Oh my gosh, I clicked expecting to see the classic old version... this is an updated one!! It looks like this one even shows the progression of the sound of a genre or subgenre over time, not just the other genres that came from it.
Forgive my excitement but damn, the original guide was an absolute treasure of the early (at least for me) internet, and as a teenager getting into electronic music but with no real local scene or context for any of this stuff to say it was eye-opening is an understatement. Find a song or genre you liked (for me it was early French Touch/filter house) and you could see similar genres, plus what inspired it and what it inspired. And back then if you weren't familiar with this stuff everything with electronic drums or synths was lumped into "techno" (remember Eminem's infamous line about that) so it was great to figure out the actual names of the genres and subgenres I was into so I could dig deeper. Shout out to Ishkur, I'm obviously thrilled to see this today.
I was just talking about this the other day with glowing nostalgia. What a delightful unexpected event. I had a similar experience to you with the flash version and it lead me to start making music myself and get involved in a scene that really was one of the most valuable experiences of my young life. Having the graph to explore the lexicon for what exists and examples side by side to get an understanding of why felt like finding a secret treasure map. I can only think of one other flash program I've gone and searched out in the years since and it's the dumb Something Awful Jeff K cartoon making fun of Linux users [0]. Any time I've shown the old version to people over the years it blew their minds. If I ever make anything half as impactful I'll consider myself pretty lucky.
Some of these genre descriptions are _awesome!_ - th9s is from the LiquidFunk subgenre of Drum n Bass:
"Just before the turn of the millenium is when a sufficient number of white people were attending Jungle parties to the point where music writers and magazines stopped calling it Jungle and rebranded it Drum n Bass, although the partykids retained the label "junglists" and they're still called that today (probably because "drumnbassists" isn't as catchy).
Not coincidentally this is also the point where the two-step drum kick takes over everything, ushering in an age of mediocrity for a scene that was once specifically noted for its unique and inventive drum programming. You might as well call this Disco n Bass.
As if things couldn't get any worse for Disco n Bass, the lucrative opportunity of mad festival money in the 2010s compelled it to whore itself into a subgenre depository of shitty pop remixes heretofore known as Dancefloor. If you hear a Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift or even Adele remix with a powerful Pendulum two-step drum kick, it's technically Dancefloor: The end game of pop music trendwhore oblivion.
"
"The word Garage doesn't mean anything pertinent other than its name comes from the legendary Paradise Garage nightclub in New York City where DJ Larry Levan would play anything he damn well pleased."
"Today what most people think is House music is actually Garage. And what most people think is Garage is some dodgy nonsense the British sharted into their trousers. Someone should really try and set the record straight about that. Like make a guide or something."
I love a bit of UK Garage but laughed out loud when I read that line about trousers. This Ishkur guy is a beast.
"There are subgenres of Deep House that get even deeper, jazzier, and more soulful. One of my favorites is something I like to call "Dad House", because its liberal employment of walking basslines and saxophone solos evoke images of your dad walking around the house in his bathrobe on a Sunday morning before settling into his favorite chesterfield chair to smoke a pipe and read the newspaper in front of a roaring fire. Well, mine anyway."
“Spacesynth is best known as an energetic non-threatening genre with a surprising amount of commercial applications, almost like royalty free music. You may have heard it as background music in 80s VHS boardroom presentations or educational videos, community access TV show theme songs, commercial interstitials, pornography, and Amiga/Tracker conferences. You know, the stuff dorky guys in their 40s are into.”
Yes, finally! Ishkur's original guide and Listology's Darktremor's top 400 trance list and Dazzamack's top 1000 EDM lists are what really got me into electronic music!
I'm kinda bummed out right now that listology.com doesn't exist anymore :(
EDIT:
For anyone interested, at the time, I downloaded both Darktremor's and Dazzamack's lists. You can find them here:
I've downloaded a few other lists from Listology as well (progressive trance, classic trance, best albums etc.). If anyone is interested, I could add these to Github Gist as well.
I've also sent a mail to the webmaster of Listology to see if there is any possibility to get the community back online (I've also offered my time for helping).
From the comments I was expecting a really cool site with a lot of knowledge, but so far all I've seen is genre bashing. Since this is supposedly a general guide on all electronic music, it's really unfortunate they need to convey their negative opinions on everything that isn't their genre of choice. Either Ishkur is getting old and resentful or we live on completely opposite sites of music taste.
