Originally posted by sg_57
Let's see.... Vangelis, Kraftwek, YMO, Jean-Michel Jarre, Giorgio Moroder and to an extent early Depeche Mode/Vince Clark. All multi-million sellers... (well, maybe not Kraftwerk) I could go on.
The only talent in Depeche Mode was Alan Wilder. Gahan has a range of 4 notes, Fletcher was stage filler and Gore... Well, I'll just point to his solo venture and leave it there.
To your point about timing, the groove functions on DAW's have improved. I'm really not trying to pump my shit, here, but the last few (16 if memory serves) measures on the track below are strictly quantized to 1/16 while the measures preceding them have a groove applied to them.
The mix is garbage but you should be able to hear the shuffle, if that adds any perspective to the conversation.
Posted by Ishkur on Oct-21-2011 09:06:
quote:
Originally posted by sg_57
I think that over time we can see a pattern of certain things created which having staying power, what I was ranting about (since this is the thread for it) is the fact that software has enabled people with arguably very little qualification to make technically perfectly acceptable music which is otherwise devoid of much in lieu of emotional qualities.
This is a curse electronic music has to bear, unfortunately. Blame Apple (or someone) for making machines which were once stubbornly complicated, with arcane programming languages, goofy protocols, indecipherable manuals written in engrish and an almost insurmountable learning curve.... into extremely simple software with out-of-the-box ease of use and a million tutorials just a url away.
The bottleneck of musicianship -- learning the theory, honing the craft, practice and repetition until the scales, chords and melodies become second nature -- has been replaced by machine code and intelligent algorithms that do all the thinking for you, finding the BPMs and key changes and all the boring stuff while you rock out with your cock out.
But this occurs in every tech industry. There are web developers who don't know a single line of html -- Dreamweaver does it for them. There are writers who've never taken an English class -- they got MS Word spellcheck and grammarcheck for that. And, if you can believe it, there are car drivers out there who have no idea what goes on under the hood. In fact, that's probably most of us.
Technology will always gravitate toward simpler user interfaces, allowing everyone to participate. Everything gets smarter, better, more automated, accomplishing things in seconds for the next generation what the previous one had to do manually over several tedious hours. This will never stop. The next generation will always be more privileged than the previous one.
DIY is one of the hallmarks of this scene and remember that its birth came from poor black musicians in Detroit, Chicago and NYC who couldn't afford a studio or session musicians so they purchased these cheap, terrible-sounding Roland boxes from second-hand music stores. They didn't go through the proper channels either, they just made the music they could with the resources they had.
Today's generation are doing the same. We can only hope that the cream rises to the top, but we should never disparage the legions of bedroom fruity tunes compositions. I personally don't care -- it's not like I listen to them. I think there's only about five guys on the DJ Top100 that I actively follow. I personally can't be made to care that they're all that popular. They don't even breach my music consumption sphere, and I'm the fucking music guide guy!!
...wait... I think I wrote about this once before. Ahh, here it is...Posted by stev� on Oct-21-2011 13:51:
quote:
Originally posted by sg_57
Since this is the thread for unpopular opinions, I won't hold back about electronica and club music.
As computers and software keep increasing their foothold and further permeate every aspect of music-making, our global music and DJ culture has steadily been regressing to a state which ultimately is leading our collective asses to some form of idiocracy for supporting it unconditionally.
From the lack of compositional skills, inability to write memorable melodies to total disregard for the basics of arrangement and any innovative ideas or deeper message on the side of the music makers, the public itself has sunk to ever-lower depths of expectations, having now been trained and conditioned to accept those dumbed-down and inferior productions as the standard. There are now audiences who would not know what to do if someone was going to actually play a song with vocals, a proper melodic buildup and was played with real instruments by human beings.
That same public, however reacts extremely well to people going on stage wearing giant masks or other gimmick props (to be fair, Kiss was way ahead of the curve with this one) while presenting simplistic tracks laden with special efx and synchronized to pyrotechnics, cheap thrills that are nonetheless a guarantee to get a rise out of them for a few seconds.
Thousands of years of humans patiently crafting the most exquisite music being made irrelevant by terabytes of beat-matched sample libraries and intelligent software agents turning it all into one gigantic highway lined with perfect samey-looking cars forever. And leaving real musicians completely out of work as no one wants to hire them.
Now of course, it would be unfair to forget the reality that most of this music I am ranting about is in fact designed to be consumed by people under the influence of chemicals, and that the aim of it is to clearly provide a smooth, predictable and appropriately themed endless backdrop to enhance their drug experience without ever 'rocking the boat' or waking them up from their torpor by causing them to think, other than to occasionally tweet about it (in 140 characters or less) or annoy everyone around them by snapping pictures with their new iPhone 4Gs.
