I've been spending a few hours enjoying this site: Ishkur's guide to Electronic Music. It's rude, ironic, opinionated and really quite funny. But it provides a fascinating insight into the development of electronic music, and traces stylistic strands and influences across such genres as house, hip hop, disco, jungle, dub and numerous ludicrous subcategories (booty bass and terrorcore to name but two).
Many of the inferences and deliniations will no doubt be highly contested by dance afficionados, but to do that is to miss the point. It documents the chemical reaction of culture, youth, media, politics and creativity over the dawn of the electronic age, and highlights key figures, moments and places in the history of electronic music. It also provides numerous audio samples to let you hear for yourself.
The funny thing is that I seemed to come to electronic music from completely the other end. I've grown up with the pop-ified version of electronic music: only the most accessible, catchy material that made it out of the clubs and onto radio (mine was a relatively innocent childhood!) But I didn't necessarily hear anything I definitely wanted to emulate. My musical training was classical and rock & pop. Guitars and keyboards and verse-chorus-bridge stuff.
I first developed an interest in making electronic music when I discover the sequencing software Logic Audio while studying music at uni. It just seemed to make sense, much more than written scores (I've always been poor at sightreading).
The interesting thing is that most of the electronic music I've made has not been consciously imitating certain artists or style. I had no idea that the drum loop I was using under that synth line meant I was making a breakbeat record. Or that adding reverb to that patch made this section sound like epic eurotrance. So it added a kind of naivety, but also a kind of freedom. You just make the music that sounds good to you, and don't worry about whether it's cool, or whether it's been done before. I wonder whether that stands in your favour if you want to get your music noticed? Does it help to "know" the genre you are working in? Or does it just make you seize up, discarding every idea that sounds a little like something else, because you're on a mission to make something original?
I have to say though, I think my favourite genre in this whole list is what he calls "VGM". Video Game Music. Created using the audio chips from Commodore 64s and ZX spectrums, this music was probably the music I listened to more than any other in my youth, and still creates a soft nostalgic feeling when I hear it. You can hear that influence quite strongly in much of my own electronic music. Go listen: it's on the bottom left of the Techno category.
And another great example of this kind of music I discovered today (on Spotify), listen to this.
Rave on, ravers, as my dad used to say.
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