Show me some melody in modern electronic music.

[rockstar_not]

Remember, pop music in general started to get more basic and stripped down starting in the late 80's, it wasn't just dance. Was that based on demand, or was it coming from the supply side?

Pop music has ALWAYS been both stripped down as well as requiring evolution. Go back and listen to doo-wop music from the 50's. Truckloads of the same thing delivered over and over with the same chord progressions, same rhythms, same number of singers, etc.

Being basic and stripped down is one means to popular appeal. You will never have the world swooning over some complex multi-modal keyboard wizard 'melody' otherwise Jordan Rudess would be as much a household name as Justin Bieber.

No worries - the world needs music for the masses and the niches.

[Bronto Scorpio]

+1

People like to glorify older music and older stuff in general. Popular music 20, 30 or even 50 years ago wasn't more complex or "intelligent" than todays music.

Luckily I had the opportunity to hear music from a lot of different periods when I was younger (I was born when my mother was 40 and I have an 14 years older brother....so I basically listened o everything from the 50s to the 90s as a kid).
I guess this helped me to have an open mind about a lot of very different stuff. I listen to Pink Floyd and Tom Waits equally as much as I listen to Autechre and Richard Devine and I like them for different reasons, just like people dance to different stuff for different reasons. Some music needs melody, some doesn't. It's as simple as that.

I always come up with my Mario example at this point
The new Mario games are absolutely fantastic! But no Mario game will ever be as good for me as Super Mario World, even if there is absolutely nothing wrong with the new ones (well, Mario Sunshine was crap).

There is a lot of prejustice and "back in the olden days" mentality in this thread. Don't ask questions if you already have a fixed opinion, always keep an open mind about new stuff and you may find some wonderfull stuff.

Cheers
Dennis

[Tricky-Loops]

There is a lot of prejustice and "back in the olden days" mentality in this thread. Don't ask questions if you already have a fixed opinion, always keep an open mind about new stuff and you may find some wonderfull stuff.

+ 1 and a million...

I'm getting the impression that the OP just wanted people to support his thesis that music is getting less melodic and worse every year and that music in the 60ies, 70ies and 80ies was so great that it's still being played today. (Truth is that 90 % of ALL the music from this period won't be played any more and is nearly forgotten).

People tried to prove wrong and showed melodic electronic music, but without effect...

[highkoo]

Woah eleven pages!

I hope Joker has been mentioned.
I dont know what his 'most melodic' track would be, but he is doing stuff that not a lot of other edm is doing.


Not that I particularly like it...
I dont really think that melody can take the same place in the hierarchy in edm that it does in most genres.
When it does, it often makes for watered down edm imo.

Hows this for a lead?-


Not the four bar intro. All the sound in the drop creates a wonktastic roll that sings a little tune.
Weird.
But it makes me think two things-
That 'melody' covers a huge amount of the freq spectrum, and it has maximum dancefloor impact without a distracting 'twee' lead line melody.
I dont know what that means but its interesting to me.

[theodore_whitmore]

Aaaah, I'll play why not:

Joker-Digidesign:


Mark Knight feat. Skin-Nothing Matters (Noisia remix):


Blawan-Getting Me Down:


Todd Terje-Inspector Norse:


I was going to compose a thesis, with examples. Too long, did not write. Let it rest at this: they will all work superbly on their respective dancefloors. They all sound somewhat ludicrously overdone but are more fun for that. A crowd with a stake in the given genres probably wouldn't stomach more than two or three tunes that full-on musically in a set but they make excellent highlights. The Blawan track is definitely the strongest dancefloor tune of the four and also the one that takes the most liberties with conventional harmony and melody. All in my opinion and experience, of course.

AM Gold, do check out the Todd Terje tune, I really think you will appreciate it. And thanks all for a thought-provoking and open minded thread.

[A.M. Gold]

Remember, pop music in general started to get more basic and stripped down starting in the late 80's, it wasn't just dance. Was that based on demand, or was it coming from the supply side?

Pop music has ALWAYS been both stripped down as well as requiring evolution. Go back and listen to doo-wop music from the 50's. Truckloads of the same thing delivered over and over with the same chord progressions, same rhythms, same number of singers, etc.

