years back that is an absolute skull-blaster. Klaus is still going further into space than anyone.

[Tom Ripley]

8. I think it's a valid art form, but I don't want to watch anyone "perform" it...

"Hey look, that guy's checking his email!"

[IcyPeas]

9. give me examples of dubstep

so I can recognize it. thank you

[TrogL]

26. Apparently various ads have "killed dubstep"

http://www.adweek.com/news-gallery/advertising-branding/10-ads-killed-dubstep-142687

[TrogL]

27. I think I'm starting to understand dubstep

The main difference between the rest of electronica and dubstep is the bass drum and bass line. Most electronica like house is based on a pattern with bass drum on all four beats. In dubstep this is entirely missing. There's percussion but it's extremely sparse, quite inventive, and rarely on the beat. The tempo is also much slower. It makes the downbeat that much more apparent because there's a big hole where it's supposed to be.

[kwassa]

28. Isn't that like reggae?

Where the bass plays around the beat and never on the downbeat?

(I am no musician, just a fan, and don't have a clue about proper terminology)

[TrogL]

30. Dubstep has Carribean roots

This could definitely been an influence

[Iggo]

12. Off the top of my head, I'd say ask MrScorpio.

[derby378]

14. This guy does it much better than I can

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music v2.5

[TrogL]

18. He's got everything there except dubstep

He's got dub, but I understand that's a separate genre.

[derby378]

19. Not entirely...

Dubstep is basically UK dancehall music that's been infused with a heavy dose of Jamaican dub. That's it in a nutshell.

The first dubstep producers tended towards a more stripped-down sound, although with lots of possibilities for variation. If you want a real dubstep primer, listen to this BBC Radio 1 broadcast of Breezeblock hosted by Mary Anne Hobbs from 2006:

http://www.mixcloud.com/MaryAnneHobbs/dubstep-warz/

This is more or less where dubstep got started. Folks like Skrillex came around sometime later.

[Kali]

17. No Clue

but I kind of like it (of course I hung out in the gay bars back in the day)

the local community station used to play it most of Friday night, but now they are down to a couple of hours. Almost as lame as having a 90 minute Dead show. Some things need 6 hours if you are going to do them.

As far as defining sub-genres, no way do I have a clue.

[Motown_Johnny]

20. You start with rhythm and melody, then throw out the melody and fuck up the rhythm

Synthesize it all and crank it up to eleven.


Repeat as needed.

[MiddleFingerMom]

23. "You start with rhythm and melody, then throw out the melody and fuck up the rhythm"

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You've obviously seen me dance.
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[Motown_Johnny]

25. don't remind me

[sendero]

29. Sorry ...

... while I have been a fan of electronic music since back when Wendy Carlos was just about it, the genre thing leaves me perplexed also.

I'm a huge fan of Boards of Canada (Scottish duo, labeled IDM or "intelligent dance music, the most ludicrous moniker ever), Squarepusher (English, drill&bass, an outgrowth of drum&bass or jungle)

These labels are not very useful. And folks who compare serious electronic artists such as Richard James, Brian Eno, Vangelis, Boards of Canada, Tangerine Dream, etc, etc, etc, with that pointless crap you hear in clubs are really clueless or tone deaf.

If it has a disco beat it is garbage, you can bet on that.