0743302 - Modern Electronic Music

Billboard Top 10 Genres

In the hundred of subgenres of modern electronic music, the genres of House, Breakbeat, Dance, and Progressive seem to appear most commonly on Billboard Charts. With groups like Daft Punk conquering most of the Top 5 songs with their House genre, bands like Prodigy, Moby, and Jem appear multiple times as well.

With the genres I’ve discussed in the previous slide, comes the venues at which they are played. From the late 70’s Chicago House clubs, to the more modern stages that DJ’s like Tieso and Van Helden have, the basis of having pounding bass and synchronized lighting seems to be the standard for what makes Electronic music the way it is today. Much like the bass you hear and feel in your chest is the audible stimulant, the visual stimulant is the very powerful and eye-catching lighting that accompanies the music. Notorious musicians known for this are Daft Punk and DJ Tiesto, where their lighting can run them many thousands of dollars.

Audio/Visual

Highest Audience Attendance

From the early pioneers of Electronic music, the most popular choices for Instruments were produced by Roland, Korg, and Moog. On the upper right is some examples of what synthesizers look like in a normal setup; bottom right is an example of sampling equipment, and bottom shows the Equalization that gets put into making these songs.

Equipment in the Genre

From the days of Disco to the modern performers, the same sounds and technology have been used. Artists such as Daft Punk and MSTRKRFT often use equipment that was made almost 30 years ago to achieve their sounds, but in a totally new genre and context. The invention of MIDI, which is an interface wherein the synthesizer can be connected to the computer, has been a staple of modern electronic music for the last 20 years. Composers could record, edit, and playback their songs all in one place, which eliminated thousands of dollars of studio equipment.

History

To visualize the mass of this genre, and how many different subgenres spawn from it, I have included a great reference to a website I happened upon. This website is flash based and includes a number of samples from every electronic genre, categorized by genre, then by era; be it the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 00’s.

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_music_genresof concerts . This website shows the vast number of subgenres that are a direct result of musicians using electronic devices to create music. By popularity, some of these genres are not well known, and do not have famous groups perform them, but are heard in small clubs or very underground scenes. The subtle differences in these genres are classified by style, by the beat, by the timing of the beat, and sometimes just by the area that they were played in. Stretching from the Early 70’s, right up to modern day, additions to old songs have created new songs, and beats and riffs have been used widely by DJ’s to create songs. Some examples are the hooks and riffs Daft Punk uses. http://palmsout.blogspot.com/2007/02/sample-wednesday-27-daft-punk.html, is a website that shows all of the older songs Daft Punk has adapted to create their own original songs. Some argue that this is not creating music but merely stealing it, but the differences and way these group adapt these samples can ultimately change the song entirely. It isn’t so much stealing as it is rearranging to improve the older song, to express new ideas onto it, or show new listeners that these old songs were good back then, and they are even better now with a modern electronic twist.

List of All Subgenres in the Electronic Music Genre

Photos

Citations

• http://www.ez-tracks.com/top-40-Electronic-songs.html - First Chart

• http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/• www.rockandrollbadboy.com/topattendance.html

• http://palmsout.blogspot.com/2007/02/sample-wednesday-27-daft-punk.html