Phrasing in electronic music and the curse of predictability

[qa2pir]

jancivil you're the conservative as you cannot tolerate new definitions even on a hypothetical level...

[jancivil]

I know that writer...it's a tosser with an opinion, that has a degree

More than "a" degree, in fact. By your own standards then, you're a tosser without a degree and without any invited essays on the subject. So we can easily conclude that no matter how shrill you screech out your unsupported opinion, there's no reason to accept it over the tossers that have followed through with their studies and made a commitment to put their words in a form that matters.

amiright?

Actually, I'm surprised that you dismiss Simon so quickly, and even more surprised that you missed my mis-attribution. I thought that you studied tape music?

so, you really believe someone's academic degree lends weight to an argument per se. this is amazing to me. you won't enter into a discussion of the merits of what was said, but you do feel confident that this side attribute is something you can type some words about.

you can't make an argument without backup? you are so weak. additionally, coloring what I said with 'screeching' does in no way support your argument. the more you go at this, the more you amplify the fact of the emptiness of your blather.

So, you have, instead of saying one thing more, an appeal to authority. The entire argument against what I said agasinst the definition was that I failed to bring an appeal to authority. make the same fallacy as you.

this is amazing to see. you do know you have the fallacy, stick to fallacy to the extent that your entire argument from there is my failure to commit the fallacy.

and you do this just to argue.

[t3toooo]

i don't know what it is all about the "new inventions",new lines of music that is replacing the "old way"?

thinking in this direction is rather limiting,there is no need to compete with the unknown.

what differences the possibility to work with the computer versus hardware is the ability to make the music much louder and tighter.
personally i like a good level of loudness,there is a fine line,when it is beginning to distort (in the bad way) i don't like it anymore.


i love distortion and i love loud "smacky" kicks and snares but this is rather a production technique.
although,you can not taken apart music and production.
but a conversation about what "the people" are preferring is an empty debate and lead to nowhere.

i like to see more live music in the future,using the current production techniques but also going away from the the endless "drop here","break here" "chorus there" gibberish.

using nearly the same form ever and ever isn't exactly innovative and nothing new at all.

[ghettosynth]

Did someone say something about "my thesis"?

I'm sorry, when did I write a thesis? I had no idea KVR was a scientific journal!

The first denotation of thesis: A proposition that is maintained by argument.

That's what is meant by thesis here.

it's VERY easy to get gridlocked into a heirarcy of even phrasing, tending to powers of 2 and even numbers of repetitions or variations. I thought it'd be nice to share since I've made a lot of neat discoveries by deciding to lessen the strictness of this trend in my music.

Good for you. But you seemed to be asserting more, you seemed to be asserting that electronic music SHOULD avoid powers of two. For that, you should expect that people will push back.

The fact is, there is a lot of innovation in dance music and I haven't found too many producers talking about a need to break up the basic form in order to find inspiration. So, just because it works for you, don't expect it to be something that most EDM producers would embrace.

I thought it might inspire someone or at least bring up some fun debate.

It did, people in a debate disagree. That said, it's pretty clear that some people who choose to debate don't have any actual experience with the style or the culture and want to push their outdated and irrelevant points of view. What you propose does affect mixability, surely if you actually produced records, then you must agree with that. If you know any underground DJs you know that there are degrees of DJ friendly. Perhaps if you'd acknowledge and discuss those points you would have more discussion of EDM and less distracting nonsense.

I'm not going to answer and justify cut up bits of my original post and people's responses to them because it was JUST A POST. If I were writing a legally binding statement or something, maybe...

So, if you're not going to engage in a discussion, then don't be surprised that your thread goes in directions that you didn't anticipate.

I don't see why the high and mighty DJ shouldn't be poked fun at once in a while.

The DJ is not off limits, of course. Poke fun all you want, but don't expect that false statements won't be challenged. You can't ignore the DJ's role in this, music is made to be DJ friendly so that it can be flexibly mixed. Sticking to a clean set of, e.g., 5 to 7 32s say for house, is arguably the most flexible format. Where you put variations is also important, right? A variation leading into the main build has less impact on mixability than a variation right before the out-tro.