The "path of Ishkur" for most people is to arrive at the site, marvel at the artistic layout and amount of info presented, then immediately drill down to one's favorite genre to find... that Ishkur roasts it like an old episode of SNL, mildly offending the casual visitor who feels their taste has been somehow called out.
Later on one discovers that Ishkur roasts all of the genres in similar fashion and that this is part of the appeal. It is in the trashing of each style that Ishkur reveals what makes that type of music unique.
People like what they like and they don't like what they don't like, there's an art to conveying what you don't like about particular art, this art is called criticism. When criticizing art, the only sin you can commit is not being expressive enough.
If you start to place positivity above expressiveness in art criticism, you get puff pieces that don't teach anyone anything. People love this guide not because they want to feel good about being a snob but because they actually learn about music.
For example, in the guide for New Jack Swing he makes the argument that Thriller aged better than Dangerous or Bad because of the drum sounds, I might or might not share his assessment, but the point he made about the tinniness of the drums was well-taken.
I think this is unfair. Only someone with a deep love of music would put in this colossal and ongoing effort. A mere curmudgeon would have quit years ago. And in any case, the music itself is provided, so you can just listen for yourself.
Haven't read the update yet, but with the olde version Ishkur's tongue was pretty much piercing his cheeks. His knowledge of the old scene still was good and valuable.
However, it's rather clear from the update timing that he's not getting younger, and you can't really follow all the micro-scenes these days unless it's a full-time job, so I won't be surprised if the guide's spirit is not the same.
The universal genre bashing is a required element. Nothing good can come from talking about musical genres without constant reminders of not taking yourself too seriously.
Spent so much time browsing an older version, so happy to see it again, so sad that Casiocore apparently did not make it into the current incarnation. "Just push 'samba' on that thing and away you go."
These "genres" mostly fit very comfortably into their parent category. Even to the point that if you treat it as a strict history of the music, the majority of the subgenres are unnecessary.
It's poorly presented in this regard. It doesn't do a good job of delineating the music and the cultural history.
What is being taken as genre bashing is really tribalism and the subcultural awareness of the author. In contrast to it's failings as a strict musical history, it presents extremely well the cultural history around the music.
I mean, he has clear deep love for dance music and the history of the genre which shines through in everything he writes and the examples he picks. And that's chimed with people for the last 20 years, it's a bible of a site. Maybe you just have crap taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is missing all of the post-2011 dubstep subgenre stuff.
If you search "melodic dubstep" or "chillstep" there's lots of relatively popular post-2011 stuff that's way more tasteful for a mass audience than skrillex.
But that's just one branch. The other major branch is called "freeform bass" or sometimes "spacebass". Certain bass music (post-2016?) no longer has a clear genre definition, so we've literally adopted the term "freeform bass". A lot of it is pretty good. But some of it overlaps with brostep/riddim.
I have been waiting for this since what, 2003? He said it would cost him an arm and a leg, by the time elapsed since that statement, I guess it did! I assumed he had lost interest in this project, but no. Thanks Ishkur!!!
Does the author actually like any music? So far every description I've read tells me that the music is either pretentious or a sell-out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Although this looks like a lot of work, a more positive guide would be vastly more useful. Help me find the best of a genre, rather than telling me it all devolved in trash. My metric so far is that if it's labelled pretentious I'll probably like it.
It's not totally serious though, i mean look at this gem annotating a futuristic world render:
> The future is a hellish dystopia where everyone's needs are taken care of and they all live in the clouds and listen to Progressive Breaks.
[edit]
oh there's more :D
> Progressive Breaks is still around today because being a Breaks version of essentially another scene ensures it indefinite survival, like a domesticated animal that will never go extinct because man depends on it too much as a ready source of food. That's what Progressive Breaks is: The chicken of electronic music.
All music genres burn out, they all devolve into trash or repetition, so inevitably every almost genre description is going to bookended with when/why/how that happened else it wouldn't really be an accurate history. There's no need for the hyperbolic "Does the author actually like any music?" when about half the descriptions are him talking about great music
> The peak period for any popular genre is 3-5 years, and then everyone wants to move on to the big thing
I agree, but read, say, the entry for Drill'n'Bass. This happens to be a genre I like (Girl/Boy Song by Aphex Twin and and u-ziq's Lunatic Harness being some favourites of mine). However, according to Ishkur "the result [is] not complex ... it [is] just busy and schizophrenic". So there we go. No redeeming features here.
