Techno

[Iceblink]

There are a couple other new threads about music, and so I decided to make one for Techno.

So, did you know techno is not a catchall word for all genres of electronically made music, but is its own genre? In 1980 just outside of Detroit a couple guys who had a love of Kraftwerk formed a band called Cybotron. They would inspire several other local bands to form and by the mid to late 80s Detroit Techno and Chicago House was the music heard in underground clubs and after hours in Detroit. The 80's was also when I began my clubbing years as a young man and did this in Detroit, so if you've seen this 48 year old man posting a lot of different kinds of electronic music in music threads, this is where it come from. Techno often has a colder sound, but if it has elements of House in the song, it can have a little bit of a warmer sound. Incidentally, in the 80's Techno and House shared a lot and I thought about also making a House thread but the genre is one of a few that has become horribly corrupted by EDM and I just don't want to make a thread for a bunch of crap.

The wiki article about Techno:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno

One of the earliest songs:



One of the Kraftwerk songs that had a big influence on Techno and one that I heard often being played in clubs alongside Techno back in the day.

[CarGuy65]

Sooooo many different types of techno! It is currently my favorite kind of music. I tend to lean more to the compilations on I tunes. My favorites are any of the Adrian and Raz comps. I know, I am a little old to be listening to it but it sounds so good in my BMW with 2 12 inch subs pounding in the back of my head!!! Yes I am that guy who pulls up behind you and makes your rear view mirror vibrate!

[Iceblink]

There are a few, but probably not as many as you think. Trance has elements of techno, but is a different genre. House shares elements with techno, but is also a different genre. Electro house shares some things with techno, but techno and electro house are two different genres. Techno is a genre all on it's own. Also,there are often songs that blur the edges between some of the genres and can fall into more than one.

Here's some classic techno from the 90's.

[Dattiv]

So what exactly is the difference between house and techno? I thought house is a sub-genre of techno?

[Iceblink]

It's a little difficult to explain, but generally techno's rhythm sticks more to a sound that sounds as if it actually came from technology. House still sounds as if it was made from the technology that it was made from, but also uses technology to imitate things like horns and piano. You can hear a lot of disco and dance pop in many house songs. Neither is absolute. some techno does use sounds that imitate other instruments, like the piano in the early techno song Strings of Life by Derrick May. In the early days when House was emerging from Chicago and Techno from Detroit, there was a lot of travel between the two cities by partyers and musicians and they developed pretty much on the same time frame. The Chicago sound was more warm, happy pop and the Detroit sound was a little colder, more industrial and this is really oversimplifying it.

Maybe this can make it more clear if you listen to the sound. Here is the #2 song from current Beatport House chart:



Here is the #1 song from the Beatport Techno chart:



So House is not really a sub-genre of Techno, but both are sub-genres of electronic music. It gets even more confusing from here because there is also the sub-genre Tech House which is somewhere in between House and Techno and although I used the word "electronic," when you add an "a" to that you have a different sub-genre called Electronica. You can still find good House songs if you look hard enough, but most of it is awful like that House video I posted, not like it was in the old days.

[yousir]

These are all sub-genres of electronic.

House generally does use more live instruments, like piano or guitar or strings etc, or at least uses synths that, as [MENTION=20912]Iceblink[/MENTION] says, IMITATES live instruments. And has more of an organic feel.

Techno, that I do not know so much about, as [MENTION=20912]Iceblink[/MENTION] says, uses more synths that dont imitate live instruments.

Regardless of instruments, it is also more about the general "feel" of the "timbre" of the genres. Like I say about house - more organic. More groovy, funky, melodic. Sometimes more mellow.

Techno, more electronic/digital sounding, drum machines or samples of the kind of drum machines that were popular in the 80s and 90s (808 or 909 drums). Less focused emotion through chord and melody progression (unless I am wrong??)
More focused on electronic design and more rigid rhythms. Pulsing beats. Sometimes a darker sound, certainly less "bright" in mood. (Am I wrong????)

Trance, can feature real guitar or piano, but is again more focused on synths and electronic sounds that SOUND electronic. But more geared toward emotive chord and melody progression, sweeping strings/pads, rich atmospherics. Can have a more organic feel than techno, by making use of real world sound FX (eg birds, or waves crashing), but less so than house.

Buuuuut then a lot of the liines can be blurred.

[Iceblink]

This is where I am not at this weekend, unfortunately. The annual Movement Electronic Music Festival in Detroit.

http://movement.us/lineup