Being basic and stripped down is one means to popular appeal. You will never have the world swooning over some complex multi-modal keyboard wizard 'melody' otherwise Jordan Rudess would be as much a household name as Justin Bieber.

No worries - the world needs music for the masses and the niches.

Not what I was referring to by "stripped down". I would call what you were referring to as "streamlined" for popular appeal.

When I say stripped down, I'm talking about the intensely simplistic compositional ethic of techno, trance, and house.

If you are going to compare house music (in terms of harmony and melody) to, say Paul McCartney, or Stevie Wonder, or Crosby Stills and Nash, then I think we will never agree on that kind of lumping together.

[A.M. Gold]

There is a lot of prejustice and "back in the olden days" mentality in this thread. Don't ask questions if you already have a fixed opinion, always keep an open mind about new stuff and you may find some wonderfull stuff.

+ 1 and a million...

I'm getting the impression that the OP just wanted people to support his thesis that music is getting less melodic and worse every year and that music in the 60ies, 70ies and 80ies was so great that it's still being played today. (Truth is that 90 % of ALL the music from this period won't be played any more and is nearly forgotten).

People tried to prove wrong and showed melodic electronic music, but without effect...

Prove wrong? Like you proved that ABBA is a b.s. group that brainwashed people into liking them?

You have a funny definition of the word proof. I think you need to examine what subjective vs. objective rhetoric is.

No "proof" has been offered by anyone on any aspect of this discussion. Not by me, or you, or anyone else. The closest thing to proof about ABBA, for instance, was offered by Gamma-UT when he told you you had no idea what you were talking about.

[A.M. Gold]

And with that, I hereby wash my hands of this thread.

I'm not going to argue endlessly and bandy about as to what the "best fruit" is, apples or oranges.

Hearing that somehow someone "proved" me wrong about the bone simple aspects of house, etc., was enough to make me realize this is a silly exercise. So I bid you all adieu. I appreciate the career advice from Gamma-UT, though, I do want to point that out.

[highkoo]

Too bad this was never about edm.

[Tricky-Loops]

I shouldn't waste my time on these threads, but what the hell.

I prefer the career advice of Revo...

It's annoying if people try to show that even nowadays there *IS* melodic electronic music, and then I always have to read from AM Gold the contrary (that there weren't any melodic electronic music any more), ABBA were the last great dancing band, all DJ's cannot play any instrument, everything is getting worse, people dance to trance without melodies...

[ghettosynth]

Far from necessitating endless argument, I'm hoping maybe we've clarified something with this lengthy discussion: people dance for different reasons.

For some, the rudimentary "throb" of the basic beat (in divisions of two, probably because most of us have two legs) is foremost in motivating their dance instincts. They want other things going on to build on just a basic beat, but if the composition asserts itself too much, even in a popular melodic sense, they find it distracting.

But others, and I fall firmly into this category, need melody and the beauty and complexity of sophisticated chord progression, in combination with strong rhythmic context, to really feel the energy of dance coming on.

How this breaks down in terms of percentages within the population is anyone's guess. There is conflicting evidence. People used to dance mostly to melodic music, now they seem to dance mostly to beat and texture driven music. Does that mean that people have changed, or did the music making culture just change and the people followed based on what they were given?

Remember, pop music in general started to get more basic and stripped down starting in the late 80's, it wasn't just dance. Was that based on demand, or was it coming from the supply side?

I personally don't see any clear answer to that, and so I'm not afraid to forge ahead in doing something to begin bringing more melody and harmonic richness back into dance music, including synth heavy instrumental music.

"dance music" the electronic kind, has a purpose, i apologise for going a bit hippy here, its about losing yourself to a collective unconciousness
which is why it borrows heavily from tribal/shamanic rituals, steady beats to induce trances, no destractions.

the more "pop oriented dance music" is for dancing as an individual, strutting your feathers to get some action.

/off to get a bath to wash away the stench of hippy this post just gave me!

