EDM sub-genre's seem redundant

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

EDM sub-genre’s seem redundant

Anyone else think this?

It seems like in EDM, someone will try to “coin” a new sub-genre with any little variation.

For instance, how many different kinds of house are there (rhetorical)?

Look at “alternative” for instance, it covers so many different sounds, and so many different styles, but it seems like within just the genre of house alone, anytime someone introduces a slightly different sound, they have to “coin” a new genre. And on that note, the term “alternative” was once a genre to describe something that was different from everything else. Now it’s one of the most commercial genre’s out there.

I remember back in the day, people I knew started using the term “progressive drum n bass” and where is it now?

For the sake of my own sanity (and for the sake of my music library) I’ve tried to keep the genre classification as minimal as possible.

It also seems like a way to express elitism as in “that’s not minimal techno, that’s microhouse”.

I remember asking someone what the different was between “techno” and “tech-house”, and one guy said “it’s house, but with a techno sound”, to which I replied, “if it has a techno sound, is it not techno?” The response was “no, it’s house”.

“But what makes it house and not techno?”

blank stare

Not to mention, I just read in a thread yesterday that there’s a music purchasing site that has the genre “romantic techno”.

Is this worthy of a facepalm or am I totally off?

2

Isn’t microhouse that cut up and glitchy Akufen style stuff? It is different sounding to minimal.

See?

3

Also the difference between techno and tech house is generally in the timing and quantisation on the drums, tech house tends to have more ‘swingy’ drums whereas with techno the timing will be more straight down the line.

4

so called sub genres are just a marketing ploy.

5

Ah yes, those cunning bastards at the Underground Dance Music Marketing Board strike again.

:roll_eyes:

That’s not to say they’re all valid, Mixmag went through a big phase of just making shit up (Smash House anyone?), but in general there is a delineation between subgenres. Certainly between tech-house and techno for example.

6

Deep House vs. Electro House… case in point? Some sub-genres are pretty stupid and esoteric (seapunk?!?), but many (most even) are useful once you’re familiar with the actual distinctions they’re based on. Some distinctions, like Tech House vs. Techno, are a bit more finite… but still; when you’re looking for music of a particular style, sub-genres are quite handy.

7

Yeah, I don’t think anyone could argue that electro house and deep house are identical or even similar, +1.

8

In the era of romantic techno etc I’d say that while sub genres have become ridiculous, they are definitely not redundant.

I think the purpose of sub genres, or even micro genres has changed subtly.

Genres used to exist to distinguish one style from another, to take an example from the eighties, the new electronic “house” or “techno” records from disco that people had been playing. As time has gone by house and techno have subdivided into garage, drum and bass, trance etc and these have divided themselves again and again. For example even psy which is a relatively niche subdivision of trance, could be divided into at least ten sub genres, each of which probably has its own styles within it, like fluffy morning prog or dark nighttime forest.

Here is the thing, now that the differences between different styles, each with their own genre title, have become more and more subtle, if a DJ were to go out and play just one of these sub styles all night, their set would probably be fairly predictable, lifeless and dull. However with a really good working knowledge of what constitutes different styles or subgenres, what sounds, tempos and structures typify them, a DJ can go out and effortlessly flow from one sound smoothly to another, using knowledge of sub genres to create natural bridges between styles that would not otherwise go together, allowing a broader range of music within one set, while keeping a cohesive feel to the flow. Also, sub genres can be pretty useful, within reason, when record shopping, cataloguing and tagging, when you are looking for a certain sound in a hurry.

TL;DR version - The divisions are all but meaningless now, but a working knowledge of sun genres can actually help you play a more, not less, varied set.

…do romantic techno parties have candles, wine and fireplaces, or is it more of a fetish thing?

9

[quote=“tokenasianguy, post:1, topic:45450, username:tokenasianguy”]
Anyone else think this?

It seems like in EDM, someone will try to “coin” a new sub-genre with any little variation.

For instance, how many different kinds of house are there (rhetorical)?

Look at “alternative” for instance, it covers so many different sounds, and so many different styles, but it seems like within just the genre of house alone, anytime someone introduces a slightly different sound, they have to “coin” a new genre. And on that note, the term “alternative” was once a genre to describe something that was different from everything else. Now it’s one of the most commercial genre’s out there.

I remember back in the day, people I knew started using the term “progressive drum n bass” and where is it now?

For the sake of my own sanity (and for the sake of my music library) I’ve tried to keep the genre classification as minimal as possible.

It also seems like a way to express elitism as in “that’s not minimal techno, that’s microhouse”.

I remember asking someone what the different was between “techno” and “tech-house”, and one guy said “it’s house, but with a techno sound”, to which I replied, “if it has a techno sound, is it not techno?” The response was “no, it’s house”.

“But what makes it house and not techno?”

blank stare

Not to mention, I just read in a thread yesterday that there’s a music purchasing site that has the genre “romantic techno”.

Is this worthy of a facepalm or am I totally off?
[/quote] Good post mate… Very funny.

10

Huh? Both are generally 4 to the floor and 100% quantized; if anything I see more variation in techno than tech house, but even that isn’t a way to distinguish the two as far as I can tell.

And is that Akufen stuff really its own genre? Seems like an interesting art project but I can’t imagine anyone dancing to it, and I certainly can’t imagine a club night built around that sound.

11

TECHNO

TECH-HOUSE

Quite the difference if you ask me, ofcourse some tracks have a bit of both and blur the line between both but there really is quite a difference between both usually :confused:

12

Do you understand what swing is in quantisation? House has more swing in general, techno tends to be more straightly quantised to 16ths. This is of course a generalisation but generalisations always have a basis in truth.

