What Is Techno.

As many people often say "Techno is not music", "Techno songs are repetitive", "they are all alike" and similar, we would like to tell our minds on this matter, saying why we do like Techno Music and why we think it IS music.
I’ll repeat: it’s My opinion, nothing in art is subject to objectivity. I don’t want anybody to change his/her own mind, but I would be happy to have someone revalue his/her opinion on Techno music and accept that there are some reasons if one can feel emotions listening to a hi-tech electronic track rather than to a Classical Opera.

First of all: what is Techno Music? Many people think that Techno Music is Dance Music, especially in Italy. But, while Dance Music is often Techno Music, the contrary is not completely true.

For Techno we mean a music genre that is as wide as Pop or Rock music. For Techno we mean the Old-style Techno, Trance, Hard Trance, Acid Trance, Goa Trance, Psychedelic Trance, Hardcore, Speedcore, House, Eurodance, jungle, Drum ‘n’ Bass, Underground, Rave, Progressive, Mediterranean Progressive, Dream and so on.

Dance Music, as the adjective says, is mainly intended to make people dance, usually in discos. For this reason, when a Dance song is written, the main intention of the artist is not to create an experience, but, rather, to produce a track that people can remember, a track with a beat that people can feel when they are on the dance floor... a track that must sell as many copies as possible.

On the other hand, Dance songs are always characterized by the use of synthesizers, electronic percussions and rhythm that are typical of Techno Music. This determines some side effects: most people, who are used to listen to the radio and go to disco, identify Techno with Dance. Record companies are interested in profits, so they promote Dance Music a lot and they don’t often give enough space to other artists who express themselves with any other kind of Techno genre that is not enough "commercial". This is why we often hear people talking about "commercial music" and "non-commercial music". Dance is not the only Techno sub-genre subject to commercialization: depending on the period, here in Italy Progressive, House and a not-too-much-aggressive Acid Trance form had fortune in the commercial scene, for example. But think about Drum ‘n’ Bass, a Techno sub-genre that is now known world wide, thanks to the work of the Prodigy.

Now we've got this dynamic pulp of inter-influenced electronic music in both commercial and bedroom production. Electronic music spans across a large variety of styles, domains and media types. We hear it on TV, video, film, computer games, mobile telephony… we hear the influence of electronic music in our every day life. Techno music is everywhere - yet the original idea got lost somewhere in 1991. Now, what is techno, I ask myself again.

Is Techno really music? Some "music experts" can say that it is not. For them, Techno music has always the same rhythm, while melodies are almost always poor and repetitive. What do we have to say here?

For me, one must be able to listen to Techno Music before judging. We think that Techno is another kind of music and Techno artists might be as skilled and as great as other artists given to other "more titled" genres. The concept is different. A Techno artist may even not know music theory at all, but if he/she has a good ear and is very good at using electronic instruments, he/she might be able to transmit feelings to the listener all the same. Techno Music is mainly based on sounds: they must be impressive, aggressive, grooving... A good equalization, together with a good acoustics and a high-end stereo system, can make interesting an otherwise meaningless track. Good Techno artists are wizards in using synthesizers and samplers, editing sounds, mixing them together, creating aggressive grooves and intriguing loops, setting up dark atmospheres or dream landscapes, making the listener fly away or give outlet to his/her own rage...

Techno can transmit almost all the feelings we can find in our life, exactly like other music genres. But if we are not able to listen to Techno, it is our limit. A Techno song is not only an electronic bassdrum beating the fourth... it is also a sequence of filtered sounds coming up and down continuously, it is a series of few but intriguing notes repeating themselves all over the whole track, causing your mind to get into a trance or paranoia state, it is an angelic symphony coming from the outer space, it is an electronic bassdrum hitting on your stomach, it is a breathless run towards infinity, it is...

Moreover, Techno can also be very varied, if we think of the fact that any instrument can play in a Techno track: a piano, a trumpet, a synthesizer, a flute, percussions of any kind, strings, ... This cannot be true of other music genres.
electronic dance music.
(History)

When I mention electronic dance music, the first thing that comes to many people’s minds is the constant “boom boom boom” of your average house track, or maybe the “bleeps and boops” of a techno track. What they don’t realize is that electronic music has been a rather large part of musical history. From Disco, to 80s pop rock, to modern rock, and even classical, electronic music has had a large influence on modern music culture.

It may come as a surprise, but electronic music first appeared just a few years after Edison and Bell discovered the many uses of electronic current. In 1874, Elisha Gray, a friend of Graham Bell, discovered that his nephew had found a way of using electromagnetic fields to make a switch vibrate. This principle Gray turned into a musical instrument, the harmonic telegraph. After that was first Hammond Organs, very popular in many many rock songs.

