Show me some melody in modern electronic music.

[ghettosynth]

Nothing can make me believe that (many) people are liking ABBA because of their "killer melodies" and greatness of songwriting. It's all about repetition and marketing - and even younger people have heard ABBA many times on the radio, TV, advertisements, musicals, shopping malls, from their parents...and I include myself, without all those marketing I wouldn't know anything of ABBA...

So ABBA is purely popular because of what...Soooo much repetition 35 years ago that it somehow resonates forward even to the current day?

Who else does this apply to? The Beatles? The Stones? Michael Jackson? Elvis?

To some extent, all of them. Nobody is claiming that marketing is the sole reason that anyone is successful, but you can't deny that it's an extremely important part of pop music. Still doubting? Two words, Mini Vanili...QED.

And what does any of that have to do with EDM? I thought that the purpose of this thread was to try to understand how melody fits into EDM. How many purely instrumental tracks, let alone dance hits, ever hit the pop charts?

I can't quite figure out what your goal is here, do you want to be Rolling Stones of EDM?

I think what you're really saying is you don't like ABBA and as a result you can't conceive of why anyone else does, other than that they must have been brainwashed.

ABBA is fun and sweet, but clearly dated and not EDM in any sense of the word. So it's not clear to me other than they were a milktoast disco band, what they have to do with this conversation.

[ghettosynth]

Great stuff, I think that you've posted some of those before in another thread just like this one. Of course, that's only dance music for a very liberal interpretation of dancing.

It's true: the more interesting the music, the further you're moving away from a certain type of dancefloor. Although having said that, in the early days of dubstep most people said you couldn't dance to it. They said it was too slow, not really understanding that the dancefloor worked at 140bpm rather than the 70bpm that dubstep technically is. Now it (or some bastardised version of it) is the big thing on mainstream dancefloors worldwide!

Well yes, except, I'd replace "interesting" with "less danceable", but then we just have an uninteresting tautology. DnB had the same issue with danceability, frankly, I don't really think that it's ever been resolved with either DnB or dubstep. The really long term danceable stuff seems to lie between about 115 and 130 BPM. IIRC, I even think that I've cited some research on this in some other thread. Nonetheless, that's getting far afield.

All I was saying that the music that you presented is indeed interesting and not very danceable. Personally, though, I think that a lot of house music is also interesting and danceable. If you had said that the more rhythmically inconsistent something is, the less danceable, then I would agree.

I guess what I really mean is that I just can't wait for this dubstep phase to pass so we can move on to something that I loathe less.

[A.M. Gold]

Nothing can make me believe that (many) people are liking ABBA because of their "killer melodies" and greatness of songwriting. It's all about repetition and marketing - and even younger people have heard ABBA many times on the radio, TV, advertisements, musicals, shopping malls, from their parents...and I include myself, without all those marketing I wouldn't know anything of ABBA...

So ABBA is purely popular because of what...Soooo much repetition 35 years ago that it somehow resonates forward even to the current day?

Who else does this apply to? The Beatles? The Stones? Michael Jackson? Elvis?

To some extent, all of them. Nobody is claiming that marketing is the sole reason that anyone is successful, but you can't deny that it's an extremely important part of pop music. Still doubting? Two words, Mini Vanili...QED.

And Milli Vanilli is relevant today in what sense? ABBA is one of the biggest selling music acts in world history, and that is without very much touring if you look over the whole period they've been selling albums.

And what does any of that have to do with EDM? I thought that the purpose of this thread was to try to understand how melody fits into EDM. How many purely instrumental tracks, let alone dance hits, ever hit the pop charts?

I can't quite figure out what your goal is here, do you want to be Rolling Stones of EDM?

I think what you're really saying is you don't like ABBA and as a result you can't conceive of why anyone else does, other than that they must have been brainwashed.

ABBA is fun and sweet, but clearly dated and not EDM in any sense of the word. So it's not clear to me other than they were a milktoast disco band, what they have to do with this conversation.

This thread started as one thing (what you indicated above), but it branched off quickly into a subset of discussions about whether or not melody has essentially been "eliminated" as having any relevance or importance in dance music (or whether it was actually counter-productive to effective dance music).

I brought up ABBA to reinforce the point that a strongly pop sounding dance act can have enormous staying power, and sell tens upon tens of millions of albums, and be loved by young people who weren't even conceived when they were a current band, and I made the argument that that is extremely unlikely to ever happen to any house group.

That was a counterpoint to the idea that melody in the pop sense is somehow counter-productive to any sensible approach to dance music.

As far as current EDM, I gathered what I needed to know---the thread has moved on from that focus. I've just reinforced what I had assumed, which was that I will need to focus more on an uptempo pop concept to marketing my music, not an instrumental EDM concept or framework, but I wasn't as sure of that before as I am now.

