does anybody ever make (or try to make)

sometimes i think i should stop pottering about with clanging and squelching and tinny old 606 beats and try and do something that the kids want to dance to.. how hard can it be i think every time i listen to some modern chart dance claptrap on the old wireless but i've only ever got round to trying it once or twice... the latest time being tonight. i've only spent about an hour or so on it so far and half of that was tweaking synths to get some fashionable noises out of them. it's not a great deal of fun.

i guess i'm specifically referring to the sort of thing thats all over the radio and the charts and the clubs where people with expensive haircuts and pre-ripped jeans go

do you ever have a crack at it?

it's no good shaking your perfect tits in Albania forever when all the dollars are in LA

I've made a few club friendly tracks but honestly, i don't feel like making anything that I'd have to FORCE out of me.

I have always thought how piss easy it must be to make music like that but never followed through with it. Though I did a track the other day, intending to make some sort of acid dancey sort of thing but it turned out quite trancey...

and quite gay. So I think this is when I give up making music forever. :(

To begin with: regardless of what music you're making, even if it is (or especially if it is) IDM (or braindance or whatever nomenclature you're ok with), you definitely should stop pottering about with clanging and squelching and tinny old 606 beats. We all like them, sure, and i'm not trying to be some mouthbreathing bandwagon follower, but if you're gonna be experimental, isn't it the point to... experiment? Aphex didn't lose sleep about getting his piano sounding just like Satie's or Cage's, Clark isn't worried about how reminiscent of Tri Repetae his output is... i mean... seriously.

Moving on.

Modern dance claptraps are shit. You know they're shit. And, unless you're some Dutch or Swedish replica of a generic US fratboy twat you're gonna feel like shit making them. The better you will do it, the shitter you will feel. And 6 hours later you've got this fat generic car-stereo-pleasing beat with this incredibly huge but edgeless supersaw sound that's big and reverby and "kewl" but you just feel like it's castrated, and then your idiotic cousin or low-bred stepmom hear it somehow and they tell you you should put it out and that it would sell millions and you just wanna at MOST keep the patch you made for some later ironic use and delete the whole fucking project. Whilst crying. Like a fucking whore.

But then there's the middle ground. Or maybe i shouldn't call it that, because you're really not compromising, at all. And this is the point where you, and every other wattumer who happens upon this, is gonna hate me.

Fidget. Fucking. House.

Or nu-electro, or maximal, or french stuff, or tech funk, or nu-rave, or wobbler house, or whatever you want to fucking call it. They're all umbrella terms for very different people who, regardless, are collaborating and remixing the shit out of each other. It's, IMHO (stress the H), THE SHIT. It is definitely something "the kids want to dance to". Just that its fewer kids, with weirder haircuts, but with a slightly less moronic expanse of musical tastes. But, at the scale we're talking of, fewer kids is still in the !big$$! payscale.

Why? Well... let's see... Is it mental? Check. Holier-than-thou? Check. Can it be aggresive, evil, and all of these non-plurry moods? Definitely. Can it be glitchy, broken, FSUd? You listen to Shadow Dancer, or ZZT, and you tell me. Is it experimental? Check. Can it be personal, wanky (or wonky), subtle, moving, mourning, gloomy etc? Not that much, but the again that's not really the point of stuff that the kids like to dance to now is it? And, ultimately, can it be as FUCKING POSH AND COOL as "teh idmz"? Depends on whether you can let go and give it a go. And whether you're comfortable sticking between 115 and 135 BPM.

So i guess this is my extremely oblique answer to your question. Yes, i've had (and am having) a copious crack at it, and everybody should have one. Or have a crack at the next cool thing after Clark. Or try to empty out their idol's body and live in him. Or... give up?

to placidburp...

nah mate it ain't piss easy. you spend just as much time with finetuning glossy boring production and getting the fucking minimal "plink" sequencer just the right amount of humanized as you would spend mangling breaks and a 303 bassline in different ways over 40-50 different patterns. With a fucking FM8 effeminate pad over... In... both cases...

Brrr.....

I've fucked around with techno before:

http://www.myspace.com/colonelerrormusic

I also did that Deimos EP on project168:

http://www.project168.co.uk/music.php?p=4&e=robot_speak_667e1c995bcef088673904e516351932

I make the occasional bangers, quite often when I come to think about it. Top secret stuff.

Theres a lot more subtlety to popular dance music and house music than one might first realize. I've been into doing the Justice style shit lately, more as an experiment than anything. Super distorted leads, insane compressed distorted and gated kicks and snares, really heavy bus compression, accentuated highs, tight lows. Just playing around with that mixing style and catchy melodies and funky basslines/leads.

actually I write all Cascada's tunes.

if your heart's not in it you'll find it difficult

Thats pretty much exactly what I did for this one...

