Minority Rule II

83 posts in this topic

Posted

I feel like calling anything musical a disgrace to music is going a bit far. Music isn't supposed to be a prestigious, elitist description in my view; if it has sounds organized to provoke a reaction, it's music.

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Posted

Although I do enjoy listening to dubstep, I do hold a neutral stance regarding this point.

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Posted

its like almost all things--there will be songs youll like, songs youre ok with, and songs you dont care about or really cant stand. the bottom line is how many of each the genre has for you. and hell, it varies from artist to artist. in my case, country and rap/thingsrelatedtorapthaticantdifferentiatewell mostly fall into the last two categories, though there are still some songs im ok with.

 

things like techo, dubstep, and certain japaese bands tend to have a general sound that just fuses together, where the overall sound is something i like, but about ten songs of the same feel later, its not all that great, as nothing winds up standing out to me in the end. so the songs that are really different from the majority of that artists stuff tend to be what i like, in those cases.

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Posted

That's pretty much all music, though you're more talking about electronic music since the current topic is about it.

 

Actual techno is actually pretty rare; there are pretty much no mainstream examples of it I can think of. I went to a club that had a night dedicated to techno and it was actually really more percussion oriented. A lot of things people call "techno" tend to be trance, house, jungle, pop, etc. Pretty much anything that isn't actually techno. For instance, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYxT9GM0fQ, Sandstorm, is actually trance, despite how super electronic sounding it is. During the first wave of electronic music fanaticism in the US, people called anything that sounded electronic "techno", to the point at which it literally stopped meaning anything in the mainstream media, similar to how everyone calls gun magazines "clips" and any pistol is a "glock". JPop is actually a subgenre of house, for instance.

 

In the second wave, Madonna, I think, coined "Electronica", but since she was so painfully ignorant of the scene (I believe she tried to claim she invented trance), she didn't know that electronic dance music was already called just that: electronic dance music, or EDM. It didn't actually mean anything from the start; it's just EDM. So techno and electronica became these buzz words that people just used. I was talking about music I like with my friend, and he mentioned that he couldn't really get into Daft Punk's stuff because it was more "techno-y", and I was like nooooo. Daft Punk are notorious for their house music.

 

I have a lot of different kinds of music, but the only techno that I have I don't really listen to, because it can be super ultra abrasive sounding (Solar Quest - Acid Air Raid) weird or kind of dull (Monolake - Index) but then there's some that are cool, but I can't really appreciate just listening to. (

) I feel like some tracks really require that dark club scene where you're dancing with a bunch of strangers and the music is drowning out absolutely everything other than your will to dance... That being said, I haven't been to too many raves/clubs, but that's my impression. Most of my techno is actually from Pryda or Denki Groove, because they do some of that too, and JTek can be pretty great (
). Sometimes it's hard to tell what is actually techno, because there's abrasive house too, but from the percussion you can probably tell. (
) The hi-hat makes it really obvious, for instance.

 

And I understand your sentiment about some music just kind of running together and sounding homogeneous. I once went to a club where they were playing Drum & Bass, and it was literally the same drum breaks with slightly different vocals and instrumentals. Like, from a dance perspective it was alright for the first couple hours, but then I was like man, these are a lot of breaks. And a lot of beats. And it's not even breakbeat! It's Jungle. And I run into people who think Drum & Bass is Dubstep, and there are a bunch of subgenres of Dubstep now like Drumstep and Jumpstep and Chillstep and whatever, but I'm just like screw it, I don't even listen to this genre that often. I listen to the stuff that sticks out and doesn't run together with everything, because pretty much all music can fall into similar traps. With pop and anything pop inspired, for instance, there's the intro, chorus, verse, bridge, outro fade etc. thing. It's more of a structure issue, and it's one that everyone enjoys, so it's pretty much everywhere now. Mainstream music gets a lot of its hooks, methods, and quirks from electronic music, because electronic music is always changing and evolving, so unless the artist is actually innovative, music on the radio nowadays really directly leeches from EDM in some way or another. I heard a track on the radio that used sidechain compression, (Which French House helped propel into EDM IIRC) and a huge amount of pop uses the house beat now, but then it gets crazy and starts using filters and effects and modulated synths and looping, and I found it ridiculous when I heard a track that used the house beat, chopped vocals, and then a nerfed bass drop with crazy filters. I was like, this track embodies everything about pop that is unoriginal, but it's still pretty catchy.

