I didn't answer because I have to go through some tracks to answer that, and I'm not at home with my collection.

but it's obviously going to be subjective since we're dealing with emotions and music..

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Originally posted by stevësto there are some things i am seeing in this thread that should be clarified: How can a simple arrangement of traditional drums trigger a range of moods? Tap the outer edge of the drum for a higher note, the middle for a lower note. The notes, the tones, are the key to emotions. Same goes for minimal dance music, its all in the tones when it comes to emotions. But there is so much more to music than just emotion.

I agree with you, and in doing that, i'll assume that the complexity of "notes" and "tones" are correlated with emotion, with more elaborate compositions correlating with more or stronger emotions wheres the simpler/poorer (ehmm "minimal" ones) ones relate to "minimal" (poor, low) emotions.

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The perception of lack of emotion in today's music I think has more to do with conformity and tradition. Its just a matter of people experimenting and trying new things. Clubbers dont just stick to listening to trance for 20 years and never wander anywhere else, rather, they eventually get tired of a sound and curiosity leads them to try other stuff. Same goes for music makers. Right now people are less interested in happy feeling music and more interested in hypnotic, meditative music, but also emotions presented in an abstract way. They also want to experiment with groove, swing, and variation within a 4x4 beat for the sake of conformity, and its just coincidence the closest genre that fell into this is minimal/tech. Abstract art has always had an older audience. As the first generation of clubbers are now getting into their 30's and 40's, this is a natural progression. Unfortunately, as with abstract minimalist art galleries, snootiness and pretentiousness is common. It shouldn't have to be this way, but people aren't perfect.

You can experiment and try new things in more ways then creating horendous clicky, bleepy tracks that don't have any substance or whatsoever. If clubbers and/or producers are tired by trance in its present (1997-today) form, they can always push boundaries and instead of going back by stipping-down everything they could go...well...even MORE melodic! Or more complex! Or perhaps by using more analogue instruments like violins and cellos. Can you imagine that? Orchestral-Trance, Art-Trance now that would be awesome! There are musical ways to push boundaries not only non-musical ones.

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The problem I have, is that minimal dance is mostly a minimal form of tech house, which has never had much emotion in it, nor has it ever been very cerebral, it was always more about groove and variety. There's a pendulum that swings and right now we are shifting into new forms of dance music and we are unbalanced. Eventually it will balance out where the things we've forgotten in the past will be remembered and incorporated back into these new forms of dance music in these confusing times. There's a whole lot more reasons for the general feeling of dance today and its not just the music itself, its the people themselves.

It strikes me when people say that, misinformed probably by beatport. People: Minimal (i mostly mean the Kompakt German minimal stuff etc.) are not originally related to London Tech-House! (e.g. Mr. C, Eddie Richards, Tery Francis etc.). Modern minimal is directly derived by older 90s German "Minimal Techno" (yes, it existed even back then!) and "Microhouse" (e.g. Akufen,also known as "click-house" and/or "glitch-techno" ). This is not related to the current thread but i can be a jerk!


And the state of our times has nothing to do with the state of present-day EDM. I have listened to some supra-emotional, supra-melodic modern records, maybe more emotional and melodic then ever before. I'm currently listening to a godly, very emotional electronica/downtempo album, Arms and Sleepers- "Black Paris 86", whereas before i was listening to layered hyper-emotional orchestral post-rock masterpiece, Ef- "I'am Responsible". There were countless, emotional quality releases in 2006, 2007 and continue strong today. Its just that, they are not EDM! You see, its the EDM that has this problem, well, that it went...shit!

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Originally posted by nefardec I didn't answer because I have to go through some tracks to answer that, and I'm not at home with my collection. but it's obviously going to be subjective since we're dealing with emotions and music..

Ok, i understand that, don't worry.


Can't you remember anything from memory? If it was capable of inducing such strong emotions such as "depression" and "loneliness" you would surely remember it!

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Originally posted by nefardec deadbeat is great, a big inspiration right now I suggest everyone listen to: Deadbeat - Live @ Space Lab Yellow Tokyo 08.2005 Download

i've never been disappointed by anything you've recommended, so i decided to check this one out. i'm listening to it right now at work and absolutely loving it. thanks for posting the link!

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Originally posted by PETRAN I agree with you, and in doing that, i'll assume that the complexity of "notes" and "tones" are correlated with emotion, with more elaborate compositions correlating with more or stronger emotions wheres the simpler/poorer (ehmm "minimal" ones) ones relate to "minimal" (poor, low) emotions.

sure you can assume all you want. i dont believe more complex compositions = more stronger emotions. thats implying maximalism is better than minimalism. a more direct approach to evoking emotions would be lyric based, its more specific. but EDM has always been about less words and more instrumentation and making you dance, the indirect approach. dancing is a form of "no mind" meditation. by not thinking, there is less chatter in your head allowing you to think deeper and bridge the concious with subconcious. by not thinking you are able to think more clearly. with lyric based music being the maximalism end of the spectrum, minimal techno is the minimal end. within minimalism the spectrum of skelatism is the "ohm", the constant tone on one end, with massification being the emotional chakra on the other. eventually things come full circle when there is so much massification within minimalism, that it becomes the ultimate skeletalism form. iow, you combine so much noise and so many elements that it eventually becomes one big mush or one constant tone, the "ohm". there was an experiment done on the net not too long ago where someone combined something like 1000 different songs into one song, and it ended up being a constant tone. so, there is no perfect place in the wheel, they are just different places to match different states of mind on the path to enlightenment.

