Is Electronic Music Dying or Growing?

ciw · Post by **ciw** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:04 pm

honestly though, what poll results did you *EXPECT* when asking that question on the ableton forum??!

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 12:38 am

Growing. Music is growing. Electronic music is growing. There is so much "electronica" out there now that it's harder to find the non-generic, interesting stuff, BUT there are more possibilities for electronica at the same time.

I've been making music for 20 years, playing live electronica for 15, and in the last 5 years have started to gig internationally, had a track used in an Oscar-nominated movie, licenced a track to CSI:Miami, licenced tracks to overseas compilations, got an album selling on iTunes, and just finished my first game soundtrack for the PSP.

I don't say this to boast, but its a long way from playing keyboards in a pub covers band, which is where I started out. There is so much more media than ever before, and a lot of that media needs music, from net stuff to ringtones to games. Let alone how EASY, yes I said EASY, Ableton Live makes it to perform live electronica on stage.

Everything is cyclical. In 1962 Decca Records famously turned down The Beatles, saying "Guitar music is on the way out". Guitar music ain't dead, it's evolving and changing. Ditto electronica.

nuperspective · Post by **nuperspective** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 2:34 am

house music for me is dying slowly. but there is good stuff out its just harder to find.

electronic music in general has had a really good two years, with some really diverse original stuff coming through and being released.

the mainstream is very poor - house being the main one. electro and minimal are killing the club scene for me. theres little or no diversity any more in what djs play so what does the choice come down to. there isnt one it mainly the same.

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:03 am

What comes around goes around...
Things are always changing.

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:10 am

ikke wrote:"When electronic music first came out .. the world wasn't like this - electronic music was a straight line next to a wobbly world. Now the world is straight and tight - so there's no tension between the two. So E-music isn't saying anything anymore. "

The world is straight and tight? Youve got to be kidding .... Thats some comparisation you made there lol. It was a joke right?

I know what he means - I thought that was a good post

I think what will happen is electronic music will become more "organic" - meaning sounds will continue to be abstract like reaktor and absynth kind of noise, but more people will get more proficient at playing laptops as a musical instrument - especially as laptops get smaller

the technology is just now getting to a point where it be transparent - meaning computers can do amazing things without having to stop and think about it

10 years ago you just couldnt play, 4 instances of reaktor, 2 or absynth and microtonic in one computer, now you can do it in a small portable one - so I think with this transparency it will become more of an instrument - maybe we'll start to see "anti-quantisation" music where people just play the electronic music like they would any other instrument, completely relying on their own timing

it's evolving, and I think maybe what people have been calling electronic music, meaning club music with a 4/4 beat that is becoming a bit generic and clichéd might dwindle

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:23 am

Angstrom wrote:
ikke wrote:"When electronic music first came out .. the world wasn't like this - electronic music was a straight line next to a wobbly world. Now the world is straight and tight - so there's no tension between the two. So E-music isn't saying anything anymore. "

The world is straight and tight? Youve got to be kidding .... Thats some comparisation you made there lol. It was a joke right?
nope - I think that more people working more hours on compurters with tighter controls and tighter scrutiny makes for a tighter world.

in the 1980s I managed to sign onto the dole here in the UK when I was still at school!
how ?
because the system was so shit that there was room to breathe, it was all done on peices of paper and brown folders. It was so slow you could feel freedom in the slackness.
Right now if you fill a form in wrong they know at head office before you even finish your deviant thought and you get shipped to guantanamo bay with a CCTV camera up your arse.
Modern life is straight and tight, computers mean that all the databases are cross correlated so you haven't got room to slack off.

how do I know?

it's my job to write the software that cross-correlates unrelated shit like Car-Tax and Television License ownership against Underground Oyster Card usage.
all that info used to be held by separate agencies - now it all lives on one system, cross-correlated and data-mined to fuck, just waiting for you to make a wrong move.

straight and tight.

man - how do you sleep at night??

