The Electronic music family

When did electronic music start? If you google it now, it will show 1980s. This was the era of the development in analog modulation and digital synthesizer. if I were to discussed how electronic music was start, it will take a thousand paged book to explain it. For now, we jump to the most recent era, the era of “everybody can make music” that is around the 2010s.

The father of electronic music a genre called Techno and now known as Trance. The mother? Probably the instruments. The word Techno is combined word from Greek téchnē which means “Art,” ”Skill” and used in form of word with the meaning “Technique,” “Technology” (‘Techno’graphy). (According to Techno Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com). But wait, why Techno is also known as Trance?  is it the same?

Find out about it next week!

This meme describe how I react to my new headphone, especially my new monitor headphone!   

New Music Movement (The Majestic Bass)

Before we start with this new genre movement, I want to share my thought on several music genre, just a quick one, because this could be related to the new music genre (The Majestic Bass – not official name) of its development. The genres that are related to the majestic bass is future bass (with some ‘future’ lines), dubstep, offbeat (yes offbeat), complextro (electro + dubstep + complex), Trap beat and Hip hop. The genre developed by the combination and picking up several bits of styles in the genres I’ve mention. Thus, it’s really a complex (as the genre says). If we look on the surface of the song, we can Identify it on the early style dubstep by taking the FM bass only (the purest form of it). Specifically, the sound called monster sound or growling sound but the difference is the type of frequency. The frequency is a bit high than normal while maintaining its lows which is the bass part. Basically, what I am talking about here is the EQ (Equalizer) frequency which consist of 3 parts; the low, mid and high. Sometimes, we can manipulate sound using EQ but just the frequency. For example, you can make a radio or telephone filter FX if you want too. Or maybe boast a bass which one of the techniques to boast the majestic bass and Trap beats 808s.

The bass FX cerate the heavy and fat sound bass using Trap beat (also hiphop beat in simplest form) as its foundation for the beat create it unique new form. The main part of this genre (majestic bass) is sampling from classical music, symphonies, orchestra composition etc. as the ‘main instrument’ and adding high note bass sound with sketchy sound wave. The technique of sampling is not foreign, as the famous genre Lo-Fi practice this a lot.

I will give an example song for the majestic bass genre on my next post stay tune!

Music on Bluetooth Headphone and Monitor Headphone Today’s topic is a little different but when it comes to listening or creating music, the highest quality is indeed desirable. Here’s my BT headphone and monitor headphones brand Audio-Technica, one ATH BT200s (small one) and ATH M30x (big one).I got my BT200s last year, a Bluetooth headset with excellent battery life (which is awesome) around 8hr total usage but I think more than that in my whole experience. A very sturdy form factor and comfortable cushion. Unfortunately, it needs to be handled with care and careful not to drop it. I’ve once dropped it like a bed height and something like bit of plastic inside. when I listen to bassline sound, I can hear vibrating plastic sound, but sometimes the plastic sound is gone so I don’t really mind. 

Why I bought this headset? Because I need a quality headset for me to work on music in very detail sound design. This headset is indeed affordable. I realize I need some quality audio equipment when I experiment sound driver in speaker and build-in driver in computer and it was completely different. I thought to myself that probably all these years my sound design is actually low or should I say bad? Overall, with this middle range headset quality, it presented whole music perfectly, I can hear every detailed layer of sound, FX, bass notes, pattern and more. Although, I still don’t not which driver is good and lead to my new question/problem, since I use Bluetooth headset, I need to think about its latency, the max and min db, and blutooth driver is a good choice? Indeed, bluetooth headset is not ideal for sound design. I am certainly not saying this headset is bad and you shouldn’t buy it, oh no no. Since I mention about how detail it can be, sometime unflawed sound can create new ideas which is very helpful for music development, either as my own sound and reference music. It was a great headset for idea developing phase, plus it’s a bluetooth headset, I can move around with my device far from me and it stays on my head no matter what pose I do.

Recently, I bought a new monitor headphone ATH-M30x that specifically and standard sound production. Of course, it’s a wired one. Basically, a monitor headphone or studio headphone give the raw result, in other word, the purest sound with no system EQ or headphone build-in EQ which most headset out there have. A wide cushion head that cover my whole ears (p.s I have a big ears). It is a perfect monitor for myself right now, I can get the most accurate result of any music which I can sometimes hear a mistake. It was well use for me. As I compare my both headphones, I can hear very different quality and the main one is the bass, my BT200s have bass boasted and reduced in high frequency. This probably for normal end user, and some music profession. I conclude that so far for my monitor perform what I need either for enjoying music and sound designing. 

That’s it for this post! you can leave a comment for open discussion. Until then keep inspired !!        

