Can EDM Music Ever be Listened Normally?

EDM is not just one track by Dizzee Rascal. I can listen to a whole catalogue of old skool house and love it, without being high or even being out dancing. I’m far from being alone, as I’m sure you’ll discover.

EDM has been taken seriously as a genre since the the late 1980s.

If you find that EDM is generic it may be because recently, in my opinion, there is a whole lot of commercial, awful, autotuned devil’s **ck cheese that makes little children’s ears bleed. I can’t play that, I just dislike it so much.

Try listening to some classic house when you’re relaxed and feel it creep up on you and grab you by the ass.

mr_john, post: 4998 wrote: i used to find the people complaining about EDM going mainstream crazy. I love sharing music with the world. But then the EDM scene in my town changed. It went mainstream. Gone are the PLUR days. It’s city punks, club rats, pissed off wannabe gangsters, who all go just to get drunk and mack on girls. They fight, cause problems, and ruin peoples nights. The kandy ravers and people who go for the music are fewer and farther between.
What I’m getting at, is yes it can be just music. I wish it would stay that way. But unfortunately the mainstream can’t handle it. They take the stereotype and run with it. Now every time I hear a hip-hop song with an EDM beat I die a little inside.
Trance however, seems to be safe. House is lost as far as I’m concerned. And next up is dubstep.

That is precisely why many people are gutted when their favourite genre of music goes mainstream. Not only does it start to attract awful, cheap commercial producers and fabricated bands lacking in class, talent and soul but the public who listen to it change for the worse. Not everyone agrees with that, but it’s what you and I think 🙂

Let’s not sweat it though guys. I distinctly remember 2000-2002 when the quality of music appeared to be terrible, cheap and full of artificial boy bands, karaoke covers and low quality, cheaply produced, soulless EDM. What this heinous, musically painful couple of years unexpectedly produced was a groundswell of awesome talent that had been brewing quietly away, frustrated by the current lack of quality.

At that time, future musicians and producers who were revolted and sickened by the lack of originalty had been getting high on music from 15 years before instead. The music that followed from 2003-2008 then proceeded to beat the hell out of 1999-2002.

Let’s hope the current evil autotune EDM herd of “lowest common denominator” sheep who all produce electro only because it’s meant to be the current trend will do the same, eventually disappearing to leave us with outstanding new innovative artists who come through in a year or so, or hopefully before that.

Really good discussion. Having just ditched 95% of my music, I can confirm that the classics do have staying power, but for every tune that really says something new, there are 100 wannabes that won’t last the test of time.

If you Dj and like a genre, but feel it has gone commercial/mainstream you don’t have to play all the commercial tracks. you have the choice of what to play.

Trance for example used to be the uplifting euphoric melodic style. (think Cafe del Mar – energy 52)
It has expanded to so many variations since then. some of which, I’d even think it might be a house track.

quite a lot of trance DJs will play the commercial sing-along vocal tracks and just top 100 beatport tracks

I will go through all the new releases and pick out what I like and fits my style of DJ’ing.
Yes, I will play commercial tracks that everybody involved with the trance scene knows, but that is if i like it, not just because it is popular.

That is how I have my own style, and hopefully stand out.

As A DJ, you don’t have to let commercialism completely take over what you do.

There are two tracks i absolutely love by the same artist, i can listen to over and over again, as tunes in their own right.
But for some bizarre reason i find them really hard to mix in and out of… Doesnt stop me using ’em in sets tho 😉

[media=youtube]6F54C0uNSqE[/media]

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And a recent-ish mix where i dropped Quad, and finished off with one of my all time favourite tunes, another I could put on loop and listen too forever.
This version is the Nude Mix, not my favourite mix, but this was given to me by a very very good mate, and i love it none the less…
Actually thinking back, I think this mix was a bit of self indulgence!
http://www.mixcloud.com/U31/dont-let-the-music-stop/

If you think EDM is only for dancing and getting high then I don’t understand why your here? I don’t want to come off as mean but if you can’t feel and hear the differences in each track then why post on a dj forums? I am 100% sure that users on this forum can tell the differences in any two tracks. Certain tracks can make me wanna dance, sing, cry, laugh and sit in quiet contimplation. Especially today with the wide range of genres and sub-genres you quite literally have music for any mood/occasion.

I don’t understand why people think that EDM is just for drug heads. I get it that they’re the loudest and get the most attention but for every candy raver pill popper there are three legitimate fans.

EDM to me can be liked the way someone would like a rock tune, rap rune, or pop tune. The reason we don’t see it across the board is the same reason why a lot of music doesn’t get there. EDM can be arranged “traditionally” with vocals, choruses, bridges, etc…or it can get totally abstract.

So whenever you hear EDM in normal airplay on the radio, you notice how much it’s kept in that more “traditional” sense. Even tunes that rocked the clubs can and will be changed up to be more friendly to the non-clubbers. A great example I usually recall is Anthem by Filo and Peri:

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If you check out that video, and have heard the versions being sold for DJs, they are different. The DJ versions are more abstract and longer, as they’re done in the more traditional sense. The added verses and sounds though for that clip more or less format the tune into a palatable version the radio listeners can get into. I’ll admit even I have this as an MP3 on my iPod.

I ignore the people who complain when no one supports the music, then complain again when their music blows up into the mainstream. Watering-down and dumbing-down the music is nothing new. You look at any recent tunes from David Guetta, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, or Black-Eyed Peas and you’ll see how much it’s watered-down compared to electro-house people were playing for years.

That’s life. I remember when European artists watered down the new wave sound into the Hi-NRG sound of the early 90s, and then watered down rave techno into the euro sound of the mid-90s, then in 2001-2003 they took trance and watered it down so average Joes will get into it.

Can it be liked normally? Maybe…but I think the DJ element is part of what makes people like EDM. Many listen to the dance shows on satellite radio, Radio 1 gets a lot of worldwide listenership, and people listen to mixes off the internet all the time. Even I personally prefer to listen to EDM as a DJ set. It’s one of the main things that drives me to make new mixes. I have a bunch of new tunes, so I make a mix to enjoy them in.

That’s a good thing though…it shows how dependent the music is on the DJ and likewise. It makes it unique.

@u31 no I’m saying the opposite. I think almost everyone here can dissect the subtle changes common in EDM. to my wife and her family though it just sounds like repetitive noise. That’s the comparison I’m trying to draw.
@D-Jam thank you for explaining it better than I could. Even in Europe where EDM is not only accepted but celebrated they still change the music to make it palletable to the masses.