IDM, Acid, Electro, Braindance, Glitch, Glitch-hop, Breakcore

Avoiding the debacle of why pigeon holing the creative free expression of art such as music is right or wrong I'd like to see peoples perspective on the generic music groups that are particularly common on this forum yet also seem to interpolate together.

Please give a brief description of what these following genres mean to you and say a few example artists who you feel fall in one category more than the others.

IDM

Ambient/Drone

Acid

Electro inc Electro Pop

Braindance

Glitch

Glitch-Hop

Breakcore

IDM > Weird electronic that doesn't fit anywhere

Ambient/Drone > fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... swhoooooooooooooooooooooosh..... for 45 minutes

Acid > House with a 303

Electro inc Electro Pop > Music non stop

Braindance > anything released in rephlex

Glitch > glitchy noises

Glitch-Hop > a hip hop rythm made of glitchy noises

Breakcore > weird time signatures with drum machines, fast

IDM - a lot of synthpads, minor keys

Ambient/Drone - ... ambience, no beats

Acid .... squelchy bleep bloops

Electro inc Electro Pop .... power drill sounds and stabs, probably has vocals

Braindance .... elements of drill, fast

Glitch .... obsessive cut-ups

Glitch-Hop ... obsessive cut-ups beside hip-hop beats

Breakcore ... amen break

IDM - electronic music that is hard for certain people to classify. apparently this makes it intelligent

Ambient/Drone - in my experience, both of these can be total opposites in many ways. i might elaborate later.

Acid - use of sequencers to create elaborate melodies that range from near impossible to impossible to play on a piano. preferably super-polyphonic with morphing timbres.

Electro inc Electro Pop - poppy electronic music. electro house and brostep in america. sells millions of cds to teenagers and gets played on mtv

Braindance - it's all in the name

Glitch - i'll have to pass on this one since i was unaware that glitch was a style outside of glitch-hop

Glitch-Hop - phat beatz cut up to the point to where they don't sound right accompanied by glitchy noises.

Breakcore - drum breaks cut the frick up, tweaked the hell out, and sped up super fast.

IDM: early Warp artist or artist who sounds like they are heavily influenced by early Warp artists

Ambient/Drone: mostly pads and textures

Acid: squelchy bass and dancey beat

Electro inc Electro Pop: don't feel like describing this one atm

Braindance: see IDM

Glitch: ziptchamzzkpT!

Glitch-Hop: ziptchamzzkpT! word muthafucka

Breakcore: clatter crash bang kapow!

IDM - Sad childrens television theme songs made by nostalgic old men on computers or synths : Plaid, Bochum Welt

Acid - a tr 909 and a tb 303 playing in sync : Hardfloor

Ambient/Drone - Wishy washy synths / endlessly sustained guitars drowned in reverb: Biosphere / Sunn O)))

Electro inc Electro Pop - Strict eletronic rythms accompanied by minimalist synth arrangements (and pop vocals): The Knife

Braindance: IDM made by nostalgic men on synths: The Tuss

Glitch - The sound of a malfunctioning cd player: Oval

Glitch-Hop - The sounds of a scratched cd skipping randomly to a hip-hop beat: edIT

Breakcore - the Amen break as interpreted by a spastic nerd with ADHD: Shitmat

  On 8/6/2011 at 8:36 PM, Gocab said:

Breakcore - the Amen break as interpreted by a spastic nerd with ADHD

i like that description. ADHD ftw.

IDM - The combination of early home listening techno, acid, industrial, ambient, hip hop rhythm structure, jungle, glitch / dsp fuckery. Has a range of examples that don't always have much correlation with each other, ranging from downtempo melancholy sine waves & pads with skittering beats, to abrasive tones and inventive sequencing often with distortion or other extreme effects. Complexity of the rhythm section is a constant. Highly electronic. Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada and all of the clones that blended their respective sounds together.