OTOH, I still plan to check in on Beatport a few times a week to see if I catch wind of anything instrumental that is closer to what I do. Can't hurt.

[A.M. Gold]

And I appreciate Andy/ZPH's suggestion to immerse myself more in the current standard frameworks of EDM, house, etc., but that's never what my aim was.

I was expressly trying to establish whether there was anything else going on in EDM that I actually could naturally embrace, and that might open a commercial application to my music.

Making an effort to get more into house music wouldn't make any sense for me, because it's just way too far off from what I instinctively do. It's also, as I said before, an incredibly saturated market with a million or more people already doing it on their Macbooks, so from a career standpoint it also makes no sense to get into.

[zircon]

Did you check out my album?

http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/album ... y-sequence

Five years of work, very sci-fi / cyberpunk influenced. I'm really proud of it so when I see people looking for EDM that is beyond just generic wubs and 4x4 kicks/plucks, I want to share it.

[damoog]

first thing i thought of that defines awesome melody in electronic music was this track by squarepusher



on topic though i do think that electronic music has suffered musically on a massive scale over the last 20 years with the rise of COMMERCIAL dance music(basically anybody with a laptop),the vast majority of commercial artists dont have any musical background (ie-play piano)

most warp label artists such as squarepusher DO have musical background(have you seen him play bass)and write some truly amazing electronic music

[A.M. Gold]

Yea, that Squarepusher track was alright. Sort of reminds me of Air.

As far as DJ's not playing instruments (this is a side note but somewhat relevant), I was a little shocked when one of my favorite hip hop producers, DJ Toomp, had a video I saw on YT in which he did a little seminar for a crowd of people gathered around him somewhere. He made up a live beat from scratch, and he just had a laptop and a little two octave USB keyboard hooked up to it.

The upshot: he couldn't even play in key. He kept hitting wrong notes, and I know they weren't intentional because he was acting a little embarrassed. And this is a guy who has done a fair amount of hip hop production which I believe to be all original (i.e not sampled loops) which I found fairly impressive. He obviously worked it out in the DAW, but I still found it kind of weird that he had never even established the most basic competence on keys.

[ghettosynth]

I brought up ABBA to reinforce the point that a strongly pop sounding dance act can have enormous staying power, and sell tens upon tens of millions of albums, and be loved by young people who weren't even conceived when they were a current band, and I made the argument that that is extremely unlikely to ever happen to any house group.

Well, there aren't very many "house groups", but, to the extent that ABBA is relevant today, it's not as a dance act. In fact, that kind of success is extremely unlikely to happen to any act.

That was a counterpoint to the idea that melody in the pop sense is somehow counter-productive to any sensible approach to dance music.

In any context that I was talking about, ABBA would not work as dance music, at least not remixed. Moms may be going to concerts with their pre-teen daughters, but ABBA is no significant way relevant to the EDM crowd or current trends in dance music. You can't take just a part of the hypothesis and twist it to suit your agenda. My assertion was that dance music has changed as a consequence of sequencing, nostalgia for ABBA does not change that fact.

That said, you don't have to go back to ABBA to find (vocally) melodic dance music, I gave you several examples that have been in the charts recently. Nobody is arguing that the average consumer wants to hear tech house. They don't, they dance to the same pop that they've been dancing to for decades. What some of us were arguing is that this is not where the forefront of underground EDM is and citing ABBA isn't going to change that. ABBA is popular today, so is AC/DC, neither group has squat to do with dance music today. Frankly, I think thunderstruck is far more relevant than anything ABBA's ever done.

As far as current EDM, I gathered what I needed to know---the thread has moved on from that focus. I've just reinforced what I had assumed, which was that I will need to focus more on an uptempo pop concept to marketing my music, not an instrumental EDM concept or framework, but I wasn't as sure of that before as I am now.

OTOH, I still plan to check in on Beatport a few times a week to see if I catch wind of anything instrumental that is closer to what I do. Can't hurt.

EDM is all about finding the right labels. Spend some time on Beatport looking for the kind of stuff that you like and you might find the right market.

[dune_rave]

modern electronic music from '95


or his new track (2012)

[srv-musikmaker]

https://soundcloud.com/srv-musicmaker/t ... rack-urban

I try to focus on melody at times ! This one has some melodic elements. It's a lil dancey. Just an instrumental though

[A.M. Gold]

ghetosynth, we are two ships passing in the night.

I think I established a while back pretty clearly that I don't really care about underground dance. It doesn't include anything I can work with, so it's not going to play into anything I pursue. This thread helped me establish that.

For about the fourth time: I needed to know if there was anything purely instrumental based, not full song based in EDM that was more melodic than the standard stuff I'm already aware of.

I also think we actually agree about something I've been arguing for several pages, which is that it is not a universal constraint of anything dance related in music that it must be mostly simple and basic beat oriented.