But it _is_, as a rule, both busy and schizophrenic. It's neither complex nor danceable; I like Aphex Twin a lot, but his contributions there, with exceptions, tend to veer toward the "quite possibly just taking the piss" part of his back catalogue -- notably none of the artists he mentions really produced anything like their best work under that banner
The point is not whether the music is busy etc. Yeah it is. The point is that the author of the guide is excessively negative about many generes. According to the guide drill n bass is all trash. He doesn't mention any redeeming qualities in the review. Same for UK garage and glitch. The author seems to only like old school USA dance music (not that I have read every entry).
[Hard Normal Daddy is generally considered one of Squarepusher's best albums and it's drill n bass.]
Yes, but you're doing exactly the same thing. Why should it have any redeeming features, bar it being a breeding ground for a few acts that went off and did better things, (this is mentioned in passing), and being the punchline for a good joke on Father Ted?
A balanced music review that's good to read is rare. You have things you think are good, and you have things you think are bad, and the meh ones in-between: who cares? Not you. Validation that what you like/dislike - good. Putting into words what you thought all along - good. Part of the reason the site is so loved is because of the kickings doled out to genres (which a vague enough containers disowned by those put in them at the best of times) vs. the things he clearly loves, and, shit, that's what you want from reviewers, not an anodyne history lesson. Music is deeply, deeply tribal, it isn't neutral
Like Squarepusher. "My Red Hot Cock" is really good. But bar that, he's good at playing that stupid six-string bass and making generally-undanceable dance music that people like to stroke their chins to. Saying Hard Normal Daddy is considered one of his best albums -- well that's a pretty shallow pool! Considered by whom? Not by me. Hard Plastic is miles better by dint of the fact it has actual tunes. And the music I like is the best music, and the music I dislike is crap. Weirdly enough the music you like is also the best music and the music you dislike is the worst but anyway, Squarepusher is like one of the jazz acts on The Fast Show, or something John Peel would put on when he was having a mild breakdown. (nb I do actually really like Squarepusher, I'm just arguing against his music because it is frankly unlistenable to most people)
> A: Because educating others and fighting ignorance is one of the noblest activities that anyone can ever engage in. Also, jokes.
Part of the fun the is genre bashing. But don't take the genres too seriously.
> Suggested usage: Ignore scenes and genres. Instead, pick a single year and move through the guide vertically, listening to different music released in that year.
I've looked through about 6 so far, and pretty sure he likes jungle... I feel like if you know enough about the origins of anything (think tech), you can be predisposed to have a negative opinion against newer incarnations.
Pretty neat, but it's missing some important genres. eg, lounge music is quite possibly the first popular electronic music genre from the 40s and 50s, yet it's not mentioned.
Some of the writing is funny, some is distracting from its purpose. The Dubstep entry for instance spends most of its time bashing brostep and skrillex which is a shame as it glosses over the first few years of interesting music before it devolved.
It never devolved; the mainstream split off from the genre, which remains underground and still has a couple dozen labels actively producing music, as it has for the last decade.
The genre is actually evolving constantly and there's a fair amount of interesting material and new artists. But it's back to being a niche much like jungle is nowadays.
Yeah, but Skrillex! He's bashing the music, saying it's garbage isn't exactly controversial, it's ripe for skewering. And it's supposed to be his opinion; if you like Skrillex the site might not be for you
I remember using this in the very early 2000. I made electronic music myself, and it functioned as a sort of mashup between Wikipedia and the recommendations at Spotify. I remember browsing the genres, getting some recommendation and searching for the files on Soulseek. When I found the files I could browse all the files of the user that shared them and often find similar acts. Lovely times. Still have the files, btw. :-)
I first discovered this in 2009 when it still needed Flash (for obvious reasons). A fantastic resource, and really pleased to see it updated for the modern web. Great work (again!), Ishkur!
Fucking modern web dev piece of shit where you can't even ctrl+F among the big list to find what you were seeking. Guess at least it covers a decent breadth of styles.
Audible Genius (http://www.audiblegenius.com) -> This is really a good resource. The subscription will be online tomorrow, 14,99$/m. I'm using it for some months now and it's really helpful, it develop your ear enormously. It's from the same guy who created Syntorial (http://www.syntorial.com).
Dance Music Manual (http://www.dancemusicproduction.com) from Rick Snoman, version 4 has been recently released and it's the only book you need (for a time being). I don't own it but Secrets of Dance Music Production looks good too.
Melodics (http://www.melodics.com) is also good for practicing keyboard, if you're interested in learning to play the keyboard.