Ambient/Drone - Atmosphere music. Music that sets a tone, or expresses an abstract mood with a limited sound palette and repetition. Spacious & minimal. Usually beatless and focuses on drawn out melodies, elongated chords and textures. Lots of delay & reverb. Originally thought of as music that could as easily be ignore as it is listened to. Drone leans closer to noise in the ambient spectrum, often with ample amounts of distortion. Sound is typically very sustained with evolving texture. More aggressive and gritty in nature. Opens up for cross over into Metal. Uses anything as a sound source, from stringed instruments to synthesizers. Brian Eno, Biosphere, Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker

Acid - House / Techno music from the late 80s that centers around boxes from Roland's X0X line, classically the TB-303 & TR-909. Squelchy, rubbery synth bass lines over a four-on-the-floor beat. Started off as very primitive dance music, and has recently been retro-fetishisized and mixed with IDM sensibilities, for the modern acid scene we have today. Phuture, DJ Pierre, Larry Heard, Aphex Twin, Ceephax Acid Crew

Electro inc Electro Pop - Seems to mean something different to everyone. Its original use is to describe music influenced by Kraftwerk & Yellow Magic Orchestra. Also Proto-Hip Hop like Afrika Bambaataa or Mantronix. Also things like Cybotron. Also fused with 80s synth pop & R&B, see Midnight Star. Also a style of shitty modern house music.

Braindance - See IDM, up the dose of Acid, dance music and Synth pop. More retro feeling in nature. More focus on it sounding "lush, mate". Rephlex Records

Glitch - Music either created with, or created to sound like digital malfunctions. Not really a genre on its own as it is a sound. It's used to describe ambient music like Fennesz & Oval, or beat-based stuff like Autechre, early Kid606, Aphex Twin's stutters. Also, more academic works by people like Alva Noto & Ryoji Ikeda. Often synonymous with lots of IDM and "Gltich-Hop"

Glitch-Hop The Glitch / IDM / cutup aesthetic worked into a more defined Hip Hop structure. Can have rappers, if the beat allows. Prefuse 73, ediT

Breakcore - Really fast, aggressive Jungle / Gabber combo. Pulls heavily from all of the ^above music^, save maybe ambient, ups level of intensity and speed while taking down the level of maturity and emotional content. This music is about going mental. Banging kick drums, constantly firing breaks, rave synths, heavy use of vocal samples. Also samples lots of shitty pop music and fucks it up... Has cross over into mashup culture... Has had a large crossover with Metalheads in America. Teenagers with dreadlocks. Venetian Snares, Kid606, Drumcorps, Duran Duran Duran, The Flashbulb, Bong-Ra, Enduser

IDM - the more experimentally driven electronic music, including but not limited to the "warp records" sound...

Electro/electropop: also "The French Touch"

Braindance: and the Rephlex stuff, more recent Clark

Glitch: (^see post above^)... Well said Deepex

Glitch-hop: Glitch-hop, is pretty much about taking the rhythms of hip-hop and getting IDM with them. With less traditional and glitched out drum samples, various sample manipulations and synthesis. Not always instrumental at all times, many tracks feature rappers with a more underground hip-hop sound. Prefuse 73, Flying Lotus and the Brainfeeder label, Daedalus, Blockhead, Dabrye, Harmonic 313, Madlib, Nosaj Thing, etc... I love me some glitch hop

Breakcore: Drum and Bass on steroids. Big emphasis on syncopation and drum complexity, and drum loop edits.

tried but got so sick of trying to define IDM that I gave up

IDM: Electronic music that had that "feeling" you know? music that doesn't fit anywhere else, it just is idm.. you can dance mentally to it, it calms you, it can arouse you.. It's simply the best.

Ambient/Drone: Just ambiance going and going for at least 20 minutes, drone is darker, more metallic, industrial almost but still very soothing.

Acid: Anything that sounds like the word acid, self-explanatory

Electro inc Electro Pop: Electro is for me the basics of "electronic" sound, it's hard, raw and so on.. It just Sounds Electro

Braindance:Same as IDM but from Rephlex records ofcrs.

Glitch:More a way to describe noise then to call a genre imo, pure glitch is like ambient but experimental and.. yea glitches

Glitch-Hop: don't know what it is

Breakcore:Basically sampled noise with a phat beat!, can be anything from drumming on a door to a sneeze sample, it's fucking energetic! kinda like jungle but more hardcore and experimental and abstract

good views here guys

how would you pigeonhole artists like Frank Bretschnider, Alva Noto and the Raster Norton type stuff as glitch or more avant guard, minimal or microtonal (if such a genre exists)?

  On 8/6/2011 at 6:50 PM, Bubz said:

 

Electro inc Electro Pop - poppy electronic music. electro house and brostep in america. sells millions of cds to teenagers and gets played on mtv

 

read the rules

I remember the raster norton stuff being classified as microsound when I first discovered the label. I'm not sure if it's still called that.

