Do people really like Electronic Music ?

[Giganova]

Originally Posted by Jose Mrochek

My question is, will they listen to electronic music while in their shower or driving to work on monday ?

Hell yeah, I know a lot of guys (and gurlz) who listen to nothing else. I listen mostly to Jazz and electronic music -- all the time. When I hear a guitar I reach for my gun *LOL*. I cannot stand the sound of guitars (so much for my ignorance) *LOL*.

Honestly, you should check out some of the producers (that's how electronic "bands" are called coz they usualy act as musician/producers/distributers/etc in one person) mentioned here. Electronic and also dance music can be verty interesting to listen to. There's much more to it than the boring "4 on the floor" stuff.

[Jose Mrochek]

Originally Posted by Giganova

As an electronic music producer, I find your thread offending and ignorant. You should try to make an effort and stay young. Music is not only being produced by instruments with strings these days anymore.

"Why is MTV not playing that kind of music if it's played in every single club ?"
Because you obviously don't even know the difference between dance music (which only makes sense in a club) and electronic music (the title of your thread).

This thread is pretty old. It some how surfaced again, and don't feel like discussing this anymore. I still feel the same way. Electronic/Dance or whatever, does not move me. I hate it , and think it sucks. I need melody in a song, to enjoy it. A vocal. A message. Something. What else do you wan't me to say ? Just a opinion from a ignorant, no need to be offended : )

[Giganova]

All right, fair enough! I understand that electronic/dance music is not everyone's taste. As long as you enjoy music of any sorts I am happy.

[Jose Mrochek]

Originally Posted by Giganova

Hell yeah, I know a lot of guys (and gurlz) who listen to nothing else. I listen mostly to Jazz and electronic music -- all the time. When I hear a guitar I reach for my gun *LOL*. I cannot stand the sound of guitars (so much for my ignorance) *LOL*.

Honestly, you should check out some of the producers (that's how electronic "bands" are called coz they usualy act as musician/producers/distributers/etc in one person) mentioned here. Electronic and also dance music can be verty interesting to listen to. There's much more to it than the boring "4 on the floor" stuff.

I've been in several ocasions in clubs where out of the blue the DJ plays some rock tune. AC/DC, Nirvana.. or whatever.. and people go crazy. (in a good way)
Seem to enjoy the rock tune a thousand times more than the electronic crap that came before that. I felt this kind of reaction in famous clubs in Miami, and lesser know clubs here in south america.

[Jose Mrochek]

Originally Posted by Giganova

All right, fair enough! I understand that electronic/dance music is not everyone's taste. As long as you enjoy music of any sorts I am happy.

Dude, seriously.. discussions about musical taste can be very boring and reach no conclusion. If you enjoy it, and make a living out of it. My respects go to you. I can't say the same for myself, so I'm sure theres something you do right and I do wrong : )

[momo]

Go to www.di.fm if you want to study some edm sounds, techniques, feeling and flow patterns.

on box- Electronic dance music has so many different styles today. There's always someone that is beautifully creative and on the cutting edge. Most club heads don't listen during the day unless they get addicted to the feelings for awhile. The music is associated with the club and people atmosphere. Some is anchored with melody some with a deep groove some with high energy. Whatever suits your current taste. When your in the middle of the crowd and a familiar melody kiks in, the whole place goes nuts and feels it together. it's a great primal feeling. Some just get high on whatever, chill and listen.
My theory for U.S. not accepting it is back when it was just emerging about the same time as hip hop is edm was being associated with xtc by media. The news like 20/20 did their special reports and only focused on kids doing heavy drugs and behaving weird with all the glow sticks and what not. Well, the hip hop scene has it's equally bad issues as well (will smith just commented on it needing to be more responsible) but the media could not sensationalize out of fear of being called racist. So it grew, became a party/gangsta music and the radio picked it up as the new thing to promote their biz. kids listen to it cause it's free, grow an association with it and you now have a good lifetime run on it. Radio is still afraid to get into edm except in strong markets like Miami. Too late radio we now have satalite and internet so dj's can promote themselves to people. Clear channel in denver sponsored a dance music festival last year so i know they want to be part of it they just can't put it on public airwaves, joe public has been conditioned to not accept it. There's so much more to discuss with edm it would go on forever. if you want to listen to a variety of styles and production techniques check out www.di.fm Another site for a trance forum is tranceaddict.com.
A DJ called Tiesto is putting on a concert in the U.S. this year. It's more than just him playing records. He has put together a massive production with singers, dancers, lights. Kind of like cirque de sole but the dj as the mc. I'm very interested to see how well it does. -off box