Exactly so. I try to avoid the "trance state" language because it leads to accusations of pseudo-science etc. But, there seems to be some confusion regarding what one "needs" to dance which seems to imply that the population is divided. I don't buy into this. I think that these ideas have been around for a long time (thousands of years) and only technology has made it possible for the ideas to become a part of pop music. Further, that there are neurological explanations that link specific attributes of this style of music to the enjoyment of dancing to it. I posted some support for this point of view in some other thread. In short, it's been studied in other areas, e.g. long distance runners, and relates to our ability to predict the onset of an external metronomic signal. This prediction is necessary for the synchronization of our motion controlled by central pattern generators to an external stimulus (sound) owing to latency in our central nervous system.

Perhaps if there's any predisposition that allows some to enjoy this "state" it is connected to experiencing it naturally elsewhere. That is, maybe you need to have run twenty miles once in your life to really feel the value of minimal repetitive stimulus. I'm out on a limb here, but what I have observed over the years is that the OP's point of view is one often shared by outsiders and that once they begin to engage in dancing from the "losing oneself to a collective unconsciousness" point of view they begin to understand the value of EDM as it is, not as they believed that it should be. This is why I asked the questions that I asked earlier with respect to how one approaches dancing. I don't think that you can "get it" until you experience it in context. Things that seem repetitive and boring before you "get it" seem like they're over in an instant when you've been dancing for hours in a groove. Once you "get it", you tend to connect instantly as soon as you hear it. In that sense, it strikes me that it's a learned physiological behavior.

[ZenPunkHippy]

Which also explains exactly why you need to experience this first hand before passing judgement on how much melody is required to dance.

Just sayin'

Peace,
Andy.

[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...

Bzzt. Wrong.

Let's see. How did ABBA get famous? They won Eurovision. Hardly anybody gets famous from winning Eurovision, largely because 99% of the songs in the competition are stunningly forgettable. It's a challenge to recall a melody from a Eurovision entry ten minutes after hearing it.

ABBA's Waterloo was a bit of a surprise. Somebody rolled up with a great song and had it aired to millions of people just once. If it wasn't a great song, no-one would have noticed and ABBA would have joined the long list of Eurovision winners who fade back into obscurity. It took a few weeks to reach #1 in the UK charts but this was a time when it was practically unheard of for a non-US or non-UK artist to have a hit here, so they had practically no marketing. It was all requests to record shops to get a copy, which naturally fed back into radio airplay.

They then managed to deliver several follow-ups. It was only after that you saw marketing swing into action. I think the record company even managed to press the wrong version of Waterloo for a while before realising which one they meant to release.

Right, I didn't take TrickyLoop's comments to be critical of their pop value during the seventies. He says "Nothing can make me believe that (many) people are liking ABBA because of their "killer melodies" and greatness of songwriting." So from that, I read present tense, that is, why are they still selling records?

ABBA were/are pop musicians. Although they played uptempo music and perhaps, I don't know if this is true, fancied themselves dance musicians, like so many other great euro-dance artists such as "Modern Talking", that would be a bit of a delusion.

Waterloo is a great record. But, it's syrupy sweet like so much seventies pop music. In some way, I think that accounts for the groups continued popularity. They were as wholesome as apple pie. You can be sure that they were never vetoed from a junior high school dance party for questionable content. In the seventies they sung about love in a sweet and wholesome way and this appeals a lot to little girls, and that which appeals to little girls, can be sold to little boys, especially when packaged "appropriately."

ABBA played a key role in the story in the movie "Murial's Wedding" and, while of course it's fiction, I think that the appeal of ABBA to a naive Murial reflects some aspect of the true appeal of the group. The performance of Waterloo in that movie is great. I'll get to that in a second. First, the song as performed by the lovely wholesome seventies group ABBA. Seriously, can you get any more wholesome, and simultaneously titillating than those artfully matched matching tops and those curve hugging bottoms? Remind me again, how far up do those boots go?



Before we get to Toni Collette's excellent lip sync and interpretation, let me share a few other super hits from 1974, the year that Waterloo peaked at #6 on the single's chart in the U.S. and #1 in the U.K. It was the #49 song for the year end hot 100. What else was a hit in 1974? Well, David Hasslehof brings his own flavor and style (both visually as well as aurally) to this classic song which came in at #20 for the year.



#5 that year, The Jackson Five's "Dancing Machine." Now, I'm not really a Michael Jackson fan but there's no denying his impact on dance music and this song at least conveys more of the elements of dance music of the day. And of course, the kid's got moves.