It's just two different cultures of uptempo music that different people like to either dance to, or just listen to because it's energetic and uplifting. It's two different approaches, both of which find audiences, but the melodic approach is closer to general pop, and is, by definition, likely to be more popular.

As far as ABBA, they WERE considered a dance group when they were popular, so saying they have nothing to do with dance doesn't hold much water. People may not dance to them in clubs now, but that doesn't disconnect them with any sense of ever having been a dance band.

[arkmabat]

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 352AAhx4gS

[A.M. Gold]

I've had similar discussions of this on several EDM forums over the years and I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the lack of melody in modern EDM comes from not only DJs, but from all of the bedroom producers who have gotten into production with little/no prior musical training. Today's EDM producers seem to believe that production value and groove trumps melody/harmony. Not only do most of them have no melodies, most of them don't even know what a melody is - spend some time on other forums' song feedback subforums and you'll see people referring to a two-note pluck pattern that repeats ad nauseum as a "nice melody."

Granted, production is relatively easy these days with all the tools and tutorials at our disposal. If someone wants to learn the latest production technique from the hottest producers, it's only a few youtube clicks away. There is no equivalent manner for writing a solid melody, because a solid melody works within a harmonic framework, and for vocals needs to work with lyrics, etc. That takes experience, knowledge, creativity, etc. Sure, people who are good at it can share some of that, but putting it into practice is far more difficult than learning how to dial in settings on a compressor or delay. So, you end up with countless tracks out there that are finely polished turds - production-wise, they can sound as good as commercial tracks, but have nothing interesting enough in them, musically speaking, to keep it interesting for 7-8 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, though - I think it's awesome that music production has become so easy and widely accessible for anybody with a computer and a desire to do so. It's created this sort of subculture that really digs this style of music - nothing wrong with that IMO, but songs without melodies have to have something else special going on to get my attention. Personally, I come from a musical background, so I tend to focus far more on composition than I do on production. And, yeah, that probably shows in my music.

I only skimmed this before but after reading it more carefully, it's a good summing up of a lot of my own perspective and background as well.

I think ghettosynth and I have been on the verge of arguing about this (even though we agree on some points) mostly because there is a tug of war going on about my use of the word "dance", and my defensiveness about whether dance music can still be called dance music and really have that strong song orientation you are describing here.

The essence of my problem isn't really with instrumental dance or club music or whatever you want to call it, it's just with my circumstance of being stuck doing instrumentals in a framework that still is almost exclusively the precinct of songs with vocal top lines rather than being made of all-synth ensembles.

I have an application for my music, but it's not in the right format, and as anyone knows, it's much harder to get a full vocal piece made (even as a demo) than it is to do instrumental music completely ITB.

[A.M. Gold]

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 352AAhx4gS

What is this dubstep song called?
It goes like this:

WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBW… *czzt* WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB

can someone help me out here?
can someone help me out here?



Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

may be one of these

-Wobble by Wobblster

-I Wub You by Wubber Boy

-Your An Idiot by Me

hahaha
2 years ago

[Gamma-UT]

I think ghettosynth and I have been on the verge of arguing about this (even though we agree on some points) mostly because there is a tug of war going on about my use of the word "dance", and my defensiveness about whether dance music can still be called dance music and really have that strong song orientation you are describing here.

The essence of my problem isn't really with instrumental dance or club music or whatever you want to call it, it's just with my circumstance of being stuck doing instrumentals in a framework that still is almost exclusively the precinct of songs with vocal top lines rather than being made of all-synth ensembles.

I have an application for my music, but it's not in the right format, and as anyone knows, it's much harder to get a full vocal piece made (even as a demo) than it is to do instrumental music completely ITB.

If that's the case you're pretty much stuffed for making pop music and, realistically, always have been. The only instrumental synth hits I can think of made the pop charts as novelty records. Only a few of them set out as novelty records (for example Popcorn) but after that it's film themes - Axel F and Crockett's Theme - and once the 80s were over you got into EDM territory with Papua New Guinea. And Doop. Remember that?

If I were attempting to earn a crust making music I wouldn't be so fast to set my face against what the audience wants because that's the point the posters claiming it's all down to 'DJs' and talentless, unmusical brats with synths in their bedrooms keep missing. They didn't suddenly erect an electric fence around Nashville to stop the songwriters getting out. Songs still get written and played and aired. But the general public does not, right now, care for their apparent complexity.

I'm right there with ZPH's suggestion of immersion and I think ghettosynth was hinting in the same direction - it's only by attempting to understand what is going on in music that you can really determine whether you can make a go of it in today's market. Or you can close your mind and be one of the guys complaining how it isn't like it used to be (conveniently forgetting that 99% of yesterday's pop got consigned to the trash because once it left the charts people realised it wasn't very good).