7 ms·

Well I for one think Electronic Music has too many sub-genres. Like if you change the timing of the highhat or the type of synth you're using it catapults you i

Well I for one think Electronic Music has too many sub-genres. Like if you change the timing of the highhat or the type of synth you're using it catapults you into a different genre. Whats that all about? Why does it need to be so segmented?

mjpuser 7y ago
I am in agreement with you. It seems it is more work than it's worth to develop this taxonomy.
- thatswrong0 7y ago
  Most people in the scene (or at least the sub-scene I'm embedded in) that make it and listen to it don't really care what it's called. But for people trying to find more of a certain style, it certainly can be useful.
noir_lord 7y ago
Metal is the same, often it's the true(TM) fans who come up with the micro-genres as a way to beat people over the head for not knowing that "foo" is "bar". It's the pretentious of wine culture applied to music basically.
- scns 7y ago
  Tribalism at work?
- pimmen 7y ago
  This is basically spot on. But, these micro genres can be useful for the "true" fans too, if they know a fellow fan and feel like they want something within a genre, but with some specific features (like just a tad slower tempo, more vocals or something) they can just say "heard anything good from <sub_genre>" instead of "heard anything good from <genre>, but with <list_of_really_tiny_differences>".
- karmickoala 7y ago
  I used to follow this in rock. Despite being misused like the way you mentioned, it also serves the purpose to help you find new artists based on the genre and sub-genre. If you like a specific thing about a track and you'd want to listen more like that, the taxonomy helps you find it and how they relate to other (sub-)genres. However, I do concede that there is a lot of pretentiousness.
- keymon-o 7y ago
  People enjoy certain patterns in some genre and then they explore and develop it further. When that pattern becomes more known it gets a name for easier referencing. All music eventually starts to sound boring and micro genre is how fans find what they like about genre and continue enjoy it. I don't understand craft beer fad and obsession, but I know beer has many tastes and many interesting stuff can come out. Why would I call someone pretentious just because they develop something I don't care about.
- CapricornNoble 7y ago
  Agreed. It wasn't until later in life that I realized how obnoxiously hipster-ish metal fans can be. Band t-shirts are great conversation starters, but it quickly devolves from finding common ground ("Oh, you like Behemoth? Me too!") to bringing up super-obscure music to look like you are "deeper in the scene". "If you like black metal of course you've heard Zarzagamel's latest, right? It's a solo project from southern France with a limited release on vinyl."
- CuriouslyC 7y ago
  Eh, as a metalhead, the music is incredibly diverse and it's useful to be able to state your exact preferences clearly, and for promoters to be able to describe bands quickly. Personally I'm not too anal it, but I did laugh at a girl who thought Megadeth was death metal. That was pretty funny.
SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
It's useful if you feel like listening to "a certain sound". Knowing which (sub)genre it belongs to makes discovery of similar music easier
dintech 7y ago
There are many kinds of lots of things. If the nuances don't interest you, that's ok. Fortunately nobody made you the authority on the subject.
- codeulike 7y ago
  I'm trying to understand why. For example this is a pretty good explanation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20694521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20694521
emptyfile 7y ago
>Whats that all about? Why does it need to be so segmented? So that when I look at a party in my area I can know if its a party where artists will be playing progressive psytrance or forest psytrance. Because they're different. Is this so hard to understand for you?
- codeulike 7y ago
  But why does the music at the party have to be so specific?
  - MrScruff 7y ago
    Because people like different music and the different genres sound different. If you don't think they sound different it's just because you haven't refined the part of your brain that can discern the differences for this type of music.
    - codeulike 7y ago
      But a good party should introduce people to new experiences, no?
      - MrScruff 7y ago
        I go to psytrance parties reasonably often because I have friends who are into it, but I hate psytrance personally. Different strokes for different folks.
      - CapricornNoble 7y ago
        Not necessarily. If I were attending a party with some Avante Garde/Post-Black Metal and suddenly a band broke out in Djent or rap-rock....I would find it a highly jarring and unpleasant change in atmosphere.
  - emptyfile 7y ago
    "have to be", "need" Says who? You can describe your party as psytrance, or just trance if you have to. I have an event in my facebook feed that just says "hospitalization" and a list of djs. I know what kind of music they will play because I know the organizers and djs, but it would still be helpful to write an bigger description. You're all stuck on "micro-genres" but when I'm looking at a new dj at some event I expect a full paragraph describing their style with a soundcloud link with some dj sets. Maybe the fundamental difference is that with a dj or even a producer you can't just download an album and see how they sound: the actual set will probably be unique, and in tune with the party. And yes I do want to know vaguely how it will sound.
weavie 7y ago