.

Anyway my point is, if it starts to sound generic, it might be generic, and your mileage may vary. My "home" genre of House suffers from this a lot too, and I hear a lot of generic tracks mostly made up of just the house beat that's way too minimal that doesn't have enough variation or funk factor. I can get into a deep, groovy track, (

) and I'm patient and don't really care too much about the whole four-minute-track-that-instantly-throws-you-into-the-dancey-part kind of style, but some people just figure they'll let the loops handle themselves, and don't do anything to capture my interest. Since EDM is more produced for dancing, it seems to suffer the problem of formulaity a lot more than other genres, because musicians in the genres tend to consider that people will be mixing his or her tracks as a DJ, so there can be a lot of filler in there.

 

Dubstep isn't subtle at all and likes to get to the drop around the 30-40 second mark. It might not be that exact range, but if you look at the time codes, I guess because of how the bar structures are and because people like to play it at 140BPM, the drops happen around all the same time, because it wants to be loud as soon as possible. The tracks I listed are good about not being ultra generic; that's pretty much why I linked them.

 

We haven't heard much from anyone who isn't neutral or for the subject, btw. Interesting...

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Posted

listened to the first one in that post, now listening to the second one.

 

i must admit, im kainda guilty of the "everything is techno" umbrella terming, but i think thats a side effect of not really delving deeply into the genre or its cousins to learn what they all are, and the typical differences between them.

 

though i feel that i could probably pick out true techno a good portion of the time, using only one criteria: is it adding new sounds and rhythms way too slowly for my taste? in my experiences, that one is usually a yes :/ about 30% of the time, i think, they tend to also use some really grating thing as its starting sound, so it goes on and on and on throughout the whole song, without really changing. but that could just be that sort of monotony (or rather, "letting the loops handle themselves"?) you mentioned people falling into there.

 

just watched ken ishii's bit, thats about how id see techno being really good in--it makes a slick BGM, especially for that sort of surreal, illogical scene. things that generate that sort of feel for me i tend to like, too.

 

listening to noise maker--some of its catchy, and its progressing well enough for my expectations, but i can tell what you mean by the rhythm....but a large majority of what they were using initially make me cringe pretty hard at the beginning. its mellowed out to where im ok with it, but jeegus.

 

Dubstep isn't subtle at all and likes to get to the drop around the 30-40 second mark. It might not be that exact range, but if you look at the time codes, I guess because of how the bar structures are and because people like to play it at 140BPM, the drops happen around all the same time, because it wants to be loud as soon as possible. The tracks I listed are good about not being ultra generic; that's pretty much why I linked them.

this made me laugh pretty hard. the fact that theyre around that range a lot is just...

 

i think i could dig house and EDM and the like, but techno has been a lot more touchy for me. id probably go for dubstep songs more than techno, i think. that freaking high hat beat just. so abused, imo.

 

and im not against dubstep, im just too underexposed to really make any arguments in any particular direction. hell, i could say that about almost all genres. im more of an artist person, i guess. browsing by genre just gets sketchy, mostly because of, like you said, people tossing some genres in with others and just eargh. i can imagine someone liking "techno" for years, only to find out it was actually EDM or house the whole time. yaoi/yuri is a similar sort of blanket term. really, we could just go on and on and on.

 

 

im gonna use wiki and youtube to go listen to a bunch of dubstep (randomly picking artists) and try to formulate some sort of opinion/argument/solid feelings on it.

 

 

 

 

OI, SILVER, RECOMMEND ME SOME THINGS :3

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Posted

Well, I'm going to respond more to stuff you said a bit later, but EDM just refers to any electronic music; it's the accepted blanket term. If it's not for dancing, just call it electronic music. I mean what would you blanket a bunch of different genres of organic acoustic music with? Probably just acoustic music. It's not even really all that necessary, because blanket terms are used in pretty specific situations I think, but it's good for just referring to electronic music as a whole.

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Posted

The stage will end at 11pm tonight, March 4th.

As it is 7:40am as of my posting this, the stage will end approximately 15 hours and 20 minutes from the time of post.

