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| quote: | | by not classyfying the genres you give no credit to the particular expertise of a certain artist...do you think ferry corsten or armin van buuren or paul van dyk (as producers not djs) would be happy if everyone decided to ignore genres and classify all trance as "elcectronic music?" I understand how it becomes annoying when people try to categorize music since the genres tend to become so percise that they are difficult to follow. But, its necessary to categorize so that we know what exactly people like. I like trance, trance is a form of electronic music and techno is a form of electronic music, but i dont necessarily like techno as much as trance. Do you see what i mean? |
No, I agree entirely. There does need to be some genre division to enhance clarity (by seperating, say, techno and trance) but to continue splitting genres up into tiny little pieces - by continually and arbitrarily inventing new sub-genres - you're just making things unnecessarily complicated.
Like I said before, uplifting trance isn't a genre, it's just a term representing the nature of a particular track: if the track sounds uplifting to the individual listener, and can objectively be placed into the trance genre, then you're free to label it as such. But to argue that there should be an objective standard in such instances is bollocks: what I consider uplifting, you may not. Whether Mauro Picotto is an uplifting trance artist, a tech-trance artist, a hard-house artist or a techno artist is impossible to say, as his music takes elements from each of these genres. If you're trying to pidgeon hole him then you can forget it right now, because he doesn't actually conform to any specific genre.
Besides, many of you seem to have your terms muddled, which makes genre classification a pointless, circular, entirely subjective thing.
| quote: | | do you think ferry corsten or armin van buuren or paul van dyk (as producers not djs) would be happy if everyone decided to ignore genres and classify all trance as "elcectronic music?" |
I think most artists would be delighted. 
Paul Van Dyk has actually said that he doesn't like to pidgeon-hole his music (productions or sets) into the "trance" genre, preferring to call it electronic music instead, which is exactly what argue would be a bad thing (and I'm sure one of the PVD fans will back me up here). I consider much of PVD's work to be heavily trance influenced, but if we can't even classify the entirity of his work into one broad genre, how are you going to squeeze it into increasingly tiny sub-genres? This is how pointless discussions start: people trying to inmpose their own subjective preconceptions onto a topic, without realising that what they think may be misinformed or incorrect.
Armin Van Helden titled his last album "Killing Puritans" in response to people who try to pidgeon-hole and quantify music by strict objective standard. I may consider him a "house" dj out of convenience, but at the same time I have to realise that to do so is to demean his music by archetyping it with my own rigid, entirely subjective notions of what house music really is. The more you try and focus and pinpoint the exact nature of the sound, you warp it so that it's original meaning is lost, and instead replaced by some hackneyed, preconceived notion of what the music is meant to represent.
How would you classify Timo Maas? House? Techno? Trance? Progressive? He crosses all those boundaries, so where do you place him? Do you make up a new genre, or do you accept the fact that not everything has to fit nicely into the rigid musical preconceptions you have invented?
Just please realise this: we invent genres out of convenience, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, when you start pidgeon holing things, and turning music into an exact science able to be objectively quantified with unerring precision, you begin to miss the point. The more precise a picture you try to paint, the more muddled and less useful it becomes.
Anyway, that's it. I'm off to drop a chill-pill then. 
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