Other influences

[PCAhype]

What other genres/artists outside of electronica inspire you?? I originally became interested in electronic music because there was a vibe that hip hop was just not tapping into. And while the dance and techno faction of electronic music kind of loses me, I always wanted to tap into the energy and funkiness of Daft Punk and the vibe of groups like Air, Imogen Heap, Massive Attack and Zero 7. And to bring that to the simpicilty and force of hip hop.

So I wanna know... what other genres/artists are influencing you now. I want to know what aspects of other genres you want to tap into. I want to know where we are all going to take electronic music from here.

Leave your thoughts, please

[blue hell]

Great entry question.

For me it could be anything making sound, like birds, or whatever music that makes me want to try something, not really specific genres but structures or sound qualities mostly.

[elektro80]

Yet another

A great question.

As for a possible answer.. why not spend some time in the composition subforum and check out the older threads? Not that I really think you will find the answer you want in there, but you might place/ relocate your question within bigger context if you do.

[Jyoti]

I make synthpop but I mostly listen to alt rock / indie, hip hop and a lot of pre-rock'n'roll music (particularly 1930s' pop).

In songwriting terms, I guess it'd be people like Michael Nesmith, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, Phil Ochs, Tim Hardin and other non-electro types.

I'm working on some particularly overblown proggy synthiness now which is influenced mostly by reading people like Greg Egan, Justina Robson, Tony Ballantyne and other SF people.

So, a lot of non-electronic influences there!

[Alexander]

I would enjoy it if I could take my electronic music into other directions.. what a great topic. Not only a great thing to answer, but thinking about this for the past 15 minutes is like a second wind.

Here's a thing that came to my mind, substance.
I always experienced electronic music in an objective and sonic way, using my ears and emotion to feel the music out, always not trying to analyze it for technical details and never really looking for a message or meaning. It is a more abstract and open way of listening for me than other means of music.

Electronic music is almost just sound to me. Punkrock was never music to me, but an expression.

It never mattered if the compositions were perfect, it doesn't matter if the song structure is original. The riffs could be simple variations on songs done before and it would be good.

These things concern me a lot while composing electronic music and it's really the opposite way of thinking for me.

I experience punkrock in a total different way. I go to shows, I can feel bored, angry or anxious and map these emotions to songs.

I would love to make electronic music that is very direct, simple, with a lot of power mixed with a critical or raw emotional message. I would like to know how it feels to sweat and be angry, or be young, repetitive and ignorant within my electronic music. The worlds feel so alike to me, but never seemed to meet. They are separate. Why mix one with the other?

The strange part is that I can have all sorts of inspiration and emotions with all sorts of music.

But with a lot of electronic music it sometimes feels so endless in it's possibilities and numerous great examples out there that I wish we only had a few classics and that a crappy recording in a garage twenty five years ago would still send shivers down my spine.

There is a similar magic to my love for punkrock and electronic music and maybe it is just perfect the way it is. With one foot in both worlds!

Music in whatever form is to me a way of letting something go or having something to say, however strange, unique, stupid or brilliant that might be.

Rock on.

[Inventor]

I want to leverage my engineering background to create new electronic music. I listen to rock from 1950's to present, but mostly I want to do new stuff.

A friend told me in college (1980's) that there was a concern in the music world that it had all been done before. Pretty much anything you did could be named and categorized into some shoe box and put on a shelf where it belonged.

I believed this for the most part, but then when I got into this electro-music.com forum and specifically the ChucK programming language, I did a thingamajig that people told me was "new"! Me, a nobody, doing something with at least a hint of novelty in the music world? This inspired me, be it really true or not, and now I'm doing some performance art work with human interface devices that is certainly new to those with whom I discuss it.

So basically I want to do "new" things with electronic music that lean toward the rock-and-roll flavor. Plus whatever else rolls across my desk. Oh - and have a great fun time doing it as well! Welcome and Rock On!

