Why is electronic dance music typically very simple?

[nuffink]

Commie

[G&L_player]

As a fan of electronic music, I've always wondered why most electronic music is very simple in terms of harmony, counterpoint..etc (with the rhythm and melody being exceptions--electronic music can be very complex rhythmically, and sometimes we also get synth solo leads wanking away in a melody as well). I listen to wide range of styles in Electronic music (from classics like Kraftwerk, experimental stuff like IDM, club stuff like progressive house, breakbeat..etc), and more often than not, they follow a very basic formula. Even the more melodic based acts like 808 State or BT, the structure is still quite simple. Could it be because electronic music simply sounds better when it doesn't incorporate complex harmonies, counterpoint..etc (I'm excluding the pseudo-symphony mimicked by synthesizers stuff from the era of giant analog modular synths). Does the use of filters, effects..etc negate the effectiveness of harmony and counterpoint? Or they are simply aspects of music theory that does not interest electronic musicians?

In my mind, there's a real-time apsect to the simplicity thing, as well. More specifically, the aspect of performing in the electronic arena can easily become more of a coordination effort of the "pieces" that are to be sewn. This, of course, has a musical aspect to it.

It's it a curiosity that people will look at you funny if you play your own arpeggios? (Seems to me.) It used to be a sin. Now, it's strategy/planning, which is appreciated just as well, as it contributes to the whole- "everything's gotta be phat" mentallity.

Personally, I find the electronic music arena to be the child of ARP/Moog days, where cats would come into a music store and see what they were supposed to pay so much for. Eventually, bands started letting the instrument challenge their creativity; some were lucky and found the right sound(s); the rest did the strings/pad/lead thing with the synth de jour.

It's just way past cool to see that there is an audience for all this stuff! Man, I missed out...shoulda stuck with the synth. (I used to get to chat with Tom Piggot when I was a kid- what an opportunity for any synth owner/lover!) Being a young electronic musician today must be like being the organist of the 60's-70's, only you have a layer of devices at each instrument level, and further control over the whole thing. What's going on today, is simply and answer to all of those questions (from that time)...cause and effect.

FYI: I'm a little jealous, because we couldn't get away with this much synth, back in the day...but I'm not that old, just grew up with it.

[herodotus]

its a bit worrying that you dismiss at least 50 years worth of work just because it wasnt popular in your opinion.

Try 2-3 billion people mate!:x

Man I dunno if you've heard of the big 5, but here are the guys/groups that invented electronic music:

Leon Theremin, Maurice Martenot, Raymond Scott, Louis Barron, and Robert Moog.

Knew the left wing party couldn't contain themselves without making 'NWO' politically correct comments!

A guy who has a (probably apocryphal) Hegel quote for a sig is in no position to talk about mentioning obscure cultural figures. Because Hegel is way more obscure than the sound of an Ondes Martinot or a Theremin.

And Varese rocks.

Period.

[k-bird]

I'm still waiting for some names of complex electronic music. I'd love to hear something new (for me). Who's the John Williams et al of electronic music?

A lot of Music by The Orb and FSOL was really complex, AND had a good flow to it. However, a lot of that complexity was created by skilful layering of samples, rather than built up note by note, which may bother you.

Haven't listened to The Orb for quite a while, didn't think of it as complex, but they might have changed.

The Orb's earlier stuff (say from go to the end of Orbus Terrarum) is very cleverly layered. It's seemingly been designed for enjoyment by people who are out of it on one thing or another because the old mental information filters need to be temporarily taken out of service to properly catch everything they put in there. It's certainly not complicated in a harmonic or melodic sense but in a textural sense it's very complex; the Orb arranged many of their tunes using sound effects to make them fully lush instead of tonal instruments.

If you want complexity on the scale of classical music or even jazz, i'd say go and listen to classical music or jazz. There's really no need to be biased against it because it's not performed with electronic instruments; electronic music isn't in competition with classical after all.

The way i see it, working with electronics gives a composer the leeway to summon whatever instrument sound they like from thin air, so you'll have to excuse us if we work more with textures than with harmony and melody.

[herodotus]

Commie

Fascist.

[nuffink]

Electronic music was invented by midge ure in 1992.

What do I win?

[afreshcupofjoe]

I can't believe "Mr. A. Funk" hasn't been mentioned yet. You guys are really missing out:

http://www.venetiansnares.com/audio/sam ... myself.mp3

Not my favorite example of his work, but his other stuff will make your face melt off and we don't want that to happen.

[Reverse Engineer]

Electronic music was invented by midge ure in 1992.

What do I win?

Kate Bush's bush trimmings.

[nuffink]

Again?

[yemski]

its a bit worrying that you dismiss at least 50 years worth of work just because it wasnt popular in your opinion.