Repost K-391 music Fantastic

This song has inspired thousands of music producers and the most iconic for 2012 House music genre in the SoundCloud music producer community during that time. He also posted how he made the music on Youtube (will share on next post), so most producer can get the idea of his structure. This is the very beginning of developing progressive music melody to the next level and have influenced several artists to be in this movement. K-391 is very innovate in his melody creation, how his inspiration come from is still unknown to me or maybe a movement community developing this melody design.

HOUSE MUSIC

Welcome back to my daily post of #EmusicFamily. Today, we’ll discuss about House music as a main genre and sub-genre.

House music is not actually new; it’s been around in the 70s but of course the instruments vary during that era and with combination of electronic as usual. Why is it called House Music? Some suggest that the origin of house music came form Chicago in warehouse played by DJ Frankie Knuckles (The Godfather of House music) source: House music - Wikipedia. When I, for the first time listening to House music, it was progressive house music and it influenced me in music career. I’ve made a lot of experiment and successfully tackle this genre. It was very exciting with probably produced around 30 songs composed and produced by myself around 2014 to 2017. So here, I’m sharing my experience on the general content for Progressive House.

Progressive House is quite a rising genre in early 2012, The famous producer for stylistic progressive house on that time was K-391 (in SoundCloud community) with the spice for their unique melody. It was so innovative melody creation in progressive house and captivated millions of producers on SoundCloud. Most early music producer start with progressive house, developing their skill, experimenting sound design and kick off to other genres. Why they start of progressive house? Because the structure of this genre is basic and can be applied to most electronic music in 2010 to 2021. Back to K-391’s melody, it was actually developed to several music genre and some of it is future bass and the most Bass genres lines. Moreover, his pure style is very much inspired Alan Walker with his famous song Faded. Although, he claims in his tag as Electro house, but the structure is identical to Progressive House.

This music as a whole structure has 5 - 6 parts, the intro hook, intro main, buildup, the drop/chorus, post drop and ending beat (depends on producer). the main structure of Progressive house is the ‘hook’ which consist beat and hook melody with a hint for the drop/chorus melody as its very first composition. The part where progressive house as its genre is the buildup, in the beginning typical buildup consist of white noise rising up support with multiple FX and repetitive melody from ¾ rhythm. Coming after that is the chorus/drop which plays the main melody with several layer of sound and FX. This structure will be repeated on the second chorus/drop but slightly change in melody. Will post the example for this explanation.

As I discuss in the last post, electronic music can be called electronic house. Somehow, I think music nowadays can be called anything, to validate a music is also confusing. But I believe people can agree with a music genre by producer and artist creating their core style to validate their piece of work. That’s all for this section post. Will coming back soon!

Born of infinite possibility of Electronic Genre What’s up my G’s! Welcome back to our daily post of #EMusicfamily. So, continue from our last post. I was mentioning about Electronic, Electro and EDM as each different genre although carries the same initial meaning in the name and it also contain features of Trance, Techno and House Music combined. We can identify its individuality by the composition and type of sound (style). Some people might differentiate the main 3 big genre (Trance, Techno and House Music), but in my opinion each genre contributes each one other to developed and I would like to point this out because differentiating them in big genre is like forgetting their origins as each of them can carry the same attribute and features. This is my other reason why I wouldn’t fully agree with The Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music from my last discussion. Electronic as genre. As a big genre and sub-genre, its composition is varied in types. It is like the gate way to the extension of this genre to new genres. In other word, it is like indie version of electronic music. This happen when the music composition is in mixture of more than 3 styles/genres. For example, a music that contains House as fundamental. In House music there are several genres. As for this explanation, let’s say we take Progressive House genre combine with Ambient plus Deep House, so there are 3 different sub-genre of House Music and using Trance composition in 123BPM or more. Thus, to generalize these genres, we can call it Electronic. Wait, isn’t that just the same to categorize these music genres as a whole Electronic Music? Absolutely no. why? We can see back to our helpful Ishkur’s music guide illustration, Electronic Music includes 10 main genres and in this case its not the whole main genre but combination of sub-genres. Electro as genre. Short name from electronic music and contain very distinctive styles. The composition is the same with the 3 main genres but add with new genre called Dubstep and its features. Initially, before the official name for this genre, it was called FM bass (frequency Modulation bass) which now is one of music sound design technique. It uses synthesizer to developed this sound. I wouldn’t go much detail in FM bass creation because I am not an expert in Dubstep sound design, took me quite some time to understand and design such complex sound design in 2015. The main point is the attraction for electro is FM element and LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator). LFO in practical is just the vibration of sound that you can make texture of chain sound, making that wavy kind of sound. Making FM bass and deliver it in LFO form (as simple example) can be called Electro. Oh yeah! You can hear the example from my music repost/share music produced by K4CK. It uses the main beat from Progressive House, Trance, Techno, and more *this why music nowadays is interesting because of its infinite combination and possibilities! * Well, the one I explain above is example of sounds around 2012. EDM as genre. Electro Dance Music, if you think that it may relate to Electro, then you are right. EDMs style is almost the same with electro but instead of complex Electro composition which contain dubstep element, EDM uses pure FM bass with subtle filters. The sound creates hype and progressive sound but not too wild in flexing sound (creativity in sound design). It lets the audience to enjoy with hype feeling of subtleness sound in FM bass using sidechaining method. Sidechaining method is the main attraction for this genre, sidechain is basically a must effect for music production that involve beat. In other word, this effect is used for separating the melody/bass to achieve rhyme which created the hype vibe and that is why the Dance name is in EDM. This genre has possible link with Progressive House, Big room, and more. There is also a genre called Dance Music, but for me, I think the composition is quite similar with EDM. It probably exists with reason to create different name from electronic music (as genre) and avoiding confusion. As new extension genre, I do agree with this because of it has multiple combination in sub-genres but specific main styles. For example, Nu dance, hands up and more. Which from these examples are categorized with other main genres like Rock (electronic version), Disco and so on and forth. I feel like this explanation is not enough into the depth of electronic music. In surface, I’ve cover main feature of the genres focused. Music knows no bound that’s why music can have infinite possibilities. For my next post, we’ll talk about House music including the sub-genres. Stay tune!    

