1.
Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition from each other. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other such as urban, dance, rock, Latin. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a format, as well as the common use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes. David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, according to Pete Seeger, pop music is professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music, the music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately, pop music continuously evolves along with the terms definition. The term pop song was first recorded as being used in 1926, Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience. Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the meaning of non-classical mus, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles. Grove Music Online also states that, in the early 1960s pop music competed terminologically with beat music, while in the USA its coverage overlapped with that of rock and roll. From about 1967, the term was used in opposition to the term rock music. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward, and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high rather than being made from below, pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment, the lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions
2.
Disco
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Disco is a genre of dance music containing elements of funk, soul, pop, and salsa. It achieved popularity during the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Disco can be seen as a reaction against both the domination of rock music and the stigmatization of dance music by the counterculture during this period. It was popular with men and women, from many different backgrounds. The disco sound often has several components, a beat, an eighth note or 16th note hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat. In most disco tracks, string sections, horns, electric piano, Orchestral instruments such as the flute are often used for solo melodies, and lead guitar is less frequently used in disco than in rock. Many disco songs use electronic synthesizers, particularly in the late 1970s, well-known 1970s disco performers included Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, Boney M. KC and the Sunshine Band, The Trammps, Sylvester, Village People, Gloria Gaynor and Chic. While performers and singers garnered much attention, record producers working behind the scenes played an important role in developing the disco sound. Many non-disco artists recorded songs at the height of discos popularity. Disco was the last mass popular movement that was driven by the baby boom generation. Disco was a phenomenon, but its popularity drastically declined in the United States in 1980. Disco Demolition Night, an anti-disco protest held in Chicago on 12 July 1979, is thought of as a factor in discos fast. By the late 1970s most major U. S. cities had thriving disco club scenes, Studio 54, a venue popular amongst celebrities, is a well-known example of a disco club. Popular dances included the Hustle, a suggestive dance. Discotheque-goers often wore expensive, extravagant and sexy fashions, Disco clubs were also associated with promiscuity. Disco was a key influence on the 1980s electronic dance style called house. The term is derived from discothèque, by the early 1940s, the terms disc jockey and DJ were in use to describe radio presenters. During WWII, because of restrictions set in place by the Nazi occupiers, eventually more than one of these jazz venues had the proper name discothèque. By 1959, the term was used in Paris to describe any of these type of nightclubs and that year a young reporter named Klaus Quirini started to select and introduce records at the Scotch-Club in Aachen, West Germany
3.
Post-disco
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Post-disco is a term to describe an aftermath in popular music history c. Developed from the rhythm and blues sound as perfected by Parliament-Funkadelic, the side of disco, dub music techniques. Post-disco was typified by New York City music groups like D Train and Unlimited Touch who followed a more urban approach while others, like Material and ESG, a more experimental one. Post-disco was, like disco, singles-driven market controlled mostly by independent record companies that generated a cross-over chart success all through the early-to-mid 1980s, most creative control was in the hands of record producers and club DJs which was a trend that outlived the dance-pop era. Drum machines, synthesizers, sequencers were either partly or entirely dominant in a composition or mixed up with various acoustic instruments, depending on the artist. The main force in post-disco was mainly the 12 single format, the music that mostly catered to dance and urban audiences later managed to influence more popular and mainstream acts like Madonna, New Order or Pet Shop Boys. The music tended to be technology-centric, keyboard-laden, melodic, with funk-oriented bass lines, synth riffs, dub music aesthetics, and background jazzy or blues-y piano layers. For strings and brass sections, synthesizer sounds were preferred to the orchestration heard on many disco tracks. Soulful female vocals, however, remained an essence of post-disco. Bridging the so-called death of disco and the birth of house, all this early-to-mid-80s music lacks a name beyond drably functional and neutral terms like dance or club music. ”– Simon Reynolds, SPIN magazine The term post-disco was used as early as 1984 by Cadence Magazine when defining post-disco soul as disco without the loud bass-drum thump. AllMusic states that the term denotes a genre in the era between the indistinct end of disco music and the equally indistinct emergence of house music. Since disco music had been on the way of progression, it split itself into subscenes and styles like Hi-NRG, freestyle, Italo disco. The last one is associated with post-disco more than any other offshoots of post-disco. On the West Coast, especially in California, a different approach lead to a different sound, other examples of early American artists drawing from post-disco are Rick James, Change and Teena Marie. Disco in Europe remained relatively untouched by the events in the U. S. Ms 1979 Pop Muzik was a example of this. This section summary shows commercially successful records from the post-disco movement, during the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s, electronic and, especially, house musicians were influenced by post-disco. Some of these musicians are, Daft Punk, a French house music group, adopted elements of post-disco, disco, another artist, Les Rythmes Digitales, released a post-disco/electro-influenced album, Darkdancer. Canadian music group Chromeo debuted in 2004 with the album Shes in Control, similar Los Angeles-based musician Dâm-Funk recorded Toeachizown, a boogie- and electro-influenced album released in 2009
4.
New wave music
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New wave is a genre of rock music popular from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s with ties to 1970s punk rock. New wave moved away from smooth blues and rock and roll sounds to create pop music that incorporated electronic and experimental music, mod, initially new wave was similar to punk rock, before becoming a distinct genre. It subsequently engendered subgenres and fusions, including synth-pop, college rock, common characteristics of new wave music include the use of synthesizers and electronic productions, the importance of styling and the arts, as well as diversity. In the mid-1980s, differences between new wave and other genres began to blur. New wave has enjoyed resurgences since the 1990s, after a rising nostalgia for several new wave-influenced artists, subsequently, the genre influenced other genres. During the 2000s, a number of acts explored new wave and post-punk influences, such as the Strokes, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand and these acts were sometimes labeled new wave of new wave. The catch-all nature of new music has been a source of much confusion. The 1985 discography Whos New Wave in Music listed artists in over 130 separate categories, the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock calls the term virtually meaningless, while AllMusic mentions stylistic diversity. New wave first emerged as a genre in the early 1970s, used by critics including Nick Kent and Dave Marsh to classify such New York-based groups as the Velvet Underground. It gained currency beginning in 1976 when it appeared in UK punk fanzines such as Sniffin Glue and newsagent music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express. In November 1976 Caroline Coon used Malcolm McLarens term new wave to designate music by bands not exactly punk, the term was also used in that sense by music journalist Charles Shaar Murray in his comments about the Boomtown Rats. For a period of time in 1976 and 1977, the new wave. By the end of 1977, new wave had replaced punk as the definition for new music in the UK. As radio consultants in the United States had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad, like the filmmakers of the French new wave movement, its new artists were anti-corporate and experimental. At first, most U. S. writers exclusively used the new wave for British punk acts. Music historian Vernon Joynson claimed that new wave emerged in the UK in late 1976, in the U. S. the first new wavers were the not-so-punk acts associated with the New York club CBGB. CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, referring to the first show of the band Television at his club in March 1974, said, furthermore, many artists who would have originally been classified as punk were also termed new wave. A1977 Phonogram Records compilation album of the same name features US artists including the Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads, New wave is much more closely tied to punk and came and went more quickly in the United Kingdom than in the United States
5.
Synthpop
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Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late-1970s to the mid-1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestras success opened the way for bands such as P-Model, Plastics. The development of polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI. This, its adoption by the acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV. Synth-pop is sometimes deployed interchangeably with electropop, but electropop may also denote a variant of synth-pop that places emphasis on a harder. In the late 1980s duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style that was successful on the US dance-charts. Some artists and bands were criticised for gender bending, Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but, many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music. The result was often minimalist, with grooves that were woven together from simple repeated riffs often with no harmonic progression to speak of. Early synth-pop has been described as eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing, using droning electronics with little change in inflection, common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, and feelings of being emotionally cold and hollow. Synthesizers were increasingly used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras, thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, and compressed production, and a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were generally optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance, escapism. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its emotional, at times operatic singers such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox. Because synthesizers removed the need for groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Later synth-pop saw a shift to a style influenced by other genres. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, the portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use, particularly in live performance was widely adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes
6.
Electropop
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Electropop is a variant of synth-pop that places more emphasis on a harder, electronic sound. The genre has seen a revival of popularity and influence since the 2000s, the media in 2009 ran articles proclaiming a new era of different electropop stars and indeed, saw a rise in popularity of several electropop artists. In the Sound of 2009 poll of 130 music experts conducted for the BBC, lady Gaga had major commercial success since 2008 with her debut album The Fame. Music writer Simon Reynolds noted that Everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, the second album by British singer Lily Allen released in 2009 called Its Not Me, Its You is largely electropop as opposed to her first ska album. Other female electropop acts that emerged were Ladyhawke, Kesha, Demi Lovato, Britney Spears, Selena Gomez, Elly Jackson of La Roux and Perfume. The Korean pop music scene has become dominated and influenced by electropop, particularly with boy bands and girl groups such as Super Junior, SHINee, F. Male acts that have emerged included British writer and producer Taio Cruz, who charted well in the U. S. along with one-man act Owl City, who had a U. S. number-one single, DJ Kaskade, and LMFAO. Singer Michael Angelakos of the Passion Pit said in a 2009 interview that while playing electropop was not his intention, so everything weve been put on to is electronic in nature. Music Projects with Propellerhead Reason, Grooves, Beats and Styles from Trip Hop to Techno
7.
