Electronica vs. Electronic Music

laird · Post by **laird** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:49 pm

Well, since you can only make trance or IDM using ableton Live, while you can only make rock'n'roll with ProTools, I can totally see why the bookstore has seperate sections for "electronic music" versus "electronica".

oh and if you coulnd't tell I was being sarcastic

I hope you said "no, I want to make electronic music. Electronica is for losers",

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:48 pm

electronic music instruments existed at least as long ago as the 1800's.

mechanical instruments may be as old as the 2nd century bc. (search the "Hydraulis") obviously this is not electronic, but the concept is there

music concrete of the 40's was one of the starting points for the concept of sound as music.

What i'm getting at here is this:
electronic music is very old, and very vast, and not always about synthesis. Tape manipulation is certainly electronic music and doesn't need to involve a synthesizer, although it often does. Esp. in the times when tape editing and manipulation was the only available way to "sequence" synthesized sounds.

electronica however, is a term applied to modern (i believe the term to have been coined in the 90's) electronic music that exhibits at least some adherence (often fairly loose) to regular song structure or recognizable popular music forms.

.lm.

laird · Post by **laird** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:49 pm

I love Hydraulica

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:56 pm

SPAWNmaster wrote:fucking ridiculous debate in my own opinion. everyone has their own definitions these days especially with genre blurs. for the most part people agree that electronica and EDM (electronic dance music) are entirely seperate...EDM being the umbrella category for such genres as:

trance
house
breaks
electro
tech-house
techno
minimal
DnB
psytrance

each of which contain various other subgenres. to me electronica can be 2 things: 1) what the masses refer to when they hear any form of EDM OR 2) rock with electronic influences (discobiscuits for example).

hmmm. so there isn't any current electronic music that is neither "EDM" or rock with electronic influences? or if so, the term electronica does not apply?

i too find the debate ridiculous to a certain extent..... But i also think that "EDM" and all of its bazillion subgenres that some "EDM" scenesters actually believe are important to name and file are actually damaging to the perception of electronic music as a whole.

.lm.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:01 pm

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music has been a good differentiator for a while now...helps to explain a lot of genres:

http://www.di.fm/edmguide/edmguide.html

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:06 pm

ishkur's guide is complete bullshit and full of inaccuracies and opinions stated as truth.

I'm afraid you're going to have to do more research of your own to find out the complete story.

.lm.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:13 pm

leisuremuffin wrote:you're going to have to do more research of your own to find out the complete story.

Thanks, but I'd rather spend that time making and/or listening to music I like instead of endlessly debating over what is or isn't this week's definition of two-step London progressive breakz ... *yawn* ... for newbies, Iskur is a fun way to get into the conversation.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:19 pm

ah sorry, didn't mean to direct that at you personally. I meant "you" as in the reader, not just one idiot named neb.

anyway, fine, you don't have to be interested in this stuff, but maybe some people who are reading a thread about it are. To them i say, don't use ishkur's as a resource, it's bullshit.

and also, if you think that this week's definition of "french scrote-rock choad-step" is uninteresting, why expound on the virtues o a site that is pretty much all about that kind of complete bullshit?

.lm.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:20 pm

lm - what do you like instead of ishkur?

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:27 pm

How about collecting records, reading liner notes, books, researching using the intertubes etc etc....

ishkur's guide to me is about all of the things wrong with the endless genrification of popular electronic music.

even a book like "modulations" or the movie of the same name, does a better job in terms of history, i think. I still don't agree with everything in modulations either...

Fuck, i guess i'll have to write my own book...

.lm.

kpa · Post by **kpa** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 10:32 pm

what about EBM - electronic body music. I have seen some people use this, Jeff Mills as one example, as a reference to (something obvious coming next) music created electronically that moves your body. As i said i have seen this said by a few people, mostly as a reference to detroit techno, but not seen it anywhere in a few years.

perhaps because it sounds a bit lame.

andrewbrewer · Post by **andrewbrewer** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 4:34 am

hmmm "electronica" has meaning to me.