Try 2-3 billion people mate!:x

Man I dunno if you've heard of the big 5, but here are the guys/groups that invented electronic music:

Leon Theremin, Maurice Martenot, Raymond Scott, Louis Barron, and Robert Moog.

Knew the left wing party couldn't contain themselves without making 'NWO' politically correct comments!

A guy who has a (probably apocryphal) Hegel quote for a sig is in no position to talk about mentioning obscure cultural figures. Because Hegel is way more obscure than the sound of an Ondes Martinot or a Theremin.

And Varese rocks.

Period.

Hegel is very important to the development of Western ideas and philosophy, particularly in the way he influenced Marxism.
He can't really be classed as obscure.

True, more people are aware of the sound of the Theremin and (to a lesser extent) the Ondes Martenot, through old horror films and the recent resurgence of those instruments in popular music. It's doubtful many people could tell you what they were listening to though.

Granted not many people could tell you who Hegel was either. But I believe the small minority who could tell you who Hegel was would be larger in number than the small minority who could you what a Theremin is. As for the Ondes Martenot, I know a lot of musician's who had never heard of it, until I told them about it.

So pedantry over with, what were we talking about again?

[Lunatique]

Man I dunno if you've heard of the big 5, but here are the guys/groups that invented electronic music:
Jean Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk.

Of course I have (anyone making electronic music that haven't heard their music should probably get a sharp slap upside the head), and they all belong to the excluded categories I mentioned previous.

A brief bit of OT...I thought I might venture to say that I quite enjoy your art. I just started working with digital painting myself, after years of doing it the "analog" way.

Thank you.

Given that, maybe it's nothing more than a requirement of the genre. That certainyl seems to be your attitude - if it is complex, like Sakamoto, then it's not electronic music. I find that bizarre but then I find the whole question strange.

That's not quite what I meant--I'm just saying his electronic stuff (like the album B-2 Unit) tends to be very avant-garde. Of course it's electronic music, just not the kind being discussed. It's simple to make complex harmonies and counterpoint work in a non-beat/dance driven piece of music, because it doesn't have to convey the kind of vibe that's essential for beat-driven music.

[yemski]

Most popular music is "simple", whatever that means.
A large proportion of popular music is electronic, ergo it is "simple".

Having said that their is plenty of electronic music out there that uses odd time signatures, complex harmony, and sophisticated counterpoint should you wish to search it out. Whether this makes it makes it not simple is entirely down to the cultural criteria you use to define simple and sophisticated.

As an excerise try and notate one of Eminem's raps (Hip Hop counts as electronic music in my mind) , or analyse it using other critical formulae such as sociological or anthropolgical observation and then try and tell me music like this is "simple". I tend not to get involved in discussion like this, since aesthetic judgement is probably the most subjective of all intellectual pursuits, given the fact that the tools one has to measure it are also themselves subjective.

[BONES]

Which is exactly what I mean. You ask why electronic msuci is so simple, tehn you say that something that isn't simple is avant-garde, not electronic. So you're talking only about "dance" music, and probably only even then by the narrowest defintion, in which complexity is both unnecessary and a distraction from its main purpose - getting people onto a dancefloor. Skinny Puppy do some very complex, layered electronic music but the stuff I play at a club is the stripped-down stuff that works in that medium.
But it's irrelevant anyway because it can be just as hard to do something simple really well as it is to do something complex.

[VicDiesel]

You ask why electronic msuci is so simple, tehn you say that something that isn't simple is avant-garde, not electronic.

Well summarized.

Observation 1: if dance music is harmonically simple, so what? Your average salsa band has a trap drummer plus 3 percussionists, but hits an average of two chords per song. So what? It's not what that particular music is about.

Observation 2: you're asking for something impossible. Dance music lives on repetition. That doesn't go together with the continuous development that features in harmonically and contrapunctally rich music. Just try to imagine a trance gate stuttering out a single note for 16 beats, and then imagine interesting harmonies against that. If it can be done at all, it'll sound silly.

Victor.

[DWb]

Whether this makes it makes it not simple is entirely down to the cultural criteria you use to define simple and sophisticated.

Truth.

A good example is that from a harmonic / melodic point of view, oldskool jungle tends to be very simple in so far as you can describe what's going on without much complicated notation. Describing what's going on rhythmically and timbrally is rather harder.

Then you get onto things like Basic Channel or Aphex's ambient stuff which is comparatively simple from any conventional point of view but which is effective in a way that's very hard to pin down - ie it's subtle. But is subtlety just a form of holistic complexity that we can't currently describle or explain? Not sure really...

Oh, and FWIW I think quite a lot of Detroit / intelligent techno and deep house got reasonably into jazzy chords and the like. It's still not exactly Bach, though.