House music
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House music is a genre of electronic music created by club DJs and music producers in Chicago in the early 1980s. Early house music was characterized by repetitive 4/4 beats, rhythms mainly provided by drum machines, off-beat hi-hat cymbals. While house displayed several characteristics similar to music, it was more electronic and minimalistic. House music became popular in Chicago clubs in 1984 and it was pioneered by figures such as Frankie Knuckles, Phuture, Kym Mazelle, and Mr. Fingers, and was associated with African-American and gay subcultures. House music quickly spread to other American cities such as Detroit, New York City, Baltimore, in the mid-to-late 1980s, house music became popular in Europe as well as major cities in South America, and Australia. Since the early to mid-1990s, house music has been infused in mainstream pop, in the late 1980s, many local Chicago house music artists suddenly found themselves presented with major label deals. House music proved to be a successful genre and a more mainstream pop-based variation grew increasingly popular. House music has also fused with other genres creating fusion subgenres, such as euro house, tech house, electro house. After enjoying significant success in the early to mid-90s, house music grew even larger during the wave of progressive house. The genre has remained popular and fused into other subgenres, for example, ghetto house, deep house. As of 2016, house music popular in both clubs and in the mainstream pop scene while retaining a foothold on underground scenes across the globe. The song structure of music songs typically involves an intro, a chorus, various verse sections, a midsection. Some songs do not have a verse, taking a part from the chorus. The drum beat is one of the important elements within the genre and is almost always provided by an electronic drum machine rather than by a human drummer playing drumkit. The drum beats of house are four on the floor, with bass drums played on every beat, House music is often based on bass-heavy loops or basslines produced by a synthesizer and/or from samples of disco or funk songs. The tempo of most house songs is between 118 and 135 beats per minute, soul music and disco influenced house music. These artists produced longer, more repetitive, and percussive arrangements of existing disco recordings, early house producers such as Frankie Knuckles created similar compositions from scratch, using samplers, synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines. Rachel Cain, co-founder of an influential Trax Records, was involved in the burgeoning punk scene and cites industrial
8.
Bubblegum pop
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Bubblegums classic period ran from 1967 to 1972. A second wave of bubblegum started two years later and ran until 1977 when disco took over and punk rock emerged, the genre was predominantly a singles phenomenon rather than an album-oriented one. Because many acts were manufactured in the studio using session musicians, singer Tommy Roe, arguably, had the most bubblegum hits of any artist during this period, notably 1969s Dizzy. The songs typically have singalong choruses, seemingly childlike themes and a contrived innocence, bubblegum songs are also defined as having a catchy melody, simple chords, simple harmonies, dancy beats, repetitive riffs or hooks and a vocally-multiplied refrain. The song lyrics often feature themes of love and personal happiness, with references to sunshine, platonic love, toys, colors, nonsense words. They are also notable for their frequent reference to food, including sugar, honey, butterscotch, jelly. Cross-marketing with cereal and bubblegum manufacturers also strengthened the link between bubblegum songs and confectionery, cardboard records by The Archies, The Banana Splits, The Jackson 5, The Monkees, Bobby Sherman, Josie and the Pussycats, H. R. Producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz have claimed credit for coining the term pop, saying that when they discussed their target audience, they decided it was teenagers. And at the time we used to be chewing bubblegum, and my partner and I used to look at it and laugh and say, Ah, the term was seized upon by Buddah Records label executive Neil Bogart. Music writer and bubblegum historian Bill Pitzonka confirmed the claim, telling Goldmine magazine, Kasenetz and Katz really crystallized it when they came up with the term themselves and that nice little analogy. And Neil Bogart, being the person he was, just crammed it down the throats of people. Thats really the point at which bubblegum took off, a breeding ground for the genre has also been found in the field of 1960s garage rock, the songs of which shared an overriding simplicity with bubblegum. Garage and bubblegum groups were also both generally singles acts, between those two camps emerged Florida group The Royal Guardsmen, who scored a US No.2 hit in 1966 with their novelty hit Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron, and The Fifth Estate, whose 1967 song Ding-Dong, the Witch Is Dead reached No.11 in the US. Although the band began as a prefabricated, fictional rock group concocted to sell records and TV advertising time, in May 1968, The Ohio Express also scored a No.4 hit with Yummy Yummy Yummy. The song was released as an Ohio Express single without Levines knowledge, two follow-ups, Down at Lulus and Chewy Chewy, also charted – both featuring vocals by Levine, and neither featuring any members of Ohio Express. The real Ohio Express toured, supporting The Who and Hermans Hermits, with bassist Dean Kastran performing the vocals for the hits, Kasenetz and Katz also scored on Bell Records in early 1969 with Gimme Gimme Good Lovin by another manufactured band, Crazy Elephant. The dominance of the Kasenetz–Katz team was challenged in 1969 by music publisher Don Kirshner and Hanky Pankys co-author, a battered and resentful Kirshner envisioned a manufactured group over which he could have permanent and total control, Filmations cartoon band The Archies, based on the Archie Comics characters
9.
Drum machine
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A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums, cymbals, other percussion instruments, and often basslines. Drum machines are most commonly associated with electronic music such as house music. They are usually used when session drummers are not available or if the production cannot afford the cost of a drummer. Also, many modern drum machines can also produce sounds, as well as allowing the user to compose unique drum beats. In the 2010s, most modern machines are sequencers with a sample playback or synthesizer component that specializes in the reproduction of drum timbres. The invention could produce sixteen different rhythms, each associated with a pitch, either individually or in any combination, including en masse. Received with considerable interest when it was introduced in 1932. The next generation of rhythm machines played only pre-programmed rhythms such as mambo, tango, Chamberlin Rhythmate In 1957 Californian Harry Chamberlin constructed a tape loop-based drum machine called the Chamberlin Rhythmate. It had 14 tape loops with a head that allowed playback of different tracks on each piece of tape. It contained a volume and a control and also had a separate amplifier with bass, treble, and volume controls. The tape loops were of real acoustic jazz drum kits playing different style beats, with additions to tracks such as bongos, clave, castanets. First commercial product – Wurlitzer Side Man In 1959 Wurlitzer released a drum machine called the Side Man. The Side Man was intended as an accompaniment for the Wurlitzer organ range. The Side Man offered a choice of 12 electronically generated, predefined rhythm patterns with variable tempos, the sound source was a series of vacuum tubes which created 10 preset electronic drum sounds. Combinations of these different sets of rhythms and drum sounds created popular rhythmic patterns of the day, e. g. waltzes and these combinations were selected by a rotary knob on the top of the Side Man box. The tempo of the patterns was controlled by a slider that increased the speed of rotation of the wiper arm, the Side Man had a panel of 10 buttons for manually triggering drum sounds, and a remote player to control the machine while playing from an organ keyboard. The Side Man was housed in a cabinet that contained the sound-generating circuitry. Raymond Scott In 1960, Raymond Scott constructed the Rhythm Synthesizer and, in 1963, scotts machines were used for recording his album Soothing Sounds for Baby series
10.
Synthesizer
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A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates electric signals that are converted to sound through instrument amplifiers and loudspeakers or headphones. Synthesizers may either imitate instruments like piano, Hammond organ, flute, vocals, natural sounds like ocean waves, etc. or generate new electronic timbres. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are called sound modules, and are controlled via USB, MIDI or CV/gate using a controller device. Synthesizers use various methods to generate electronic signals, synthesizers were first used in pop music in the 1960s. In the 1970s, synths were used in disco, especially in the late 1970s, in the 1980s, the invention of the relatively inexpensive, mass market Yamaha DX7 synth made synthesizers widely available. 1980s pop and dance music often made use of synthesizers. In the 2010s, synthesizers are used in genres of pop, rock. Contemporary classical music composers from the 20th and 21st century write compositions for synthesizer, the beginnings of the synthesizer are difficult to trace, as it is difficult to draw a distinction between synthesizers and some early electric or electronic musical instruments. One of the earliest electric musical instruments, the telegraph, was invented in 1876 by American electrical engineer Elisha Gray. He accidentally discovered the sound generation from a self-vibrating electromechanical circuit and this musical telegraph used steel reeds with oscillations created by electromagnets transmitted over a telegraph line. Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device into later models, consisting of a diaphragm in a magnetic field. This instrument was a remote electromechanical musical instrument that used telegraphy, though it lacked an arbitrary sound-synthesis function, some have erroneously called it the first synthesizer. In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Teleharmonium, which used dynamos, and was capable of additive synthesis like the Hammond organ, however, Cahills business was unsuccessful for various reasons, and similar but more compact instruments were subsequently developed, such as electronic and tonewheel organs. In 1906, American engineer, Lee De Forest ushered in the electronics age and he invented the first amplifying vacuum tube, called the Audion tube. This led to new entertainment technologies, including radio and sound films, ondes Martenot and Trautonium were continuously developed for several decades, finally developing qualities similar to later synthesizers. In the 1920s, Arseny Avraamov developed various systems of graphic sonic art, in 1938, USSR engineer Yevgeny Murzin designed a compositional tool called ANS, one of the earliest real-time additive synthesizers using optoelectronics. The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were developed in Germany and the United States, during the three years that Hammond manufactured this model,1,069 units were shipped, but production was discontinued at the start of World War II. Both instruments were the forerunners of the electronic organs and polyphonic synthesizers
11.