1. it's a 90's thing.
2. it's experimental-ish cross-genre techno-ey goodness parading around as if it were pop music -- often throwing traditional song structure out the window.
3. for maybe a split second, even in america, it was pop music!
4. sampling, advanced effects, liberal use of filters, liberal borrowing from the 70's. usually a colorful, complex, textured sonic palette

mtv's AMP was the tip of the iceberg. i know it's cheesy, but it's a starting point.

to me, it was hard to categorize not b/c journalists were lazy, but because "electronica" producers at the time were trying to freak the frame and generally bust out of the box that is genre.
it seemed liked this peaked sort of mid-90's maybe up to '97.

true, no artist wanted to be called electronica.

but consider -- "electroclash" also sucks as a label, but it was certainly a movement.
a movement that was a reaction in some ways to the "electronica" that preceded it.
complexity/texture replaced with upfront simplicity.
egalatarian appeal replaced w/ elitist cool.
meandering structure replaced w/ a more pop song structure.

just some half-assed theories.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:45 am

electroclash was the name of larry tee's party. And then the word started being used to describe all sorts of shit that had nothing to do with larry or the acts that played his "festival." Look, i lived a block away from luxx, the epicenter of that shit when it was happening, and i can tell you for certain that it was more hype than reality. And certainly there were plenty of acts labled electroclash that did not want that label on them. But check it, that's exactly what's wrong with these genres. They don't really mean anything and have little to do with the peple who make the music. They are just bite sized bits of marketing jingo. Plus, anything good that came out of that scene, or that had the name pinned on it, will long outlive anyone caring about the word "electroclash"

electronica was never specifically a genre, it was used to describe any popular electronic music. (and by popular, i mean not academic or otherwise really super artsy avant shit. "IDM" stuff would still fall under electronica back in those days)

but y'know, somebody decided we needed a new bullshit marketing term so now its "EDM" apparently.

.lm.

nuperspective · Post by **nuperspective** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:01 am

the first time i heard the term 'electronica' was in the early 90's. i think [and dont quote me on this] it came about because the US music press at the time couldnt really pigeon hole artists such as the prodigy and underworld etc who where growning in popularity. Unfortunately, the influx of new and varying types of electronic music [including drum and bass, which really blew their minds] meant the pigeon hole prone US music press where in a quandry and therefore they grouped all types of electronic music as 'electronica' in their write ups. as awareness grew of the different genres and rave scene exploded US, the genre definitions became more well known the 'electronica' tag stuck.

so from memory thats my take. however, i was smashing the goof balls big time at the weekends back then and i could be wrong.

andrewbrewer · Post by **andrewbrewer** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:29 am

leisuremuffin wrote:electroclash was the name of larry tee's party. And then the word started being used to describe all sorts of shit that had nothing to do with larry or the acts that played his "festival." Look, i lived a block away from luxx, the epicenter of that shit when it was happening, and i can tell you for certain that it was more hype than reality. And certainly there were plenty of acts labled electroclash that did not want that label on them. But check it, that's exactly what's wrong with these genres. They don't really mean anything and have little to do with the peple who make the music. They are just bite sized bits of marketing jingo. Plus, anything good that came out of that scene, or that had the name pinned on it, will long outlive anyone caring about the word "electroclash"

electronica was never specifically a genre, it was used to describe any popular electronic music. (and by popular, i mean not academic or otherwise really super artsy avant shit. "IDM" stuff would still fall under electronica back in those days)

but y'know, somebody decided we needed a new bullshit marketing term so now its "EDM" apparently.

.lm.

agreed, no artist wants the label, but this is more about the consumer, and the culture of the consumption.
for a brief moment in the 90's people were throwing the word electronica around. it stuck for a while. yeah the "idm" of the time would fit. the first person to introduce me to autechre called it "electronica". it was a little meaningless, but there was a style interval somewhere between FSOL "we have explosive" on one end and OLIVE "you're not alone" on the other. even today I would call that range of stuff electronica. it's as meaningless the label "krautrock" -- but it can still make for OK conversation if you don't take it too seriously.
at the time, somehow we could distinguish electronica from all the other silly genres -- trip hop, acid jazz, jungle, tribal house, rave, whatever -- people made some sort of totally personalized distinction.
i seem to remember daft punk's "da funk" would have been called electronica at the time, but "revolution 909" would have been called "house".
silly, yes. but kind of phun.

now, what really makes me laugh is how "techno" went from being a bad word in the early 90's to almost high art in the late 90's ... then suddenly a bad word again when electroclash was the hot topic. nowadays i hear plenty of techno, good techno, with the label "minimal". the genre game never ceases to amaze me.