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Posted

I'll concede that the wording of that question was a bit strong, but its an actual sentiment I've heard from people who aren't really into EDM when they listen to stuff like Skrillex or Borgore (Probably the most pronounced example of 'brostep' you can find. I cant actually tell if the artist is doing it semi-satirically, its a poe's law thing). Perhaps a better wording would have been "Do you think modern dubstep is giving a bad impression of EDM" or more generally I could ask about your thoughts on the direction of modern/mainstream electronic music overall.

 

Personally, I actually really enjoy dubstep, but I really only listen to 'brostep' either as an in-joke with friends or when I need to listen to something ridiculously heavy/fast/upbeat. Regardless of your thoughts on the quality of the music, it really does accomplish its goal of making you want to dance to it. But I've always enjoyed EDM - its been the main thing I've listened to my whole life - and really dubstep is the part I listen to least and probably feel the worst about listening to, because I honestly dislike the culture and the way its worked into the mainstream. It seems to lose some of its quality in exchange for marketability and hype.

Sahaqiel likes this

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Posted

tru dat emso

 

The good thing about how hyped it is is that since now that the market is saturated with the stuff, it's got good examples to go along with the bad. It has definitely burnt itself out pretty quick though, and I think it happened right around when big companies like Microsoft used it in their ads [for Internet Explorer, though this is irrelevant]. Right around then people probably felt like it had lost its underground edge.

 

and then trap

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Posted

6 hours remain in this stage.

 

You may wait until the end of the time limit to vote, and I will be lenient,

but keep in mind that if you do not vote, you will likely be kicked from the game.

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Posted

i actually picked some random dubstep artists from wikipedia and listened randomly on youtube. mostly picking things that sounded cool and not really "look im trying too hard". for the most part, i was cool with it (they wound up having very drastically different feels from each other), and then i hit skrillex. i dunno i if just grabbed three bad songs in a row or what, but they drove me up a wall fairly quickly. it was like the high hat beat of techno annoying, but using one-word sound clips with unattractive voices in that same frequency of usage as that high hat was just....

 

it also had this pervading aura of "look how cool i am". i dont pick that aura up often. maybe the closest ive heard to that aura is the feeling i get when owl city comes on the radio. i mean, how many rainbows and sunshine can you cram into one song?! dunno why, but owl city kainda disgusts me. too cheesy or something. and skrillex left me with a similarly foul taste in my mouth :/ again, maybe it was just those songs (by all means, if someone is a fan of the dude, link me something good) but i just want feeling what he was dishing out.

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Posted

So we all agree that Emma is wrong and should be lynched?

Chimetals and emsomniac like this

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Posted (edited)

by all means, if someone is a fan of the dude, link me something good

So I tried to find something from him that I remembered liking, and then I just thought: "wait, all of this is actually just shit". BUT I SHALL TRY

 

I guess the iconic Skrillex song is

though. I have no idea where his fascination with injecting soundbytes from random youtube videos came from, but this is where it started.

Of more recent stuff, I actually kinda like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJVmu6yttiw, and the music video is pretty funny.

Also, this remix of

isn't half bad, though I kinda feel like in some ways its just a butchered version of the original. Like it really didn't get better at all when he turned it into dubstep.

 

I can really point out a million things that I dislike about skrillex, but instead I'm just going to link to some other dubsteppy stuff that isn't terrible.

 

First off,

 

Nero does some really great stuff, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gb3faOzvBkis well done.

 

Probably one of my favorite songs, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imixg3jrJS8. Bonus points because the original artist is Skrillex's girlfriend.

 

EDIT: Okay, this last one isn't dubstep, but I got lost in youtube watching novation launchpad videos and I puppying love Madeon so much,

Edited by emsomniac (see edit history)

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Posted

3 hours

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Posted

Jeez emso I already linked In For The Kill.......

jk. Incidentally, here is a live mashup of Skrillex's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd1v-iv5uA0, which is literally just using a mixer; the crossfader and EQ knobs. I think it's pretty impressive to look at, but Pop Culture is probably the craziest live mashup I've seen. The guy knows how to make a bunch of stuff come together and sound great on a launchpad.

