we just used to like do our own thing.....

[wolf89]

Did you just say all electronic music comes from hip hop? Please tell me you didn't.

[Genevieve]

No, I'm just saying that the production and creation of electronic music is primarily based on innovations from hip-hop.

Musically, electronic music comes a variety of stuff.... kraut/progressive rock, types of classical (and avant-garde) music, hip-hop, funk and soul, dub reggae and industrial music.

Hip-hop was still a huge influence, though. If it wasn't for Bambaata, there'd be no techno.

[wolf89]

Oh ok you mean it's influence on modern electronic music (so like popular music routed electronica and dance music)

Because electronic music is a shitload older than hip hop.

Current avant-garde music is still not really influenced by that way of working either though so it's still a bit of a narrow statement to make.

[incnic]

is this a circular troll thread
IM GETTING CONFUSED
either everyone is pretty sharp or everyone is pretty thick

[test_recordings]

Like dogs chasing their own tail...

[Genevieve]

Oh ok you mean it's influence on modern electronic music (so like popular music routed electronica and dance music)

Because electronic music is a shitload older than hip hop.

Current avant-garde music is still not really influenced by that way of working either though so it's still a bit of a narrow statement to make.

"Electronic music" isn't completely the same as "music made with electronic instruments". Musique concrète, computer music, minimalism, etc. Are all from the classical realm and aren't directly culturally linked with jungle in the '90s or acid house in the '80s. If you go back far enough, acid house had its roots in disco music and disco started using electronic instruments because stuff like synthesizers and drum machines became more affordable in the late '70s. Not because those guys were all listening to Bernard Parmegiani and Iannis Xenakis.

Annnnd you're kind of wrong here. Since the late '80s, samplers have become increasingly more popular in electronic art music. Steve Reich has been using them in some of his compositions among others. So hip-hop did have an influence on modern electronic art music.

[Hedley King]

^^^^^^^^
Everything has had an influence on everything though, just depends how much. Someone making techno today (or 25 years ago) is much more directly and indirectly influenced by people like kraftwerk/throbbing gristle/funkadelic/brian eno than people like krs one

[Genevieve]

I'm not saying KRS-One. I'm saying that modern electronic production is the direct result of what hip-hop producers were doing in the late '70s. And like I said before, Juan Atkins himself admitted that Bambaataa was making the music HE wanted to make. Techno is a direct descendend of the electro-funk/hop of the early '80s.

Hell, back before Ruthless took over, rappers like King Tee had their shit released on early techno labels on the west coast. Some hip-hop producers from that scene were making proto-techno tunes alongside their hip-hop shit.

There's obv traces of Xenakis and Cage all the way up to modern techno or dubstep. But those bottlenecked through pop musicians like Kraftwerk and Eno. Culturally speaking, electronic dance is mostly derived from American black music traditions.

[magma]

Everything owes everything that went before it. This conversation isn't going to go anywhere particularly quickly.

[Genevieve]

Everything owes everything that went before it. This conversation isn't going to go anywhere particularly quickly.

Yeah with replies like these that don't get the large difference between '2-step influenced dubstep' and 'the teleharmonium performances of the late 1890s influenced dubstep', conversations are bound to go nowhere.

[magma]

If it helps muddy your conversational waters even further at all, I'd class hiphop as part of electronic music personally.

[Hedley King]

I'm not saying KRS-One. I'm saying that modern electronic production is the direct result of what hip-hop producers were doing in the late '70s. And like I said before, Juan Atkins himself admitted that Bambaataa was making the music HE wanted to make. Techno is a direct descendend of the electro-funk/hop of the early '80s.

Hell, back before Ruthless took over, rappers like King Tee had their shit released on early techno labels on the west coast. Some hip-hop producers from that scene were making proto-techno tunes alongside their hip-hop shit.

There's obv traces of Xenakis and Cage all the way up to modern techno or dubstep. But those bottlenecked through pop musicians like Kraftwerk and Eno. Culturally speaking, electronic dance is mostly derived from American black music traditions.

I think you are over-emphasising the influence of hip hop because of it's use of samplers and turntables....that was just a technology of that time that plenty of other genres used, and synths were used a lot more by others, stuff by people like Moroder and New Order sound a lot more techno to me than most early hip hop. Even the electro stuff like Bambataa is basically a Kraftwerk loop from years before. And most early hip hop wasn't as electronic sounding as that- basically funk loops.

Any interviews I've seen with Juan Atkins he says that he was trying to sound like european electronic music but 'got it wrong' or the classic line "It's like Kraftwerk and George Clinton stuck in an elevator with a only a synthesiser to keep them company"

.......either way I agree that America has played a large part in the electronic music we have today. But to say that the UK hasn't come up with anything original and that Jungle is basically a copy of hip hop because samplers are used (basically the technology that was available) seems quite a long way off the mark to me.