I don’t know how old you are but microhouse has been around since the late 90s and many of the labels and artists are now big names.

Anybody else incapable of googling for something themselves please let me know.

:smiley:

13

Also, if you can’t imagine people dancing to that Akufen track I don’t think you have any funk in you (it was a big record with a wide selection of djs). Consult your physician.

14

Tend to disagree: Fabric, London, anyone?

15

Discussing microhouse in 2012 seems a bit anachronistic to me. I think the genre is more or less a thing of the past now, but it was quite big in the early 2000s. It’s certainly a genre in its own right and - for me - the best example for the genre would be the Taka Taka Mix-CD by Ricardo Villalobos. Still well worth a listen.

The distinction between tech-house and techno is more tricky, I agree. There certainly is a distinction, even though one might not be able to clearly attribute a track to one or the other in every individual case. For me the snare makes all the difference, I guess, house puts quite some emphasis on it while in techno it’s rather minuscule (if at all existent). It’s harder to explain than to demonstrate, but finding clear examples might be a bit of a task (and I’m not motivated to search right now - I don’t think the examples posted above [Sam Paganine/Stafone Noferini] really hit the spot, I would call both of them tech-house). Of course in the twilight zone between house and techno the lines are extremely blurry, but in the end why would one need to be able to exactly classify an individual track? (Sub-)Genre-distinctions are tools for communication used to describe a certain sound - so they need to capture the essence of a certain style, individual tracks on the other hand can (and often will) of course mix elements of different genres - and frankly, that’s part of the beauty.

Edit:

Maybe a comparison from a different field helps clear things up: Languages and dialects. A dialect is defined by the features in which it differs from the standard variety of a given language. So both are - in theory - well defined and quite different. But still you will have a very hard time finding a single individual speaking purely in the “standard” variety or a single dialect. You pretty much always find some kind of mixture. Depending of the number of features employed from either side, one might be able to classify a single speaker as a “dialect-speaker” or “standard-speaker” (probably not proper linguistic terms, but they bring the point across), but often one will end up puzzled how to classify - even though one has a clear idea of both varieties. (And there’s even many cases where it’s not quite clear if a certain variety is just a dialect of another language or a whole new language in its own right - also quite like with music-genres, eh?)

16

It seems they never stick when they’re most needed…

ahem dubstep cough

But really, they are a bit ridiculous. But in some genre like house, it really varies a lot and i guess to a DJ, if it were all house, they wouldn’t know what to play at a night. Big difference even in Electro House today, this whole “complextro” wave with half-time sections coming in.

17

Yes, I do understand what swing is in quantization, perhaps I did not understand the person I was replying to. But yes I have heard plenty of “tech house” that has no swing, and plenty of techno that does, and has some interesting drum patterns to boot; I guess I’m saying I think the line is a lot more blurry than people make it out to be.

I’m old. In the 90s I was more interested in house and dnb than anything called “microhouse.” I guess the name just turns me off.

[quote]Anybody else incapable of googling for something themselves please let me know.
[/QUOTE]
yes, can you please google “try not to be a dick” for me? Thanks.

18

Jeez, kid, calm down, like I said previously there’s no need to be a dick. Besides, you’re kinda wrong - I won’t jump on the “you don’t even know what funk is” argument but there’s very little quantized electronic music that I would consider pure “funk.” Funky, maybe, and I’m sure I can get down to Akufen if I gave it more of a chance (hell, I’ve danced to glitch and skweee before, not to mention all the industrial stuff I was into in the 90s), but when I really want to hear funk I pull out my Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament, Betty Davis, Bootsy, James Brown, Gene Page, Kool & the Gang, etc. The only quantized stuff I would put in that category is stuff like Fort Knox Five, Timewarp, Malente, etc., stuff that nods to and samples the older stuff. House and techno can be funky, but it sure isn’t funk. And believe it or not I have a pretty open mind when it comes to music (ever get down to Einsturzende Neubaten?); as I said I could probably like Akufen if I gave it more of a chance, but I can’t really see any world in which I would call that “funk.” If there was a whole microhouse movement in the 90s, it’s just my ignorance that I missed it - sorry but I can’t keep track of everything, and in over 20 years of DJing nobody has ever requested a microhouse track.

19

[quote=“3heads, post:15, topic:45450, username:3heads”]
Discussing microhouse in 2012 seems a bit anachronistic to me. I think the genre is more or less a thing of the past now, but it was quite big in the early 2000s. It’s certainly a genre in its own right and - for me - the best example for the genre would be the Taka Taka Mix-CD by Ricardo Villalobos. Still well worth a listen.
[/quote]Will check it out; I actually like Ricardo Villalobos and had no idea he was playing “microhouse.” Still don’t like the name but whatever.

[quote]The distinction between tech-house and techno is more tricky, I agree. There certainly is a distinction, even though one might not be able to clearly attribute a track to one or the other in every individual case. For me the snare makes all the difference, I guess, house puts quite some emphasis on it while in techno it’s rather minuscule (if at all existent).[/quote]This actually makes a lot more sense to me than the swing issue, but as you say it’s still a challenge to categorize things perfectly.

Amen. In the end if I want to mix two tracks I mix two tracks because they sound good together, not because they’re in the same genre. Genres can be useful when you’re looking around a record store but they get in the way if you use them as absolute guides to your mixing.

20

You’ve got a very limited idea of what funk is tbh, the funk at it’s most basic is just the space between events. And I’m sorry if you don’t agree with the swing thing but it’s true.