Wall Street Journal actually writing an article on this? Who would have thought. Good read actually except for one part that truly made me upset.
Really? Primitive was the best word you could come up with? Why not “influential”, “Iconic” or “Historic”? Do they not realize it’s still a highly coveted and still used piece of dance music production?
I’ll say it again, people who have no knowledge of dance music, or anything else, should be getting paid to write articles about it.
The analog machine can tend to drift on longer sequences, and doesn’t present the tighter quantized strings that modern samplers and synths provide, so people are actually better off ditching the 909, grabbing it’s samples and running them through more modern studio equipment. [/devils_advocate]
But that was also part of the charm and what made each 909 unique to itself. People TRY to get their grooves to just a bit off grid like a 909 and react like all those other classic drums machines.
It’s one thing to just sample an 808 kick and have go 4 to the 4, but to actually have the 808 itself running a simple 4 on the 4 pattern, they will sound different. There’s certain things going on and happening to the actual sound in the circuits that you really can’t emulate.
I thought the exact same thing, but a mate of mine that I used to work with has an 808, 909, 505 and many more pieces of kit and we got into this debate, and after he showed me all the nuances that you’re missing out on when just sampling it, I now understand why people go to such great lengths to get the originals.
Now, is it practical? Not at all I’d say. If you’ve been here long enough you know how I feel about going with software vs hardware. But at the same time I have enough knowledge and respect to realize what these machines have done and still can do.
Calling it “primitive” is like calling a 69 Chevelle “primitive”. Sure, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles on a new 2012 Camaro, but it still has more than enough raw power to perform and people still pay out the nose for it (probably not the best comparison, but you get the point).
The writer has no knowledge about what influence the 909 had on EDM
I’ve read the article, and I tend to think he used the word ‘primitive’ specifically to intentionally intend irony. And there’s too much ‘tend’ in that sentence
“Guetta and Harris are cliché-riddled, white-bread house that don’t represent the best of the genre.” Yes
“I can’t play house for two hours.” - Avicii Lol…you don’t know what house is.
“As EDM and its related events continue to grow, an audience may be developing that wants nothing more than predictable, middling entertainment. Given the new audience’s response, why would big-name producers go back to old-school DJing that requires concentration and knowledge of a vast musical database?” Heh. This is why anyone close to an old-school DJ hates the new guys. It has nothing to do with sync and computers, and it never did…dumb people who can’t articulate their points have always bitched about mundane details.
I think that’s actually the best car to music similie I’ve heard. Most of them fall apart under anything but the most short-sighted, surface analysis.
And I kind of agree. There’s something to be said for a car that doesn’t do everything for you and requires you to learn its nuances to get the most out of it.
And from a related interview of Ritchie Hawtin,
“Club culture has just been there for years and years, since the ’70s. America, it’s bar culture, concert culture. Go out till 2 a.m., go home. Pick up a girl, pick up a boy, whatever. People in Spain and Italy and Germany, they go out at midnight. Or they start partying at 3 or 4 a.m. and they want to hear music and just dance and freak out. So that’s why they’ve been ahead, it just made sense there. It’s made sense for a long, long, long time, and it’s just taken America a while to catch up.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’ll be on the way out soon. But the one thing that makes me think he might be wrong: Tiesto. Tiesto in Concert seems like it was the start of this thing, and he was a Dutch DJ playing in the Netherlands.
That’s a great interview. My favorite part was this [QUOTE]I was with Deadmau5 last week, and his mom was at the house, and she’s like, “Is this the guy you used to talk about when you were a kid?”[/QUOTE]
But seriously, you could be right. The weird thing is, however, that over here everyone has moved on already and good parties with good DJs playing real dance music all night long are still widely spread. From our point of view, it looks like some idiots in the US only lately discovered the music from guys like Tiesto and Afrojack and built a huge hype around it, completely with coming up with new genres named “Dutch house” and all. Over here, quite some people can still enjoy a full night of underground house/techno/hardcore/whatever is played.
