E is for electronica

 

Some people love it and some people hate it, but electronic music is here to stay.

Scrabble Word Finder

Scrabble Cheat

It can be argued that anything is electronic music as long as you have to ‘plug it in’, but generally, electronic music is defined by specific tools used and the sound they make. Some claim that electronica is the future of music as the tools have changed music and taken it to where it has never been before. The tools in question are synthesisers, samplers, computers and drum machines.
 
Electronica can be identified by the specific genre types that fell into place as it evolved and separated: new wave, techno, house, acid jazz/fusion, trance, drum and bass, jungle, industrial, garage, dance and so on.

How to define the genres can be an esoteric task and sometimes it is as abstract as calculating its ‘deepness’ (in the case of deep house). Elements that make up a genre can be the lyrics, tempo and the bass line.

Genres today

Drum and Bass/Jungle:

Drum and bass and jungle came as a direct offshoot from the rave scene of the 1980s and 90s. It happened when DJs and producers mixed in a deep bass line borrowed from ragga, reggae and ska over complicated and frenetic breakbeats.

House music:

The foundation of house music exists entirely on electronically generated sounds from samples, synth noises and drum machines. Most styles and samples are known to be derived from jazz, blues, new wave and disco. House music often involves a soulful vocal whether from a sample or by a ‘live’ singer.

Electronica can be identified by the specific genre types that fell into place as it evolved and separated

Techno:

Techno usually sounds like house music but is simpler and more mechanical. Usually, it’s a pure instrumental track and would only feature a vocal as a spoken word sample from films, music or radio. It is usually driven by a solid 4/ 4 beat (aka four to the floor) and rarely deviates from the beats on the count of 1, 2, 3, 4.

Trance:

Trance has a progressive travelling beat with elements of psychedelia. Trance’s beat is more freeform than techno, although it technically uses the same elements to create it.

New Wave:

New wave first became big in the 1980s. Mainly British, famous exponents are Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, Human League and Duran Duran. New wave embraced equal parts lyrical content to melody and defined pop songs of the 1980s.

What were once crazy ideas

Robert Moog

All genres of electronica have roots deep in experimental music. This experimentation included the making of the instruments – and their components - as well as the sounds themselves.

The development of electronic music relied heavily on inventions we now take for granted: electricity, transistors and the phonograph. In the 1920s, a landmark was achieved with the theremin. It was one of the only pieces of electronic equipment that was not designed to mimic ‘traditional’ sounds to make music.

The theremin was unique in that it worked without any touch. It produced sound when the player moved their hands around two antennas which produced a very spooky sound. The theremin was used in 1940s film noir soundtracks and then went onto being part of b-grade horror films of the 1950s. A composer, Miklós Rósza, used the theremin in the Alfred Hitchcock directed Spellbound, for which he won an Oscar for best film score.

Synthesisers were filed under strange and weird until Robert Moog came along. Before he delivered an electronic synthesiser that was affordable and accessible he had been busy (since the age of 14) producing theremins. By 1961, Moog started selling portable theremins and was soon flooded with offers. Despite studying physics at Cornell University, a career in portable synthesisers was inevitable.

In 1964, he presented his first analogue synth to the market, the Moog Synthesiser. This technology revolutionised the way electronic music was seen. This release officially heralded the birth of a new sound in music – electronica. 

Synthesisers, samplers and computers

Samplers were a logical progression from the invention of synthesisers. Samplers make and play ‘samples’ which are a recorded piece of sound that is played again in a piece of music, usually via a sampling machine (sampler). By the time samples were used in the 1980s, they were played from a synthesiser with a recording function. Now, samples come from samplers which are a piece of hardware onto itself, often used alongside a computer.

Computers too have revolutionised music in more ways than one and continue to be at the forefront of the technological advancements in music ever since. Since the 1990s, computers replaced tape machines as the nucleus of the recording studio.  Not only does the computer record at a higher level than any other device available today, but it is also used to generate and sequence the sounds from the synthesiser and sampler.

The last experimentalists? Nien!

This could not be a story about electronica unless it paid homage to the great influential experimentalists Kraftwerk. The four-piece from Düsseldorf, Germany, defined electronica, and despite not releasing any new material since the mid-1980s, their influence just becomes more potent.

Kraftwerk were the first to use the three elements of electronica: samples, a drum machine (of sorts) and a synthesiser. In the early 1970s and 1980s, they were performing what was to become the fundamentals of electronica. Indeed, one of their first singles, Klingklang, along with Sly and the Family Stone's Family Affair, was the first song to feature the first recorded drum machine in pop with both pieces appearing in 1971.

Since the very beginning of Kraftwerk, the equipment they worked with were Moog synthesisers (the smaller variety called ‘Mini Moog’, to be precise), Arp Odyssey synthesisers, the Hammond organ and a Farfisa organ. They also grabbed the drum beats from one of the organs. Kraftwerk found that they could play a bass drum, snare drum, cymbal and more through the instrument and found it more sophisticated, as they once said: “Our drummers don't sweat anymore”.

With a name translating as ‘power plant’, their musical style is as industrial sounding as their title suggests. But when we mean industrial-sounding, we mean it literally. Autobahn, the hit that made them world famous, featured samples from traffic. The band held a microphone outside a car and recorded all the traffic noises and then used these ‘real’ sounds as templates for their synthetic facsimiles of car sounds. With their other worldwide smash, Trans-Europe Express, they use the same sampling and synthesiser impressions with a train.

In the 1970s, this sampling technique was experimentalism at its finest, and their military precision in music making inspired genre after genre. In fact, the samplers became the samplees. A New York Bronx act, Afrika Bambaata, sampled the Kraftwerk songs Trans-Europe Express and Numbers and combined them to form a track called Planet Rock, and in doing so kick-started hip hop.

And in Detroit, more music makers like Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Carl Craig and Juan Atkins, became so influenced by the hypnotic and industrial rhythms of Kraftwerk that they in turn put together their own sounds, which became known as techno.

Meanwhile in Britain, in the late 1970s, the industrial movement started with bands like the Human League and Cabaret Voltaire building on the technological breakthroughs of Kraftwerk and taking it into pop and rock respectively.

So much can happen from mucking around

Today, the most important pieces of equipment in electronica are the sampler, the synthesiser and the computer.  And as electronica’s forefathers, such as Robert Moog and Kraftwerk prove, there aren’t any hard and fast rules and experimentation is king.
The sky’s the limit in forging a musical journey in electronica, as Mylo, Fat Boy Slim and Moby may attest.

Further reading:

Read more articles on Making Music in our A - Z library

The wonderful online world of Kraftwerk
Theremin
Moog Music
How to make elctronic music
Free Samples!

You’ve read it. Now review it.

Back to top

Back to top