Jump to content
  • Beyond 11: So You Think EDM Sucks? Read This

    By Anderton |

         Beyond11Background_CAnderton_EDMSUCKS_20

    It's not just the "kids, get off my lawn" syndrome

     

    By Craig Anderton

     

    How many times have you heard (or said) “EDM is crap! It’s just a bunch of non-musicians pushing buttons!” The usual retort is “Well, that’s what they said about rock and roll” and while that’s true, there’s much more to the story.

     

     

    edm-b87b8f1a.jpg.a80d8d74f70cbaaf952f6bf5db902c44.jpgMost EDM is about live performance and to a great extent, improvisation. Whether in a packed club or at an outdoor festival, EDM is an almost tribal experience that has more in common with a Grateful Dead concert during their prime than a traditional concert. And just as people would say “Recordings don’t really do the Dead justice, you need to see them live,” I’d say the same thing about EDM.

     

    With EDM (and yes, I think that’s a dumb term but I’ll use it anyway), music is not about a band doing a one-way transmission to an audience. Instead, it’s a shared experience that depends heavily on a feedback loop between the musician and the crowd. In a way, an EDM musician is more like a “performing engineer” and “performing arranger” than a skin-pounder or string-plucker. No two EDM sets should ever be alike (and if they are, then you are indeed listening to a button-pusher). A good EDM musician can read the crowd perfectly, always choose the right music to build a mood, and create seamless transitions that provide a musically and more importantly, emotionally satisfying experience that takes people on a journey that’s almost cinematic in nature.

     

    edm-1.5-d0c63aab.jpg.1ca12dc3d7775141c149366de3fef3bd.jpgBut does someone doing this truly qualify as a “musician”? I don’t think there’s any doubt, any more than whether a conductor is a musician. You have to understand music to make it fit together, and if it’s a question of skill, being able to do a multi-hour set that’s perfectly in sync with the audience—and where you cannot make one mistake (nothing kills the vibe more than a train-wreck transition)—takes a whole lot of skill. I think most traditional musicians would be totally lost when placed in front of a modern DJ controller, which is a complex and unforgiving musical instrument.

     

    Now, this doesn’t mean all purveyors of EDM are great musicians, any more than all rock musicians are great musicians. Most music has by-the-numbers players and EDM is no exception. Time filters out the good stuff, but when a musical form is new and rising in popularity, you’re going to have people jumping on the bandwagon in an attempt to make a fast buck. That’s true of anything, as anyone old enough to remember the folk music boom over half a century ago will attest…

     

    edm2-2709bac9.jpg.f76663c67eb8340c86c54b27399e023f.jpgThere have been seminal moments in my life that got me truly excited about music. Hearing Andres Segovia for the first time made me want to play guitar. Discovering Wes Montgomery, Artie Shaw, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane showed me the many faces of jazz. The first time I heard the Brandenburgs revealed a level of harmonic complexity I had never heard in any music (and still haven’t). Buddy Holly blew my mind with the mileage he could get out of three chords and simple lyrics. Punk rebooted music that had become self-indulgent into something that once again was vital, if only briefly. My first reaction on hearing Public Enemy was “so that’s why sampling was invented—not just to sound like a piano.” Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd, and Bob Marley turned the rock paradigm on its head, while L. A. Style’s “James Brown is Dead”—the first techno tune to hit the Billboard Hot 100—was a clear indication that something new was afoot in a merger of rap, dance, and electronics.

     

    Hearing really good EDM in a live context was a similarly seminal moment for me. I’ll never forget a concert I saw with Dr. Walker in Ravensburg, Germany, that had as much impact as when I saw the Who in their early days, or the Vienna Philharmonic. He was a master of creating irresistible beats on-the-fly, and the band was in total improvisational sync with him and the audience.

     

    Open your mind, and go to some clubs. The odds are very much against finding something fabulous on the first try, any more than dropping into a random bar with a rock band is going to give you a great rock experience. But someday, you’ll hear someone who really knows what they’re doing, and you’ll say “I get it.” Then you’ll add a new musical experience to your existing repertoire of musical experiences.

     

    ______________________________________________ 

    image_86469.jpg

     Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

     




    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments

    There are no comments to display.


×
×
  • Create New...