[evergreen]

I'm shocked nobody has really mentioned too much drum and bass??? There's tons of melodic, inspiring stuff coming from drum and bass - if you dig past the commercial drum and bass out there. Check:

Polar - No Sleep <single>
Goldie - Timeless <album>
Photek - Form and Function <album>
Kemistry and Storm - DJ Kicks <mix>

Then again this stuff is older (mid 90's to 2001), but still, there's a lot of deep heads in electronic if you look beyond the meat market clubs of and big city. Astounding soul, astounding production.

Bjork, Portishead, Lamb, etc. are extremely melodic, and electronics are just another instrument. S**t, Electric Light Orchestra could be considered electronic if you want to describe electronic music as music which involves synthesis in the composition.

I just think it's rather narrow minded to say "electronic music sucks" when your limited experience with it has been some Miami "sunglasses, fedora, boot-cut jeans" meat market DJ.

No offense meant, but seriously - I'm sure there's some electronic music that would move you rather deeply, that doesn't involve the dancefloor, if you just browsed a little.

[Reptil]

Originally Posted by Jose Mrochek

Dude, seriously.. discussions about musical taste can be very boring and reach no conclusion. If you enjoy it, and make a living out of it. My respects go to you. I can't say the same for myself, so I'm sure theres something you do right and I do wrong : )

Jose, did you try to find out what all the ppl. in this thread are talking about? Did you go and look for those tunes, and actually listen to them? There are a number of excellent suggestions of what to get.
I have to agree with Giganova, that the initial questions are very annoying. (I saw this thread now for the first time.) Why? Because they're the same lame questions that ppl. have been asking for 20 years or so, who really don't want to know what all the fuss is all about, and start comparing with Nirvana or MTV, just to find an excuse why they're not in the deal. (MTV DID air electronic dance music, for a number of years, in europe, but after being taken over by the bossman stopped airing music alltogether IMO )
Your last post shows that you're not one of those. But you had some flames coming, and ppl. have been very kind, and open, and helpful. You see, electronic dance music was born underground, and a healthy, yet weird and experimental part will allways be like that. undeniable, unfathomable by the suits. Deceptively simple and too abstract for the ear tuned to 3 minute pop or rocksongs. Brutally primal to the ear tuned to acoustic jazz and classical music. And it's about a set, a flow, as someone posted here. Something you like or don't. You got that (I hope) and then it's all good.

Anyway, it takes some openness to experience the music in the right atmosphere and frame of mind. And then it can go horribly wrong because 85% IS indeed mindless crap. It is a very fine line. Maybe some night, you'll end up, half intoxicated in the arms of a dangerous woman, in a smokey club, 2 flights of stairs down the main street, where boom boom music is played. And love it. Or maybe not.

[forgetmeknots]

if you have not heard fourtet then check them out.
Stellar stuff, with minimal gear (like a soundblaster card), really shows what a creative engineer/producer can achieve.
http://www.myspace.com/fourtetkieranhebden

[Cojo]

One thing that strikes me is that "rockers" don't seem to enjoy elecronic music as easy as "electronic people" enjoys rock! I love both!

