Like anthologies? Techno music might be for you.
Posted March 12, 2016
on:I was an art minor in college. It took 32 credits for me to learn that while I am rather creative, I am not artistic. One of my art professors had us do a project where we created a self portrait shadow box using found items. Of what little I owned at the time, I sure wasn’t going to sacrifice any of it for some art project. And the things that I felt represented me either weren’t things, or weren’t easily available. On the day of the critique, I remember most of the shadow boxes included parts of the single serve cereal boxes you could get in the dorm cafeteria. Somehow Lucky Charms and Apple Jacks was supposed to represent all the anxiety a college freshman away from home from the first time experiences?
I do wonder though, if the art professors had a bet going to see how many students used stuff pilfered from the dorm cafeterias in these “found objects” projects.
I’ve been listening to a lot of techno music lately. It falls under different names – techno, EDM, dance remix, electronica. Yes, I know all those words technically mean something different, but in Venn Diagram land they all overlap somewhat. It’s the kind of music where someone has taken lots of bits and pieces of other songs and layered them on top of each other, and on top of a dance beat. it’s really fun to dance to. the beats per minute is usually pretty high, so it’s great music to run or work out to. If you have Sirius Radio in your car, I listen to channels 51 and 52 a lot. Hardwell, #ASOT, Tiesto’s Club, stuff like that. Last week on channel 52, I heard a dance remix of the main theme from the movie Interstellar. Someone had taken Hans Zimmer’s music and put a dance beat behind it, and mixed it around a few other ways. It was so beautiful i nearly started crying. I only have access to this radio station while in the car, so I was nearly crying while driving too fast down the interstate.
If i knew now what I knew back when I was taking that annoying art class, I’d have turned in a dance remix instead of a shadow box. And probably received an F, because it was an art class, not a music appreciation class.
More on this at a different time, but i’m one of those weird people for whom sound often has a corresponding color. When I listen to a song on the radio, the singer’s voice may have a certain color (not all singing voices have a color, but the ones that do have a consistent color). So the whole radio song is usually the same color. Still with me? But the techno music, because the melody changes all the time, it’s like the DJ (or mixer, or composer?) is layering all sorts of different colors, painting with different sounds. In the course of 5 minutes, I get to hear lots of different colors! wheee! It’s the sound of a colorful painting, but not in an overwhelming fashion. More like it’s a few colors at a time, and those colors slowly morph to other colors. Sort of.
Whoever has put the song together has chosen their bits and pieces of music and put them together in a very particular way, with one sample shifting into the next, which shifts into the next, and so on. Like an orchestral overture, a particular melody might make multiple appearances. Maybe the composer switches up tempo, or pitch, with a faster beat being following by a slower beat, and then a faster beat, or a short melody followed by a long melody, followed by another short one. And the entire thing together? It is a shadow box of the whole song – a bunch of found objects that when put together represents whatever the composer/artist wanted to represent. If you’ve ever been in the terminal tunnel at Detroit Metro Airport, a lot of the techno music I like sounds a lot like the shifting colors in that tunnel.
I’m not sure what to call the folks who make this kind of music. DJs? mixers? artist? composer? How about “editor”? They are pulling together things that will work together, choosing an order of what should come after what, deciding how the end user should experience their creation. It’s like they are editing an anthology of sound. An anthology you can listen to in 8 minutes.
there you have it: how techno music is like fiction anthologies. And if you read your anthologies cover to cover in the order shown in the TOC, techno music might be for you.
22 Responses to "Like anthologies? Techno music might be for you."
[…] people describe anthologies as a journey. I’ve been known to compare them to techno music. But today, I’d like you to think about anthologies as restaurants – the stories are […]
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1 | Cassandra
March 12, 2016 at 2:56 pm
You are on the right track. EDM and electronica (or techno) is similar except they are still different. I have taken into account that EDM is more dance-oriented and thus more like Pop but still set apart from it. By Pop I do not mean Popular music but a style of music.
While Electronica is more like a mixture of dance-oriented and concentrated listening. Sometimes due to all the samples within a song this can be quite complex.
And I don’t know I would be hesitant to call them composers since they technically did not create the music/lyrics originally, so they are actually mixers or music samplers.
“orchestral overture” that sounds about right when it comes to music. And fascinating when you listen to music you can picture colors. I myself can picture sceneries. Though this only vividly happens in alarmingly wonderful music like TK from Ling Tosite Sigure, Ling Tosite Sigure, Coldplay, or artists like Fleurie.
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Redhead
March 12, 2016 at 10:18 pm
thanks for clarifying EDM vs electronica, because they are different, but I wasn’t able to articulate how. And yes, “pop” is more a style than anything else. I listen to a bit of pop, but mostly alternate rock and traditional rock music. I like a lot of 70s rock.
I get sceneries sometimes when dozing off to orchestral music, classical stuff, early 20th century orchestral music. I like rock, pop, and techno because it isn’t as overwhelming as the orchestral music. Sometimes I do want to be overwhelmed by the musical experience! just not while driving. 😉
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Cassandra
March 12, 2016 at 10:43 pm
Ha, Ha. Yeah. I can see how being overwhelmed could be bad while driving. And huh, I did not know I might be into music that tends to overwhelm. Thanks for that insight. Great post!
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Redhead
March 12, 2016 at 10:52 pm
just cuz i get overwhelmed by something doesn’t mean other people will. i’m kinda weird!
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