Mike Judge arguably was a visionary, and as is the case with most of them had his disruptive movie Idiocracy buried by Fox (who funded it) when it became obvious how incredibly prescient its message was, and that it was hitting a bit too close to home for comfort. This is pretty much what seems to have been happening to the once-lavish, exotic and gorgeously iconoclastic world of dance music.
It all became streamlined, commoditized and defanged into a parody of its once-vibrant sexiness and beautiful energy; but with lots more bass, sharper drum sounds and wondrous synthetizer wooshes than ever before.
That's where young sonic rebels like Skrillex (who everyone loves to hate) can come in and wake people the f*ck up from that complacent status quo with gut-wrenching ugly-ass beats and demented bass lines. The world might just be getting ready for the next generation of electronic punks without guitars.
P.S.: before anyone even points it out, yes there are thousands of very able and extremely talented musicians, composers and practitioners of creative electronic music today, but they aren't very high on the public's radar, and for the most part what they do just doesn't seem to register at all.
man, this post was going great until you said skrillex
Posted by SYSTEM-J on Oct-21-2011 14:50:
quote:
Originally posted by sg_57
Rather than going on about other people's rants, it would be great to hear your unpopular opinions just as well...
Maybe if you'd bothered to read the thread, you'd find a page or two back I was railing against all the shit you just said. I hear this identikit rant so many times I've no idea how you think it's an "unpopular" opinion. It's almost like you're deliberately trying to wind me up.
I don't even know where to begin dissecting all this, but I find it especially ridiculous you cite wabi-sabi of all things in a discussion of electronic music. Yeah, because the melancholy of transience is exactly the aesthetic philosophy I can hear in this:
Posted by nefardec on Oct-21-2011 17:36:
quote:
Originally posted by Ishkur
DIY is one of the hallmarks of this scene and remember that its birth came from poor black musicians in Detroit, Chicago and NYC who couldn't afford a studio or session musicians so they purchased these cheap, terrible-sounding Roland boxes from second-hand music stores. They didn't go through the proper channels either, they just made the music they could with the resources they had.
DIY certainly. poor - well, they were middle class kids, and if they could have illegally downloaded fruity loops back then, I bet they would have.
Posted by pozz on Oct-21-2011 19:32:
quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I find it extremely strange that you judge the health of electronic music based on what the "public" get to hear. Exactly when were large numbers of creative and talented electronic musicians in the public eye in the past?
i don't know, but if i go out to listen to music these days, it means going to a friend's house. there is no venue that plays interesting stuff consistently. there are no lounges that even play chillout forchristsake. (speaking about Toronto)
the mounds of stuff all of us dug up: it's nice to see electronic music alive and well in our collections. too bad that's as widespread as it gets.
the judgment is good. same way you judge the way people of a particular society live: if there is widespread corruption, it does little good to be proud of yourself and small group you may belong to that's brimming with moral goodness.
Posted by cherrybarry on Oct-21-2011 20:01:
Where is the analogue to this in today's scene?
It surely isn't the Ableton live set.
Also, Kraftwerk is overrated.
Posted by Guest on Oct-21-2011 21:38:
quote:
Originally posted by enydo
BRING TWILO BACK TO THE MASSES
OCCUPYTWILO
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Posted by Guest on Oct-21-2011 21:43:
quote:
Originally posted by sg_57
Since this is the thread for unpopular opinions, I won't hold back about electronica and club music.
As computers and software keep increasing their foothold and further permeate every aspect of music-making, our global music and DJ culture has steadily been regressing to a state which ultimately is leading our collective asses to some form of idiocracy for supporting it unconditionally.
From the lack of compositional skills, inability to write memorable melodies to total disregard for the basics of arrangement and any innovative ideas or deeper message on the side of the music makers, the public itself has sunk to ever-lower depths of expectations, having now been trained and conditioned to accept those dumbed-down and inferior productions as the standard. There are now audiences who would not know what to do if someone was going to actually play a song with vocals, a proper melodic buildup and was played with real instruments by human beings.
That same public, however reacts extremely well to people going on stage wearing giant masks or other gimmick props (to be fair, Kiss was way ahead of the curve with this one) while presenting simplistic tracks laden with special efx and synchronized to pyrotechnics, cheap thrills that are nonetheless a guarantee to get a rise out of them for a few seconds.