/Cojo

[auxpot]

wow people that don´t know talking about music they even never have listened to, i guess....

there´s so much more "electronic music" than all the crap that get to your ears when listening to radio, mtv and cheesy club music in holiday island´s clubs...
phew....

coming from black music and early rap stuff, i discovered electronic dance music aka house when it started early 80´s.....so many songs moved me deeeeeply emotional, not just on the dancefloor but in all situations of life...
it´s definitily a music that has a rather cold, dark and intense mood coming from the minds of the machines....so this emotional music fits perfectly in todays state of the world...we don´t life in a romantic world full of nature, love, peace and happiness, we life in a cold hard machines and computer loaded unpersonal world...so who wants to sing about flowers and birds and call it emotional??? huh...

why is the music not on mtv etc, somebody said....maybe because electronic music is mainly done in the underground, by small independent labels, distributions etc...no majors involved, no airplay....it´s that simple....
there are so many artists around the world making a living from electronic music and you will never ever even heard of them....sure there´s alot of bullshit and crap around, as in any other genre as well...but there´s a whole different world that you obviously never discovered...
sorry, don´t want to offend anybody, i am just sick of people talking about electronic music and the only artists they know are the obvious ones from the charts...that sucks...
peace

[horseface]

Wow...

Do people really like yet another interchangable cock with a guitar and a grossly inflated ego, churning out the same 'me too', uninspired wholesome old rubbish for years on end?



Of course they do. They love it.

This question can be asked of every genre out there. I, for instance, don't like anything with acoustic guitars. It bores me silly. Something about the sound aggravates me. Especially angsty girls trying to be Alanis Morissette clones.

I don't care about how good the musicianship is. If it doesn't catch my ear, move me or excite me in any way, you may as well be twanging your dong on a desk.

Problem is, there is tired grey noise in every genre and being on the outside looking in makes it hard to see through that noise. Everything just seems the same. If you're willing to explore, you can find the roses amongst the thorns. I'm sure I could find some plank spankers that I'd enjoy were I to look a little deeper, but the crap out there makes it a little off putting.



If electronic is simply a fashionable passing trend, it's been a passing trend for 30 years now...

[horseface]

Oh, and the reason it's not played on MTV or on the radio in America is because America is infatuated with image, rather than the actual music itself. The Prodigy are the only real big electronic act to get a lot of airplay in Yankland due to their stageshow and making sure people could see them from the start. America needs something to look at, it seems. It needs live gigs and touring. It gets frightened and can't trust or enjoy something if there's no pretty face to look at. Heck, what if the people making that music is ugly? Then what would they do?

Funny, eh?



Not the case in Europe, though. They can enjoy music for what it is, rather than the image.

As a side note, electronic based bands are now realising that they can gain popularity over here by having a band to tour with, even though they're a 1 or 2 piece studio based setup. Air and Beck use the same band for live shows and Trent Reznor has some monkeys on guitars for people to look at, so it seems like a band rather than just somebody in a studio with gear.

[Reptil]

Originally Posted by auxpot

.........it´s definitily a music that has a rather cold, dark and intense mood coming from the minds of the machines....so this emotional music fits perfectly in todays state of the world...we don´t life in a romantic world full of nature, love, peace and happiness, we life in a cold hard machines and computer loaded unpersonal world...so who wants to sing about flowers and birds and call it emotional??? huh...
..........

yes, parties on industry complexes, driving home with some friends with a Carl Craig tune on the car radio.
passing cranes and big metal things, open spaces, rusted pipes and wheels.

good memories !

[Reptil]

Originally Posted by forgetmeknots

if you have not heard fourtet then check them out.
Stellar stuff, with minimal gear (like a soundblaster card), really shows what a creative engineer/producer can achieve.
http://www.myspace.com/fourtetkieranhebden

forgot about that one LOL
I think I got Prawn somewhere. (I believe it's called that, terrible with names )
thanks


oh yeah : -) "No more mosquitos" it used to bug my girlfriend

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by horseface

...the reason it's not played on MTV or on the radio in America is because America is infatuated with image, rather than the actual music itself.