That said, neither records were on the very short list of top dance tracks of 1974. Here's an interesting track from that short list which reflected records most popular in New York clubs.



Notice how little in the way of "melody" and lyric are in the song. There's very little traditional song structure. It's a groove with some "jamming" and a very simple and minimal vocal hook.

So back to ABBA, and this fantastic song.



Did they ever make it onto the dance charts? Well we know that Michael did in 1982 with every single track from the smash album Thriller. It turns out that they did, for one week, in 1981 with the following hit. Aha! OP is vindicated! ABBA IS a DANCE group!



Not so fast though, there's a bit more to this story. First this song is far less melodically driven than their earlier catalog. It was probably this that caught the attention of DJ Raul Rodriguez of the Disconet remix service who produced this much longer remix which became popular in New York clubs. The ABBA official release placed on the charts AFTER this remix became super popular.



That's right, it was the skills of a DJ that allowed ABBA to score a place on the Dance charts. Notice that besides being longer, the DJ version is far more sparse and has these very nice funky guitar groove sections.

ABBA wrote great pop songs for their time. They were sweet and campy like so much music of the day. They were never, themselves, at the forefront of dance music. The key point being that it's a mistake to look at them as a "dance" role model. Yes, they played uptempo music that you can dance to, but that doesn't make it "dance" music.

Incidentally, the track I posted a few pages ago was on the top 100 dance charts of 1998.





Along with this fantastic example of vocal driven house that is still a crowd pleaser today.



DJs have a skillset that, no matter what one thinks of it, is distinct from the skills of producing music. I've even observed this among producers who aren't DJs. Often their music reflects a lack of understanding of the D in EDM, that's ok, there's nothing wrong with producing electronica. No matter what one might think of DJs, however, IMNSHO, producers who also DJ tend to produce better music for the dance floor than producers who don't DJ. In fact, if one wants to produce dance music, I think learning to DJ is at least as, if not more, important than learning how to play an instrument.

[Tricky-Loops]

People just fiddle with the piano roll a lot and it covers a multitude of sins, so to speak.

Hey, nothing wrong with playing by ear, it's mostly what I do, but there are very good reasons for getting real skill on at least one instrument too, and for working ITB, keyboard is the best bet I think.

Hip Hop was always sample-based. They sampled old records and made Hip Hop songs out of them. So it isn't surprising that most of them don't compose great piano music with tons of melodies and modulation, but rather simple instrumental and drum loops.

BUT -- now we're at the beginning: It is a prejudice that there aren't any good composers amongst hip hop producers. Many hip hop producers do play instruments (not only Kontakt), and some play even a few of it.

And back to the topic: There still is much melodic content in dance songs. Most of them may be 4-to-the-floor-4-loops-only-compositions. But there even are some great dance songs with complexer melodic lines. I've mentioned Gotye, Moby, William Orbit, and Midnight Juggernauts are coming into my mind -- Midnight Juggernauts are making a great mixture of dance and rock music with stunning atmospheres/textures.

At last, to the ABBA-Queen-battle: Tricky Loops does like ABBA, but I don't think that they're THE GREATEST songwriters ever. The Bee Gees and the Beach Boys I like more in terms of songwriting, but I believe that the composers of most Queen songs are amongst the greatest songwriters ever. It is great how they play with dynamics in Queen songs, they are like classical orchestral tracks.

I can only quote myself to make you know what I think about ABBA...

[cron]

Perhaps if there's any predisposition that allows some to enjoy this "state" it is connected to experiencing it naturally elsewhere. That is, maybe you need to have run twenty miles once in your life to really feel the value of minimal repetitive stimulus. I'm out on a limb here, but what I have observed over the years is that the OP's point of view is one often shared by outsiders and that once they begin to engage in dancing from the "losing oneself to a collective unconsciousness" point of view they begin to understand the value of EDM as it is, not as they believed that it should be. This is why I asked the questions that I asked earlier with respect to how one approaches dancing. I don't think that you can "get it" until you experience it in context. Things that seem repetitive and boring before you "get it" seem like they're over in an instant when you've been dancing for hours in a groove. Once you "get it", you tend to connect instantly as soon as you hear it. In that sense, it strikes me that it's a learned physiological behavior.