Everything references everything to a certain extent, music didn't just suddenly appear in America or the UK from nowhere but both have innovated and come up with original ideas that are built on influences from the past.

[Genevieve]

I think you are over-emphasising the influence of hip hop because of it's use of samplers and turntables....that was just a technology of that time that plenty of other genres used, and synths were used a lot more by some, stuff by people like Moroder and New Order sound a lot more techno to me than most early hip hop. Even the electro stuff like Bambataa is basically a Kraftwerk loop from years before. And most early hip hop wasn't as electronic sounding as that- basically funk loops.

Any interviews I've seen with Juan Atkins he says that he was trying to sound like european electronic music but 'got it wrong' or the classic line "It's like Kraftwerk and George Clinton stuck in an elevator with a only a synthesiser to keep them company"

What hip-hop was groundbreaking in, on the popular front, was the use of old music and turn it in new. It was done like 60 years earlier in the classical music realm, but it did it with new technology on the popular front. And synths were actually used quote a lot in the early stuff. Not so much on the East Coast, though.

The fact it was hip-hop may have been incidental. But modern popular music production took its shape in hip-hop and hasn't changed since. It's only adapted to current technology.

You're also underestimaging how much electro-hop was out there. It died pretty quickly on the East Coast, where it was replaced with really sparse and minimal drum machine driven stuff. But it's what the whole LA scene was about before Ruthless took over. And there was a lot of back and forth between proto-techno stuff and even the early techno scene and it. It was also big in Miami and influenced the whole bass music thing (and freestyle!).

I also never said that it was just hip-hop that spawned everything. Just that hip-hop was at the end of the completion of the process from using the mixer as an instrument to using just the studio as an instrument. I'd be pretty foolish to ignore how much influence the German progressive rock scene had on electronic music. But all these early techno producers took their cues from how electro-hop/funk was produced. And that's the type of music Atkins made in Cybotron in the early '80s.

.......either way I agree that America has played a large part in the electronic music we have today. But to say that the UK hasn't come up with anything original and that Jungle is basically a copy of hip hop because samplers are used (basically the technology that was available) seems quite a long way off the mark to me. Everything references everything to a certain extent.

I didn't say that the UK didn't do anything original, I said the UK didn't innovate. I pointed out the difference between 'originality' and 'innovation' before. American music did things we didn't think were possible before and changed the discussion about music. The UK's music was a regional appropriation of American music. Like in a 2-step tune, the drums are recreations of classic breaks like the Amen and a lot of the vocals were chopped up soul or diva house vocals. Both based on technologies and techniques that had long been innovated in American music, but put in a context that was definitely from the UK.

And yeah, the jungle thing was apt. Jungle didn't break any new barriers. It did what hip-hop did before it. MCs, breakbeats, samples. Was it done differently? Well yeah sure, but using techniques and technologies that had been innovated before in American music. If I'd been a hip-hop producer who'd heard Remarc in 1994, I'd think what the dude was doing was crazy and original, but I wouldn't say he rewrote the book on production.

So I wouldn't say that the UK was some sort of driving force of musical innovation. It's had its share of 'original music', but it didn't do anything that changed music as a whole.

[magma]

You're missing out a whooooole lot of Jamaican influence in the 70s by ascribing all this to America... soundsystem culture easily did as much to create the UK dance scene as anything American. I'd say that British dancefloor culture sits somewhere in the middle of the two with a pretty big, but not quite as tangible influence from Germany, too.

American marketers were interested in selling a few, easily profitable soundsystem tunes... but when the waves of Carribean immigration to the UK came in the 70s and 80s the whole culture was pretty much transplanted to London, Bristol and a few other little hotspots around the UK. The same places have been artistically vital ever since pretty much. Bristol didn't become a Dub/Jungle town because it was watching America, it did it because tens of thousands of Jamiacans suddenly started living there.

[Genevieve]

I will admit that Jungle, Dubstep and some other styles wouldn't have happened anywhere else other than England.

And I am very grateful for that!!

That's what I meant with 'regional spin'. They're a product of their environment and they sound like it. But none of these styles broke any barriers.

I haven`t heard anything new or original from America in a longggg time

Please prove me wrong

Nope, it did stop a long time ago. It stopped with hip-hop. Electronic music as a whole is merely a reappropriation of hip-hop production techniques. It all really happened with Bambaata and Grandmaster Flash. All electronic music since then has been a variation of that style of production, and built on that (with the technological advancements). In the UK too. Though is has some influences from Jamaican culture as well (though, GENERALLY, it referenced dub production/culture more than it applied it, though there's exceptions).*

Like someone like Venetian Snares, his music's totally crazy and out there. But he just hit a vibe that technical death metal bands hit before him, with production techniques that hip-hop producers used before him. He gets points for being original, but not for being innovative.