American advertising agencies are the ones infatuated with image. Unfortunately they now dictate most of what music gets exposed here on radio, tv and to a growing degree the concert stage.

[horseface]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

American advertising agencies are the ones infatuated with image. Unfortunately they now dictate most of what music gets exposed here on radio, tv and to a growing degree the concert stage.

Maybe so, but now the majority of people crave it and can't live without it.

As a randomish sidenote, I actually happen to like the facelessness of Electronic. I can have as many entities as I like and nobody really knows that all these really different tracks in different genres were done by one and the same person. I'm totally free to experiment and do what the heck I like.

[supernova]

Seems like some folks here are pissing on electronic music because all they can think of is the basic loopy four to the floor cheesy track that they just happen to hear on the poppy radio station when they get their coffee in the morning.

Hey, I hate that sh*t too. Too much candy is bad for your teeth and very annoying.

From my personal experience, coming from a classical music background (I cut my teeth at Juilliard where I did learn solfege and music theory) to beats and the wonderful world of gear, I can safely say that there are enough genres and talented folks out there producing great music to appeal to all folks. Even my dad, an 80 year old retired professional violinist, understands and appreciates electronic music.

The problem is that we don't hear the good stuff, only the cheese and if you are a musician with discerning tastes (like many of us on this site), you may throw out the baby with the bathwater.

[Dave Peck]

Just another voice here to chime in on the point that there is a lot more to 'electronic music' than just the narrow genre of 'dance music'. In fact, I have been patching synths and composing electronic music for over 30 years and I have never created anything that might be thought of as 'dance music'. It's not a conscious decision, I just don't have those types of creative ideas popping into my head.

A few examples of electronic music that are not dance stuff:

1. Bob O mentioned Robert Rich, and I second the motion. I've seen several of his live shows and they are absolutely amazing. Really beautiful exotic music that creates a distinct mood. I recommend his CDs "The Seven Veils" and "Lithosphere" as starting points. Info is here: http://www.robertrich.com/

2. Some of Brian Eno's work. His more recent CDs are more mellow and more song oriented, like "Drawn From Life" and "Just Another Day on Earth".

3. The "Bladerunner" score by Vangeles.

4. If you want really catchy pop music with a solid verse/chorus/etc format, two recent CDs by Erasure are full of very catchy tunes. Check out "Cowboy" and "Nightbird". Well written and well produced.

5. There is an entire website devoted to electronic music that is not dance oriented - www.electro-music.com. Soem of the stuff there is more experimental or eclectic, some is more mellow and abstract, some is dramatic and film-score-ish, etc. Shameless plug - You can also hear some examples of my stuff at the site, here: http://electro-music.com/catalog/pro...products_id/40
There are some short audio clips at the bottom of the page that give an idea of the type of electronic music I've been doing.

DP

[alfonso]

Electronic music is such a large container that can't be used to define a genre, a school or whatever. It's a term that has been used by critics and journalists during almost a century now to express the most different things...

Anyway, I would like to attempt a reduction and find something that gives a sense to this term. It can't be technical, today all music is electronic music somehow when it goes in a medium, don't think that "classical" music is immune of some electronic process of some sort.

I think that electronic music has to be considered a mental approach to the production of sound, basically the need to explore the sound conceptually and to work out a control on the very low level components of the sound itself.

This has been done mostly with electronic circuits, but, in my opinion, the procedure of "preparing" a piano shares the same philosophy. How similar can be the sound of a piano whose strings have been covered with some other metallic elements to the processing of a piano sound with a frequency shifter (not a pitch shifter), basically the need to "tweak" the sound is what could give a common sense to all the incarnations of electronic music.

Well, you might say that Madonna's "Ray of Light" CD is an electronic music product, well in a certain sense it is for sure, but the Massive Attack stuff it's much more electronic, not because or what has been used, but because of the creative goals and the aesthetical sense of their work.