I just watched V is for Vendetta last night - i thought it was the best film I've seen in ages - funny that you mention that today - Gattacca is another good one like that

of course, it would be naive to think that all this technology is not being used to control us

but it's interesting to compare the UK and Australia like this - in the UK there is definitely a culture of trying to get around the system somehow - that definitely links back to that freedom through inefficiency you were talking about - but it still has a way to go - you can still easily get lost in the huge pond - people do things like tick that box on the back of prescriptions to say you're signing on even if you're not because they can and it works - there must be millions in lost revenue through inefficiency

but in Australia by contrast, it struck me straight away coming back 2 years ago how much "towing the line" is more ingrained in the consciousness here because there are way less people and more government/authority to keep tabs - so it has NEVER been easily to slip underneath the radar in the same way, so people were more cautious and less likely to do anything dodgy, particularly when it comes to government etc

Anubis · Post by **Anubis** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 4:03 am

Well it's obviously evolving. I assume that by "Electronic" we define that as music created(primarily) with software.
I have found striking similarities with what happened in the early sixties when pop music first became overtly electrified. At first it was ecclectic and foreign... psychedelic! But by the seventies, the Pages, Claptons, and Richards were turning out more "acoustic" music- with the very same technology.
Similarly, in modern times, the gabber had made room for the downtempo and other- even mellower sounds. Lately, I've found myself creating more of what you would probably consider "World" music.

timebomb · Post by **timebomb** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 4:17 am

Maybe it needs to die out a little. Its roots are "underground" and it seems like everyone who creates electronic music wants to be above ground these days. This makes for more variety but less talent, less from the heart, less from the soul. Some people are in it for the wrong reasons now. This doesn't mean we should stop creating and enjoying EM by any means. Will it die out, never. In fact it went pop just like rap did. Everything goes in cycles, thank goodness. It should naturally extend but not lean twards the "organic" theory. The only thing keeping it from being more "organic" feeling is latency, A\D D\A conversion speeds and how fast data can move thru a wire, or the air. And even that is improving faster than ever. Just takes time and faster algorithm processing which is math. math is a universal language and so is music, so they naturally belong together. Long live electronic music.......shit i'm in left field.

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 4:21 am

Anubis wrote: At first it was ecclectic and foreign... psychedelic! But by the seventies, the Pages, Claptons, and Richards were turning out more "acoustic" music- with the very same technology.
.

actually, I'm sure part of that is down the the artists getting a bit older too

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 5:50 am

forge wrote: I think maybe what people have been calling electronic music, meaning club music with a 4/4 beat that is becoming a bit generic and clichéd might dwindle

Hear, hear! good point Forge about separating the definitions of "electronic music" and "dance music". A little thing called "rock n roll" - the ultimate guitar genre - was once considered the dance music of it's day.

Electronic music sooooo needn't be defined as "dance music" But it is the style of music with the broadest possible pallate for sound creation, in terms of the sonic textures you can create and combine.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 12:48 pm

forge wrote:
Angstrom wrote: it's my job to write the software that cross-correlates unrelated shit like Car-Tax and Television License ownership against Underground Oyster Card usage.
all that info used to be held by separate agencies - now it all lives on one system, cross-correlated and data-mined to fuck, just waiting for you to make a wrong move.

straight and tight.

man - how do you sleep at night??

<snip>

but in Australia by contrast, it struck me straight away coming back 2 years ago how much "towing the line" is more ingrained in the consciousness here because there are way less people and more government/authority to keep tabs - so it has NEVER been easily to slip underneath the radar in the same way, so people were more cautious and less likely to do anything dodgy, particularly when it comes to government etc

heh, sleep, sleep is for weaklings !

well, actually I don't do stuff directly for the governmental dream police - I do it for quangos which are supposedly in the area of "helping disadvantaged youth start creative businesses" or some bollocks like that. The reality of those industries are "european grants for the boys in suits and a database of cross correlated info to sell on and intermingle with other government records!".

So, although I do stuff similar to the software which tracks the citizens dreams, I am actually in a hell-league below.
I would love to get the hell out, but poverty I have tried - character forming but health knackering.
And people wonder why I am on this forum so much?

Aaaaanyway,
Interesting about Australias freedoms , because I always thought that it would be more free. What with all that space to hide in I somehow assumed there would be space in your personal life too. personal freedom.
Suprisingly, not, then?

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:56 pm

Very interesting posts here. I find my own views reflected in many of them.

I think there are a couple things (at least to be said). Electronic music as an entertainment/mainstream/club genre, personally at least, is dying. Too many copies of copies of copies. Too many DJs that suddenly say "hey, i can throw some loops and make music", and there you go, we are infested with lots of clones that add nothing. Too many people creating without having a message. As someone defined in this very same forum...LOOPTRONICA.