I'm not even American btw'z. I'm Dutch, but if I had to look at it objectively, the US was a lot more innovative in the 20th century. And just look at what all these UK musicians' main influences come from. People may have been calling me a 'troll' or whatever, but at least I had points. Points that really weren't refuted. All we're doing now comes from some guys playing blue notes in the Mississippi delta, Jamaicans using a mixer as an instrument on itself (which was done before to a lesser degree by Americans as well -- Phil Spector anyone? Miles Davis?) and some guy in the Bronx using hardware to turn old songs into new ones.. Or even American middle aged white composers in a lab playing with tapeloops. Why wouldn't it? America was on the forefront of technological and cultural advancement in the 20th century (and was a bigger melting pot of cultures than the UK was). And its market was much bigger. More people listened to Quincy Jones than any blue eyed soul from the UK

*refering to the music itself.

So thanks for reinforcing what I've been saying? That it wasn't the UK that really innovated anything?

It's like people trying to catch me off guard and just wanna find unrelated stuff about what I'm 'wrong' about to discredit what I'm actually saying.

Which is that the UK wasn't a breeding ground for musical innovation in the 20th century. And it wasn't. And the UK isn't Jamaica. Just because a lot of Carribeans moved to the UK, doesn't mean that Tubby and Perry were cutting dubs in London. They weren't, they did it in Jamaica.

[EliteLennon117]

Genevieve you know a lot about electronic music

[Hedley King]

Just seems a bit unfair to say that the UK didn't innovate with things like 2 step, dubstep or jungle but America did with things like techno and hip hop or Jamaica did with dub- you can just as easily trace their roots to other styles and the whole thing goes back as far as cavemen banging on drums.

And it gets a bit like arguing for the sake of it where you say something is original but not innovative.

[magma]

Which is that the UK wasn't a breeding ground for musical innovation in the 20th century. And it wasn't. And the UK isn't Jamaica. Just because a lot of Carribeans moved to the UK, doesn't mean that Tubby and Perry were cutting dubs in London. They weren't, they did it in Jamaica.

I still don't really get what point you're trying to get across. Everything has roots... everything was built on something else. Even at points where Americans or Jamaicans innovated, they were standing on the shoulders of giants passed... sure, you can take someone like Adrian Sherwood and neurotically follow the trail of breadcrumbs all the way back to people bashing sticks against walls if you want, but what would be the point? Sherwood and Mad Professor were geniuses that helped Lee Perry get his life back on track... does it matter that he influenced them first before they did the same back to him?

Art is a conversation, it's not about one generation of musicians handing everything they made down to the next in some clean, linear process that you can boil down to mind-numbing detail like a chemical reaction "This happened here so that happened there"... it's much, much more organic than that. Like everything to do with humanity is.

I don't think many people involved in the UK music scene would claim that the UK "invented" (m)any forms of music... what we can, quite proudly say, is that over the centuries, we've absorbed almost every form of culture the world has to offer, looked at it objectively and then made it our own... and made it our own so effectively that we've managed to present it back to the rest of the world, often altered so effectively that entire scenes were built both here and abroad. Not many cultures can claim to have done that so successfully and so reliably for so long.

But anyway, whilst we're getting anally retentive and nationalistic; Delia Derbyshire invented IDM, so all you Europeans and Canadians can fuck RIGHT off.

[Genevieve]

Genevieve you know a lot about electronic music

Sarcasm? :0

Just seems a bit unfair to say that the UK didn't innovate with things like 2 step, dubstep or jungle but America did with things like techno and hip hop or Jamaica did with dub- you can just as easily trace their roots to other styles and the whole thing goes back as far as cavemen banging on drums.

And it gets a bit like arguing for the sake of it where you say something is original but not innovative.

I made points about how 2-step and jungle weren't innovative and people opposed to me are saying that they're innovative as a self-evident statement. And dubstep? Rrry? It took everything that jungle did and applied to to 2-step. And I'm not arguing for the sake of it. Every bit of original art isn't innovative. This is an original song. It has an interesting structure, vibe, melody, use of vocals, lyrics. But it didn't rewrite or redefine music. It doesn't really do anything that wasn't done before, it just did it with an original execution.

Dubstep didn't innovate sparseness, heavy bass, swingy drums and heavy reverb. But it applied those basic things in a slightly different bpm and format than jungle But you truly, REALLY, believe that dubstep changed music forever? Really? It INNOVATED?

[wubstep]

Not arguing, just still unsure why it's innovation in America and only a regional appropriation when anything original happens over here?

Also, I read the blurb of this book earlier (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Faking-Quest-Au ... 0571226590) and it claims that all the hyper-innovative blues guitarists you are talking about were actually molded and shaped by white businessmen.