Keyboard instrument
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A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various keyboards, including synthesizers. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, today, the term keyboard often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers. Another important use of the keyboard is in historical musicology. Particularly in the 18th century, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the piano were in competition. Hence in a phrase like Mozart excelled as a player the word keyboard is usefully noncommittal. The earliest known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ, the keys were likely balanced and could be played with a light touch, as is clear from the reference in a Latin poem by Claudian, who says magna levi detrudens murmura tactu. Intent, that is “let him thunder forth as he presses out mighty roarings with a light touch”, from its invention until the fourteenth century, the organ remained the only keyboard instrument. Often, the organ did not feature a keyboard at all, almost every keyboard until the fifteenth century had seven naturals to each octave. The clavichord and the harpsichord appeared during the 14th century—the clavichord probably being earlier, the harpsichord and clavichord were both common until widespread adoption of the piano in the 18th century, after which their popularity decreased. The piano was revolutionary, because a pianist could vary the volume of the sound by varying the vigor with which each key was struck. The pianos full name is gravicèmbalo con piano e forte meaning harpsichord with soft and loud but can be shortened to piano-forte, which means soft-loud in Italian. In its current form, the piano is a product of the late 19th century, in fact, the modern piano is significantly different from even the 19th-century pianos used by Liszt, Chopin, and Brahms. See Piano history and musical performance, keyboard instruments were further developed in the early twentieth century. Early electromechanical instruments, such as the Ondes Martenot, appeared early in the century and this was a very important contribution to the keyboards history. Much effort has gone into creating an instrument that sounds like the piano but lacks its size, the electric piano and electronic piano were early efforts that, while useful instruments in their own right, did not convincingly reproduce the timbre of the piano. Electric and electronic organs were developed during the same period, more recent electronic keyboard designs strive to emulate the sound of specific make and model pianos using digital samples and computer models. Concerns celebrated keyboard players and the various instruments used over the centuries
12.
Music sequencer
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This software also improved on the quality of the earlier sequencers which tended to be mechanical sounding and were only able to play back notes of exactly equal duration. Software-based sequencers allowed musicians to program performances that were more expressive and these new sequencers could also be used to control external synthesizers, especially rackmounted sound modules, and it was no longer necessary for each synthesizer to have its own devoted keyboard. As the technology matured, sequencers gained more features, such as the ability to record multitrack audio, Sequencers used for audio recording are called digital audio workstations. Many modern sequencers can be used to control virtual instruments implemented as software plug-ins and this allows musicians to replace expensive and cumbersome standalone synthesizers with their software equivalents. Today the term sequencer is used to describe software. Workstation keyboards have their own proprietary built-in MIDI sequencers, drum machines and some older synthesizers have their own step sequencer built in. There are still also standalone hardware MIDI sequencers, although the demand for those has diminished greatly due to the greater feature set of their software counterparts. Music sequencers are often categorized by handling data types, as following, or, the phrase samplers including Groove machines, etc. Also, music sequencer can be categorized by its construction and supporting modes, realtime sequencers record the musical notes in real-time as on audio recorders, and play back musical notes with designated tempo, quantizations, and pitch. For editing, usually punch in/punch out feature originated in the recording is provided. For detailed editing, possibly another visual editing modes under graphical user interface may be more suitable, anyway, this mode provides usability similar to the audio recorder already familiarized by musicians, and it is widely supported on software sequencer, DAW, and built-in hardware sequencers. Analog sequencers are typically implemented with analog electronics, and play the musical notes designated by a series of knobs or sliders corresponding to each musical note and it is designed for both composition and live performance, users can change the musical notes at any time without regarding recording mode. And also possibly, the time-interval between each note can be independently adjustable. Typically, analog sequencer is used to generate the repeated minimalistic phrases which is reminiscent of Tangerine Dream, on the bass machines, select a step note from a chromatic keypads, then select a step duration from a group of length-buttons, sequentially. In general, step mode, along with roughly quantized semi-realtime mode, is supported on the analog drum machines, bass machines. Software sequencer is a class of application software providing a functionality of music sequencer, the features provided as sequencers vary widely depending on the software, even an analog sequencer can be simulated. The user may control the software sequencer either by using the user interfaces or a specialized input devices. The early music sequencers were sound producing devices such as musical instruments, music boxes, mechanical organs, player pianos
13.
Bass guitar
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The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb, by plucking, slapping, popping, strumming, tapping, thumping, or picking with a plectrum, often known as a pick. The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to a guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length. The four-string bass, by far the most common, is tuned the same as the double bass. The bass guitar is an instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds to avoid excessive ledger lines. Like the electric guitar, the guitar has pickups and it is plugged into an amplifier and speaker on stage, or into a larger PA system using a DI unit. Since the 1960s, the guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of basslines vary widely from one style of music to another, many styles of music utilise the bass guitar, including rock, heavy metal, pop, punk rock, country, reggae, gospel, blues, symphonic rock, and jazz. It is often a solo instrument in jazz, jazz fusion, Latin, funk, progressive rock and other rock, the adoption of a guitar form made the instrument easier to hold and transport than any of the existing stringed bass instruments. The addition of frets enabled bassists to play in more easily than on acoustic or electric upright basses. Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period, around 1947, Tutmarcs son, Bud, began marketing a similar bass under the Serenader brand name, prominently advertised in the nationally distributed L. D. Heater Music Company wholesale jobber catalogue of 1948, however, the Tutmarc family inventions did not achieve market success. In the 1950s, Leo Fender, with the help of his employee George Fullerton and his Fender Precision Bass, which began production in October 1951, became a widely copied industry standard. This split pickup, introduced in 1957, appears to have been two mandolin pickups, the pole pieces and leads of the coils were reversed with respect to each other, producing a humbucking effect. Humbucking is a design that electrically cancels the effect of any AC hum, the Fender Bass was a revolutionary new instrument, which could be easily transported, and which was less prone to feedback when amplified than acoustic bass instruments. Monk Montgomery was the first bass player to tour with the Fender bass guitar, roy Johnson, and Shifty Henry with Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five, were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, switched from bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957. The bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, following Fenders lead, in 1953, Gibson released the first short scale violin-shaped electric bass with extendable end pin, allowing it to be played upright or horizontally. In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass, the EB-0 was very similar to a Gibson SG in appearance
14.
Electric guitar
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The vibrations of the strings are sensed by a pickup, of which the most common type is the magnetic pickup, which uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction. The signal generated by a guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is plugged into a guitar amplifier before being sent to a loudspeaker. The output of a guitar is an electric signal. Invented in 1931, the electric guitar was adopted by jazz guitarists. Early proponents of the guitar on record included Les Paul, Lonnie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, T-Bone Walker. During the 1950s and 1960s, the guitar became the most important instrument in pop music. It has evolved into an instrument that is capable of a multitude of sounds and styles in genres ranging from pop and rock to country music, blues and jazz. It served as a component in the development of electric blues, rock and roll, rock music, heavy metal music. Electric guitar design and construction vary greatly in the shape of the body and the configuration of the neck, bridge, Guitars may have a fixed bridge or a spring-loaded hinged bridge that lets players bend the pitch of notes or chords up or down or perform vibrato effects. The sound of a guitar can be modified by new playing techniques such as string bending, tapping, hammering on, using audio feedback, in a small group, such as a power trio, one guitarist switches between both roles. In larger rock and metal bands, there is often a rhythm guitarist, many experiments at electrically amplifying the vibrations of a string instrument were made dating back to the early part of the 20th century. Patents from the 1910s show telephone transmitters were adapted and placed inside violins, hobbyists in the 1920s used carbon button microphones attached to the bridge, however, these detected vibration from the bridge on top of the instrument, resulting in a weak signal. With numerous people experimenting with electrical instruments in the 1920s and early 1930s, Electric guitars were originally designed by acoustic guitar makers and instrument manufacturers. Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow-bodied acoustic instruments and used tungsten pickups, the first electrically amplified guitar was designed in 1931 by George Beauchamp, the general manager of the National Guitar Corporation, with Paul Barth, who was vice president. The maple body prototype for the one-piece cast aluminum frying pan was built by Harry Watson, commercial production began in late summer of 1932 by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation, in Los Angeles, a partnership of Beauchamp, Adolph Rickenbacker, and Paul Barth. In 1934, the company was renamed the Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company, in that year Beauchamp applied for a United States patent for an Electrical Stringed Musical Instrument and the patent was issued in 1937. The Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts provided players a full 25 scale, with 17 frets free of the fretboard and it is estimated that fewer than 50 Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts were constructed between 1933 and 1937, fewer than 10 are known to survive today. The need for the guitar became apparent during the big band era as orchestras increased in size, particularly when acoustic guitars had to compete with large
15.