Electronic Music is generally music that is made to dance to. A big part of what makes music good to dance to (especially when you are going to do it for hours at a time) is its predictability. If you know a beat is about to drop, and you can feel it coming you can position your body in preparation. When it does drop and you are able to move accordingly it provides a great sense of release and satisfaction. The result of this is that when people go to dance parties, they really want to know in quite some detail about what music it is they are dancing to. So if the genre is slightly changed, it will need a new label to inform the dancers of what is going to be different so they can plan their body movements accordingly! Thus the whole plethora of sub-genres.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  I guess that is why I am not too much into electronic dance music(at least not those types you mentioned), as it is too predicitable and therefore booring to me. I like music to be wild and when I am in the flow, I feel a beat coming, even if it is out of "order". But why does it need a label to inform dancers of a genre change? You just feel the beat and move to it, no?
  - H1Supreme 7y ago
    Most western music is 4/4 (or some derivative) time signature based, and quite predictable. Especially anything that is remotely popular. Mind sharing some of the acts/bands you like?
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      I like music from many genres, though what I like is usually not very popular. But I like shpongle too, for example. I just prefer it, if the music has something handmade to it, like a didgeridoo (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTOTN0OrBU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTOTN0OrBU), or in general, I prefer live concerts, over a dj. Live playing allways brings variations to this exact moment, the bands can change the speed according to the vibe of the audience. (but a good dj can do this probably, too) But the music I had in mind, was something like Piniol. A crazy french band, but the genre is hard to describe. I heard it described as Zappamusic (from Frank Zappa), or psychadelic rogressive, but that does not really say much. Also, so far I never liked that music to just put on speakers, just enjoyed them, or similar bands, live in concert. Oh and, yes their music is also somewhat predictable, it is just that the complexity seems to be higher.
davedx 7y ago
Electronic music "sub-genres" are usually BS, in my experience most producers don't go "ok, today I'm going to make some fullon Israeli south-Goa psytrance" (or retroactively label their music like this). It's just that there's a small section of fans who devote their time to obsessively trying to categorize and label every single track, making up new genres and sub-genres as they go. Drum'n'bass has the same issue... while there are definitely differences between dnb tracks, it's not like you can't play a perfectly great set of dnb with whatever "sub-genres" mixed together. Which in my mind means the notion of the "sub-genres" is BS in the first place.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  They can be useful though. eg when I discovered from Wikipedia that the genre that Knife Party are in was called "Complextro", I was able to quickly discover other music that I enjoyed from the same genre. Before I found that magic word, I had no way to find those other acts. Of course, they're also listed as electro house, drumstep, and dubstep, so clearly they cross sub-genres. Anyway, I did manage to find some other music that I liked so the sub-genre'ing helped me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_Party
empath75 7y ago
Because djs like to mix songs continuously in a way that it sounds like one song is flowing seamlessly into the next. It only takes subtle differences before a transition throws you right out of the moment. It’s possible to mix these subgenres together but you have to do a lot of work to find songs in different genres that sound similar enough to make a smooth transition. Djs don’t buy all one sub genre, generally, but they do tend to focus on a few of them and that’s why the labels and record stores try and cater to what djs are looking for.
kortex 7y ago
Sometimes musical tastes can be very specialized. When I am in overcaffeinated deep flow programming mode, nothing hits the spot light High-tech Minimal (see Boris Brejcha, Amelie Lens). It has a sparsity (c.f. Fullon) which is nice when I'm bordering on overstimulated, but still has a driving beat that gets in your bones.
magicalhippo 7y ago
Because people like to listen to more of the same. Sometimes we're open to new things, but for the most part we want more of what we already like. Say you like a track[1], but one day you stumble upon a remix which makes you go wow. Maybe you really like that aggressive synth and the slightly higher tempo[2], and having a genre just for that makes it easier to find more of it. Not like electronic music is unique here. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ZRtcIR1po https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ZRtcIR1po [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NjqDIgVlwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NjqDIgVlwA
insickness 7y ago
The segments are an outgrowth of exploration. Electronic music is constantly evolving. New beats, styles, sounds, etc. Producers build on what others have done, influence each other, DJ each other's music, etc. When a new sound or style emerges, many producers jump on the bandwagon to explore the possibilities within the constraints of that particular segment. Constraint breeds creativity.
Raphmedia 7y ago
This is like saying analog music is too segmented because both rock and metal are played with guitars. Imagine searching a huge "analog music" catalog for hours and hours until you stumble on Country music. You would go through so many other genres until stumbling on what you were looking for. People make music first and labels appear after. An example I like is Witch House. The name was originally conceived as a joke: "Myself and my friend Shams were joking about the sort of house music we make, [calling it] witch house because it’s, like, occult-based house music. I did this best-of-the-year thing with Pitchfork about witch house. I was saying that we were witch house bands, and 2010 was going to be the year of witch house. It took off from there. But, at the time, when I said witch house, it didn’t even really exist..." "Shortly after being mentioned to Pitchfork, blogs and other mainstream music press began to use the term. Flavorwire said that despite Egedy's insistence, 'the genre does exist now, for better or worse'."