Thousands of years of humans patiently crafting the most exquisite music being made irrelevant by terabytes of beat-matched sample libraries and intelligent software agents turning it all into one gigantic highway lined with perfect samey-looking cars forever. And leaving real musicians completely out of work as no one wants to hire them.
Now of course, it would be unfair to forget the reality that most of this music I am ranting about is in fact designed to be consumed by people under the influence of chemicals, and that the aim of it is to clearly provide a smooth, predictable and appropriately themed endless backdrop to enhance their drug experience without ever 'rocking the boat' or waking them up from their torpor by causing them to think, other than to occasionally tweet about it (in 140 characters or less) or annoy everyone around them by snapping pictures with their new iPhone 4Gs.
Mike Judge arguably was a visionary, and as is the case with most of them had his disruptive movie Idiocracy buried by Fox (who funded it) when it became obvious how incredibly prescient its message was, and that it was hitting a bit too close to home for comfort. This is pretty much what seems to have been happening to the once-lavish, exotic and gorgeously iconoclastic world of dance music.
It all became streamlined, commoditized and defanged into a parody of its once-vibrant sexiness and beautiful energy; but with lots more bass, sharper drum sounds and wondrous synthetizer wooshes than ever before.
That's where young sonic rebels like Skrillex (who everyone loves to hate) can come in and wake people the f*ck up from that complacent status quo with gut-wrenching ugly-ass beats and demented bass lines. The world might just be getting ready for the next generation of electronic punks without guitars.
P.S.: before anyone even points it out, yes there are thousands of very able and extremely talented musicians, composers and practitioners of creative electronic music today, but they aren't very high on the public's radar, and for the most part what they do just doesn't seem to register at all.
I dont know about you guys but I had to use google's "define: " function several times while reading this beast of a post. Awesome.
Posted by nefardec on Oct-21-2011 21:44:
quote:
Originally posted by cherrybarry
Where is the analogue to this in today's scene?
let's be clear that tangerine dream has very little do with 'today's scene' except that people from today's scene mostly claim to be influenced by them. in terms of 'scenes' they come from a very different world than clubworld or rooftopbarworld.
look into especially drone, noise, industrial, power electronics, coldwave, minimalwave, etc and also some of the shoegazey stuff and la beat music
Posted by Ishkur on Oct-21-2011 21:54:
quote:
Originally posted by cherrybarry
Also, Kraftwerk is overrated.
Kraftwerk did one thing that nobody else did at the time, and that they were better at than anyone else for more than a decade after their peak: Percussion.
They were supreme percussionists. Every electronic musician in the 70s focused on soundscapes, textures, and quirky noises out of atonal monosynths. Kraftwerk were interested in polyrhythms, groove, and headbobbing goodness. It was funky machine music, the first time it ever sounded playful and fun yet not juvenile.
It's no wonder that Kraftwerk's biggest fans were hip hop and electro artists, predominantly black and addicted to their infectious drum loops.
That is Kraftwerk's legacy. They put the 'D' in EDM.
Posted by cherrybarry on Oct-21-2011 22:08:
quote:
Originally posted by Ishkur
Kraftwerk did one thing that nobody else did at the time, and that they were better at than anyone else for more than a decade after their peak: Percussion.
They were supreme percussionists. Every electronic musician in the 70s focused on soundscapes, textures, and quirky noises out of atonal monosynths. Kraftwerk were interested in polyrhythms, groove, and headbobbing goodness. It was funky machine music, the first time it ever sounded playful and fun yet not juvenile.
It's no wonder that Kraftwerk's biggest fans were hip hop and electro artists, predominantly black and addicted to their infectious drum loops.
That is Kraftwerk's legacy. They put the 'D' in EDM.
That's a good point, and I don't doubt that they were influential, but from what I can gather, they also marketed themselves very well. All things equal though, I enjoy the 'other' bands (Neu!, Harmonia, etc.) a bit more.
Posted by cherrybarry on Oct-21-2011 22:26:
quote:
Originally posted by nefardec
let's be clear that tangerine dream has very little do with 'today's scene' except that people from today's scene mostly claim to be influenced by them. in terms of 'scenes' they come from a very different world than clubworld or rooftopbarworld.
Well, what I meant is that no one in electronica (as far as I'm aware) is doing anything bold anymore. It's either Skrillex or regressive disco remixes. And the experimental acts today are mostly copying the Krautrock ethos of the 70's.
And I guess you also touched upon my other complaint about clubworld. There seems to be established notions about what's danceable and what's not. Why can't I go out to a club on the weekends and dance to Berlin school? Why can't we get rid of that annoying 4/4 kick?
