The House/Electro/Synth and accompanying genres megathread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > The House/Electro/Synth and accompanying genres megathread

CHRISTS FOR SALE: Jan 14, 2005; "fuck you and die"

Man vs Child posted:

The first thing coming to your mind is probably everyone's favourite Daft Punk. They were one of the main people in France in the late 90s and early 00s to bring commercial house music to North America. You and your dog should already be a fan of the fantastic robot duo, but there is so much more.

Daft Punk are probably the single most influential group in electronic music, perhaps tied with Aphex Twin or Kraftwerk. Anyway, they're amazing but NOT the originators of house music in the least bit. They also were not responsible for bringing commercial house music to America, as it was actually INVENTED here (in Chicago to be exact), predominantly by gay black people. What they did originate was the performance of original House music with live instrumentation and sequencers. With this setup, Daft Punk moved past the boring world of DJing into some actual semblance of musicianship. Instead of pressing buttons and simply cueing up parts of their songs, they set up the whole performance in such a way that they could improvise almost anything.

Anyone who's even marginally interested in how House and Techno formed should watch Pump Up The Volume, a BBC-made documentary about how dance music, and later the rave scene, began. It is very Brit-centric, because it was made by the BBC, but there's a lot of the documentary that has to do with the American scene as well.
Pump Up The Volume (1/2)
Pump Up The Volume (2/2)

Hammsturabi posted:

fucker stole my idea before I had a chance to implement it. Ever since I heard Justice's remix of Electric Feel, I thought it would be cool to have a live act like DJ Champion's but with horns instead of guitars. And now someone's doing just that! this rules!

There are a couple people doing things like this, one of them being my band The Wonder Bars (no tracks up just yet, check out a teaser at http://soundcloud.com/tubbo), we got a 4-piece horn section as well as bass, guitar & piano. Osunlade does a similar thing sometimes, but not nearly as often as he DJs. A good third of house performers nowadays are putting together small ensembles (duo, trio or quartet) for intermittent live performances. Creating House live is incredibly fun, because with technology like MIDI controllers and Ableton Live it's both easy and cost-effective to improvise entire compositions or arrangements of previous composed work. In my case, I chose horn players from the jazz scene here in Philly to add an additional layer of unexpected improvisation to the music. I've seen other bands like Thievery Corp do stuff like that as well.

Oh by the way, you can thank Daft Punk for introducing the concept of live electronics to the House world.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2009 17:12

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 05:56

CHRISTS FOR SALE: Jan 14, 2005; "fuck you and die"

Man vs Child posted:

Oh don't get me wrong man, I am well aware of the origins of house music from wonderful chi-town soul to the new york paradise garage disco sound (RIP Larry Levan). I should have specified that Daft Punk was one of the first in north america to bring major commercial success with french house music. I obviously just chose Daft Punk as a starting off point for new people getting in to the genre since Daft Punk is most often the first group people start with when they begin their foray in to house music. Aside from the electronic New Wave movement of the 80s there was not much in terms of electronic house music (that compared to the success of Daft Punk) in North America until Daft Punk came along and garnered major commercial success. No need for us to get passive aggressive and bickering over where house started or by who, it's all good music, let's enjoy it

That is true. In the past, a House producer would be lucky if he released 1 or 2 hit singles. Daft Punk has had at least 2 hits on every album they've ever released.

Sorry if it came off as passive-aggressive, I honestly had 3 hours of sleep and I was in class when I wrote that, so I'm not exactly in the right frame of mind right now. My intention was for people who were new to House to actually look back and listen to how it all began, because I think it allows you to develop an authentic and unique perspective on House and what it's supposed to be about. It also might answer questions that the common musical gormandizer would want to know, like "how did jazz, samba, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, rock, traditional african/indian music, etc. all come together like that?", or "why is it so repetitive and WHY DOES THE drat KICK DRUM CHOKE THE WHOLE MIX?!?". Everything makes sense after learning the whole history of how it began.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2009 18:30

CHRISTS FOR SALE: Jan 14, 2005; "fuck you and die"

twistedmentat posted:

I'm not watching this just to see how much they talk about New Order. No, not at all.