mjpuser 7y ago

I am in agreement with you. It seems it is more work than it's worth to develop this taxonomy.

thatswrong0 7y ago
Most people in the scene (or at least the sub-scene I'm embedded in) that make it and listen to it don't really care what it's called. But for people trying to find more of a certain style, it certainly can be useful.

noir_lord 7y ago

Metal is the same, often it's the true(TM) fans who come up with the micro-genres as a way to beat people over the head for not knowing that "foo" is "bar". It's the pretentious of wine culture applied to music basically.

scns 7y ago
Tribalism at work?
pimmen 7y ago
This is basically spot on. But, these micro genres can be useful for the "true" fans too, if they know a fellow fan and feel like they want something within a genre, but with some specific features (like just a tad slower tempo, more vocals or something) they can just say "heard anything good from <sub_genre>" instead of "heard anything good from <genre>, but with <list_of_really_tiny_differences>".
karmickoala 7y ago
I used to follow this in rock. Despite being misused like the way you mentioned, it also serves the purpose to help you find new artists based on the genre and sub-genre. If you like a specific thing about a track and you'd want to listen more like that, the taxonomy helps you find it and how they relate to other (sub-)genres. However, I do concede that there is a lot of pretentiousness.
keymon-o 7y ago
People enjoy certain patterns in some genre and then they explore and develop it further. When that pattern becomes more known it gets a name for easier referencing. All music eventually starts to sound boring and micro genre is how fans find what they like about genre and continue enjoy it. I don't understand craft beer fad and obsession, but I know beer has many tastes and many interesting stuff can come out. Why would I call someone pretentious just because they develop something I don't care about.
CapricornNoble 7y ago
Agreed. It wasn't until later in life that I realized how obnoxiously hipster-ish metal fans can be. Band t-shirts are great conversation starters, but it quickly devolves from finding common ground ("Oh, you like Behemoth? Me too!") to bringing up super-obscure music to look like you are "deeper in the scene". "If you like black metal of course you've heard Zarzagamel's latest, right? It's a solo project from southern France with a limited release on vinyl."
CuriouslyC 7y ago
Eh, as a metalhead, the music is incredibly diverse and it's useful to be able to state your exact preferences clearly, and for promoters to be able to describe bands quickly. Personally I'm not too anal it, but I did laugh at a girl who thought Megadeth was death metal. That was pretty funny.

SturgeonsLaw 7y ago

It's useful if you feel like listening to "a certain sound". Knowing which (sub)genre it belongs to makes discovery of similar music easier

dintech 7y ago

There are many kinds of lots of things. If the nuances don't interest you, that's ok. Fortunately nobody made you the authority on the subject.

codeulike 7y ago
I'm trying to understand why. For example this is a pretty good explanation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20694521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20694521

emptyfile 7y ago

>Whats that all about? Why does it need to be so segmented? So that when I look at a party in my area I can know if its a party where artists will be playing progressive psytrance or forest psytrance. Because they're different. Is this so hard to understand for you?

codeulike 7y ago
But why does the music at the party have to be so specific?
- MrScruff 7y ago
  Because people like different music and the different genres sound different. If you don't think they sound different it's just because you haven't refined the part of your brain that can discern the differences for this type of music.
  - codeulike 7y ago
    But a good party should introduce people to new experiences, no?
    - MrScruff 7y ago
      I go to psytrance parties reasonably often because I have friends who are into it, but I hate psytrance personally. Different strokes for different folks.
    - CapricornNoble 7y ago
      Not necessarily. If I were attending a party with some Avante Garde/Post-Black Metal and suddenly a band broke out in Djent or rap-rock....I would find it a highly jarring and unpleasant change in atmosphere.
- emptyfile 7y ago
  "have to be", "need" Says who? You can describe your party as psytrance, or just trance if you have to. I have an event in my facebook feed that just says "hospitalization" and a list of djs. I know what kind of music they will play because I know the organizers and djs, but it would still be helpful to write an bigger description. You're all stuck on "micro-genres" but when I'm looking at a new dj at some event I expect a full paragraph describing their style with a soundcloud link with some dj sets. Maybe the fundamental difference is that with a dj or even a producer you can't just download an album and see how they sound: the actual set will probably be unique, and in tune with the party. And yes I do want to know vaguely how it will sound.

weavie 7y ago

Electronic Music is generally music that is made to dance to. A big part of what makes music good to dance to (especially when you are going to do it for hours at a time) is its predictability. If you know a beat is about to drop, and you can feel it coming you can position your body in preparation. When it does drop and you are able to move accordingly it provides a great sense of release and satisfaction. The result of this is that when people go to dance parties, they really want to know in quite some detail about what music it is they are dancing to. So if the genre is slightly changed, it will need a new label to inform the dancers of what is going to be different so they can plan their body movements accordingly! Thus the whole plethora of sub-genres.