Posted by nefardec on Oct-21-2011 23:18:
quote:
Originally posted by cherrybarry
Well, what I meant is that no one in electronica (as far as I'm aware) is doing anything bold anymore. It's either Skrillex or regressive disco remixes. And the experimental acts today are mostly copying the Krautrock ethos of the 70's.
And I guess you also touched upon my other complaint about clubworld. There seems to be established notions about what's danceable and what's not. Why can't I go out to a club on the weekends and dance to Berlin school? Why can't we get rid of that annoying 4/4 kick?
I don't know where you go out, but I ditched that notion a while ago, and there's plenty of alternatives.
Saying that people with synths today are copying krautrock acts from the 70s is like saying that people with electric guitars are copying classic rock acts... of course history is history and influence is influence, but is that a bad thing? That's just the way it is. Novelty for the sake of novelty is no good either. I mean the whole idea that Kraftwerk even had to have a 'band' performance is copying someone too. Their uniform appearance is directly related to uniformed oldies boy bands
Posted by sljiva on Oct-22-2011 00:44:
quote:
Originally posted by cherrybarry
Well, what I meant is that no one in electronica (as far as I'm aware) is doing anything bold anymore. It's either Skrillex or regressive disco remixes. And the experimental acts today are mostly copying the Krautrock ethos of the 70's.
You have an extremely limited viewpoint if you think everyone is copying or emulating krautrock ethos of the 70s and not doing anything fresh.
And the time of boldness in electronic music is gone, dance music alone is already more than 25 years old. We can only hope for some new and interesting arrangements, sound combinations and types of atmospheres.
Posted by SYSTEM-J on Oct-22-2011 03:54:
quote:
Originally posted by cherrybarry
Well, what I meant is that no one in electronica (as far as I'm aware) is doing anything bold anymore.
Brainfeeder.
Posted by sg_57 on Oct-22-2011 05:04:
quote:
Originally posted by Redd
Sorry to single out this one from the other points made, but it made me curious. When you say the publics radar, do you mean the one that has all the mainstream music on it? And where do you see the line between underground/unknown and mainstream go?
Sorry for replying late, but the second question is actually a difficult one to answer, as no matter which way I try and slice it there are no absolutes, only very personal opinions.
From an overall perspective, my opinion is that there has always been a large gap between the obviously immense talent and magnetism certain performers, artists, DJs or creators in general are gifted with (but who stay in quasi-total obscurity, appearing very content to do what they do for a small core of fanatical supporters) and contrasting it to how little of the same qualities a large number of who have managed to successfully make it in the mainstream seem to actually possess makes me wonder. This is certainly due to the fact that talent alone has never been the recipe for success and being able to connect with large audiences, which require a whole team of PR, promotion, marketing and publicity specialists, as well as a willingness for the artists to have their image molded by those handlers rather than following their eccentric and fickle muse, as they very seldom have real, concrete plans for accomplishing what is nowadays most certainly only possible as the result of a huge team effort and a very large expenditure.
Historically this has always been the case, but perhaps recent developments like social networking and the absolute saturation of new releases make it all but impossible for talent to emerge strictly on its own merit. It would appear that most of those who are interested in the experimental and cutting edge side of things seldom possess either the ambitions or the qualities required to fit into such teams that are designed to 'build for success', like focus and relentless drive as well as a willingness to compromise for the sake of exposure. Mainstream as in 'mass market' and being able to gain a large amount of exposure in the media, on TV, in commercials, etc...
Once in a while, a perfect storm of a wealthy and connected visionary such as Chas Chandler when he dug a young nobody named James Marshall Hendrix out of Caf� Wah in Greenwich Village and took on the job to make the UK take notice, combined with Hendrix's stellar talent make it possible that a true musical genius attains great commercial success. But far more often, it's just not the case. It used to be that record labels had fairly astute and clued-up people like Ahmet Ertegun, John Hammond (Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin) Chris Blackwell, (Bob Marley, Traffic, U2, Grace Jones) or Seymour Stein (Pretenders, Madonna, Talking Heads, etc..) who truly ferreted out that iconoclastic talent and put themselves on the line to find a way for some of these uniquely gifted performers to reach a much bigger audience without compromising too much the artistry that made them so special, and this included affording them the necessary incubation time to transform the rough diamond into a more polished gem. In these days of consolidated media multinationals only obeying the short-term imperatives of their quarterly stockholder dividend reports, am not sure that I know of such people anymore, and although once in a great while someone truly gifted will earn that mainstream recognition, more often than not those with real talent toil in total obscurity.