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Originally posted by lücid i've never been disappointed by anything you've recommended, so i decided to check this one out. i'm listening to it right now at work and absolutely loving it. thanks for posting the link!

+1 These are some nice chill tunes!

I listen to everything from Pink Floyd to early 90s grunge and/or shoegaze for inspiration... Whenever I have my iPod on, I'm usually not listening to trance... As a producer, I look for every other style to give me some emotion which I can be inspired to put in my track... I don't say, "I want this song to sound like that new PVD song" or "I want this to be SVD-ish"... I say, "I want this to have an emotional melody reminiscent of a sad R.E.M. song. It's always different everytime, but that's usually my process... For example, my newest tune contains a melody inspired from "Cover Me" by the soft-rock and alternative Merz from the UK (http://www.myspace.com/merzuk), just for example... Not sure if that answers the question but that's how I do things

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I forgot which DJ told me this, but it was something along the lines of, It's very very easy to make a banger, something that makes people go crazy in the club... But it's very hard to make a song that makes them think. It kinda makes sense in a wierd way... Tunes like "Southern Sun" or "Born Slippy" do more than make you dance in my opinion. They make you think about life or the moment and touch your emotions... I may be getting too deep here but that's, imo, the best EDM, thought-provoking EDM. Tech-trance and electro-house is ear-friendly but doesn't really make you think. I think minimal can be classified as making you think, as it's not so easy to grasp the first few times you hear it out, but can be beautiful once you do (and if it's one of the 10% of GREAT minimal tracks that are well-made). Just my 2 cents...

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The only thing 'southern sun' makes me think about is how shit it is.

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Originally posted by stevësto sure you can assume all you want. i dont believe more complex compositions = more stronger emotions. thats implying maximalism is better than minimalism. a more direct approach to evoking emotions would be lyric based, its more specific. but EDM has always been about less words and more instrumentation and making you dance, the indirect approach. dancing is a form of "no mind" meditation. by not thinking, there is less chatter in your head allowing you to think deeper and bridge the concious with subconcious. by not thinking you are able to think more clearly. with lyric based music being the maximalism end of the spectrum, minimal techno is the minimal end. within minimalism the spectrum of skelatism is the "ohm", the constant tone on one end, with massification being the emotional chakra on the other. eventually things come full circle when there is so much massification within minimalism, that it becomes the ultimate skeletalism form. iow, you combine so much noise and so many elements that it eventually becomes one big mush or one constant tone, the "ohm". there was an experiment done on the net not too long ago where someone combined something like 1000 different songs into one song, and it ended up being a constant tone. so, there is no perfect place in the wheel, they are just different places to match different states of mind on the path to enlightenment.

"Maximalism is better than Minimalism". Well, i guess that it all has to do with subjective preferences, but if we take "classical (orchestral) music" as an example, we'll see that the 19th century "Romantic" period (e.g. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky etc.) which indeed was the most "maximalist" period of classical music (until now), is highly praised as THE legendary period of music ,and even more so in comparison to 20th century modern Minimalism (e.g. Philip Glass, Steve Reich). Now, ofcourse, i'm not saying that Minimalism is better than Romanticism, but i think that Romanticism is praised more due to its complexity. I think that it is due to this complexity that Romantic musical pieces are considered to be "romantic", that is, telling whole stories of love and tragedy through long, instrumental pieces (i'm not talking about Opera, Romantic composers used to "tell" stories by means of instrumental pieces as well) which evoke a range of strong emotions to the listener. On the other end, "Minimalism" is based on repetition, and IMO, it is a more abstract form of art in which emotions are not explicitly "forced" by the music, but created in a more implicit abstract way by the listener.






Is "romanticism" more "emotional" than "minimalism"? Maybe not, since what "you give is what you get", and listening to music is in many cases and ways an "active" rather than a "passive" process. But it would be interesting to see if this "musical relativity" is as "relative" as it is considered to be. If we play a "romantic" piece and a "minimalist" piece to a representative sample of a population, and ask our subjects to rate their "emotionality" on a scale from 0 to 10, will our obtained ratings reflect an even distribution between the two musical pieces, or they would rather be concentrated towards one of them? And if yes, which one? It would be an interesting experiment on psychological aesthetics, one which could generate a whole new wave of answers and questions. We could actually do a similar experiment in TA, possibly in the form of a "poll"or smthg lol.






Furthermore, your view of "lyrics/vocals" representing the "maximalist-end" is totally wrong IMO. In contrast, vocals, almost always have to be embedded on music of at least moderate (or low) complexity. This is obvious on the 19th century "Operas", in which the musical orchestration is simpler in comparison to the analogous one found on "Symphonies". In a matter of fact, the most complex music was always the instrumental one e.g. Classical symphonies or Jazz. Vocals actually constrain the limits of instrumentation and performance.





P.s. I have nothing against "minimalism", i actually love Steve Reich.

Been doing a bit of thinking about this lately:

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...5&forumid=16&s=

It seems like most people experience fewer extremes of emotion as they get older, and it's harder for music or other things to provoke them into intense feelings.

So, is part of this "lack of emotion" that people talk about the subjective side of a generation of EDM listeners "growing up" and becoming more "immune" to emotional extremes?