hutzlibu 7y ago
I guess that is why I am not too much into electronic dance music(at least not those types you mentioned), as it is too predicitable and therefore booring to me. I like music to be wild and when I am in the flow, I feel a beat coming, even if it is out of "order". But why does it need a label to inform dancers of a genre change? You just feel the beat and move to it, no?
- H1Supreme 7y ago
  Most western music is 4/4 (or some derivative) time signature based, and quite predictable. Especially anything that is remotely popular. Mind sharing some of the acts/bands you like?
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    I like music from many genres, though what I like is usually not very popular. But I like shpongle too, for example. I just prefer it, if the music has something handmade to it, like a didgeridoo (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTOTN0OrBU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTOTN0OrBU), or in general, I prefer live concerts, over a dj. Live playing allways brings variations to this exact moment, the bands can change the speed according to the vibe of the audience. (but a good dj can do this probably, too) But the music I had in mind, was something like Piniol. A crazy french band, but the genre is hard to describe. I heard it described as Zappamusic (from Frank Zappa), or psychadelic rogressive, but that does not really say much. Also, so far I never liked that music to just put on speakers, just enjoyed them, or similar bands, live in concert. Oh and, yes their music is also somewhat predictable, it is just that the complexity seems to be higher.

davedx 7y ago

Electronic music "sub-genres" are usually BS, in my experience most producers don't go "ok, today I'm going to make some fullon Israeli south-Goa psytrance" (or retroactively label their music like this). It's just that there's a small section of fans who devote their time to obsessively trying to categorize and label every single track, making up new genres and sub-genres as they go. Drum'n'bass has the same issue... while there are definitely differences between dnb tracks, it's not like you can't play a perfectly great set of dnb with whatever "sub-genres" mixed together. Which in my mind means the notion of the "sub-genres" is BS in the first place.

brokenmachine 7y ago
They can be useful though. eg when I discovered from Wikipedia that the genre that Knife Party are in was called "Complextro", I was able to quickly discover other music that I enjoyed from the same genre. Before I found that magic word, I had no way to find those other acts. Of course, they're also listed as electro house, drumstep, and dubstep, so clearly they cross sub-genres. Anyway, I did manage to find some other music that I liked so the sub-genre'ing helped me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_Party

empath75 7y ago

Because djs like to mix songs continuously in a way that it sounds like one song is flowing seamlessly into the next. It only takes subtle differences before a transition throws you right out of the moment. It’s possible to mix these subgenres together but you have to do a lot of work to find songs in different genres that sound similar enough to make a smooth transition. Djs don’t buy all one sub genre, generally, but they do tend to focus on a few of them and that’s why the labels and record stores try and cater to what djs are looking for.

kortex 7y ago

Sometimes musical tastes can be very specialized. When I am in overcaffeinated deep flow programming mode, nothing hits the spot light High-tech Minimal (see Boris Brejcha, Amelie Lens). It has a sparsity (c.f. Fullon) which is nice when I'm bordering on overstimulated, but still has a driving beat that gets in your bones.

magicalhippo 7y ago

Because people like to listen to more of the same. Sometimes we're open to new things, but for the most part we want more of what we already like. Say you like a track[1], but one day you stumble upon a remix which makes you go wow. Maybe you really like that aggressive synth and the slightly higher tempo[2], and having a genre just for that makes it easier to find more of it. Not like electronic music is unique here. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ZRtcIR1po https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ZRtcIR1po [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NjqDIgVlwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NjqDIgVlwA

insickness 7y ago

The segments are an outgrowth of exploration. Electronic music is constantly evolving. New beats, styles, sounds, etc. Producers build on what others have done, influence each other, DJ each other's music, etc. When a new sound or style emerges, many producers jump on the bandwagon to explore the possibilities within the constraints of that particular segment. Constraint breeds creativity.

Raphmedia 7y ago

This is like saying analog music is too segmented because both rock and metal are played with guitars. Imagine searching a huge "analog music" catalog for hours and hours until you stumble on Country music. You would go through so many other genres until stumbling on what you were looking for. People make music first and labels appear after. An example I like is Witch House. The name was originally conceived as a joke: "Myself and my friend Shams were joking about the sort of house music we make, [calling it] witch house because it’s, like, occult-based house music. I did this best-of-the-year thing with Pitchfork about witch house. I was saying that we were witch house bands, and 2010 was going to be the year of witch house. It took off from there. But, at the time, when I said witch house, it didn’t even really exist..." "Shortly after being mentioned to Pitchfork, blogs and other mainstream music press began to use the term. Flavorwire said that despite Egedy's insistence, 'the genre does exist now, for better or worse'."