So, how do YOU use these variations? What kind of style are you targeting? Do you intend for your music to be DJ friendly?

And I've gone into a trance dancing to allsorts of music (with and mainly without the use of chemicals) many of which was organically arranged, had odd bars here and there that acted as units in-and-of themselves, some of it has even not had a regular predictable BEAT, let alone phrasing and arrangement. Even some of the fresher dance acts play with this level of form, like Basement Jaxx. It's never made me stop dancing when done correctly.

If you have any exposure to the rave scene at all you must know that in the large, it is particular styles and forms that induce that room sized groove. I've never seen quirky arrangements get the whole room bouncing, not like house/techno DJs can. You will always find exceptions, that doesn't take away the main point that dance music is a product created to fit a particular style.

It's not hard to find support for this thesis, the aforementioned baroque dance specialist stated pretty specifically that a stable and strong beat is a key characteristic.

Nothing is stopping anyone from creating new styles, however, it's done all the time. I simply don't understand all this complaining that the styles that have proven successful aren't what people think that they should be. They are successful, that's why they are mimicked. Moreover, that somehow they'd be better if they were executed some other way. Great, execute them that way.

Who's your audience for this advice? Why don't you link to some examples of the music where you found this helpful so people can understand the context that you had in mind.

[ghettosynth]

...

[t3toooo]

successful?

a copycat can be much more "successful".
again we are at lame steady 4/4.

no contribution so far.

"thread end"

[ghettosynth]

jancivil you're the conservative as you cannot tolerate new definitions even on a hypothetical level...

Ben Neill has a lot to say about the new musical conservative, my turn of phrase, not his, in his excellent article "Pleasure Beats: Rhythm and the Aesthetics of Current Electronic Music." In the article he touches on some of the points that I've been discussing here and in other threads, specifically, about the role of rhythm and the nature of dance music as a product, he even quotes Terrance McKenna's Archaic Revival. He points out that a lot of "high art" computer music is disconnected and elitist, and consequently, is largely ineffectual as a 21st century art form.

He also touches on the obsession with time signature and complexity in general in context with the fear of 4/4. He cites John King who refers to this attitude as "the fear of the funk"

Ben Neill, by the way, is a nother "tosser with a degree" who studied with La Monte Young; he served as the music curator for the Kitchen (New York) from 1992 to 1998.

The article is available from MIT press.

[jopy]

re: Ben Neill, it's interesting to note that he highlights Squarepusher in particular as an artist worth considering, and also name drops artists like Aphex Twin, Tortoise, and DJ Spooky as exemplars of the style he admires. None of these are really 4 on the floor EDM artists, are they? But his point about the tendency for art musicians to eschew musical styles that are seen as too "funky" is certainly valid.

Ben Neill's music:



That's pretty damn interesting treatment of a beat in my book.

[t3toooo]

again i'm on "proven successful".


i had a friend who was always talking about the power of simplicity,art and creativity in a way that i really believed him.

some years later he went to asia as an architect (not that he ever was one).
now he's building the same crap that anybody else is building and get a lot of money for that.
is that innovative?

blah.blah,blah.

he wanted to earn money,nothing else,why didn't he said it before?
he could do it.


if you ever want to give david guetta a mix which isn't the norm, containing time sigs or any new invention, i hardly doubt he will play it.

he is choosing the right "proven" music from his contract composers and nothing more.

so there is a small elite which claim to play "proven" music ignoring anything else to death,because it is "un-proven".
music agency's organizing gigantic festivals with one guy that even didn't compose or produce the songs,just turning a knob and press play.

is that innovative?

i prever producers like skrillex or deadmau5 because those guys are producing their music itself.
however,some names appearing the lasts months,i'll doubt that they produce without huge support from professionals.
at the end there are not many producers.

btw.deadmau5 was ranting about this point recently.
despite how awful and corrupt,drug addicted this scene really is when you scratch the surface.


where is the innovation if you don't want to promote niches that a lot of people want to listen to?
the chance of getting a job on those places is nearly zero anyway.
a small circle of people getting millions pretending playing "proven" music.

they have it in the hand and it is effecting everyone,and i think not in a good way.


anyway this is way off topic and has nothing got to do with music.


so stop this blabbering about "success".