Example of electro music~ by KC4K

Here’s one of clear example for Electro Music. The Structure is a typical Trance, Techno, and House music. But the chorus/drop consist Dubstep features. Basically, it’s a dubstep but T.T.H music beat and structure. Usually, dubstep used the FM bass or sound as its fundamental, adding with various kind of beat like DnB (Drum and Bass) in lower BPM (beat only) which could be a HIPHOP on 140-160 BPM of the whole song. Speaking of Hip Hop, lets talk about Lo-Fi soon, look forward for this!

In 2015, this kind of sound is identified as Glitch Hop. The use of chop vocal which highly used on this time consider to this genre development. Therefore, most Electro with the song by KC4K (as now) could shift from Electro to Glitch. But glitch hop used Hip Hop beat in simples ‘onbeat’.

Electronic, Electro/Dance Music After a very long break we are back! Apologies for the wait, had to confirming our discussion on Electronic Music in general. Here what I found from music lover in the internet ‘The Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music’ http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/, attractive illustration electronic music guide. It shows the general electronic music genre such as Hip hop, Downtempo, industrial, hardcore, techno, trance, disco, house, Breaks and Garage (listed in anticlockwise). It also further explains by linking the relationship and possible combination of genres which is very interesting. But not all are listed, I feel like there are several missing music genres and some I would agree with parts of it, because the contain is more to personalization. In my opinion, a genre could not a dominate main genre or sub-genre, rather just experimental and personal creativity. However, I might be wrong because of my lacking participation in Music festivals (well.. because it’s not part of my culture, and I would like to go once in my lifetime).From my observation in EDM music during past 10 years (the raising era of electronic music as a whole), there are several theories, hypostasis, options, discussions to the Electronic Music, Electro, and EDM (Electronic Dance Music) but let us discuss in the comment and probably just barely scratch its surface on this post. “Why do I choose these genres?” The word ‘electronic’ on the name carries the main big genre and it contains some element of Trance, Techno as I posted it intro on our last two post and also House music. But it is called one each respective genre. The Electronic Music have some relation with Trance and Techno. It also related to Electro. Adding with EDM, its also as a different genre but related to House music and mix of other genre. In general, I would say this genre is the combination of Techno or/and Trance with House music in respective style. The Electronic music carries the Techno attribute (sometimes) having the melodic and acid kind of instrument (depends). Basically, it’s the fusion of genres in subgenres. Very interesting to study upon on!  Let’s discuss more of ‘Electronic’, ‘Electro’, ‘EDM’ genres in my next Post! 

Techno and Trance

Hi folks! welcome back to the people continue from last week post, so continuing our last introduction about Techno and Trance. ‘But wait, why techno is now known as Trance? Or integrated as one genre? ‘. Interestingly, they are different yet the same. Why? Here’s my opinion, the similarity between these two genres is the sound, composition and bassline, but not the BPM (Beat Per Minute).

Techno’s BPM is 120 – 125BPM, and Trance BPM’s is 125 – 130BPM. In other word Trance is slightly faster. Both genres mostly inspired from the electronic sound in R&B, pop and background vocal chorus in 70s to 80s music like the duo singer from Modern Talking.  there isn’t much different if you don’t analyze it. Trance is more to hype and focus on the beat (kicks, hi-hats, cymbals, bass line), Techno on the other hand is more harmonic, melodic and combine with slower beat. Here’s where the story start. In between these BPM there are several more genre.

The children of Techno/Trance have identified by BPMs in genres: come back next week!