When it comes to electronic music, technology has obviously had a very disruptive hand in shuffling the deck of cards most were dealt, and leveled the playing field to allow complete newcomers to very quickly get to a stage where they are able to reach 75% or 80% of what any of the professionals can deliver, which is certainly good enough for a large majority of the public out there. Whereas in the early days there were a lot of performers who developed a very unique sound and approach, sampling and the likes have pretty much made a lot of what is out there fairly homogeneous. This includes the unthinkly vast store of distributed knowledge available online at the click of a mouse
Until the next technological quantum jump (the same way House and Techno were arguably only made possible by the advent of inexpensive sequencers, MIDI synths and drum machines), I think that music will become less and less interesting, as listeners grow more jaded and pretty much everything has already been done or tried. Music just doesn't seem to get very far on artistic merit alone. Wearing masks, costumes, using stage props and other add-on visual elements sure do seem to help a great deal.
To me the line between underground and mainstream is probably drawn at that willingness to compromise in order to scale up to mass market numbers, as well as to the relative importance for certain artists or DJs to feel as if they are staying connected to their core audience or not. Underground and popular are not always mutually exclusive. In earlier days, there are well-known examples of some of the most underground clubs in NYC influencing radio and forcing them to play obscure records and turn them into million-selling hits. This -again- no longer seems to be the case, not the least because compared to those days there seems to be so little consensus as to what a hit song consists of, but I digress. And for that matter, there are many who can recall times in certain clubs where people were coming to dance and trip out, looking at each other (not at the DJ) and weren't so distracted by their gadgets and other electronic gizmos that they actually really got fully immersed into it. Most mainstream clubgoers today wouldn't know the meaning of this, because things have changed so much. I'll let others decide whether that's for good or not.
Well, there you have it. Lots more rambling. There probably is a way to distill it into a simple paragraph, but too tired to do this, so you'll be forced to sift through all of it.
It's only an opinion anyway, and since this is the thread for ranting....Posted by Mattsanity. on Dec-11-2012 23:13:
^I'm guilty for not reading it at the time but now I can say that was very informative.
Posted by Mattsanity. on Dec-13-2012 18:06:
Music Discussion is like a tranny, it's not what it used to be.
Posted by Redd on Dec-13-2012 18:29:
Maybe you should bump the thread again.
Posted by Mattsanity. on Dec-13-2012 23:13:
alright mate. I could never understand the hype for Der Dritte Raum � Hale Bopp. Sasha endorsed it on one of his compilations but I'm just not feeling that joint.
Plus, Luke Chable and Dousk both made cheesy productions.
Posted by Rodri Santos on Dec-13-2012 23:33:
quote:
Originally posted by Mattsanity.
alright mate. I could never understand the hype for Der Dritte Raum � Hale Bopp. Sasha endorsed it on one of his compilations but I'm just not feeling that joint.
Plus, Luke Chable and Dousk both made cheesy productions.
neither do i. Schulz apparently is in love with it too. Trommelmaschine is way better , Hale Bopp is good , hypnotic driving... but Trommel is just a beast to be unleashed.
Posted by Redd on Dec-14-2012 00:15:
if twinkly prog qualifies as cheese, which can be debated, I would have to agree
I don't see how that should be an unpopular opinion though, cheese isn't per definition bad
Posted by Mattsanity. on Dec-14-2012 00:27:
quote:
Originally posted by Rodri Santos
neither do i. Schulz apparently is in love with it too. Trommelmaschine is way better , Hale Bopp is good , hypnotic driving... but Trommel is just a beast to be unleashed.
you were the perfect member to respond to that opinion. Germans were pivotal in the EDM game.
quote:
Originally posted by Redd
if twinkly prog qualifies as cheese, which can be debated, I would have to agree
I don't see how that should be an unpopular opinion though, cheese isn't per definition bad
well you're probably right because I'm not alone in saying twinkly Prog was a cheesy era. that particular prog bastardized the term progressive.
Posted by sg_57 on Dec-14-2012 04:59:
quote:
Originally posted by Mattsanity.
^I'm guilty for not reading it at the time but now I can say that was very informative.
(if you were talking about what I wrote) It was just a slightly disjointed rant. Since this is the thread for it.
I could have certainly spent more time editing it down to a quarter the size and saying the same things, most of which were painfully obvious anyway.
Actually I got to write a lot more on this topic, but keeping it for myself in order to spare those platitudes on everyone else. This was more than enough....
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