It's not what everyone needs though, as a musician I went through many things, I'm actually an electronic musician, in the sense I mentioned before and because of my deep involvement in sound synthesis and timbral explorations, but you could see me with a bottleneck guitar playing the delta blues (you'll find that sound too in my works) if in a certain situation, or jam some heavy rock-fusion with other people, but what's sure you'll never see me use some presets of some sort, not even in acoustic instruments.

[Reptil]

just like the term "dance" was stuck on housetechnoteknobreakbrokenbeatjungledrumnbas sacidelectrowhatever in the late nineties. For me there is electronic dance music (a wider bucket) and "dance", a label.
suckers (ahum marketing ppl. some journalists and some numbskull radio jocks) just need labels to recognise something good. listening and going by their instincts and feeling for them is not an option, but hey, I don't give a f.

Do you?

[Reptil]

I think that electronic music has to be considered a mental approach to the production of sound, basically the need to explore the sound conceptually and to work out a control on the very low level components of the sound itself.

IMO you're close there to something really true.

[ImJohn]

Originally Posted by henryrobinett

No. Nobody likes it at all.

Actually everybody likes it . . . it's just that most people don't realize they are listening to it.

John L Rice

[JohnNy C]

Electronic music is a source of expression unlike that of the standard Guitar and Drums approach. The sonic possibilities that can be had by programing a synth and mangling samples are literally endless. And every day artists get more and more creative. Will certain types of electronic music catch on with the mainstream? Of course not. But if you listen to the radio and what the mainstream population are listening to, you will notice that more styles of music are being accepted today then ever before. So, I believe electronic music has a very bright future.

[ImJohn]

Originally Posted by JohnNy C

The sonic possibilities that can be had by programing a synth and mangling samples are literally endless.

(The following is my own humble opinion :)

And that is part of the growing 'problem' with synthesizers . . . pretty much any sound can be created and the limitations are becoming fewer and fewer. Why is that a problem? Because limitations and working with them are what makes things interesting. (not just for music, but life in general)

Synths were more interesting when they were mono and duo phonic and there was no MIDI or digital preset recall. Sure, not always good for live performances but sometimes better. Nowadays people focus too much on getting synths and samplers to sound like other instruments. I'd rather see and hear a keyboardist dial up a close approximation of a steel drum sound on an original minimoog and play a solo with it than hear a perfectly sampled version used.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE synths, old and new, but the more we try to eliminate limitations, the deeper we put ourselves into 'the box' and thinking outside of it will become more and more a lost 'art'.

I could go on and on about this but I wont.

John L Rice

[alfonso]

Originally Posted by ImJohn

(The following is my own humble opinion :)

Synths were more interesting when they were mono and duo phonic and there was no MIDI or digital preset recall. Sure, not always good for live performances but sometimes better. Nowadays people focus too much on getting synths and samplers to sound like other instruments.

I'd be more optimistic....what you say is related to an older phase ('82-'95) but now there is the following of that "synthetic era", synth languages are something on their own, the flourishing of VA together with the new forms of synthesis like the granular or the waveshaping are expression of an original path.

Originally Posted by ImJohn

I'd rather see and hear a keyboardist dial up a close approximation of a steel drum sound on an original minimoog and play a solo with it than hear a perfectly sampled version used.

John L Rice

Emerson?

[LewisWu]

I think that the statement made about most people not realizing that they are listening to electronic music is pretty fair. Also, that various genres being lumped into "dance" music is also true... and I am almost certain that most individuals couldn't tell you the difference between techno and tekno without googling it

I mean that nobody has a holodeck or a band that travels around with them playing theme music as they walk/run/jump or dance.. that would be really weird, cool at first, but weird in the long run.

and there is plenty of elecrtonic music that is undanceable... for most... except for people who are into modern dance... i don't know, I've never tried to dance to ambient music