Music Production is very similar to front-end development, especially Javascript development. Your hardware-software studio is like your bundle system, continuous integration etc. So there are many moving parts to learn and it takes time and many many readings (books, blogs, forums, facebook groups, music store product descriptions etc.). It also takes time to develop your ear and in time you will see that new levels will be opened in your mind, like a game. You will hear more details, you will easily describe the qualities of the sound (is it sine wave or a square, what kind of sonic movements happening, what kind of effects with what kind of settings make that specific sound sound like that)
It's fun, takes time, may take money (if you're interested in hardware studio and premium software plugins). But it's basically so much fun!
If you know how to use the tools but can't make anything that feels like music, you just have to keep copying songs until you understand how it works. It's just practice like anything else. There's a bunch of fantastic youtube channels that show the whole production process now too.
If you don't know how to use the tools, that's a whole world. There's a bunch of different camps, but if you're trying to do EDM, then Ableton Live or FL Studio are pretty popular. There's open source stuff too, but I don't know much about it. Some people prefer to use hardware instead. Then there's those weird modular synth nerds. It really depends what you want to do and how much you want to spend. A commercial package like FL Studio will come with a bunch of standard plugins that would get you pretty far before venturing into the world of virtual instruments.
There's a few books on the subject (Dance Music Manual comes to mind), but honestly I don't think they're very helpful. You can get extremely far without knowing any music theory, and it's hard to describe audio stuff in a book, so you'll probably get more out of youtube searches about whatever you're trying to do.
Aside from those, get a demo version of Ableton and start playing around. Your efforts will suck. Accept it and enjoy the process :) Once you've reached a certain level of competence it's worth asking more experienced producers how to improve, ideally in person, quite possibly via paying for a lesson or two.
Also, listen to a lot of music. OP will be a great starting point!
Not sure about books, but there are sites like adsrsounds.com which have (paid) video tutorial courses for learning music production with DAWs, and I think videos are the best medium for learning this sort of software because of the combination of audio and visual. I'm sure there must be other similar sites, but this is the only one I have any experience of. YouTube would also probably be a useful resource, but you'd have to search through a load of cruft before finding something useful.
Just bear in mind that writing music with DAWs requires the same level of commitment (time, effort and financial) as learning a traditional instrument.
edit: just seen the sibling comment, so as I suspected there are plenty of resources available! :)
back in the day, from drum and bass/jungle, essentially it consisted of hanging out on dogasonacid.com the grid subforum. not srure about other genres. there are some online courses nowadays
Wow... I've been waiting for this for over 10 years now. The previous version was an example of a loss when Flash started to die. Since I don't install Flash any more I've been unable to use it. So glad to see it back.
Oh my gosh, I clicked expecting to see the classic old version... this is an updated one!! It looks like this one even shows the progression of the sound of a genre or subgenre over time, not just the other genres that came from it.
Forgive my excitement but damn, the original guide was an absolute treasure of the early (at least for me) internet, and as a teenager getting into electronic music but with no real local scene or context for any of this stuff to say it was eye-opening is an understatement. Find a song or genre you liked (for me it was early French Touch/filter house) and you could see similar genres, plus what inspired it and what it inspired. And back then if you weren't familiar with this stuff everything with electronic drums or synths was lumped into "techno" (remember Eminem's infamous line about that) so it was great to figure out the actual names of the genres and subgenres I was into so I could dig deeper. Shout out to Ishkur, I'm obviously thrilled to see this today.
BTW v2.5 of the guide can still be found here (requires flash):
http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/
I was just talking about this the other day with glowing nostalgia. What a delightful unexpected event. I had a similar experience to you with the flash version and it lead me to start making music myself and get involved in a scene that really was one of the most valuable experiences of my young life. Having the graph to explore the lexicon for what exists and examples side by side to get an understanding of why felt like finding a secret treasure map. I can only think of one other flash program I've gone and searched out in the years since and it's the dumb Something Awful Jeff K cartoon making fun of Linux users [0]. Any time I've shown the old version to people over the years it blew their minds. If I ever make anything half as impactful I'll consider myself pretty lucky.
[0] https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/jeff-ks-user...
Some of these genre descriptions are _awesome!_ - th9s is from the LiquidFunk subgenre of Drum n Bass:
"Just before the turn of the millenium is when a sufficient number of white people were attending Jungle parties to the point where music writers and magazines stopped calling it Jungle and rebranded it Drum n Bass, although the partykids retained the label "junglists" and they're still called that today (probably because "drumnbassists" isn't as catchy).