Digital audio workstation
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Regardless of configuration, modern DAWs have a central interface that allows the user to alter and mix multiple recordings and tracks into a final produced piece. DAWs are used for the production and recording of music, radio, television, podcasts, multimedia, early attempts at digital audio workstations in the 1970s and 1980s faced limitations such as the high price of storage, and the vastly slower processing and disk speeds of the time. In 1978, Soundstream built what could be considered the first digital audio workstation using some of the most current computer hardware of the time. Interface cards that plugged into the PDP-11s Unibus slots provided analog and digital input and output for interfacing to Soundstreams digital recorders. The DAP software could perform edits to the recorded on the systems hard disks. By the late 1980s, a number of consumer level computers such as the Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, soon, people began to use them for simple two-track audio editing and CD mastering. This combination of software and hardware was one of the earliest examples of a DAW. Many major recording studios finally went digital after Digidesign introduced its Pro Tools software, modeled after the traditional method, at this time, most DAWs were Apple Mac based. Around 1992, the first Windows based DAWs started to emerge from such as IQS Innovative Quality Software, Soundscape Digital Technology, SADiE, Echo Digital Audio. All the systems at this point used dedicated hardware for their audio processing, in 1993, German company Steinberg released Cubase Audio on Atari Falcon 030. This version brought DSP built-in effects with 8-track audio recording & playback using only native hardware, the first Windows based software-only product, introduced in 1993, was Samplitude Studio. In 1996, Steinberg introduced Cubase VST, which could record, Cubase not only modelled a tape-like interface for recording and editing, but also modelled the entire mixing desk and effects rack common in analog studios. This revolutionised the DAW world, both in features and price tag, and was imitated by most other contemporary DAW systems. An integrated DAW consists of a console, control surface, audio converter. Integrated DAWs were more popular before commonly available personal computers became powerful enough to run DAW software, as computer power and speed increased and price decreased, the popularity of costly integrated systems with console automation dropped. Systems such as the Orban Audicy became standard equipment at radio. This could be as simple as a mouse or as sophisticated as a piano-style MIDI controller keyboard or automated fader board for mixing track volumes, the computer acts as a host for the sound card/audio interface, while the software provides the interface and functionality for audio editing. The software controls all related components and provides a user interface to allow for recording, editing
16.
Electronic drum
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An electronic drum consists of an electronic or digital sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sounds and one or more electric sensors to trigger the sounds. Like regular drums, the sensors are struck by drum sticks or by the hands, the drum pads themselves are either discs or shallow drum shells made of various materials, often with a rubber/silicone or cloth-like coated playing surface. Each pad has a sensor that generates a signal when struck. The sound signal from the module can be plugged into a keyboard amp or PA system for use in a live band performance or listened to with headphones for silent practice. Since digital drums have more popular, companies have started selling digital electronic drum files. The Acetone rhythm box was designed by Ikutaro Kakehashi, who later founded Roland Corporation Japan, as with all rhythm boxes and later drum computers, before a human feel was developed by introducing subtle variation and swing, the Acetone rhythm boxes had a metronomic, machine-like sound. In Vissers modification, the Acetone box was extended with a flat board holding 12 printed circuit boards of approximately 4 ×4 inches. The copper traces formed the touch surfaces for the sounds generated by the Acetone box, each touch pad was sensed by an electronic circuit driving high-speed Siemens computer relays he found in surplus shops. These were connected to the drum and percussion sounds of the rhythm box, although it was a crude way of playing electronic drum sounds by hand, it worked and added a human feel. Vissers approach enabled drummers to have new type of virtuosity, the unit was used in Frans Peters studio in radio city Hilversum, Netherlands. The system was over-sensitive to humidity, The circuits would be triggered by the touch pads, just breathing over them would do the job. After all wed just left the dark ages of electronic music, the first electronic drum was created in the early 1970s by Graeme Edge, drummer of The Moody Blues, in collaboration with Sussex University Professor Brian Groves. The device was used in the song Procession from the 1971 album Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, question - One of the strangest pieces was Procession, which featured the pioneering work of Graeme Edges electronic drum kit. Graeme - Id got in touch with the professor of electronics at Sussex University and we worked up an electronic drum kit, a marvellous idea. I had the panel in front of me, its old hat now. There were pieces of rubber with silver paper on the back with a coil that moved up and down inside a magnet that produced a signal. I had 5 snares across the top and then ten tom-toms and then a whole octave of bass drums underneath my feet and then four lots of 16 sequencers, there was a gap — to play a space — a tambourine, ebony stick, snare and three tom-toms. This was pre-chip days, back then you did it all with transistors, so it had something like 500 transistors
17.
Singing
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Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of sustained tonality, rhythm, and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist, Singers perform music that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir of singers or a band of instrumentalists, Singers may perform as soloists, or accompanied by anything from a single instrument up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged or improvised and it may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual, as part of music education, or as a profession. Excellence in singing requires time, dedication, instruction, and regular practice, if practice is done on a regular basis then the sounds can become more clear and strong. Professional singers usually build their careers around one specific genre, such as classical or rock. They typically take voice training provided by teachers or vocal coaches throughout their careers. Though these four mechanisms function independently, they are coordinated in the establishment of a vocal technique and are made to interact upon one another. During passive breathing, air is inhaled with the diaphragm while exhalation occurs without any effort, exhalation may be aided by the abdominal, internal intercostal and lower pelvis/pelvic muscles. Inhalation is aided by use of external intercostals, scalenes and sternocleidomastoid muscles, the pitch is altered with the vocal cords. With the lips closed, this is called humming, humans have vocal folds which can loosen, tighten, or change their thickness, and over which breath can be transferred at varying pressures. The shape of the chest and neck, the position of the tongue, any one of these actions results in a change in pitch, volume, timbre, or tone of the sound produced. Sound also resonates within different parts of the body and an individuals size, Singers can also learn to project sound in certain ways so that it resonates better within their vocal tract. This is known as vocal resonation, another major influence on vocal sound and production is the function of the larynx which people can manipulate in different ways to produce different sounds. These different kinds of function are described as different kinds of vocal registers. The primary method for singers to accomplish this is through the use of the Singers Formant and it has also been shown that a more powerful voice may be achieved with a fatter and fluid-like vocal fold mucosa. The more pliable the mucosa, the more efficient the transfer of energy from the airflow to the vocal folds, Vocal registration refers to the system of vocal registers within the voice. A register in the voice is a series of tones, produced in the same vibratory pattern of the vocal folds
18.
Eurobeat
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Eurobeat is either a form of the British dance-pop variant of Eurodisco or Hi-NRG-driven Italo disco music that both developed in 1980s. In the United States, Eurobeat was sometimes marketed as Hi-NRG, Italo disco was often referred to as Eurobeat, probably due to the negative connotations of the word disco in the minds of the United States population in the 1980s. Eurobeat is also related to the Japanese Para Para dance culture as it influences many song. The term Eurobeat was first used in the UK when Ian Levines Eastbound Expressway released their single Youre a Beat in recognition to the tempo of Hi-NRG music emerging from Europe. The majority of Hi-NRG songs tended to be from 124 to 138 BPM whereas the European releases tended to be from 108 to 120 BPM. Many European acts managed to break through under this new recognition, namely the likes of Modern Talking, Bad Boys Blue, Taffy, Eurobeat was also applied to the first hits from the Pet Shop Boys and other UK-based dance music and electropop groups of the time. Those Eurobeat hits had a European beat, topped the UK charts, braun European Top 20 on MTV Europe also aired on MTV USA during summer 1987 to 1989, spreading the UKs Eurobeat sound. But after the summer of 1988, the style lost popularity, with the exception of Kylie Minogue, by the summer of 89 the term Eurobeat was replaced by other labels and the music changed to 90s Eurodance and mostly Euro house. The term Eurobeat was also used only in the UK during 1986–1988, for specific Italian 80s Euro disco imports, such as Sabrina Salerno, Spagna, meanwhile, in Japan in 1985, the term Eurobeat was applied to all continental-European dance music imports. These were mainly Italian and German-produced Italo disco releases and that sound became the soundtrack of the Para Para nightclub culture, that has existed since the early 1980s. Japan experienced Italo disco through the success of the German group Arabesque and this did not prevent the release of two Italo disco-sounding singles in 1985 and 1986, produced and mixed by Michael Cretu. The later solo success of Arabesques lead singer Sandra further introduced this sound to Japan, in Japan, this music is called Eurobeat, Super Eurobeat, and Eurobeat Flash. Despite its European origins, the Eurobeat styles main market has always been Japan and it appeals to open-minded Italo disco fans and some Euro-house fans. Eurobeats sound is its link to its Italo disco origins. These sounds are layered with vocals and natural instruments into complex, in 1998, Bemani, a branch of the video game company Konami made a hit video dance machine, Dance Dance Revolution. The game acquired Eurobeat songs from the Dancemania compilation series from Toshiba EMI, over time, DDR has featured Eurobeat songs on-and-off in their songlists. However, their number has dwindled due to efforts to make DDR more marketable to North American markets. Currently, there has been a push to add more Eurobeat into DDR, most recently with the addition of Super Eurobeat tracks in the latest arcade release, other music games in Konamis lineup feature a large number of Eurobeat tracks, including Beatmania, Beatmania IIDX, and jubeat
19.
