like to talk ELECTRO-the genre of dance music

lord-b · Joined: Apr 18, 2004 Posts: 2 Location: australia

I've got to write a CD review for school and I need to talk with someone to help me put my finger on what is the unmistakable sound of 'electro' which I know as a particular genre of dance music. Any thoughts?

I study contempory music (technical production) and have bought a mac G4 with pro-tools, reason and live. I'm just getting my head around it and would love to talk about recording electronic music or any music for that matter.

Have a good one!! Might here from you later.

jkn · Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 469 Location: La Porte, IN, USA

Here's a couple of sources for describing electro:

From All Music Guide - http://www.allmusic.com (search for "electro" in styles) - the page on All Music lists important artists and tracks.

mosc · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 10:16 am Post subject:

Welcome to our site. We're very happy you are here. welcome

Whatever electro is, it is a subset of electro-music. What electro-music is, well that's another topic. Wink

I get lots of people lecturing me about electro. It seems some people know exactly what it is and they insist I stick to that definition here on electro-music.com. I have even had people refuse to participate at this web forum because the name contains the word electro. Rolling Eyes

The trouble is, these strong-feeling people have differing ideas about what electro is. They love and hate different things.

Beware of definitions that define music by the names of artists.

Beware statements like THIS GROUP started it all. That certainly implies ignorance of who or whatever went before.

That said, you have to write a paper and writing is a different game. In that case, it's prefectly appropriate to quote sources like JKN just provided.

When you get your review finished, please post it here. You might as well get it published!!! Wink

(BTW - I'm an editor around here and I removed your Calendar Date. That's supposed to be used for announcements of concerts and other events.)

mosc · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 10:23 am Post subject:

Seriously, I think most people who use the term electro would say it is music with a constant beat in 4/4 time and phrases of 16 beats. The sounds are usually electronic sounds, often simple ones. There are usually no words or singing. Sometimes big thumping drumlike sounds are heard. It is associated with Germany primarilly.

jkn · Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 469 Location: La Porte, IN, USA

In the more general sense I can definitely see electro being short for electronic and used in the sense it's used around here. As far as I'm concerned - genre's are great for general descriptions as long as everyone agrees on what those descriptions are - and no one does... Wink

The very cool thing about this community - is no one cares.

Since lord-b mentioned "unmistakable sound of electro" - I assumed he meant it from the primarily 80's All Music guide definition.

Techno is a very similar one - one person considers *anything* with a keyboard in it as techno - while someone else will say it's only written in Detroit... ha.

Wow - for once I disagree with mosc... (this is rare so far...):

mosc · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 12:11 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 2:19 am Post subject:

Electro? OK... do you want the US version.. or the european version?

You have actually two different trends going on here.. disco and headmusic.
Electro seems also later to have been confused with brit new wavish synth pop too.
Rythmically, early electro mixed ideas from euro sequencer music, disco, funk and reggae. The actual sounds were pretty much defined by the low end japanese gear from Roland and Yamaha and others. At the time.. 80-83, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic was also seen as part of something new and electroish. However, the french label Egg released in the last half of the 70s a series of LPs by various artists.. like Tim Blake which was very popular in the underground clubs. Some of this was used reggae dubstyle as actual dance music. A great example of this music is Crystal machine by Tim Blake. This breed was very much an underground thing... but it was huge. You would see partys in the style of Koolaid acid tests and with huge soundsystems. From what I saw back then.. the US version of this scene was mainly black and very innocent.

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 2:31 am Post subject:

Electronic music fanzines in the late 70s started to talk about something called electronic boogie, eurobeat and elektroboogie. This is in fact the european sequencer music by artists like Tangerine Dream, KS, Michael Hoenig, Manuel Gøttsching and others. Blend this music with disco and lowend gear.. and you get the US breed of electro. From a european perspective, this was basically hiphop using real instruments.. Shocked

( yes.. synths!)

jkn · Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 469 Location: La Porte, IN, USA

This is what's so great about genre names... here with electro - we have at least 3, maybe 4 perfectly reasonable definitions - each can be definited as having an "unmistakable sound" and all are slightly different.

I think the "electroclash" reference - the most recent thing - I agree that seems to be more confused with new wave stuff. (Well, whatever new wave was... grin.)

Ok - lets do IDM next. Smile

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 6:24 am Post subject:

Well.. most of the electroclash stuff I have heard is more or less a mix of elements known from bands like human league and similar early 80s britsynth pop bands.. and then with a mix of bauhaus and early 80s brit industrial pop

that said.. some of the electroclash music is far more entertaining than any of this ever was Very Happy

IDM.. what is that?

Very Happy

jkn · Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 469 Location: La Porte, IN, USA

Your electroclash description is great. That does about sum it up.

IDM? I don't know. I think it's something about dancing. Wink

seraph · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 7:29 am Post subject:

jkn · Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 469 Location: La Porte, IN, USA

It's intelligent dance music according to just about every source I've run across - stemming from the list hosted on Hyperreal many many moons ago. Can't remember if Warp's Artificial Intelligence comp spurred the name or not - if I remember right it does.

What it really stands for or means has been debated a trillion times on a number of lists. I used to be on the IDM list - couldn't stand it. Flame wars, etc... Not my cup of tea.

The best part about IDM having "dance" in it - is that the vast majority of what IDM became later is totally undanceable. I have that Artificial Intelligence comp - it does seem a bit of a pivot point album as far as definining something. Not that there wasn't stuff before it, but it sort of cemented the sound a bit and started other artists expanding that sound.

On the discogs listing - the comment from a user pretty much explains it: http://www.discogs.com/release/549 - only thing that's missed is that one of the artists is Richie Hawtin under a pseudo.

Nothing better than overanalyzing the importance of non-important things.

mosc · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 9:43 am Post subject:

We have a thread about IDM already. See:
http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-537.html

I like IDM quite a bit. I don't care very much for regular beat oriented stuff which would include almost all dance music. Rolling Eyes

paul e. · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 10:29 am Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 10:51 am Post subject:

Ahhh, glitch. I didn't realize that it is a genre. Well, glitch is nothing new. We were doing it in the late 60s. We didn't call it anything.

paul e. · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 10:59 am Post subject:

'everything old is new again'

the 'new new'

seems to me that the 90's and the 2000's have seen all of the original electronic tools/concepts made readily available,and all in one place, and so these orignial ideas/concepts are 're-discovered'...and sometimes people believe they have in fact found a new thing[due to a lack of knowledge of the near past]...

but what does make the difference now, is that all of the original ideas/concepts/techniques can now be utilised in a recombinant fashion...all the techniques can be used all at once, all in the same DAW session file....

so the new electronic music is really the original elecrtonic music but is characterized by the propensity to recombine the original techniques into new-ish hybridized forms of electronic music

mosc · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 11:24 am Post subject:

petersykes · Joined: Apr 24, 2004 Posts: 2 Location: London, UK

Electro has its own unique sound, that's about the only thing that you can be sure of when trying to describe what it is.

I often ask non electro people how much electro they have listened to when they say that its a cold soulless sound because on the contrary, electro is a warm sound.

Its the warm basslines and warm beats that make the sound unique. Whether people in general like the sound, it will always have people thinking "wow! that's different!".