Dub step and non-sequentialism vs. the writer
 

I spent about the last 3 hours listening to Electric Area (SiriusXM). A lot of modern electronic music seems to have morphed into what feels like semi-related, random clips of bleeps and burps pasted randomly together into something that's highly percussive and technologic sounding (which I like, don't get me wrong), but it got me wondering about popularity of here and now versus actually sitting down and writing a song with meaningful melodies versus letting the computer do much of the work for us.

I'm not sure that's necessarily an Ableton clip-triggering thing (because Cubase and FLS, which I use, allow the same thing... to a point where it's disgustingly simple to just record some snippets and assign them somewhat randomly, creating a patchwork quilt of "who knows what comes out"). And I'm not against beautiful accidents, but I thought it might be an interesting food for thought discussion if nothing else.

I enjoy listening to the current dubstep wave, but can't help feeling its a bit automated, kind of like society itself is becoming maybe?

Simultaneously I've gotten this recent urge to produce good old fashioned, cheesy disco... not so much for the musical value itself as for the nostalgic vibe it inspires for someone who grew up watching Starskey and Hutch or Baretta on TV as a kid :) When 80's new wave came about I used to scoff at this music and how passé it was, yet now I have a new appreciation for it and feel inspired to have a go at producing it. Maybe I will say the same thing about dubstep in 20 years? Dubstep is the new Disco!

Well dubstep is a sub genre of dub which itself is a sub genre of reggae that's around a half century old so there's really nothing new in it really. Reggae artists play real instruments & write real songs in the conventional sense. Dub is pretty much a studio/DJ thing which is very rarely performed live if at all. It started out in Jamaica with DJ's/producers cutting up tape & heavy use of reverb & delay on existing recordings to create dub plates which they could then use to play on there sound systems & in the dancehalls to give there sets a bit of exclusivity.
With the rise of the digital revolution & the new instruments it has brought with it it has become increasingly easier to re-create the FX the first dub pioneers made & also do stuff that is even more radical. Having said that I got bored of the dubstep thing years ago due to the fact it is very easy to make a track that you could pass off as dubstep & EVERY spotty herbert is doing THE EXACT SAME THING! The innovation that was the essence of Dub seems to have gone out the window. There doesn't seem to be anything musical at all about it, just who can make the most annoying, screeching sound possible then compress it to the max to make it even louder & more annoying. Fuckin shite state of affairs if you ask me. Same thing has happend to electro house also.
I deeply still love Dub but you can stick the step part up your arse as far as I'm concerned & while I'm having a rant didn't the term dubstep mean a cross between dub & two step???? As far as I can tell it doesn't resemble either genre...OK rant over, I think I'll make a real Dub track, without the step :p

Not my cup of tea either and get really annoyed at the volume levels as it's almost like, let's see just how much we can compress and then let it explode in very random volume differences...eeek!
Big fan of late 60's to 70's, (as in Emerson Lake and Palmer, The Doors), to Punk, (Iggy Pop), to New Wave. Love electronic music and true Reggae, but crap rap and Skrillix and plethora of imitators make me want to heave! I can have respect for Skrillix's programming skills but rather listen to dust fall on my speakers than to that crap but know this is highly personal so will just call it crap to me rather than 'bad music' because I know very well there's people that cannot understand the Jazz and other intricacies of Prog Rock such as Emerson Lake and Palmer and like mentioned, who knows, a decade from now I may find the crap interesting (shiver):shock:

The mainstream "dubstep" sound is crap and seems most of the fans of that sound are moving on to trap while the heads who've been into the deeper bassweight side of the sound have been staying true waiting for everyone to move on past this screeching nonsense.

There's a lot of melodic jazzy dubstep, dark deep apocalyptic atmospheric type of stuff. You really just have to dig for it.

All i'm going to say is, Seven Lions - Below Us.

(^_^)

you know. when some writers decided to cut pieces of text and arrange them sort of randomly, like William S. Burroughs, many people failed to see that as proper writing. the fact you pick pieces of audio and then arrange them, edit them, use extensive automation and such methods to accomplish your vision, doesn't make you any less a musician then a keyboardist. many people talked down to hip hop producers back then, because they heavily relied on samples instead of playing instruments themselves, but sampling is know regarded as a valid and pretty standard method for anyone making music. so...

Two words: musique concrete.

I feel that if music has lost meaning for you, its time to chase new genres and sounds. Far too much brilliant music out there to be complaining about lack of innovation - exposure is the tough part.

For beautiful electronica I was enjoying a lot of the european/dreamy electronic stuff a year or two ago, Owsey, Essay/ warminal label, delicieus musique etc.

^this. plus, it's all about making the music you want to listen to. if it's not there, all the better!

And I would add spending your time on the music making aspects you enjoy most. I look at musical composition and music production as two different things. When I sit down to *write music*, one of my goals is that at the end of it all, if the song is any good, I should be able to walk over to pretty much any piano and play enough basic elements of it that someone else could identify it (or someone who plays guitar should be able to reproduce it there). In other words, the melody / sequence of notes should be able to clearly distinguish it from someone else's work. To me that's more important than the mix or what synths or technology I used in the process of composing music.

By that definition (which I freely admit is my own, and will not imply others should adopt it unless they want to), any organized collections of samples or sound effects that I paste together to form a song would have trouble qualifying as a unique composition. I consider creating Skrillex-like mosaics of sound to be more like a mosaic of samples than a musical composition. It doesn't mean the end result is not music, I think a lot of things can qualify as music, but the truth is that if you gave Skrillex a piano or any other instrument than the specific sound bytes he uses to create a track, and asked him to reproduce the song in a way it was identifiable, he wouldn't be able to... you've got a better chance of success asking an elephant to fart in the same sequence of notes on command. I personally think what Skrillex does is music production, not music composition. He is very good at what he does, and I'm not denying the amount of technical skill and practice it takes to do it well, but I still believe the lines between a musician and a DJ/producer are primarily defined by melody and how much control/understanding the creator has over that aspect of the track. If someone's music cannot be faithfully described in sheet music, then whether it's music at all would be completely debatable to some. I personally have a much more open definition of music than that.

Your definition of music (whether for arguments sake or not) is very, very shallow. A composition does not require a distinct melody to be a compostion.

Its funny that you say, any organised collection of samples or sound effects, as the broadest definition of music is simply 'organised sound.'

Sheet music is one of the worst and inaccurate methods of communicating and preserving music, due to factors like the insane level of difficulty and restrictions in notating a physical linear score (relaying the composers emotional intentions, notating extended techniques effectively, writing with scales that arent built on 8 notes etc).

Many people have attempted to overcome a lot of the restrictions inherent in scoring (see: graphic scores of the avant garde, non linear scoring http://andrewhearst.com/blog/2006/02...r_george_crumb) etc, but recorded audio remains the best method of preserving and communicating a composition.

I don't see why it keeps coming back to Skrillex (guy must be losing a lot of sleep over this thread), but eh. Here's a few examples of harmony, melody, counterpoint in his music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e_3Cg9GZFU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJVmu6yttiw

Eg - bangarangs aroung Gm, with clearly defined melodic parts (G Bb, C Eb in main section). Just because a sound has unusual harmonics in it, doesnt mean there isnt an underlying melody thats discernable.