K-pop
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K-pop is a music genre originating in South Korea that is characterized by a wide variety of audiovisual elements. The more modern form of the genre emerged with one of the earliest K-pop groups, Seo Taiji and Boys and their experimentation with different styles of music reshaped Koreas music scene. As a result, the integration of foreign musical elements has now become common practice with K-pop artists, K-pop entered the Japanese market at the turn of the 21st century and rapidly grew into a subculture among teenagers and young adults of East and Southeast Asia. Although K-pop generally refers to South Korean popular music, some consider it to be an all-encompassing genre exhibiting a vast spectrum of musical and visual elements, the French Institut national de laudiovisuel defines K-pop as a fusion of synthesized music, sharp dance routines and fashionable, colorful outfits. Songs typically consist of one or a mixture of pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, Management agencies in South Korea offer binding contracts to potential artists, sometimes at a young age. Trainees live together in an environment and spend many hours a day learning music, dance, foreign languages. This robotic system of training is often criticized by Western media outlets, in 2012, The Wall Street Journal reported that the cost of training one Korean pop idol under S. M. K-pop is a product that features “values, identity and meanings that go beyond their strictly commercial value. ”It is characterized by a mixture of Western sounds with an Asian aspect of performance. It has been remarked that there is a vision of modernization inherent in Korean pop culture, for some, the transnational values of K-pop are responsible for its success. Many agencies have presented new idol groups to an audience through a debut showcase, groups are given a name and a concept, along with a marketing hook. Sometimes sub-units or sub-groups are formed among existing members, an example subgroup is Super Junior-K. R. Y. Which consists of members Kyuhyun, Ryeowook, and Yesung, and Super Junior-M, online marketing includes music videos posted to YouTube in order to reach a worldwide audience. Prior to the video, the group releases teaser photos. Promotional cycles of subsequent singles are called comebacks even when the musician or group in question did not go on hiatus, modern K-pop is marked by its use of English phrases. In 1995, the percentage of song titles using English in the top 50 charts was 8% and this fluctuated between 30% in 2000, 18% in 2005, and 44% in 2010. Similarly, increasing numbers of K-pop bands use English names rather than Korean ones and this allows songs and artists to be marketed to a wider audience around the world. An example of a Korean song with a proportion of English lyrics is Kara’s Jumping. Increasingly, foreign songwriters and producers are employed to work on songs for K-pop idols, such as will. i. am, musicians, including rappers such as Akon, Kanye West, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg, have also featured on K-pop songs
20.
J-pop
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J-pop, natively also known simply as pops, is a musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. J-pop was further defined by new groups in the late 1970s, particularly electronic synthpop band Yellow Magic Orchestra. Eventually, J-pop replaced kayōkyoku in the Japanese music scene, the term was coined by the Japanese media to distinguish Japanese music from foreign music, and now refers to most Japanese popular music. The origin of modern J-pop is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by the likes of The Beatles, unlike the Japanese music genre called kayōkyoku, J-pop uses a special kind of pronunciation, which is similar to that of English. One notable singer to do so is Keisuke Kuwata, who pronounced the Japanese word karada as kyerada, additionally, unlike Western music, the major second was usually not used in Japanese music, except art music, before rock music became popular in Japan. At first, the term J-pop was used only for Western-style musicians in Japan, such as Pizzicato Five and Flippers Guitar, on the other hand, Mitsuhiro Hidaka of AAA from Avex Trax said that J-pop was originally derived from the Eurobeat genre. However, the became a blanket term, covering other music genres—such as the majority of Japanese rock music of the 1990s. O. A. Because the band did not want to perform J-pop music, their album featured the 1980s Pop of MTV, according to his fellow band member Toru Hidaka, the 1990s music that influenced him was not listened to by fans of other music in Japan at that time. Hide of Greeeen openly described their genre as J-pop. He said, I also love rock, hip hop and breakbeats, for example, hip hop musicians learn the culture of hip hop when they begin their career. We are not like those musicians and we love the music as very much. Those professional people may say What are you doing, but I think that our musical style is cool after all. By the Taishō period, Western musical techniques and instruments, which had introduced to Japan in the Meiji period, were widely used. Influenced by Western genres such as jazz and blues, ryūkōka incorporated Western instruments such as the violin, harmonica, however, the melodies were often written according to the traditional Japanese pentatonic scale. In the 1930s, Ichiro Fujiyama released popular songs with his tenor voice, Fujiyama sang songs with a lower volume than opera through the microphone. Jazz musician Ryoichi Hattori attempted to produce Japanese native music which had a flavor of blues and he composed Noriko Awayas hit song Wakare no Blues. Awaya became a popular singer and was called Queen of Blues in Japan. Due to pressure from the Imperial Army during the war, the performance of music was temporarily halted in Japan
21.
Electronic music
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In general, a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, purely electronic sound production can be achieved using devices such as the theremin, sound synthesizer, and computer. During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for instruments were composed. Musique concrète, created in Paris in 1948, was based on editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds, Music produced solely from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953. Electronic music was created in Japan and the United States beginning in the 1950s. An important new development was the advent of computers for the purpose of composing music, algorithmic composition was first demonstrated in Australia in 1951. In America and Europe, live electronics were pioneered in the early 1960s, during the 1970s to early 1980s, the monophonic Minimoog became once the most widely used synthesizer at that time in both popular and electronic art music. In the 1980s, electronic music became dominant in popular music, with a greater reliance on synthesizers, and the adoption of programmable drum machines. Electronically produced music became prevalent in the domain by the 1990s. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music. Today, pop music is most recognizable in its 4/4 form. At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments and these initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances. The audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for the instruments, while some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium accurately synthesized the sound of orchestral instruments. It achieved viable public interest and made progress into streaming music through telephone networks. Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments, ferruccio Busoni encouraged the composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments. He predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery. They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in the influential manifesto The Art of Noises, developments of the vacuum tube led to electronic instruments that were smaller, amplified, and more practical for performance. In particular, the theremin, ondes Martenot and trautonium were commercially produced by the early 1930s, from the late 1920s, the increased practicality of electronic instruments influenced composers such as Joseph Schillinger to adopt them
22.
Industrial music
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Industrial music is a genre of experimental/electronic music that draws on transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. In general, the style is harsh and challenging, allMusic defines industrial as the most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music, initially a blend of avant-garde electronics experiments and punk provocation. The first industrial artists experimented with noise and aesthetically controversial topics, musically and visually, such as fascism, serial killers and their production was not limited to music, but included mail art, performance art, installation pieces and other art forms. Prominent industrial musicians include Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazazza, SPK, Boyd Rice, Cabaret Voltaire, Musicians also cite writers such as William S. Burroughs, and philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche as influences. These artists expanded the genre by pushing it into noisier and more electronic directions, over time, its influence spread into and blended with styles including ambient and rock, all of which now fall under the post-industrial music label. Electro-industrial music is a subgenre that developed in the 1980s. These three distinct genres are often referred to as simply industrial, Industrial music drew from a broad range of predecessors. Industrial music was created originally by using mechanical and electric machinery, monroe also argues for Suicide as an influential contemporary of the industrial musicians. Groups cited as inspirational by the founders of industrial music include The Velvet Underground, Joy Division, genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle had a cassette library including recordings by the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Kraftwerk, Charles Manson, and William S. Burroughs. P-Orridge also credited 1960s rock such as The Doors, Pearls Before Swine, The Fugs, Captain Beefheart, chris Carter also enjoyed and found inspiration in Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream. Boyd Rice was influenced by the music of 60s girl groups, Cabaret Voltaire cited Roxy Music as their initial forerunners, as well as Kraftwerks Trans-Europe Express. Cabaret Voltaire also recorded pieces reminiscent of musique concrète and composers such as Morton Subotnick, Nurse with Wound cited a long list of obscure free improvisation and Krautrock as recommended listening. 23 Skidoo borrowed from Fela Kuti and Miles Daviss On the Corner, many industrial groups, including Einstürzende Neubauten, took inspiration from world music. Many of the industrial musicians preferred to cite artists or thinkers, rather than musicians. Simon Reynolds declares that Being a Throbbing Gristle fan was like enrolling in a university course of cultural extremism, John Cage was an initial inspiration for Throbbing Gristle. SPK appreciated Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Cabaret Voltaire took conceptual cues from Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, and Tristan Tzara. Whitehouse and Nurse with Wound dedicated some of their work to the Marquis de Sade, another influence on the industrial aesthetic was Lou Reeds Metal Machine Music. Pitchfork Music cites this album as inspiring, in part, much of the contemporary avant-garde music scene—noise, the album consists entirely of guitar feedback, anticipating industrials use of non-musical sounds
23.