 

i actually picked some random dubstep artists from wikipedia and listened randomly on youtube. mostly picking things that sounded cool and not really "look im trying too hard". for the most part, i was cool with it (they wound up having very drastically different feels from each other), and then i hit skrillex. i dunno i if just grabbed three bad songs in a row or what, but they drove me up a wall fairly quickly. it was like the high hat beat of techno annoying, but using one-word sound clips with unattractive voices in that same frequency of usage as that high hat was just....

 

it also had this pervading aura of "look how cool i am". i dont pick that aura up often. maybe the closest ive heard to that aura is the feeling i get when owl city comes on the radio. i mean, how many rainbows and sunshine can you cram into one song?! dunno why, but owl city kainda disgusts me.

 

I think you mean the "bro" feel. As in, he does brostep; that is what they call the genre Skrillex does. I've heard bro house before, and it's kind of the same thing. Pretty much kind of add this air of "look how hardcore and bro I am" into the track. Not really sure what constitutes it, but you can pretty much tell when you hear it. As fratty and douchey as it sounds, I still find some of it pretty catchy.

 

Owl City is a different story. As far as I can tell, if I were to attach an image to his sound, it's like he's someone saying that he is a nerd by wearing big glasses. Trying to sound dreamy but just ending up looking like a douche.

 

CHIMETALS/SAHA CONVERSATION:

I should clarify, techno doesn't necessarily have a house beat; if it does, and falls within the BPM, it's tech house. The house beat is in 4/4 time, has a kick drum on every beat, with hi hats or some other softer percussion on the offbeat, and a snare, snaps, claps, etc. on the first and third beats. It's notoriously catchy.

 

I should also clarify that there is a big difference between "letting the loops handle themselves" and effective looping. You see--and please bear with me--in actual funk music, there is this thing called vamping. Like, not electronic, just the guitars and drums and stuff. Vamping is repeating a simple, catchy musical phrase over and over, and conventional wisdom of the mainstream will say that repetition is a bad thing, but from a funk standpoint, when it's funky, it's amazing, obviously. When written on sheet music, it says "Vamp until _____" over a short segment. It becomes incredibly groovy and catchy and danceable, which is why funk was [and still is] so popular. In pop, there's the equivalent "riff", the catchy instrumental part they bring in a lot. In electronic music, this is brought through looping. I will bring up as an example, Daft Punk's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDBgbFk2d-A, Around the World, Stardust's [only track] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgAJWQCC7L0, Dave Armstrong's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUdgkJMZ2No, Together's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzzJB1oh7qE, and Sebastien Leger's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhHhqEA9Jac.

 

To me, these tracks demonstrate they know to an unnerving degree, how to make someone dance, and yet they're mostly the same loops played for the duration of the track; especially Musique and We Are. If you let the sound overtake you and you listen to all the layers and really get into it, that stuff's great. It's thumping, energetic, funky, and it holds on to the good parts just long enough and introduces variation when it's necessary. What I mean by just kind of letting the loops handle themselves is with a track like Jay J and Chris Lum's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI-vqgGMJuM. It's an 8:08 long track, the vocal doesn't start proper until 2:52, and the hook (the catchy part) doesn't happen until 4:15 and sticks around until around 6:30, and the rest is kind of filler. It's part of a genre called "deep house", so most of it tries to be groovy rather than funky, so you really have to be in a specific state of mind to listen the whole thing through and enjoy every bit of it, especially since the filler parts are just for mixing between tracks. The problem is when you chain a bunch of these tracks together and end up with a listening session that's mostly filler for mixing, played side by side. The guys who made Using You! probably didn't intend for people to listen to everything up to 2:52 and everything after 6:30, because those spaces are meant to be entirely intros or outros as a DJ is mixing into the "good parts".

 

So maybe I'm being a bit unfair since I have tracks mostly for listening and bouncing around to, and it wasn't the artist's intention to bore me for two and a half minutes, but sometimes artists abuse the percussion they should use for a short mixing intro nearly the whole time without doing anything interesting with the instrumentals. Have the same hi-hat throughout the entire track? Fine by me, as long as it's awesome. And of course, there are many different contexts from which something can be awesome, so again, what works for some doesn't work for others. It's my personal preference that the parts of the track meant for mixing should also double as an intro or outro if they're standalone.

 

Incidentally, Skrillex is kinda' bad at mixing.

 

So to answer your questions with the points from the spoiler tagged thing, that's why Beethoven was actually a Brostep artist.

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