Not coincidentally this is also the point where the two-step drum kick takes over everything, ushering in an age of mediocrity for a scene that was once specifically noted for its unique and inventive drum programming. You might as well call this Disco n Bass.
As if things couldn't get any worse for Disco n Bass, the lucrative opportunity of mad festival money in the 2010s compelled it to whore itself into a subgenre depository of shitty pop remixes heretofore known as Dancefloor. If you hear a Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift or even Adele remix with a powerful Pendulum two-step drum kick, it's technically Dancefloor: The end game of pop music trendwhore oblivion. "
"The word Garage doesn't mean anything pertinent other than its name comes from the legendary Paradise Garage nightclub in New York City where DJ Larry Levan would play anything he damn well pleased."
"Today what most people think is House music is actually Garage. And what most people think is Garage is some dodgy nonsense the British sharted into their trousers. Someone should really try and set the record straight about that. Like make a guide or something."
I love a bit of UK Garage but laughed out loud when I read that line about trousers. This Ishkur guy is a beast.
"There are subgenres of Deep House that get even deeper, jazzier, and more soulful. One of my favorites is something I like to call "Dad House", because its liberal employment of walking basslines and saxophone solos evoke images of your dad walking around the house in his bathrobe on a Sunday morning before settling into his favorite chesterfield chair to smoke a pipe and read the newspaper in front of a roaring fire. Well, mine anyway."
Provided link: http://ishkur.com/oldmixtapes/Jeffro%20-%20Five%20In%20Da%20...
I know what I'm doing this Sunday morning.
“Spacesynth is best known as an energetic non-threatening genre with a surprising amount of commercial applications, almost like royalty free music. You may have heard it as background music in 80s VHS boardroom presentations or educational videos, community access TV show theme songs, commercial interstitials, pornography, and Amiga/Tracker conferences. You know, the stuff dorky guys in their 40s are into.”
yes, it required a big adjustment going to 100% step style all the time. it was a subgenre that took over the whole scene
Yes, finally! Ishkur's original guide and Listology's Darktremor's top 400 trance list and Dazzamack's top 1000 EDM lists are what really got me into electronic music!
I'm kinda bummed out right now that listology.com doesn't exist anymore :(
EDIT: For anyone interested, at the time, I downloaded both Darktremor's and Dazzamack's lists. You can find them here:
https://gist.github.com/dukeofharen/48450ec07254f82c7a9b5d77...
https://gist.github.com/dukeofharen/fff467f6fc7574864358f997...
I've downloaded a few other lists from Listology as well (progressive trance, classic trance, best albums etc.). If anyone is interested, I could add these to Github Gist as well.
I got at least one reaction :) So here you go: https://github.com/dukeofharen/listology-lists
I've also sent a mail to the webmaster of Listology to see if there is any possibility to get the community back online (I've also offered my time for helping).
Yeah, please upload them!
See my reply on the original comment
Wow. 20 years in the making.
Be sure to check out his 15-hour, 3.5 decade-spanning mix https://mobile.twitter.com/Ishkur23/status/11632947429494456...
A 2GB mp3 - woah!
Actual link for easier save-as: http://ishkur.com/mixes/Ishkur_-_The_Longplay.mp3
Is there a torrent around anywhere? His site is being slammed.
From the comments I was expecting a really cool site with a lot of knowledge, but so far all I've seen is genre bashing. Since this is supposedly a general guide on all electronic music, it's really unfortunate they need to convey their negative opinions on everything that isn't their genre of choice. Either Ishkur is getting old and resentful or we live on completely opposite sites of music taste.
The "path of Ishkur" for most people is to arrive at the site, marvel at the artistic layout and amount of info presented, then immediately drill down to one's favorite genre to find... that Ishkur roasts it like an old episode of SNL, mildly offending the casual visitor who feels their taste has been somehow called out.
Later on one discovers that Ishkur roasts all of the genres in similar fashion and that this is part of the appeal. It is in the trashing of each style that Ishkur reveals what makes that type of music unique.
He likes some of them. He really likes acid house.
People like what they like and they don't like what they don't like, there's an art to conveying what you don't like about particular art, this art is called criticism. When criticizing art, the only sin you can commit is not being expressive enough.
If you start to place positivity above expressiveness in art criticism, you get puff pieces that don't teach anyone anything. People love this guide not because they want to feel good about being a snob but because they actually learn about music.