Also, electronic music in the sense of being novelty, well, because it's a "new medium", is also dying i think. There's nothing new about computers and digital devices now, as it was in the 90s. There's no need to make the distinction anymore.

But, electronic music in the broader sense, understood as music that uses the digital medium as a playground, using what's interesting, leaving what's not, and open to exploring it in its deepest roots, and its own idiosyncracies, is just starting.

Recommended reading The Aesthetics of. Failure: “Post-Digital”. Tendencies in. Contemporary Computer Music by Kim Cascone http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf ... digital%22

There have been two major shifts in music industry. First, the means for production came closer to the people, with computers going ever more powerful and cheaper, particularly in the late 90s/early 2000s. In 2002, you could have at home a computer that did what would have taken thousands of dollars for some specialized studio in the 80s, so the potential amount of people that could make music exploded. Then in 2000s, with the increased public access to the internet at high speeds, the distribution came closer to the users. So, now you can suddenly produce and reach a big audience, with the same "cheap" means. Pros: New, democratized music possibilities. Cons: the noise floor is higher than ever. There are gems out there, but looking for them ain't easy at all...

And, finally, there's not such thing as music without electronics up to some point today...

I say, dying, to be born new.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 2:34 pm

tomperson wrote: Pros: New, democratized music possibilities. Cons: the noise floor is higher than ever. There are gems out there, but looking for them ain't easy at all...

This is obviously the crux of the issue as related to electronic music more than any other music past or presnt (IE rock and jazz now have the expanded distribution, but not means of production)

I was un-nerved to realise I don't like the democratization of production to the current extent. Often people think I am walling my self up in an ivory tower with that viewpoint, but here's an extended simile:

People who study martial arts often start by wishing to be more effectively violent, but after learning for years their violent instincts become tempered by knowledge of the medium. A guy who is incredibly qualified in martial arts is normally really placid in day to day life, simply because he has mapped out that terrain of internal violence very well, he 'knows' he is a 'man' , he has self respect gleaned from years of punishment in the gym/dojo.

Now, Imagine if the skills of our martial arts guy could be accomplished by pressing 3 buttons, playstation style, by using 3 buttons you could really beat someone up.
Everyone would be attempting to open a can of whup-ass for the mildest disagreement. Grandmothers would be doing spinning back fists onto noisy teenagers.
This would carry on for a few years until everyone gradually realised the assured mutual destruction was not accomplishing anything when every other person could do the same things, eveyone knowing that using those buttons would be pointless.
Sure kids would still try them out, there woudl still be a few high level respected people who knew 'the secret moves'. But the general public would just ignore it as simply more tedious furniture of modern life - alongside scratch cards and bills to pay.

That's how I feel about the democratization of music production - when everyone can do it , only kids and a few high level types with 'special moves' will continue.

If everyone could shit diamonds, they would be worthless

Thus endeth the parable of DJ Raiden !

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 2:37 pm

Angstrom wrote: Aaaaanyway,
Interesting about Australias freedoms , because I always thought that it would be more free. What with all that space to hide in I somehow assumed there would be space in your personal life too. personal freedom.
Suprisingly, not, then?

Oh no dont get me wrong, in many ways Australia is culturally much more free, and you're right there's plenty of room to hide, but I was meaning more in terms of Law and bureaucracy - I just remember a friend in the UK telling me he used to work for the county courts and how all you have to do to get out of your debts is never open your mail and write "return to sender" on it and bankruptcy only lasts one year and is very lenient, while in Australia bankruptcy lasts 7 years and is a big thing - jjust things like that where people in the UK know they are small fish in a very big pond and can exploit that and get around the system more easily

Australia is definitely over-governed

I played in this what could have been a nice little club here and the venue was eventually completely ruined by bureaucratic wankers who had apparently made the noise laws something like 90dB within 5 m of source which we could actually talk comfortably over - so it was basically background music, not a club - walking round with a stupid fucking SPL meter all the time measuring it, when it was in a business area with only warehouses around that were all shut at night and you couldnt even hear it downstairs in the pub underneath - silly stuff like that where you really think there is someone with their government job who really has got nothing better to do than ruin it for everyone else

maybe it's just queensland, but there are other things like that in Oz.

Ball Sack · Post by **Ball Sack** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 2:41 pm

tomperson wrote: Too many people creating without having a message.

Spot on. or maybe not even creating.