Face the challenge

Nothing personal, I`m trying to shake things up a bit, I`m not saying I`m right, at all, I`m a poncey arteeest at heart, so I may look into things a bit too deep.
I`m not saying people should stop doing pure dancefloor trance (and I mean trance inducing, not digga dah music), but it would be nice to here labels with more of a mix from the artists.
A commercial track, and hard one, and something different.
There is a lot of goo dstuff about, but also there is a lot of stuff that sounds the same as it did in 99.
And you can be diverse in your mix sets, without totally killing the buzz, you just have to work the mix that little bit harder, and choose when you do the mix a little more carefully.
Obviously, wacking some henry mancini straight after a hydraulix record might kill the buzz, but you can still keep diversity in a set, with flow.

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Originally Posted by davethedrummer

1. better rythms? ( less 4x4)
Yes but 4/4 is so dope when done right
2. more melody?( no cheese obviously)
Agreed
3. more stand alone type tracks? ( more of a song type structure, more memorable)
Definitely
4. darker?
Objective question
5. harder?
Depending on definition
6. more dj friendly type tracks
The more skill the dj has any track is dj friendly
and also what is the most overused thing in techno in your opinion?
loops tee hee but we love em.

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Originally Posted by davethedrummer

do we need

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1. better rythms? ( less 4x4)

i really don't know. with techno it seems to be either 4/4, electro or stuttered style. a breakbeat style track just doesn't make good techno. so what other kick combinations are out there? hmmm... perhaps it's the fact the 4/4 kick needs to be further forward in the mix or set further back. what i DO think though, and i get this from my detroit roots, are that the hi-hats need to be alot more intricate than just offbeats..... the bass needs to say more.

2. more melody?( no cheese obviously)

wow, another great great question. i think melody was brought into the clubby techno thing most with the swedish bassline elements and then it's developed. then the electro thing brought it in too. melody to me was never techno, but short musical notes such as Model 500's 'No UFO's' or 'Interference', was a way of using melody in a 'spacey' type of way that really worked. really now, we've had melody for years. i can't see us coming up with new melody combinations. i really cant.

3. more stand alone type tracks? ( more of a song type structure, more memorable)

but that's what techno never was - song structure. start doing that and you get dj hell electro. or a really cheesy techno track???

4. darker?

it's been done.

5. harder?

its been done.

6. more dj friendly type tracks

how many of these have we got?? :)

and also what is the most overused thing in techno in your opinion?

techno is the most overused thing in techno ;)

but we still love it :lol:

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Originally Posted by MARK EG

but we still love it :lol:

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well said mark, bring it all down to this "WE STILL LOVE IT"

no matter how its made

1. better rythms? ( less 4x4)

Yep, look at any way to improve the experience (shuffle, broken etc).

2. more melody?( no cheese obviously)

Definitely more melody, it can be done as euphoric (for this don't read cheesy, I've heard it done properly many times), or as dark and nasty as u like, sugar to taste. Check Dustins opener to his live set Evolv, Belgium, 2003, and then tell me we haven't got a bit to do with melody yet. And look at what Fernando does.

3. more stand alone type tracks? ( more of a song type structure, more memorable)

If by this you mean with an intro and outro, carrying the listener from one lower plateu to a higher one via various levels of energy and even mood, then yes. If you mean verse/chorus/bridge/vocals type traditional structure, I'm even hearin that done within the techno fraternity. Check Slam's new album, Year Zero, done to good effect in a few tracks (and the album's sellin as well), although some of u might not class this as techno :lol: .

4. darker?

If u like..

5. harder?

If u like..

6. more dj friendly type tracks?

Well alot of none techno dj's will not buy techno cos the bass comes in straight away, and the tracks are not very easy to read (as in when things are gonna happen). I personally put an intro into all tracks I do now. The techno dj's may find all this loop techno great for three deck mixin and such, but I remember when I bought my first Purpose Maker (when I used to dj Chi house), it's sounded great but also seemed a very scary prospect.

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Originally Posted by davethedrummer

i sort of agree and i don't
i think you guys are losing the plot sometimes when you say
techno needs to be more diverse.
it is diverse...it's just that you can't look at one producer to find the full spectrum you have to check out everyone , and think to yourself , do i like it , and can i play it?

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i think you make some good points but also miss the essence of what a lot of people here are griping about. techno has a lot of subgenres which are different from each other, but few really go out and touch upon outside music and the outside world. or even other subgenres of techno!

this is what i think, boiled down...

techno needs to:

a) become less fragmented
b) incorporate a more diverse set of musical and emotional influences

hearing someone spin a lot of different types of tracks is a good start, and i'd love to hear more of that when i go out...