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/46896-michael-jackson-pyt-remix/

I think it was a great success. Everyone I've played it for in RL including family members seemed to enjoy it. The only person who said anything negative about it is this girl I kinda have a crush on, figures..

I spent quite a few nights going to electro clubs before making it. I would analyze the dancefloor and see what people really enjoyed and what didn't work. There is a really small set of rules to follow but I think if you do you will no doubt be able to create a dance floor hit.

  On 8/6/2009 at 5:15 PM, xxx said:

It's the wrong time. Wait until the iron is hot like it was in the 90's i.e. LaBouche, The Real McCoy, Aqua, Amber, etc. The last true "dance" hit I can remember is Alice Deejay but then again, I live in America and I know that elsewhere, a placemarker is kept all the time for at least a little techno and dance in the charts--you guys have more examples.

yeah.... i guess i was asking english people. our charts is like a big trendy dance compilation album

  On 8/6/2009 at 10:12 PM, acid1 said:

Thats pretty much exactly what I did for this one...

 

http://forum.watmm.c...kson-pyt-remix/

 

I think it was a great success. Everyone I've played it for in RL including family members seemed to enjoy it. The only person who said anything negative about it is this girl I kinda have a crush on, figures..

 

I spent quite a few nights going to electro clubs before making it. I would analyze the dancefloor and see what people really enjoyed and what didn't work. There is a really small set of rules to follow but I think if you do you will no doubt be able to create a dance floor hit.

You did such a wonderful job with this track. I used it recently in THIS MIX

You basically have to think backward to make stuff people will mindlessly dance to.

it's like that sample in the Acid Again ep..

"take any sort of artform, water it down to their mentality, and produce it with a hard beat"

it's the truth.. you could apply that to any media. i usually think of Daft Punk or somethin.. especially after the extreme saw lead reference.. lol.

i guess when all you're doing is flailing your body to whatever sounds are happening at the time you don't care as much for the minute details. i'd say it's boring music, though.

i made one track sort of like that (still somewhat idmish) which is one of my best, but it'll never happen again.. lol.

  On 8/6/2009 at 1:25 AM, LUDD said:

sometimes i think i should stop pottering about with clanging and squelching and tinny old 606 beats and try and do something that the kids want to dance to.. how hard can it be i think every time i listen to some modern chart dance claptrap on the old wireless but i've only ever got round to trying it once or twice... the latest time being tonight. i've only spent about an hour or so on it so far and half of that was tweaking synths to get some fashionable noises out of them. it's not a great deal of fun.

 

i guess i'm specifically referring to the sort of thing thats all over the radio and the charts and the clubs where people with expensive haircuts and pre-ripped jeans go

 

do you ever have a crack at it?

 

it's no good shaking your perfect tits in Albania forever when all the dollars are in LA

LUDD, you're scaring me.

the fox in my back yard makes pretty banging dance tunes:

foxy dance songs

  On 8/16/2009 at 6:06 PM, Spore said:

http://lsn.headfoam.net/trance2.mp3

wow taht was like being tortured

I've tried and failed many times.

I made a remix of a track from Mr Oizo's Lambs Anger and it ended up on all sorts of music blogs and on YouTube

  On 8/16/2009 at 6:06 PM, Spore said:

http://lsn.headfoam.net/trance2.mp3

http://lsn.headfoam.net/new%20shoes.mp3

lol you put way too much effort into those.

Something I made in twenty minutes:

http://soundcloud.com/marce-n/jumpman

me and my mate do some of that whenever we're in the same city. it's actually a bit of a serious effort and pretty damn fun. we haven't been doing anything together since i moved out of town a few months ago.

http://www.myspace.com/kompaktduo

electro heaven made people bounce in a small club once. transition city is the newest one but it's got shit mastering

the DJ's and producers i met with seem to agree that you can have shitty mastering and derivative music but you gotta have lyrics, no matter how stupid and ridiculous, or it won't get played

  On 8/19/2009 at 9:49 PM, Rabid said:

  On 8/16/2009 at 6:06 PM, Spore said:

http://lsn.headfoam.net/trance2.mp3

http://lsn.headfoam.net/new%20shoes.mp3

lol you put way too much effort into those.

 

Something I made in twenty minutes:

http://soundcloud.com/marce-n/jumpman

you spent 15 minutes too long on that

  On 8/20/2009 at 9:42 AM, LUDD said:

  On 8/19/2009 at 9:49 PM, Rabid said:

  On 8/16/2009 at 6:06 PM, Spore said:

http://lsn.headfoam.net/trance2.mp3

http://lsn.headfoam.net/new%20shoes.mp3

lol you put way too much effort into those.

 

Something I made in twenty minutes:

http://soundcloud.com/marce-n/jumpman

 

 

you spent 15 minutes too long on that

Yeah I should've just used presets, no one would be able to tell the difference anyway.