[Veil]

Nice thread : )
The emergence of new genres is fascinating to me, just when you think it's all been done, something shiny pops out of the detritus and all of sudden, hey, a new music is here, and here as if it's always been.

Who would've imagined dubstep growing out of d&b / garage / dub? I'm very interested (and active) in seeing where this genre will go and what can be done with it (bringing in elements of other genres for example). Very exciting to me.

[dewdrop_world]

Yes, interesting question indeed.

I don't want to think in terms of "electronica" -- while I owe a big debt to electronica for busting me out of some lazy habits of overintellectualizing my music, at the same time I'm not fond of the way electronica fractures into genres and subgenres, and within genres at the boundaries are such that there becomes a same-y quality after a while. Most of it is disposable and there are only a few who stand out with a unique point of view that nobody can imitate very well (e.g. Orbital at their best). "Emergence of new genres" may actually be a consequence of limitations of musical style -- as a genre's territory gets more focused (smaller), it runs out of room and has to move onto something else. (That isn't unique to club scenes, either -- one of my grad school buddies in composition complained about the pressure to stay ahead of the curve, so that composers can't afford to go more deeply into a chosen style and continue to refine.)

For me I feel like electronica is one influence among many -- I don't feel much of a need to take electronica anywhere (or rather, electronicas -- they will go in their own way quite well without me). I'm interested most in crossing traditions, making music with elements of my classical training and elements of various kinds of club music, in a way that invites people with many different backgrounds to listen with fresh ears and chuck out preconceptions about what "classical" music is supposed to be (or club music). There are a lot of traps along the way -- too much "fracturing" in a trendy cynical oh-so-chic postmodern way ( ), adopting non-classical influences as a posture (i.e. "slumming"), self-indulgence, over-abstraction -- I've heard a lot of music that falls into the traps and I'm looking for ways out.

Innovation or novelty are secondary to bringing people together in a communal experience.

I'm with Inventor that realtime music programming languages offer really fertile ground. DJ music takes one step away from the idea of a recording as a finished product, and another step away by incorporating Ableton and other live audio software into DJ sets. I kind of fell into algorithmic composition because I wanted to lose the idea of a recording altogether as the main objective. Performance is the objective and performances should be different, even of the same piece, and the recording exists as a document/artefact/side-effect of a performance but it isn't "the piece."

James

[Inventor]

You know, I didn't quite realize that I was enabling performers to improvise their music, but I guess I am. The whole guitar motion detection thing is really geared toward freeing up performer movements to affect the music in a vaguely Theremin-like style. Also I recently started working on guitar games - games that are driven by guitar playing. My first attempt is based on learning random notes/chords or whole songs so it's more repetitive but for the next one I think I'll do it a lot more free-form. The idea is that the player plays a song in response to the gaming action and then both the game rules and the player's style affect the song that gets performed. Fun stuff.

[iPassenger]

I must admit I would say i am mainly influenced by other electronic artists but rarely those from my own field of production. I prinicipally make my own variation on techno but i seek inspiration mainly from the other branches of electronic music, particularly those of drum n bass and more free form electronica like FSOL etc.

[x_x]

I get inspired by many things but mostly ideas, experiences and dreams I have.

For example, I made a piece called "Asynchronous Frustration" after an exam that came with an asynchronous circuit that I had to analyze and I felt frustrated because I had so little time to solve it and I had a nosebleed. xD

I also made this piece called "sonic cat" because I had this wacky dream about a multi-colored cat that came out of the speakers.

Musically speaking, right now I mostly listen to classical music, avant-garde, experimental rock.

[Oskar]

A belated welcome! Nice question; Since I mostly play acoustic guitar and sing in a fairly rootsy stylee, let me throw a spanner in the works by listing some of my electronic influences:
Weather Report, Zawinul Syndicate (obviously), Prince, Run DMC, Parliament/Funkadelic, Karl Wallinger, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Arne Nordheim, Manfred Mann, The Prodigy, Gil Scott Heron, Wally Badarou, Sly & Robbie.

[Inventor]