Musical Snobbery

[LiquidEyes]

I think Modular1 means his tastes changed suddenly, not the sound of techno in general.

[TomD]

fair enough, i'm Lost here (ho ho)

 

[Ian Cashman]

no... youre missing my point...(bad wording by moi!)

 

i was into my mills/beltram/bicknell style techno... not trancey techno... for a few years i used to slag the trance that id once been into as crap... but anyone that has never done this about a sort of music they liked is a downright liar

 

when i say there was no evolving, i dont mean techno wasnt evolving... i mean i just stopped listening to it.. i went back to listening to my fave rock bands and stuff for a while.. there was no evolving in my tastes..

i just heard some new trance when i was on holiday and realised although some of it was real cheesy i liked it..

i got enough [censored] off my mates for it too ..hehe

 

the reason i wrote the long post was to go into depth about how much i used to be into REAL techno.. u seem to find it hard to believe that i was into what u call techno for some reason

 

What kinda music is this then?

[Ian Cashman]

btw.. i bought mixmag today.. i wanted to hear that fergie cd...

 

imho.. if that is the best techno about at the moment, then it hasnt evolved at all since i was into it.. in fact any of those tunes on it could probably sit quite happily in the sets that i used to play...

 

to class something as techno nowadays it seems you need is a minimal track that uses half-bar loops as its rhythmic base (a jeff mills pioneered thang)...budding techno producers take note

[LiamStyles]

IMO the tracks on the Fergie cd all sound wikid

 

So does it really matter if they sound as if they couldve been made all those years ago?

 

I thought the whole point of this post was about musical snobbery? These tunes sound wikid to me, but to you they dont. End of

[Guyster]

liquideyes said:

Tom, I couldn't have put it better myself.

 

TomD said:

i expect to be hearing some of the most absorbing, mind-altering, creative and intelligent music that i've ever heard in my life -- anything from hypnotic synth stabs and ethereal pads through to dirty electro beats, messed-up broken drum loops to tunes with full-on housey funk.

 

Thank you! The problem isn't that people just don't "get" techno, or that it is an elitist genre. It just appeals to the sort of people who LIKE diversity and creativity, whose minds are not closed to music which is not "banging" or "anthemic".

 

Techno is widely misunderstood. As you say, thanks to the more mindless offshoot of techno - essentially a variation on hard house / hardcore / gabba - techno is stereotyped as ear-bleeding minimal shash. However my techno collection varies from quirky/funky/lo-fi cut-up house, through stripped-down minimal trance, to dark, gritty, driving nastiness!

 

Fair enough, but, in my experience (and one of my best mates runs a techno night) it is quite a cliquey genre, like prog in a way. Many of the people involved in it are into it in a major way, in the sense that they know a hell of a lot more about thier music than the equivalnet person who is into, say, house or trance (and this is me GENERALISING).

 

I found it to be one of the most varied 'genres' around, but it's still not really for me.

[LiamStyles]

Guy i mentioned this cliguey thing with techno in another post. I have got into techno in a big way over the last 2 years and now play it out. But that is my only gripe about the techno scene. Its very hard to get new gigs if you are not as clued up as the other DJs. They see you as a wannabe as such. This really pisses me off as i love techno but just because im not playin such & such a producers newest acetates blah blah!

 

For this reason i have decided to target my sound at bigger clubs that normally have a HardHouse/HardTrance/Trance/Hard Dance (delete where appropriate) music policy.

I have fell onto a good thing as the clubbers at these nights are tiring of the same old stuff and appreciate something new plus at these nights you dont get all this cliqueyness and no-one takes themselves as all the techno heads do.

[Ian Cashman]

LiamStyles said:

IMO the tracks on the Fergie cd all sound wikid

 

So does it really matter if they sound as if they couldve been made all those years ago?

 

I thought the whole point of this post was about musical snobbery? These tunes sound wikid to me, but to you they dont. End of

 

sorry... i dont think you will find anywhere in my post where i thought i said they were [censored]...

 

it just pisses me off when people talk about it as this 'at the forefront of sound' genre...

[LiamStyles]

Ah OK, get what you mean. Like i said in my reply to Guy, this is my main hang up with techno. Too far up its own ass.

[TomD]

modular1 said:

the reason i wrote the long post was to go into depth about how much i used to be into REAL techno.. u seem to find it hard to believe that i was into what u call techno for some reason

 

well yeah, i was only thinking that because judging by people i know who are into their tech, it doesn't seem to be very often that you get someone who's into tech who decides to up and leave it and then gets into trance. i think that's what makes tech a wee bit snobby and i admit i'm a little bit guilty of it myself. but, unlike shitloads of people i know who won't touch HH/trance with a stick, i went to the weekender and had a brilliant time, i think hoovers (if used well) can be proper BO and, yes, i can get all spiritual to trance if there's a good track on. i think i'm less forgiving toward [censored] HH/trance tracks though.

 

nice track of yours you linked to there, btw!

[Ian Cashman]

TomD said:

nice track of yours you linked to there, btw!

 

i made it just 2 hours ago...lol

 

it took me about half an hour so i cant claim to have written a classic..

 

but it shows that even techno can be thrown together with a few cliches of the genre (not saying it all sounds like this tho) and come out sounding kinda alright...(not that id buy it.. hehe)

 

over compressed mix

half bar rhythm loops

live tweaking of synth

general 'wall of sound' nature

 

i wasnt experimenting... i was just using a few tools of the trade if you like (same as the old 'snare rolls and hoovers' that you get in hard house and yer 'big supersaws and whooshes' that ya get in trance)..

 

[Mr_Happy]

TomD said:

well yeah, i was only thinking that because judging by people i know who are into their tech, it doesn't seem to be very often that you get someone who's into tech who decides to up and leave it and then gets into trance. i think that's what makes tech a wee bit snobby and i admit i'm a little bit guilty of it myself. but, unlike shitloads of people i know who won't touch HH/trance with a stick, i went to the weekender and had a brilliant time, i think hoovers (if used well) can be proper BO and, yes, i can get all spiritual to trance if there's a good track on. i think i'm less forgiving toward [censored] HH/trance tracks though.

 

i'm exactly the same as u there m8

[LiquidEyes]

I agree Modular1 - it is relatively easy to knock up a bag of cliches in *any* genre.

 

The only difference with some of the arguably more-pretentious genres, such as prog and techno, is that people are likely to be less tolerant of mediocrity! Maybe...?

[TomD]

modular1 said:

i made it just 2 hours ago...lol

 

well, good on you for that - i don't have the first clue as to how to make music on my PC as i'm [censored] at turning ideas in my head into mouse clicks. i say it still sounded good to me.

 

liquideyes> i think i am almost the other way round to what you just said - i'm probably less forgiving of [censored] hh/trance tracks than [censored] tech/prog ones!

[LiquidEyes]

Umm, this is getting confusing!!!!

 

I was comparing:

 

hard house people's tolerance of mediocre hh

with

techno people's tolerance of mediocre techno

 

but the comment was probably baseless and subjective!