Expert: Damien King - 3/10/2004

Question
I'm curious as to what the exact differences are between techno, trance, dance, and other similar kinds of electronic music genres are.  I've been wondering for a while now out of curiosity, and also I've begun experimenting with creating my own music (using the Fruity Loops program) and I'm kind of trying to figure out exactly what type of music mine is.  :)

Thanks in advance.

Answer
Stephanie,

thats a very good question! The subgenres of 'electronic' music are in their hundreds yet sometimes they can be very difficult to get correctly, and the majority of people (especially in the US) get them all wrong. The worst point is calling any electronic music, techno. Basically, electronic music is all separated depending on three factors - Tempo/Speed, Structure, and Mood.

The speed of tracks is measured in beats per minute (BPM) which I'm sure you'll be aware of from working with F Loops - which I use myself. This is difficult to judge until you've heard songs from various speeds. A rough table of what's what is here:

GENRE      AVERAGE BPM   MOOD OF TRACK      KEY POINTS         EXAMPLES

Ambient      75 - 90      Mellow, relaxed      No drums. Sweeping synths.   Easy listening CDs
Big beat   100 - 120   Funky, danceable   Prominent beat, many samples   Fatboy Slim
Breakbeat   125 - 145   Funky         Pseudo-random, very chopped up   The Avalanches, Run DMC
Club/dance/euro   130 - 145   Happy, danceable   "Club/chart music". Female voc   Alice Deejay, ATB
Drum & bass   170 - 190   Dark, hypnotic      Focus on bass, pounding beat   ]EIB[, Decoder, Dieselboy
Gabba/gabber   200 +      Manic         Blisteringly fast      Terrorcore
(UK) Garage   130 - 145   Grungey, underground   Bass-centric, MC/rapping   So Solid Crew
Happy hardcore   180 - 200   VERY uplifting      High pitched vocals, piano   Bang!, DJ Brisk
Hardcore   170 - 200   Hypnotic, uplifting   Overpowering keyboards      Scott Brown, DJ Hixxy
Hardhouse   140 - 150   Hypnotic      Repetitive, trance-inducing   Lisa Lashes, Yomanda
Hi-NRG      145 - 160   Hypnotic, uplifting   Instantly uplifting, powerful   Naoki, DJ Ham
IDM      120 - 180   Can be anything      Very creative, experimental   Aphex Twin, Squarepusher
House      125 - 140   Funky, mellow      Laidback, very vocal      LMC, most 1990s 'dance'
Techno      100 - 120   Hypnotic      Very minimal. Beat and synth   Kraftwerk, Fuzkitz
Trance      130 - 145   Danceable, uplifting   Laidback, simple female vocals   Paul van Dyk, Robert Miles

I would REALLY recommend getting on Kazaa, eMule or some other filesharing program and downloading a couple of random tracks by each of the above example artists. This will give you a much better perspective and idea of the unique 'sounds' of each genre, as its not easy to describe music in words. By the way, if the table above doesn't show properly, copy and paste it into Notepad and make it full screen :)

Let me know if you need any more help, either with music questions or production; I'll be happy to help. I'll also put this as a post on my message board on my own website which'll launch around next week, so you can refer to it anytime there.

Best regards,

Damien
http://www.digital-slave.com