Chiptune
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Chiptune, also known as chip music or 8-bit music, is synthesized electronic music which is made for programmable sound generator sound chips used in vintage computers, consoles, and arcade machines. The term also refers to tracker format music which sounds similar to older PSG-created music and music that combines PSG sounds with modern musical styles. By the early 1980s, personal computers became less expensive and more accessible than they had previously been and this led to a proliferation of outdated personal computers and game consoles that had been abandoned by consumers as they upgraded to newer machines. They were in low demand by consumers as a whole, and not difficult to find, while it has been a mostly underground genre, chiptune has had periods of moderate popularity in the 1980s and 21st century, and has influenced the development of electronic dance music. The terms chip music and chiptune refer to music made by the sound chips found within early gaming systems, a waveform generator is a fundamental module in a sound synthesis system. A waveform generator usually produces a basic geometrical waveform with a fixed or variable timbre, common waveform generator configurations usually included two or three simple waveforms and often a single pseudo-random-noise generator. Available waveforms often included pulse wave, square wave, triangle wave, two notable examples of systems employing this technology comprise the Game Boy and the Commodore 64. The Game Boy uses two pulse channels, a channel for 4-bit PCM playback, and a pseudo-random-noise generator, the Commodore 64, however, used the MOS Technology SID chip which offered 3 channels, each switchable between pulse, saw-tooth, triangle, and noise. Unlike the Game Boy, the channels on the Commodore 64 allowed full control over wave duty cycles. The SID was a technically advanced chip, offering many other features including ring modulation. Due to limited number of voices in those primitive chips, one of the challenges is to produce rich polyphonic music with them. The usual method to emulate it is via quick arpeggios, which is one of the most relevant features of chiptune music, the earliest precursors to chip music can be found in the early history of computer music. In 1951, the computers CSIRAC and Ferranti Mark 1 were used to perform real-time synthesized digital music in public. One of the earliest commercial computer music albums came from the First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival, held August 25,1978, the First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival recordings were published by Creative Computing in 1979. The Global TV program Science International credited a PDP-11/10 for the music, Chiptune music began to appear with the video game music produced during the golden age of video arcade games. An early example was the tune in Tomohiro Nishikados arcade game Gun Fight. The first video game to feature continuous background music was Rally-X. It was also one of the earliest games to use a converter to produce sampled sounds
24.
Downtempo
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Downtempo is a genre of electronic music similar to ambient, but with a greater emphasis on rhythm, and is not as earthy as trip hop. The 1990s brought on a wave of slower paced music which was played throughout chillout rooms—the relaxation sections of the clubs or dedicated sections at electronic music events. Downtempo music started to surface around Ibiza, when DJs and promoters would bring down the vibe with slower rhythm and gentler electronic music upon approaching sunrise. In the late 1980s, trip hop emerged from Bristol, which combined elements of hip hop beats, drum and bass breaks, at the end of the 1990s a more melodic instrumental electronica incorporating acoustic sounds with electronic styles emerged under its own umbrella name of downtempo. In the late 1990s, the Austrian duo Kruder & Dorfmeister popularized the style with their downtempo remixes of pop, hip-hop, and drum and bass tracks with influences of the 70s soul jazz. Britons Steve Cobby and Dave McSherry, producing under the name Fila Brazillia, released a handful of downtempo, electronica and ambient techno albums that propelled the style further. In 2010, downtempo pop was described by The Atlantic as a variety of styles from the 2000s characterized by mellow beats, vintage synthesizers. In other words, a term that includes chillwave, glo-fi
25.
Drum and bass
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Drum and bass is a genre and branch of electronic music which emerged from rave and oldschool jungle scenes in England during the early 1990s. The style is characterised by fast breakbeats with heavy bass and sub-bass lines, sampled sources. The popularity of drum and bass at its peak ran parallel to several other homegrown dance styles in the UK including big beat. Drum and bass incorporates a number of scenes and styles, a major influence on jungle and drum and bass was the original Jamaican dub and reggae sound. Another feature of the style is the syncopation of the drum tracks breakbeat. Drum and bass subgenres include breakcore, ragga jungle, hardstep, darkstep, techstep, neurofunk, ambient drum and bass, liquid funk, deep, drumfunk, funkstep, sambass, dnbnoise, from its roots in the UK, the style has established itself around the world. Drum and bass has influenced other genres like hip hop, big beat, dubstep, house, trip hop, ambient music, techno, rock. Drum and bass is dominated by a small group of record labels. The major international labels have shown very little interest in the drum. But rave music tended to feature stronger bass sounds and a faster tempo beats per minute than that of early house music and it is important to note when discussing the history of drum and bass that prior to jungle, rave music was getting faster and more experimental. Professional DJ and producer C. K. states, There was a progression as far as the speed of music is concerned, anyone buying vinyl every week from 1989 to 1992 noticed this. By 1994, jungle had begun to gain popularity and fans of the music became a more recognisable part of youth subculture. However, this developed in tandem with the positive reputation of the music as part of the wider rave scene. As the genre became more polished and sophisticated technically, it began to expand its reach from pirate radio to commercial stations. It also began to split into subgenres such as jump-up. The popularity of drum and bass at its peak ran parallel to several other homegrown dance styles in the UK including big beat. But towards the turn of the millennium its popularity was deemed to have dwindled as the UK garage style known as speed garage yielded several hit singles. London DJ/producer C. K. says, It is often forgotten by my students that a type of music called garage house existed in the late 1980s alongside hip house, acid house and other forms of house music
26.
Dub music
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Dub is a genre of music that grew out of reggae in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae. Other techniques include dynamically adding extensive echo, reverb, panoramic delay, Dub was pioneered by Osbourne King Tubby Ruddock, Lee Scratch Perry, Errol Thompson and others in the late 1960s. Augustus Pablo is credited with bringing the melodica to dub, and is also among the pioneers and creators of the genre, similar experiments with recordings at the mixing desk outside of the dancehall environment were also done by producers Clive Chin and Herman Chin Loy. These producers, especially Ruddock and Perry, looked upon the mixing console as an instrument, manipulating tracks to come up with something new and different. Dub has influenced many genres of music, including rock, pop, hip hop, disco, and later house, techno, ambient, electronic dance music, the verb dub is defined as making a copy of one recording to another. The term dub had multiple meanings in Jamaica around the time of the musics origin, in concert, the order dub this one. Meant put an emphasis on bass and drums, drummer Sly Dunbar points to a similar interpretation, relating the term dubwise to using only drums and bass. Another possible source was the term dub plate, as suggested by Augustus Pablo, the word duppy also relates to dub through Jamaicas history of intra-racial terror, violence, and murder that is often overlooked in favor of Jamaican ideologies of racial solidarity. The ghosts of these victims, or duppies, are thought to be captured best within the dub instrumentals, a version is a record with the vocals removed, the alternative cut of a song made for the DJ to toast over. These versions were used as the basis of new songs by rerecording them with new elements, the instrumental tracks are typically drenched in sound effects such as echo, reverberation, with instruments and vocals dropping in and out of the mix. Another hallmark of the dub sound is the prominent use of bass guitar, the music sometimes features other noises, such as birds singing, thunder and lightning, water flowing, and producers shouting instructions at the musicians. It can be augmented by live DJs. There is usually an organic feel to the music, even though the effects are electronically created. Often these tracks are used for toasters rapping heavily rhymed and alliterative lyrics, in forms of sound system based reggae, the performer using a microphone is referred to as the DJ or deejay, and the person choosing the music and operating the turntables is called the selector. A major reason for producing multiple versions was economic, a producer could use a recording he owned to produce numerous versions from a single studio session. A version was also an opportunity for a producer or remix engineer to experiment, Dub music and toasting introduced a new era of creativity in reggae music. From their beginning, toasting and dub music developed together and influenced each other, in 1968, Kingston, Jamaica sound system operator Rudolph Ruddy Redwood went to Duke Reids Treasure Isle studio to cut a one-off dub plate of The Paragons hit On The Beach. Engineer Byron Smith left the track out by accident, but Redwood kept the result
27.