Electro is the most important genre name on that list. Electro is a true genre, like jazz, that can be understood. It's important to know where a lot of electronic music comes from, and the majority can be traced back to electro.

There is a stylistic importance of it.

There was somehow a total change in the what 'electro' meant with bands like Justice and so on. I have never cared for that scene as much as I care for the 'electro' detroit sound now.

Electro is Drexciya, Cybotron, Carl Craig even. Anything with that recognizable sound of synthesizers and drum machines. Not much sampling or acoustic instrumentation. A respect for the possibilities of the electronic instrument!!!!!

IDM has, unfortunately, started to sound like any electronic DANCE music that is cold, clinical, and atmospheric. I HATE that it has become this. It's because of all the artists who knock off Autechre and some Aphex Twin. They're attracted to 'cold' 'scary' sounds and they miss the point. IDM is Plaid, Wagon Christ, Come to Daddy.

It's always been playful, experimental, truly experimental. There was a serious sense of humor in the music, much of the time.

IDM evolved out of electro.

Electro and detroit techno are essentially the same in my mind.

Those things evolved into 'house' which is more centered around the club experience than the listening experience. Not interested, personally.

Glitch and IDM are basically interchangeable, if not actually meaning the same thing. Both terms are shit. Technically, glitch only refers to Oval, Pole and others who 'glitch' CDs. Underrated "genre" that shouldn't be considered a "genre."

2 words:

Aphex Twin

IDM: Cute songs made with vibrato leads, glowing pads, and sampled acoustic instruments (especially drums and orchestral instruments.) Emphasis on melody.

Global Goon, Cylob, Aphex Twin, Anne Laplantine, Nobukazu Takemura, etc.

Ambient/Drone: Slow, soft synths playing carefully picked notes, with anything else available that can be used to create the desired atmosphere.

Leyland Kirby/The Caretaker, Selected Ambient Works II,

Acid: 303, ABL2, x0xb0x, or any other synth with a square or saw wave that you can get to sound corrosively resonant one second and deep and soulful the next + anything else that you can pile on top that sounds good. WATMM party music, Belgian New Beat, something lots of Braindance & IDM artists do on the side.

Ceephax, Dj Pierre, Chris Moss, Mr. Fingers, +10, Underpants Lord, etc.

Electro Pop: Short for "Electronica" probably. Bad house music for people who like to party and have no taste.

Deadmau5, Justice, Daft Punk, etc.

Electro: Industrial electronic music from or inspired by Detroit, or alternatively, music with lots of funky riffs. Basically, IMO, it's used to differentiate the original "techno" from all it's later meanings. Any way about it though, emphasis on analog synths and powerful drum machines.

Aux 88, Drexciya, Kraftwerk, DMX Krew, Man Parrish, Maggotron, Scape One, UR, Mr Velcro Fastener, Impakt, etc.

Braindance: Music inspired by Aphex Twin's music published after 2000, or experimental electronic music that's hard to label. To me it means either genius or tussalord ripoff. Emphasis on melody, and sometimes analog equipments.

Monolith, Wisp, EOD, Goodiepal, Leafcutter John, Automatic Tasty, Space Dimension Controller, Bogdan Raczynski, Soundmurderer, etc.

Glitch: Music 4 nerdz. IDM but melodically minimal and with more edits. Emphasis on taking itself very seriously.

nerds, Autechre, Tadd Mullinix, Acustic, Doofgoblin, etc.

Glitch-Hop: Music for cool nerds and sometimes hipsters. Like hip-hop + glitch + chiptunes + IDM. Emphasis on melody, swag, and heavy editing.

Gouseion, Hudson Mohawke, Flying Lotus, etc.

Breakcore: 200+ BPM and two or more of the following:

Gabber

Jungle

random samples

sense of humor

Nero's Day At Disneyland, DJ Rainbow Ejaculation, Ove Naxx, Shitmat, Toecutter, Nasenbluten, Istari Lasterfahrer, Captain Ahab, etc.

  On 8/8/2011 at 10:33 PM, vamos scorcho said:

Electro and detroit techno are essentially the same in my mind.

 

 

 

Those things evolved into 'house' which is more centered around the club experience than the listening experience. Not interested, personally.

 

 

 

 

err what? House was around well before Detroit techno. and Detroit techno is not the same thing as electro.

it's all related