For example, in the guide for New Jack Swing he makes the argument that Thriller aged better than Dangerous or Bad because of the drum sounds, I might or might not share his assessment, but the point he made about the tinniness of the drums was well-taken.
> Either Ishkur is getting old and resentful or we live on completely opposite sites of music taste.
Ishkur's guides have always had this tone. It is part of the fun. Even when he is trashing your preferred genres, you are laughing. Or I am.
I think this is unfair. Only someone with a deep love of music would put in this colossal and ongoing effort. A mere curmudgeon would have quit years ago. And in any case, the music itself is provided, so you can just listen for yourself.
Haven't read the update yet, but with the olde version Ishkur's tongue was pretty much piercing his cheeks. His knowledge of the old scene still was good and valuable.
However, it's rather clear from the update timing that he's not getting younger, and you can't really follow all the micro-scenes these days unless it's a full-time job, so I won't be surprised if the guide's spirit is not the same.
The universal genre bashing is a required element. Nothing good can come from talking about musical genres without constant reminders of not taking yourself too seriously.
Spent so much time browsing an older version, so happy to see it again, so sad that Casiocore apparently did not make it into the current incarnation. "Just push 'samba' on that thing and away you go."
The thing is, it's not really genre bashing.
These "genres" mostly fit very comfortably into their parent category. Even to the point that if you treat it as a strict history of the music, the majority of the subgenres are unnecessary.
It's poorly presented in this regard. It doesn't do a good job of delineating the music and the cultural history.
What is being taken as genre bashing is really tribalism and the subcultural awareness of the author. In contrast to it's failings as a strict musical history, it presents extremely well the cultural history around the music.
I mean, he has clear deep love for dance music and the history of the genre which shines through in everything he writes and the examples he picks. And that's chimed with people for the last 20 years, it's a bible of a site. Maybe you just have crap taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is missing all of the post-2011 dubstep subgenre stuff.
If you search "melodic dubstep" or "chillstep" there's lots of relatively popular post-2011 stuff that's way more tasteful for a mass audience than skrillex.
But that's just one branch. The other major branch is called "freeform bass" or sometimes "spacebass". Certain bass music (post-2016?) no longer has a clear genre definition, so we've literally adopted the term "freeform bass". A lot of it is pretty good. But some of it overlaps with brostep/riddim.
I'd love to see something about tearout
Here's an example I found
https://soundcloud.com/iamthedreameater/the-cleansing
> #Goat-Noises
Oh god. Not the soundcloud tag you want to be in.
If you read the FAQ, he stopped working on most of this around 2014, so a lot of the newer stuff will be missing.
Whoa version 3?!?!?!?!?!?
Secretary; Cancel all my calls for today.
I have been waiting for this since what, 2003? He said it would cost him an arm and a leg, by the time elapsed since that statement, I guess it did! I assumed he had lost interest in this project, but no. Thanks Ishkur!!!
Here is a screenshot of the classic Flash version: https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/ishkurs-guide-elect...
Does anyone have a donation link?
It'd be nice to chip something in for the work + streaming to the entire internet right now.
Does the author actually like any music? So far every description I've read tells me that the music is either pretentious or a sell-out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Although this looks like a lot of work, a more positive guide would be vastly more useful. Help me find the best of a genre, rather than telling me it all devolved in trash. My metric so far is that if it's labelled pretentious I'll probably like it.
It's not totally serious though, i mean look at this gem annotating a futuristic world render:
> The future is a hellish dystopia where everyone's needs are taken care of and they all live in the clouds and listen to Progressive Breaks.
[edit]
oh there's more :D
> Progressive Breaks is still around today because being a Breaks version of essentially another scene ensures it indefinite survival, like a domesticated animal that will never go extinct because man depends on it too much as a ready source of food. That's what Progressive Breaks is: The chicken of electronic music.
All music genres burn out, they all devolve into trash or repetition, so inevitably every almost genre description is going to bookended with when/why/how that happened else it wouldn't really be an accurate history. There's no need for the hyperbolic "Does the author actually like any music?" when about half the descriptions are him talking about great music
> The peak period for any popular genre is 3-5 years, and then everyone wants to move on to the big thing
I agree, but read, say, the entry for Drill'n'Bass. This happens to be a genre I like (Girl/Boy Song by Aphex Twin and and u-ziq's Lunatic Harness being some favourites of mine). However, according to Ishkur "the result [is] not complex ... it [is] just busy and schizophrenic". So there we go. No redeeming features here.