[ghettosynth]

re: Ben Neill, it's interesting to note that he highlights Squarepusher in particular as an artist worth considering, and also name drops artists like Aphex Twin, Tortoise, and DJ Spooky as exemplars of the style he admires. None of these are really 4 on the floor EDM artists, are they?

Notably missing from your list is Richie Hawtin. I recently attended Hawtin's latest live show, nothing BUT 4/4. In fact, Hawtin (almost) represents the ideal at the other end of the spectrum. There were no glory notes or endless never-ending builds that crescendo into more never-ending builds; Hawtin understands the long term groove.

But his point about the tendency for art musicians to eschew musical styles that are seen as too "funky" is certainly valid.

Yes, and he goes beyond that, as I'm sure that you're aware. In fact he argues that 4/4 is a perfectly valid vehicle for new compositional ideas and innovations.

Ben Neill's music:



That's pretty damn interesting treatment of a beat in my book.

Absolutely. It's very reminiscent of Omni Trio or Plug (Luke Vibert) and clearly influenced by contemporary electronica.

But you aren't going to hear that at 1AM on the main floor, look at the setting that it's being played in. Wonderful chill room stuff. If anyone posting here is under some delusion that EDM producers are somehow not aware of this then you're simply not "well read" so to speak. This stuff is the star of chill rooms and has been for decades. To understand the Pareto dominance of straight 4/4 one only needs to recognize the fundamental fact that DJs aren't beating down doors to play the chill room. Most EDM is locked in the time signature of the genre because it is a product. Again, I'll cite Neill who's quoting Chadabe.

Popular electronic music...exists within a commercial entertainment culture. A song or a performing group is in effect a product designed to be immediately successful within a targeted segment of the mass market (emphasis mine)

To whine about the dominance of straight 4/4 is to tilt at windmills, house/techno/trance music is entertainment that serves a particular purpose and is consumed in a particular manner. Continuing the quote from above:

...It follows that popular electronic music is consumed by its public primarily in clubs where the public participates by dancing and that it is appreciated more in physical than intellectual terms (again, emphasis mine)

So, going all the way back to the start of this thread, as I have repeatedly stated on this subject, the value of variation from from depends almost entirely on purpose and intent. Dance music is intended to be consumed physically and fit a particular genre. Changing up the form moves it away from that genre, either into a new genre, or into something that nobody is going to buy. Yes pedants, there are exceptions. If you want to consistently sell to a certain segment, then the techniques that lead to inspirational chill room music, may be useless on the main floor. Trying to blame DJs or Drum Machines, or the lack of music education, is all just a bunch of nonsense. Producers test their tracks against audience response, that's the metric of interest.

[t3toooo]

Producers test their tracks against audience response, that's the metric of interest.

[t3toooo]

it's good that a fast cheap produced track is forgotten the next morning when people waking up with a headache.
for most of them it is simply about having something to move but talking about it as a great art is outrageous.

those standard formulas are relative simple to create, except the production technique which is way harder to archive if you do not have somebody who explain to you which tools and how to use them correctly.

this thread is called "Phrasing in electronic music and the curse of predictability",so it could be a resource for interesting ideas,instead it is turning out that you must do 4/4,anything else wont be played.

we can go forever about this but i guess it is rather sad that some people always bring their shit money in it.

[ghettosynth]

Producers test their tracks against audience response, that's the metric of interest.

I'm guessing by this that you're a top producer; perhaps you'd like to give us all a listen of your latest 3/4 floor burner?

[experimental.crow]

that ben neill track was outstanding ...

[dusted william]

Ben Neill's music:



That's pretty damn interesting treatment of a beat in my book.

I loved all of that except for the drum beat (s)

dw