There is the possibility Robert Moog, another important instrument maker, created the Theremin used in Good Vibrations. He first started producing Theremin kits as a means to pay for his education; however, after encountering musician Herbert Deutsch, he seriously thought about making a career out of it. In 1964, they began creating a modular synthesizer, built using many basic elements such as oscillators, filters, and amplifiers.

After that producers created many songs, there were many bands, many singers and once upon a time Jamaicans created contept of remix. To keep people dancing in the dancehalls, producers made special 'versions' of popular songs by fading in and out instruments, they also made multi-track copies of certain tracks called 'dubs'. People who became masters in this process are still seen as Gods in the studio, people like King Tubby, Lee Perry and Augustus Pablo. Jamaicans were also the first to start a 'rave', then called the sound system. Parties were organized illegally at certain sites, or inside unused buildings by setting up big rigs of speakers and amplifiers. The DJ also began to play an important role in this culture. They were the first to 'rap,' or 'toast' as they call it in Jamaica. To excite the crowd, the DJ would toast about the track playing, or even nothing of importance. Producers and studios helped DJs to become more popular by releasing very limited copies of remixes called 'dub plates'. These practices have become normal in today’s dance-culture, but they had already pioneered these techniques halfway through the seventies on the island of Jamaica.

In the seventies, as electronic instruments became cheaper and more common, they began to show up in many studios around the world. Under the influence of Kraftwerk (created their own studio and experimented with sounds and simple melodies. On their first three records, they still used what were considered normal instruments, such as the flute, guitar and organ. In 1974 they changed all that and began using all electronic instruments ), Funk and R'n'B, a form of dance music, began appearing. A fast paced four to the floor beat made for partying and partying only, it eventually became commonly known as Disco, and traveled around the globe, becoming most popular in America and Italy. Party-people of the world went crazy about it, while many less hedonistically interested listeners cringed and fought back, playing and listening to punk rock.

After Disco, electronic dance music flourished. It became commonplace to hear songs produced with synthesizers during the 80s and early 90s. Over the years Disco became replaced by another form of electronic dance music, House. House was also characterized by a pounding four to the floor beat, and quickly swept the world as the popular dance music of choice. Other forms of electronic music quickly surfaced, from Trance and Techno, to Breakbeats and Drum and Bass – kind of Jungle music.
Britain is the birthplace of acid house music, which stemmed from the hardcore underground music and rug scene. The underground dance scene was then known as raves. Acid house branched into garage, techno, and hardcore, which transformed into speed garage, big beat, and jungle music.

British DJ's developed jungle music from reggae traditions derived from Jamaica and urban hip hop styles of America with a mixture of many different kinds of other music like techno, house, breakbeats, etc. Drum n Bass is also closely related, yet it has a faster tempo equivalent to techno and house beats with a booming bass line and drum set. This is my favorite style of music.
Dj’s

In the end of this article i shoudl say something about dj’s and their work. There are two kinds of dj’s : Fisrt playing from cd’s and seconds from vinyls. Depending on whom you ask, you’ll get a wide range of answers to the question “Should I spin CDs or Vinyl.” Some will say Vinyl is dying, and CDs are taking over, so CDs are the way to go. Others say Vinyl will never die, and it’s superior sound, and hands on feel mean there’s no other choice. However, the question remains, what are the differences between the two? Which is better? Which should DJs use? The short answer is both, but what if you can’t afford a CD deck along with two turntables? Which should you start out with then? Well, the answer to that question is much more difficult. I prefere vinyls, never played from cd’s . turntables are great. But remember, when deciding CDs or Vinyl, the best choice is both. However, if you must choose one or the other, try both, and decide what negatives you can live with, and what positives you feel are required. Good luck - Dj Hide ( meJ )

Today, electronic music has found it’s way into many aspects of our life, from common Pop, Hip-Hop, and Rock music, to radio and TV adds, movie scores, games and television soundtracks, to classical scores reproduced using electronic instruments.

Regarding the fact that "Techno songs are all alike"... well, I may also say that Heavy Metal songs are all alike, because there are always those electric guitars playing, that a piano composition is boring because the sound is always the same (the one produced by the piano) and so on. This is not the right way of considering music and arts in general.
I think Techno is characterized by all the things that characterize other more titled genres, so I think it is music in every respect, even if tracks are not composed on a paper score and artists are not geniuses absorbed in studying music theory and history. So, next time you hear someone say there’s nothing to electronic music other than some bleeps and boops, be sure to tell them that the majority of the music they here today is electronic, and they have a person by the name of Elisha Gray to thank for creating the first electronic musical instrument.


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