But it _is_, as a rule, both busy and schizophrenic. It's neither complex nor danceable; I like Aphex Twin a lot, but his contributions there, with exceptions, tend to veer toward the "quite possibly just taking the piss" part of his back catalogue -- notably none of the artists he mentions really produced anything like their best work under that banner
The point is not whether the music is busy etc. Yeah it is. The point is that the author of the guide is excessively negative about many generes. According to the guide drill n bass is all trash. He doesn't mention any redeeming qualities in the review. Same for UK garage and glitch. The author seems to only like old school USA dance music (not that I have read every entry).
[Hard Normal Daddy is generally considered one of Squarepusher's best albums and it's drill n bass.]
Yes, but you're doing exactly the same thing. Why should it have any redeeming features, bar it being a breeding ground for a few acts that went off and did better things, (this is mentioned in passing), and being the punchline for a good joke on Father Ted?
A balanced music review that's good to read is rare. You have things you think are good, and you have things you think are bad, and the meh ones in-between: who cares? Not you. Validation that what you like/dislike - good. Putting into words what you thought all along - good. Part of the reason the site is so loved is because of the kickings doled out to genres (which a vague enough containers disowned by those put in them at the best of times) vs. the things he clearly loves, and, shit, that's what you want from reviewers, not an anodyne history lesson. Music is deeply, deeply tribal, it isn't neutral
Like Squarepusher. "My Red Hot Cock" is really good. But bar that, he's good at playing that stupid six-string bass and making generally-undanceable dance music that people like to stroke their chins to. Saying Hard Normal Daddy is considered one of his best albums -- well that's a pretty shallow pool! Considered by whom? Not by me. Hard Plastic is miles better by dint of the fact it has actual tunes. And the music I like is the best music, and the music I dislike is crap. Weirdly enough the music you like is also the best music and the music you dislike is the worst but anyway, Squarepusher is like one of the jazz acts on The Fast Show, or something John Peel would put on when he was having a mild breakdown. (nb I do actually really like Squarepusher, I'm just arguing against his music because it is frankly unlistenable to most people)
Read the Q&A:
> Q: Why did you make this?
> A: Because educating others and fighting ignorance is one of the noblest activities that anyone can ever engage in. Also, jokes.
Part of the fun the is genre bashing. But don't take the genres too seriously.
> Suggested usage: Ignore scenes and genres. Instead, pick a single year and move through the guide vertically, listening to different music released in that year.
From the stuff I like, he hates Trip Hop, is somewhat OK (but amusing) about Synthwave and seems to like Dark Ambient.
He hates everything that's a British invention. IIRC even from the old guide, "the British take everything good about music and ruin it".
I've looked through about 6 so far, and pretty sure he likes jungle... I feel like if you know enough about the origins of anything (think tech), you can be predisposed to have a negative opinion against newer incarnations.
> Cybergoths: What happens when you take the stock Rivethead look and add Steampunk, mecha anime, and The Predator.
Love it!
Pretty neat, but it's missing some important genres. eg, lounge music is quite possibly the first popular electronic music genre from the 40s and 50s, yet it's not mentioned.
Also, I'm surprised by the lack of newer genres.
Missing Future Funk aswell
Read the FAQ or the UAQ for explanations.
This Electro Tech Tree is greatly welcomed only 5 days after I lamented the lack of electronic music on the Psytrance Guide[^1] :).
Where is progressive melodic techno, though? E.g. Atlas (Adriatique Remix) by Romboy & Bodzin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4NSDcbmsI
I wish the text was searchable using my in-browser search.
- [^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20695334
The Brostep entry alone is worth visiting the site to read.
Some of the writing is funny, some is distracting from its purpose. The Dubstep entry for instance spends most of its time bashing brostep and skrillex which is a shame as it glosses over the first few years of interesting music before it devolved.
It never devolved; the mainstream split off from the genre, which remains underground and still has a couple dozen labels actively producing music, as it has for the last decade.
The genre is actually evolving constantly and there's a fair amount of interesting material and new artists. But it's back to being a niche much like jungle is nowadays.
Not really. Bashing someone because they like a style of music is one of the lowest of low. inb4 it's just a banter
Yeah, but Skrillex! He's bashing the music, saying it's garbage isn't exactly controversial, it's ripe for skewering. And it's supposed to be his opinion; if you like Skrillex the site might not be for you
Same for McProg
I remember using this in the very early 2000. I made electronic music myself, and it functioned as a sort of mashup between Wikipedia and the recommendations at Spotify. I remember browsing the genres, getting some recommendation and searching for the files on Soulseek. When I found the files I could browse all the files of the user that shared them and often find similar acts. Lovely times. Still have the files, btw. :-)
I think you should click the link. This is not what you were using in the early 2000s :)
I saw that. Not that far from it though. Remember the selection of genres and some of the samples provided. Much is still the same.