It was pretty nice in the late 90s when Daft Punk, Prodigy and Fatboy Slim were the biggest things out there. It looked like Electronic music might be the next big thing. Then BAM! Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys out of nowhere, and it killed it. And ever since then, it's been kid oriented bubblegum pop since.

What are you talking about? If anything, electronic music has become WAY more interesting right now than back in the 90s. The fact that anybody and their mother can get a DAW and cheap audio interface and make decent quality music means that the scope of EDM is growing. No longer is it difficult or annoying to create tracks like this, and the nerds who can actually program that synth gear are no longer the major contributors to the electronic songwriting paradigm. Creating electronic music is so loving easy that any composer (who isn't gifted at the technical arts) can just make music entirely on their laptops. I happen to know a dubstep producer who's quite well known (especially in the UK) and does all of his composition entirely on a MacBook Pro.

With the advent (and accessibility) of Ableton Live and MIDI controllers designed for live performance, I'm excited to see where it will go next...

# ¿ Feb 23, 2010 23:26

CHRISTS FOR SALE: Jan 14, 2005; "fuck you and die"

has anyone heard of SonicC? this kid is 17 and he's already making some killer tracks. only reason I heard of him is because he's playing a warehouse party in Philly on Friday night, can't fuckin wait!!

# ¿ Apr 6, 2010 05:35

CHRISTS FOR SALE: Jan 14, 2005; "fuck you and die"

Edelweiss posted:

Seems like most DJs/artists whatever around here use Ableton. I've used both it and Reason and can't really commit to either. Ableton is king for samples and sequencing, but Reason seems better for constructing the base sounds. I know Reason's instruments can be chained into Ableton and have done so, but you lose out on being able to sequence all the dials and subtracks and so on, and it's a pain to deal with the two program setup.

Yeah, that's why they invented ReWire. Propellerheads knows that Reason isn't a "complete DAW" because you can't record live audio into it. You can easily patch any Reason device into an Ableton audio track and record it, and you can send MIDI to Reason instruments as well. Any legitimate producer knows how to ReWire or does it constantly, as the most common way to use Reason is not as a DAW on its own but as an "instrument suite" in other DAWs.

Personally, I use both programs when performing live. All of my drum programming is done in ReDrum (I love the 909 interface) and ReWired over into Ableton Live where all the samples, mixing and looping is taken care of. An interesting fact: you can change Reason project files on-the-fly without affecting the performance of the Ableton Live set. Leave one project open, and then open another project. Then, close the first project. The drum pattern will migrate over seamlessly. This allows you to constantly interchange Reason files and keep settings organized for your instruments and drum patterns. Plus, because of the A/B/C/D banks, you can have up to 32 patterns per track...

My live set would be impossible without Ableton + Reason. It's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you get used to the workflow it's quite rewarding I think.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2010 15:28

CHRISTS FOR SALE: Jan 14, 2005; "fuck you and die"

phractured posted:

ADD SUV (Armand Van Helden Remix)

The original is garbage... this on the other hand.

ADD SUV in a nutshell: "Banger." *funky disco beat* :dance:

a milk crime posted:

(LIKE A G6 LIKE A G6.aiff hhaha)

I really like it, thanks for sharing.

On the topic of disco house, does anybody have any recommendations other than Armand Van Helden and all the top Ministry of Sound stuff?

Aniki. Currently leading the Indie Dance/Nu-Disco charts on Beatport with the song "Lesbian Bondage Fiasco"

http://soundcloud.com/aniki

CHRISTS FOR SALE fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Sep 16, 2010

# ¿ Sep 16, 2010 21:21

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 05:56

CHRISTS FOR SALE: Jan 14, 2005; "fuck you and die"

edit: whoops.

CHRISTS FOR SALE fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Sep 16, 2010

# ¿ Sep 16, 2010 21:25

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > The House/Electro/Synth and accompanying genres megathread