Dubstep
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Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, England. It emerged in the late 1990s as a development within a lineage of related styles such as 2-step garage, dub, techno, drum and bass, broken beat, jungle, and reggae. In the United Kingdom the origins of the genre can be traced back to the growth of the Jamaican sound system party scene in the early 1980s, the music generally features sparse, syncopated drum and percussion patterns with bass lines that contain prominent sub bass frequencies. The earliest dubstep releases date back to 1998, and were featured as B-sides of 2-step garage single releases. These tracks were darker, more experimental remixes with less emphasis on vocals, a very early supporter of the sound was BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who started playing it from 2003 onwards. In 2004, the last year of his show, his listeners voted Distance, Digital Mystikz, simultaneously, the genre was receiving extensive coverage in music magazines such as The Wire and online publications such as Pitchfork, with a regular feature entitled The Month In, Grime/Dubstep. Interest in dubstep grew significantly after BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs started championing the genre, towards the end of the 2000s and into the early 2010s, the genre started to become more commercially successful in the UK, with more singles and remixes entering the music charts. Music journalists and critics noticed a dubstep influence in several pop artists work. The music website Allmusic has described Dubsteps overall sound as tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals. According to Simon Reynolds, Dubsteps constituents originally came from different points in the 1989—99 UK lineage, bleep n bass, jungle, techstep, Photek-style neurofunk, speed garage,2 step. Reynolds comments that the traces of pre-existing styles worked through their intrinsic sonic effects but also as signifiers, Dubsteps early roots are in the more experimental releases of UK garage producers, seeking to incorporate elements of drum and bass into the South London-based 2-step garage sound. These experiments often ended up on the B-side of a label or commercial garage release. Similar to a vocal garage hybrid – grime – the genres feel is commonly dark, tracks frequently use a minor key, other distinguishing features often found are the use of samples, a propulsive, sparse rhythm, and an almost omnipresent sub-bass. Some dubstep artists have incorporated a variety of outside influences. Dubstep rhythms are usually syncopated, and often shuffled or incorporating tuplets, the tempo is nearly always in the range of 138–142 beats per minute, with a clap or snare usually inserted every third beat in a bar. In its early stages, dubstep was often more percussive, with influences from 2‑step drum patterns. A lot of producers were experimenting with tribal drum samples, such as Loefahs early release Truly Dread. One characteristic of certain strands of dubstep is the bass, often referred to as the wub
28.
Electro (music)
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Electro is a genre of electronic music and early hip hop directly influenced by the use of the Roland TR-808 drum machines, and funk. This is the distinction between electro and previously prominent genres such as disco, in which the electronic sound was only part of the instrumentation. It also palpably deviates from its predecessor boogie for being less vocal-oriented, following the decline of disco music in the United States, electro emerged as a fusion of funk and New York boogie. Early hip hop and rap combined with German and Japanese electropop influences such as Kraftwerk, Planet Rock was followed later that year by another breakthrough electro record, Nunk by Warp 9. In 1983, Hashim created an electro funk sound which influenced Herbie Hancock, the early 1980s were electros mainstream peak. By the mid 1980s, the genre moved away from its electronic and funk influences, using harder edged beats and rock samples, Electro became popular again in the late 1990s with artists such as Anthony Rother and DJs such as Dave Clarke. A third wave of popularity occurred in 2007, Electro has branched out into subgenres, including Electrocore and Skweee, which developed in Sweden and Finland. From its inception, one of the characteristics of the electro sound was the use of drum machines, particularly the Roland TR-808. As the genre evolved, computers and sampling replaced drum machines in electronic music and it is important to note, that although the electro of the 1980s and contemporary electro both grew out of the dissolution of disco, they are now different genres. Classic electro drum patterns tend to be electronic emulations of breakbeats, with a kick drum. The difference between electro drumbeats and breakbeats is that electro tends to be mechanical, while breakbeats tend to have more of a human-like feel. The definition however is somewhat ambiguous in nature due to the uses of the term. The Roland TR-808 drum machine hit the market in 1980, defining early electro with its immediately recognizable sound, staccato, percussive drumbeats tended to dominate electro, almost exclusively provided by the TR-808. As an inexpensive way of producing a sound, the TR-808 caught on quickly with the producers of early electro because of the ability of its bass drum to generate extreme low-frequencies. This aspect of the Roland TR-808 was especially appealing to producers who would test drive their tracks in nightclubs and its unique percussion sounds like handclaps, open and closed high-hat, clave and cowbell became integral to the electro sound. A number of songs in the early 1980s employed the TR-808, including Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing, ” Cybotron’s “Clear, ” and Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock. ”The Roland TR-808 has attained iconic status. Through the use of samples, the Roland TR-808 remains popular in electro, most electro is instrumental, but a common element is vocals processed through a vocoder. Additionally, speech synthesis may be used to create robotic or mechanical lyrical content, as in the iconic Planet Rock, although primarily instrumental, early electro utilized rap
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Electronic dance music
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Electronic dance music is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres made largely for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. EDM is generally produced for playback by disc jockeys who create seamless selections of tracks, called a mix, EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. In the United Kingdom and in continental Europe, EDM is more commonly called dance music or simply dance. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, following the emergence of raving, pirate radio, at this time a perceived association between EDM and drug culture led governments at state and city level to enact laws and policies intended to halt the spread of rave culture. By the early 2010s the term dance music and the initialism EDM was being pushed by the US music industry. Early examples of dance music include the disco music of Giorgio Moroder. During the early 1980s, the popularity of disco music declined in the United States, abandoned by major US record labels. European disco continued evolving within the mainstream pop music scene. European acts Silver Convention, Love and Kisses, Munich Machine, and American acts Donna Summer, in 1977, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte produced I Feel Love for Donna Summer. It became the first well-known disco hit to have a completely synthesised backing track, other disco producers, most famously American producer Tom Moulton, grabbed ideas and techniques from dub music to provide alternatives to the four on the floor style that dominated. The sound that originated from P-Funk the electronic side of disco, dub music. Much of the music produced during this time was, like disco, at this time creative control started shifting to independent record companies, less established producers, and club DJs. Other dance styles that began to become popular during the era include dance-pop, boogie, electro, Italo disco, house. In the early 1980s, electro emerged as a fusion of funk, also called electro-boogie, but later shortened to electro, cited pioneers include Zapp, D. Train, Sinnamon. Early hip hop and rap combined with German and Japanese electropop influences such as Kraftwerk, as the electronic sound developed, instruments such as the bass guitar and drums were replaced by synthesizers and most notably by iconic drum machines, particularly the Roland TR-808. Early uses of the TR-808 include several Yellow Magic Orchestra tracks in 1980-1981, the 1982 track Planet Rock by Afrikaa Bambaataa, and the 1982 song Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye. In 1982, producer Arthur Baker with Afrika Bambaataa released the seminal Planet Rock which was influenced by the Yellow Magic Orchestra using Kraftwerk samples, Planet Rock was followed later that year by another breakthrough electro record, Nunk by Warp 9. In 1983, Hashim created an electro funk sound which influenced Herbie Hancock, the early 1980s were electros mainstream peak
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Electronicore
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Electronicore describes a stylistic fusion of metalcore and/or post-hardcore with electronic music, specifically electronica. Notable artists of this genre have originated from the United Kingdom, sumerian Records noted in the late 2000s that there has been a surplus of electronica/hardcore music as of late. Attack Attack. is often recognized as the primary American contributor of the style, I See Stars debut album, 3-D, was popular amongst the synthcore scene. Enter Shikari is a band that began in 1999, adding their last member and transforming to Enter Shikari from Hybryd in early 2003, in St Albans. The group has received radio airplay and a substantial number of musical awards. NME, Rock Sound Magazine and BT Digital Awards and they express a relationship with electronic music genres such as trance and have been referred to as the kings of trancecore. Their second album, titled Common Dreads, was released in June 2009 and we Butter The Bread With Butter is another electronicore band, from Lübben, Germany, that has released four albums and one EP since 2008. Altsounds, an independent music journal, noted there has been a sudden rise in the amount of bands combining electronic. The article noted that many of the bands who created songs for Punk Goes Pop 4 incorporated characteristics of electronicore, specifically referencing I See Stars and Woe. Electronicore is characterized by typical post-hardcore instrumentation, metalcore-influenced breakdowns, heavy use of sequencers and synthesizers, auto-tuned singing, the genre often features dynamic transitions from soft electronica ballads to intense metalcore passages. However, the degree to which characteristics are incorporated may vary. In addition to electronica, the fusion may involve a variety of electronic music genres, including techno, trance, dubstep, electro. Abandon All Ships American Awesome Alliance Area 11 Arsonists Get All the Girls Asking Alexandria Attack Attack. The Browning Upon This Dawning We Butter the Bread with Butter Woe, Is Me You and What Army Nintendocore is a music genre that includes elements of video game music, chiptunes. It is a form of post-hardcore. Crunkcore is a genre that combines post-hardcore and screamo with crunk hip hop. Digital hardcore is a music genre fusing elements of punk and various forms of electronic music. It developed in Germany during the early 1990s, and often features sociological or left-extremist lyrical themes, electronic rock Dance-punk Industrial metal Electropunk Metalstep
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Hardstyle