Definitely worth checking out the chiptune entry, goes into a fair bit of detail on making music using early sound generation chips used in NES etc.
Wow, just when I thought this wouldn't release, because of The Longplay. This guide is amazingly detailed, Ishkur outdid himself
Why so little after 2000? Too close to see what's going to matter? Or has musical creativity stalled?
I first discovered this in 2009 when it still needed Flash (for obvious reasons). A fantastic resource, and really pleased to see it updated for the modern web. Great work (again!), Ishkur!
Fucking modern web dev piece of shit where you can't even ctrl+F among the big list to find what you were seeking. Guess at least it covers a decent breadth of styles.
I really don't like the way the expanded info alters my scrolling behavior.
Whoa, great upgrade.
I am interested in producing music but is there any book which can you teach you from scratch.
Audible Genius (http://www.audiblegenius.com) -> This is really a good resource. The subscription will be online tomorrow, 14,99$/m. I'm using it for some months now and it's really helpful, it develop your ear enormously. It's from the same guy who created Syntorial (http://www.syntorial.com).
Dance Music Manual (http://www.dancemusicproduction.com) from Rick Snoman, version 4 has been recently released and it's the only book you need (for a time being). I don't own it but Secrets of Dance Music Production looks good too.
Melodics (http://www.melodics.com) is also good for practicing keyboard, if you're interested in learning to play the keyboard.
Music Production is very similar to front-end development, especially Javascript development. Your hardware-software studio is like your bundle system, continuous integration etc. So there are many moving parts to learn and it takes time and many many readings (books, blogs, forums, facebook groups, music store product descriptions etc.). It also takes time to develop your ear and in time you will see that new levels will be opened in your mind, like a game. You will hear more details, you will easily describe the qualities of the sound (is it sine wave or a square, what kind of sonic movements happening, what kind of effects with what kind of settings make that specific sound sound like that)
It's fun, takes time, may take money (if you're interested in hardware studio and premium software plugins). But it's basically so much fun!
If you know how to use the tools but can't make anything that feels like music, you just have to keep copying songs until you understand how it works. It's just practice like anything else. There's a bunch of fantastic youtube channels that show the whole production process now too.
If you don't know how to use the tools, that's a whole world. There's a bunch of different camps, but if you're trying to do EDM, then Ableton Live or FL Studio are pretty popular. There's open source stuff too, but I don't know much about it. Some people prefer to use hardware instead. Then there's those weird modular synth nerds. It really depends what you want to do and how much you want to spend. A commercial package like FL Studio will come with a bunch of standard plugins that would get you pretty far before venturing into the world of virtual instruments.
There's a few books on the subject (Dance Music Manual comes to mind), but honestly I don't think they're very helpful. You can get extremely far without knowing any music theory, and it's hard to describe audio stuff in a book, so you'll probably get more out of youtube searches about whatever you're trying to do.
Resources in the sibling comments are good.
Aside from those, get a demo version of Ableton and start playing around. Your efforts will suck. Accept it and enjoy the process :) Once you've reached a certain level of competence it's worth asking more experienced producers how to improve, ideally in person, quite possibly via paying for a lesson or two.
Also, listen to a lot of music. OP will be a great starting point!
Not sure about books, but there are sites like adsrsounds.com which have (paid) video tutorial courses for learning music production with DAWs, and I think videos are the best medium for learning this sort of software because of the combination of audio and visual. I'm sure there must be other similar sites, but this is the only one I have any experience of. YouTube would also probably be a useful resource, but you'd have to search through a load of cruft before finding something useful.
Just bear in mind that writing music with DAWs requires the same level of commitment (time, effort and financial) as learning a traditional instrument.
edit: just seen the sibling comment, so as I suspected there are plenty of resources available! :)
back in the day, from drum and bass/jungle, essentially it consisted of hanging out on dogasonacid.com the grid subforum. not srure about other genres. there are some online courses nowadays
Wow... I've been waiting for this for over 10 years now. The previous version was an example of a loss when Flash started to die. Since I don't install Flash any more I've been unable to use it. So glad to see it back.
Ishkur's guide may have been useful in 1998. It's now super outdated.