Techno Change Theory

[Orange]

In the interest of injecting some change into "techno" i offer here a short, though hopefully applicable theory. I offer this to all those who have posted recently looking for some kind of change in techno. This is my humble contribution to the issue.

Just in case anyone missed my last post in Mark EG's thread of the same topic, i am copying and pasting so that you might read and understand the platform from which this change theory springs...

Im thinkin about thinkin....and i think that if you want to change your techno, then you want to change the way you think about your techno...if you change the more fundamental concepts/commitments you hold concerning what techno is, then my guess is that the way you act/react as a dj/producer/listener, will also change. However, if you change the basics too much, your future may not hold techno, as you know it, anymore...in which case you may leave most, but, perhaps not all, of your techno communiity behind. If you want to maintain the fundamentals, then, perhaps, you can't really have change...but, without really changing you might still explore techno's as yet, perhaps, unfulfilled potential, given those fundamental constraints. Nevertheless, and to the main point, i think most thinkin has to resist change...it is, pehaps, necessary...however, within the most, some re-think, for they are, perhaps, necessary too...but, can you CHOOSE to be the some instead most or vice versa? i dunno...

how much change do you want?

In what is written above, i suggest that the potential for change resides, perhaps, in your own thought process, and specifically, in the transformation of your presently employed "concepts" and commitments. Here I wish to further explore HOW you might understand such a conceptual transfomation. That is, I wish to illuminate how you can be CONFINED by your concepts, but also LIBERATED by conceptual transformation.

You have certain concepts that you employ every day while thinking. A concept is used to categorize information that you recieve through the senses. For example, you have a concept for "loop" and that concept is used to identify everything sonically that loops. So, you hear a repetitive beat, you identify it as a "loop" and categorize it as "the class of things which loop."

However, on the flipside of this cognitive process, anything that is not a "loop" is not categorized as a "loop". Now, this may not seem like a big deal, and in many ways it is not, but, it does follow that...

YOU CAN ONLY IDENTIFY AND CATEGORIZE THAT WHICH YOU HAVE A CONCEPT FOR ALREADY...

And this means that when you have a "novel" experience you will be cognitively constrained to FORCE that new experience into a pre-existing concept. It follows from this that it can actually be difficult to cognitively recognize an experience as truely "NOVEL." You might, in fact, have a novel experience, but think nothing of it becuase your mind categorized it as the kind of experience you have had before.

What does this have to do with change in techno? Well, i offer this possible consideration to all the producers of the BOA community. When you are in the studio, and you are dreaming up a techno anthem, you are categorizing the studio experience using your concepts. That is, you are compartmentalizing all the sonic information that is being generated visually, but especially sonically. And, within the sonic experience you divide your sounds into categories of what is "black" and what is "white" (where black and white here represent any concepts you commonly employ while working in the studio). For example, you may hear a sample and think it sounds like an awful "guitar" imitation or, instead, perhaps, you might think it sounds like some strangely anoying useless "noise." What happens to that sample after categorization? Probably, the same thing that happens to all your samples that fall into those two categories.

Now, and to the main point, I believe that there may be a NOVEL domain of sonic experience that is commonly overlooked becuase that domian, when generated as an information experience, gets FORCED into the concept of "black" or "white." However, and this is the important part, if you were just able to slow down that process, to refrain from categorizing, then at just the right moment, if you are lucky, you might become aware that "that" which you have ALWAYS believed to be either "black" or "white" is, in fact, "blackwhite" or, "blite" or "whack"! And, in that moment, you are free from your pre-existing conceptual constraints, and may therefore RE-CONCEPTUALIZE your sonic experience. Once you have reconceptualized the sonic experience, you have something NOVEL to produce and market. You have brought a change to techno.

Taking, again, for example, the sample that sounds like an awful "guitar" imitation or strangely annoying useless "noise," if you slow down the cognitive process and withhold categorization for a moment, you might think you hear something new. Back in 1981, you may have been the first to hear the sound of "acid." In the present day, everyone knows the 303 sound as "acid." But, there once was a day when the same sound was not. Note, however, that the sound of the 303 did not change. What changed was the way we THINK about it.

Okee, i have posted the above for a number of reaons.
First, i believe actions flow from thinking and so if the actions are the same old same old it is becuase the thinking is the same old same old. So, if you change the thinking you change the actions.
Second, since my return (as i have been absent from the board) i have read the many posts about "same old same old" techno, and, some calls for change. So, since i wish to make a contribution to the issue, I offer, for what it is worth, the techno change theory.
Third, if even one person here reads this positively and believes it might help him/her to produce something as yet unheard, then all the time taken to write it was worth while.
Finally, while i used studio production as the prime example, i believe the theory may be applicable to djing, etc.

Rethink and remix


Peace and Respect

Orange

[dirty_bass]

This can be abbreviated to, when making techno, don`t look at what should come next in the context of what you have already heard.
Just do what shouldn`t or what wouldn`t normally come next.

Further compounded.

Make something else than techno in the studio. Repetitious behaviour is unhealthy.

[oldbugger]

or just make psy trance and go against everything you love about techno :lol:

[Ritzi Lee]

This can be abbreviated to, when making techno, don`t look at what should come next in the context of what you have already heard.
Just do what shouldn`t or what wouldn`t normally come next.

Further compounded.

Make something else than techno in the studio. Repetitious behaviour is unhealthy.

You mean like making cheesy trance music.
tralalaaa tralalaaa tjalaaa..... wheeee..

[dirty_bass]

No I mean, if you make techno all the time, you are just looping around without any experience of other production methods.

[gunjack]

gotta agree with dirty. its important to make all kinds of music and keep music in general in the blood.

[SlavikSvensk]

No I mean, if you make techno all the time, you are just looping around without any experience of other production methods.

i couldn't agree more. make ambient music, make noise, make hip-hop, make house, make scandinavian black metal, make something that keeps you from falling into too predictable a pattern...

[The Overfiend]

Make House!

[holotropik]

Good wordz Orange ;)

Something I always try to do.
Once I went into breaks for a while and learnt how to incorporate a break-beat and a 4x4 together to get a funk'n jack'n sound. Another time I explored psy-trance then prog and then got into tribal-house.
I am always making sure that I am mostly remote from the trends and the sounds or techniques. I dont even know most of the names and labels that are mentioned on this board or others. I just listen to stuff that I come across and let it roll off leaving an influence or idea for me to develop.
As a result I always get comments from people that they like my stuff coz its different from all the other stuff out there.