Dear reader,

Welcome to my blog about two of the genres that took the world by storm!

Music is mostly organised sound, where musicians tell their stories and share feelings. For instance, you often hear people say “I got the Blues”- What exactly is that? Well, that dates back to 1870s with melancholic music of black American folk origins. This music is clearly all about struggle and real life. So what has changed in music today? That’s one of the genres you will see me analyse. Another is Electronic Dance Music. Electronic Dance Music is often referred to as EDM. On of the earliest EDM styles was disco. It was heavily popular in the late 1970’s. Disco music aimed to make crowds of people dance on the dance floor. It uses drum machines and electronic instruments to create synthesised rhythms.

I will begin by dissecting the Blues. There is a lot of history behind this genre which influenced other genres including EDM. Blues is all about difficult lives, stories of Black slaves, betrayal, fight for freedom. The earliest spirituals are not recorded, due to the lack of recording technology and the Civil War.The blues emerged from the oppressed, economically disadvantaged African-American communities in the rural southern states of America in the years following the American Civil War (1861–1865).However, after the war, recordings became available. For example, the first album made in 1920, ‘crazy blues’. Musical Features of Blues. Classic blues instruments inclued the guitar, harmonica, drums, bass guitar, piano, trombone, trumpet and saxophone. Historian  Sylviane Diouf and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Cubick sees the music of Islam as an influence on blues music. When singing blues, blues singers are expressing feelings rather than telling stories, the emotion expressed is usually one of sadness or deep hurt.

What influences dose the blues have on the music of today? Blues paved the way for other music genres like rock n roll, jazz, rhythm & blues/r&b, gospel and country. The blues and jazz have a lot in common, for example their origins are from the Africa-American. From the point of view of musical structure, jazz as we know it would not be in existence if it wasn’t for blues. Because of blues, the structure of jazz music wouldn’t make jazz as big as it is. The influence of blues on rhythm and blues. again the origin of both music is from the African-American community. [R & B] rhythm and blues is a term used to describe the blues-influenced form of music which has been mostly performed in the late 1930s by African-American.

EDM. what is EDM? Electronic dance music, also known as EDM is another type of music that was influenced by the blues. EDM is the music you hear when you enter the atmosphere of a nightclub/party. EDM is used in music such as dancehall and K-pop/Korean pop, some of the songs the current queen of the dancehall Spice sang explore EDM and some K-pop bands like BTS and Blackpink do the same. Describing a set of percussive [relating to or produced by percussion] music genres that largely stem from the production methods of disco music, techno music, house music and trance music. EDM has been around since the 1970s. EDM we hear today is completely different than the EDM that was played in the 1970s and after that. The influence of the gay rights and women’s rights movements on popular American culture giving disco a rise.

EDM artist that changed the way we listen to music

What EDM Technology is there?

You could say it all began with ‘I Remember Yesterday’, Casablanca, in 1977. It became a dancefloor hit and home to one of the finest singles of all time, ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer. But even beyond the hits, Summer’s fifth album shows how revolutionary her Disco hit was with the collaboration of legendary Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Moroder described Summer’s work with him on the song as “really the start of electronic dance” music. Instead of the typical orchestration found in disco music, the track “I Feel Love” was imbued with electronic sounds, using a Moog Modular 3P synthesizer. It was recorded on a 16 track tape recorder, and with tracks featuring a sequencer. The Moog synthesizer was used to replicate other sonorities. For instance, to create the hi-hat sound, the team took white noise generated by the Moog and processed it with an envelope. As the Moog could not create a satisfactory kick drum sound, the kick was played on a drum kit by session musician. Aside from Summer’s vocals, the kick drum is the only element of the song not played by a machine. Unusually for a disco track of the era, Moroder composed the backing track and bassline before the melody. Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte’s transformative production of this disco-style song, recorded with an entirely synthesized backing track, using the Moog, influenced other artists in the disco (The first of the EDM genres) and also aided in the development of New Wave, Synth Popand later Techno.

The 90s was also the first decade in which electronic music composition became something anyone could do. The ownership of PCs meant new DAW (Digital Audio workstations) were becoming popular, with software like Cubase, Fruity Loops and Ableton being released to consumers.

EDM today

From Taylor Swift to Skrillex,today’s popular pop artists have implemented aspects of dubstep, house, and trance into their singles. Due to the digital technology, the internet, the rise of electronic music can be attributed to online streaming, and popularity of social websites like YouTube and SoundCloud.

A new person listening to EDM will notice that a lot of EDM tracks use song structures that differ slightly from what we are used to hearing on a day to day baisis . As a matter of face, in the last few years, we have seen American pop music taking influence from the EDM song structure as dance music become more popular Songs like “Scared To Be Lonely” by Martin Garrix and “Lean On” by Major Lazer” are two of the best examples of song that do this.

While the verse-chorus song structure of American pop music has remained above all other genres of music throughout the last several decades, things have changed. EDM switched it up. This is because a lot of electronic dance music doesn’t feature vocals and wouldn’t work within the pop structure.Most EDM tracks can be broken down into four main structural elements.
By understanding how these four elements come together to form an EDM song, you’ll be able to figure out where your loop will fit into your overall song structure.

If you know your loop is going to be the drop, then you’ll be able to start connecting the dots of how to expand on your first idea with additional sections like the intro or the build up.

Let’s briefly go over each element.

The intro of a song is somewhat self-explanatory. It’s common for the beginning of a track to feature a stripped down beat to set the pace, making it easier for DJ’s to transition them into their sets.

Link Blues to ED

Other than the fact the blues influence edm, there is no link between both blues and EDM. EDM=electronic instrumentation, dance, fast bpm, no lyrical or limited lyrical content, it is more commercialised and mainstream than Blues. Blues on the other hand is all about melancholic moods, minor key, lyrics about pain and suffering and injustice, fighting for freedom. There really is little in common, but that’s what makes this combination great! This Summer in Wembley both genres will feature acts that are unique.

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