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Hardstyle is an electronic dance genre mixing influences from hard techno and hardcore. Hardstyle typically consists of a deep, hard-sounding kick drum, intense faded or reversed basslines accompanying the beat, a dissonant synth melody story telling, many hardcore artists produce hardstyle tracks as well, and many newer Hardstyle tracks are written in compound time. The first Hardstyle events, like Qlubtempo, took place at the beginning of the 21st century, after several successful editions of Qlubtempo and Qlimax, Q-dance registered the word hardstyle as their brand on the 4th of July 2002. Around 2002, more hardstyle labels emerged, fusion and Scantraxx are two of the Dutch labels that started to bring out hardstyle tracks around that time. Around 2004–2005 the genre became more melodic and uplifting, somewhat faster, many producers started to pitch-shift a distorted kick drum to create a melodic bassline that usually plays in pitch with a typical hard trance supersaw or a thinner electro house synth melody. The melody often is in form, which gives the genre a pulsating rhythm. Thus, nowadays many people refer to the style as early hardstyle. In early 2010, a new variation in hardstyle, named dubstyle was introduced, dubstyle is the name given to the genre fusion of hardstyle and dubstep. Notable euphoric hardstyle producers include Coone, Atmozfears, Da Tweekaz, Code Black, since around 2011, more terms to identify developments of hardstyle were introduced. Raw Hardstyle, is a type of hardstyle influenced from Dutch hardcore or older hardstyle resulting in darker melodies, screeches and deeper-sounding kick drums
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Intelligent dance music
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Intelligent dance music is a genre of electronic music that emerged in the early 1990s. Its creation was influenced by developments in dance music such as Detroit techno. Stylistically, IDM tended to rely upon individualistic experimentation rather than adhering to musical characteristics associated with specific genres of dance music, the range of post-techno styles that emerged in the early 1990s were described variously as art techno, ambient techno, intelligent techno, and electronica. In the United States, the latter is used as a catchall term to describe not only downtempo or downbeat/non-dance electronic music. In 2014, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones observed that the term is widely reviled and he regards UK acts Aphex Twin and Autechre as central to the evolution of the genre. In 1992, Warp released Artificial Intelligence, the first album in the Artificial Intelligence series. Subtitled electronic listening music from Warp, the record was a collection of tracks from such as Autechre, B12, The Black Dog, Aphex Twin and The Orb. Steve Beckett, co-owner of Warp, has said the music that the label was releasing then was targeting a post-club. At the same time, the UK market was saturated with increasingly frenetic breakbeat, in 1993, a number of new intelligent techno/electronica record labels emerged, including New Electronica, Mille Plateaux, 100% Pure, and Ferox Records. In November 1991, the phrase intelligent techno appeared on Usenet in reference to Coils The Snow EP. Off the Internet, the phrase appeared in both the U. S. & UK music press in late 1992, in reference to Jam & Spoons Tales from a Danceographic Ocean. Another instance of the phrase appeared on Usenet in April 1993 in reference to The Black Dogs album Bytes, the first message, sent on 1 August 1993, was entitled Can Dumb People Enjoy IDM, Too. Kirk and The Future Sound of London, and even artists like System 7, William Orbit, Sabres of Paradise, Orbital, Plastikman and Björk. By the end of 1996, Boards of Canada and the Schematic Records label were among the topics of discussion, alongside perennial favorites like Aphex Twin. As of 2015, the mailing list is still active, warps second Artificial Intelligence compilation was released in 1994. The album featured fragments of posts from the IDM mailing list incorporated into typographic artwork by The Designers Republic, sleeve notes by David Toop acknowledged the genres multitude of musical and cultural influences and suggested none should be considered more important than any other. Lesser-known artists on the Likemind label and Kirk Degiorgios A. R. T, in the mid-1990s, North American audiences welcomed IDM, and many IDM record labels were founded, including Drop Beat, Isophlux, Suction, Schematic and Cytrax. In Miami, Florida, labels like Schematic, Merck Records, Nophi Recordings and The Beta Bodega Coalition released material by such as Phoenecia, Dino Felipe, Machinedrum
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Synth-pop
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Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late-1970s to the mid-1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestras success opened the way for bands such as P-Model, Plastics. The development of polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI. This, its adoption by the acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV. Synth-pop is sometimes deployed interchangeably with electropop, but electropop may also denote a variant of synth-pop that places emphasis on a harder. In the late 1980s duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style that was successful on the US dance-charts. Some artists and bands were criticised for gender bending, Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but, many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music. The result was often minimalist, with grooves that were woven together from simple repeated riffs often with no harmonic progression to speak of. Early synth-pop has been described as eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing, using droning electronics with little change in inflection, common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, and feelings of being emotionally cold and hollow. Synthesizers were increasingly used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras, thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, and compressed production, and a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were generally optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance, escapism. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its emotional, at times operatic singers such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox. Because synthesizers removed the need for groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Later synth-pop saw a shift to a style influenced by other genres. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, the portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use, particularly in live performance was widely adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes
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Techno
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Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States during the mid-to-late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno in reference to a genre of music was in 1988. Many styles of techno now exist, but Detroit techno is seen as the foundation upon which a number of subgenres have been built. Added to this is the influence of futuristic and fictional themes relevant to life in American late capitalist society, pioneering producer Juan Atkins cites Tofflers phrase techno rebels as inspiring him to use the word techno to describe the musical style he helped to create. This unique blend of influences aligns techno with the referred to as afrofuturism. To producers such as Derrick May, the transference of spirit from the body to the machine is often a central preoccupation, in this manner, techno dance music defeats what Adorno saw as the alienating effect of mechanisation on the modern consciousness. Stylistically, techno is generally repetitive instrumental music, oftentimes produced for use in a continuous DJ set, the tempo tends to vary between approximately 120 to 150 beats per minute, depending on the style of techno. The creative use of production technology, such as drum machines, synthesizers. Many producers use retro electronic musical devices to create what they consider to be an authentic techno sound, drum machines from the 1980s such as Rolands TR-808 and TR-909 are highly prized, and software emulations of such retro technology are popular among techno producers. The Electrifying Mojo was the first radio DJ to play music by the Detroit techno producers Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Mojo refused to follow pre-established radio formats or playlists, and he promoted social and cultural awareness of the African American community. In exploring technos origins writer Kodwo Eshun maintains that Kraftwerk are to Techno what Muddy Waters is to the Rolling Stones, the authentic, the origin, the real. Juan Atkins has acknowledged that he had an enthusiasm for Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder, particularly Moroders work with Donna Summer. Atkins also mentions that around 1980 I had a tape of nothing but Kraftwerk, Telex, Devo, Giorgio Moroder and Gary Numan, and Id ride around in my car playing it. Regarding his initial impression of Kraftwerk, Atkins notes that they were clean, Derrick May identified the influence of Kraftwerk and other European synthesizer music in commenting that it was just classy and clean, and to us it was beautiful, like outer space. Living around Detroit, there was so little beauty, everything is an ugly mess in Detroit, and so we were attracted to this music. May has commented that he considered his music a direct continuation of the European synthesizer tradition and he also identified Japanese synthpop act Yellow Magic Orchestra, particularly member Ryuichi Sakamoto, and British band Ultravox, as influences, along with Kraftwerk. In 1980 or 1981 they met with Mojo and proposed that they provide mixes for his show, which they did end up doing the following year. These young promoters developed and nurtured the local music scene by both catering to the tastes of the local audience of young people and by marketing parties with new DJs
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Trance music
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Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed during the 1990s in Germany. Although trance is a genre of its own, it incorporates influences from other musical styles such as techno, house, pop, chill-out, classical music, tech house, ambient. A trance refers to a state of hypnotism and heightened consciousness and this is portrayed in trance music by the mixing of layers with distinctly foreshadowed build-up and release. Trance tracks are often lengthy to allow for such progression and commonly have sufficiently sparse opening and closing sections to facilitate mixing by DJs, Trance can be purely instrumental, although vocals are also a common feature. Typically they are performed by mezzo-soprano to soprano female soloists, often without verse/chorus structure, structured vocal form in trance music forms the basis of the vocal trance subgenre, which has been described as grand, soaring, and operatic and ethereal female leads floating amongst the synths. It was promoted by the well-known UK club-night megatripolis whose scene catapulted it to international fame, One writer traces the roots of trance to Paul van Dyks 1993 remix of Humates Love Stimulation. However, van Dyks trance origins can be traced back to his work with Visions Of Shiva. With film music also being influential, Trance was arguably at its commercial peak in the second part of 1990s and early 2000s. Classic trance employs a 4/4 time signature, a tempo of 125 to 150 BPM, a kick drum is usually placed on every downbeat and a regular open hi-hat is often placed on the upbeat or every 1/8th division of the bar. Rapid arpeggios and minor keys are common features of Trance, the latter being almost universal, instruments are added or removed every 4,8,16, or 32 bars. In the section before the breakdown, the motif is often introduced in a sliced up and simplified form. Then later, the climax is usually a culmination of the first part of the track mixed with the main melodic reprise. As is the case with many music tracks, trance tracks are usually built with sparser intros and outros in order to enable DJs to blend them together immediately. As trance is more melodic and harmonic than other dance music. More recent forms of trance music incorporate other styles and elements of music such as electro. It emphasizes harsher basslines and drum beats which decrease the importance of offbeats, the bpm of more recent styles tends to be on par with house music at 120 -135 beats per minute. However, unlike house music, recent forms of trance stay true to their melodic breakdowns, Trance music is broken into a large number of subgenres. Chronologically, the major subgenres are classic trance, acid trance, progressive trance, uplifting trance, closely related to Uplifting Trance is Euro-trance, which has become a general term for a wide variety of highly commercialized European dance music