...but i really like hearing new tracks come out that challenge my sense of what techno is and what it can achieve musically. i love secret cinema's revenge of a nerd because it does that. ditto some of the more daring swedish records coming out around 1998...particularly adam beyer's conceiled project on svek and cari's mr. barth records.

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Originally Posted by MARK EG

techno is the most overused thing in techno ;)

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:clap: :clap: :clap:

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Originally Posted by MARK EG

techno is the most overused thing in techno ;)

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True Story
http://957jamz.com/images/jocks/lilhomie.jpg
Word

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it is diverse...it's just that you can't look at one producer to find the full spectrum

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hmm, so it`s ok to be a one trick pony?
As soon as you step out of techno and look at other artists in other music, they have the ability to be diverse within their field.
For a weird example The Streets, or Bjork.

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Originally Posted by dirty_bass

I hear so many artist I respect, treading water, creatively.
Very few people take risks now. And with sales so low, and people crying out for something different, now is the time to take a risk.
What is there to lose?
I`d like to hear all producers taking more risks with what they put on their labels. You can still have your commercial tunes, but how about really pushing yourselves musically, and making something different?

I`m gonna put my money where my mouth is, and have a new musical project on the go, that I am gonna sink my own cash into.

But how many others will start to poke their heads above the parapet?

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what about truesoul steve? beyer put out that album and it got licks. i didn't love it but i bought it cause it wasn't your everyday shit doubt i even ever played it.. are their consumers like that out there? **** no. no matter what.. there is an political art economy here that cannot be ignored (in regards to producers taking the risks) and the consumers want what is not artistic; they want what boring, past their prime and lazy producers and co do. drug kick recycle. the nature of productive culture must change.

this is such an old rant laid out so many times before.. i bow with sincere respect to you to let people know that you are brave and that you are accountable for your emotions through music. bravo mate.

Thanks Steve you've just given me some spark to try something I normally wouldn't on my next project...

:clap: :dance:

-John Vella

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3. more stand alone type tracks? ( more of a song type structure, more memorable)

but that's what techno never was - song structure. start doing that and you get dj hell electro. or a really cheesy techno track???

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Or something like Underworld or Orbital (though the latter generally lacked TEETH imo).

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Originally Posted by Adverse

what about truesoul steve?

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good call. just about everything they've put out is interesting in my book...

I think underworld are a good example.
They were never cheesy, some of their stuff got caned, like born slippy, but it was very different to what was around at the time, and they were never affraid to experiment.
And they generally just did what they felt like.
Also they were part of the artistic collective Tomato, so they had a lot of creative people around them.

Marz make great genre-busting music, though it's more influenced by techno than actually being techno...

A couple of thing have stood out to me in this discussion -

Less 4/4 - I often think that, but then when I'm lost on the dancefloor it's the hypnotic stuff that really does it for me - and like Dave the Drummer said it's annoying when someone starts to be all weird and **** up my buzz.

The melody Idea is something I've tried - or rather chord changes - putting tension in with subtle pads and stuff bringing in 7th and sus4 type chords like you would in a guitar piece - sometimes works, sometimes goes cheesy.

For me techno's always dancefloor music and certainly in a club the simplicity and drive is what does it. I think you can still get that with a complex rhythm and really thinking on how the different parts interact, which sometimes seems to be done in a simplistic way - I'm not quite sure how I'm trying to explain this, but imagine classical music where you may have a fairly simple chord progression, but different parts of the chord are played by different instruments at different times.

Having said some of this I went to a psy-trance night on saturday and one DJ - don't know who - was playing quite hard kind of psy stuff with lots of wierd rhytms, messing around -what would have, had it been the night before, when I was out dancing to techno would have "**** up my buzz." And I loved it. I think it's a mood thing - for a saturday night when I'd had a friday of hard nasty stuff and was just wanting to launch into a full on weekend of sillyness with my Girlfriend it worked - Would that kind of wierdness work in techno??? Don't know...

I think there's always room to push boundaries and always room for innovation, but I also think theres space to stay at least some of the time with what we know. I do like a mix though that starts off with more obvious stuff and then slowly introduces more different things...

4X4 will always be perfect for techno when you learn to work around the kick. The beat itself is just the foundation. It's whats between the beats that makes the tune. Take Herbert for example (sorry, non techno). He sticks to the 4x4 formula but works with it and finds ways to emphasise everything else while the 4x4 structure remains in place.