Rap music is undeniably one of the most popular genres in America today. It’s birthed new subgenres, such as mumble rap, rapmetal and rapcore; it’s infiltrated almost every genre at least once or twice (looking at you, disco, jazz, and reggaeton); it bridged the gap between spoken poetry and instrumentation. Rap is one-of-a-kind and, simultaneously, a jack of all trades.Rap’s a delivery style that includes rhyme, rhythm, and spoken language, usually delivered over a beat. It’s a part of the wider hip-hop culture, which includes the spoken word (the MC), the beats (the DJ), break-dancing, and graffiti art.Rap consists of content, flow, and delivery. Content refers to what’s being said; flow is how it rhymes and its rhythm; delivery is the tone and speed in which it’s spoken.
Rap producers use both digital synthesizers and analog keyboards when crafting the hip-hop sounds of today. Digital synthesizers allow the producer to imitate just about any kind of sound he likes. Analog keyboards provide a more “old school” flavor with an authentic, rather than emulated sound. The turntable is the guitar of hip-hop and is rap’s most recognizable instrument. Few things are more emblematic of rap music than a musician or “turntables” hunched over two “decks,” using his hands to manipulate the records. The turntables provide the opportunity to make very simple and basic samples from previously existing material. They also allow the turntablist to make sounds that no other instrument can make, called “scratching,” by moving the record forward and backward.
EDM consists of a collection of subgenres such as House, Drum n Bass, Dubstep, Trap, and Hardstyle. The genre had been dormant in the nightclub scene since the 1980s, however in recent years the demand for EDM has taken over commercial music by storm. In the early 20th century, composers began redefining the concept of instruments and organized sound, in turn redefining music, with modernism, futurism and post modernism, ultimately leading music into a new era. Delia Derbyshire was arguably the first electronic music producer and synthesist of her time. Her revolutionary “Doctor Who” theme and seminal album of 1969; “An electronic storm” are recognized by many. The bulk of her production material and influential sound for television and radio programs is still in the BBC Sound archives, but due to BBC copyright, she was never properly credited for her work.Moving onto the 70s and the birth of Disco, the first wave of club dance music was born. Also known as Euro dance (Euro trash), Disco saw the mix of Funk, Soul and smooth jazz-fusion with electronic aspects. There was now a demand and popularity that came with clubs employing DJs, as it had turned into a club must-have. Giorgio Moroder contributed the use of electronic sounds and constant percussive beats that initially started the repetitive rhythms we hear in electronic music today. Electronic artists such as Kraftwerk and Donna Summer incorporated early electro and house, using Roland TR-808s, TR-909 drum machines and the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer.
The term “electronic dance music” (EDM) was used in the United States as early as 1985, although the term “dance music” did not catch on as a blanket term . Writing in The Guardian, journalist Simon Reynolds noted that the American music industry’s adoption of the term EDM in the late 2000s was an attempt to re-brand US “rave culture” and differentiate it from the 1990s rave scene. In the UK, “dance music” or “dance” are more common terms for EDM.What is widely perceived to be “club music” has changed over time; it now includes different genres and may not always encompass EDM. Similarly, “electronic dance music” can mean different things to different people. Both “club music” and “EDM” seem vague, but the terms are sometimes used to refer to distinct and unrelated genres (club music is defined by what is popular, whereas EDM is distinguished by musical attributes). Until the late 1990s, when the larger US music industry created music charts for “dance” (Billboard magazine has maintained a “dance” chart since 1974 and it continues to this day). In July 1995, Nervous Records and Project X Magazine hosted the first awards ceremony, calling it the “Electronic Dance Music Awards”.
In the 1980s, electronic dance music was often played at illegal underground rave parties held in secret locations, for example, warehouses, abandoned aircraft hangars, fields and any other large, open areas. In the 1990s and 2000s, aspects of the underground rave culture of the 1980s and early 1990s began to evolve into legitimate, organized EDM concerts and festivals. Major festivals often feature a large number of acts representing various EDM genres spread across multiple stages. Festivals have placed a larger emphasis on visual spectacles as part of their overall experiences, including elaborate stage designs with underlying thematics, complex lighting systems, laser shows, and pyrotechnics. Rave fashion also evolved among attendees, which The Guardian described as progressing from the 1990s “kandi raver” to “[a] slick and sexified yet also kitschy-surreal image midway between Venice Beach and Cirque du Soleil, Willy Wonka and a gay pride parade”. These events differed from underground raves by their organized nature, often taking place at major venues, and measures to ensure the health and safety of attendees.MTV’s Rawley Bornstein described electronic music as “the new rock and roll”,as has Lollapalooza organizer Perry Ferrell.
Electronic dance music is generally composed and produced in a recording studio with specialized equipment such as samplers, synthesizers, effects units and MIDI controllers all set up to interact with one another using the MIDI protocol. In the genre’s early days, hardware electronic musical instruments were used and the focus in production was mainly on manipulating MIDI data as opposed to manipulating audio signals. Since the late 1990s the use of software has increased. A modern electronic music production studio generally consists of a computer running a digital audio workstation(DAW), with various plug-ins installed such as software synthesizers and effects units, which are controlled with a MIDI controller such as a MIDI keyboard. This setup is generally sufficient to complete entire productions, which are then ready for mastering.
Dance music has a long association with recreational drug use, particularly with a wide range of drugs that have been categorized under the name “club drugs”. Russell Smith noted that the association of drugs and music subcultures was by no means exclusive to electronic music, citing previous examples of music genres that were associated with certain drugs, such as psychedelic rock and LSD, disco music and cocaine, and punk music and heroin. Similarly, the 1980s grunge scene in Seattle was associated with heroin use.
By the early 1990s, a style of music developed within the rave scene that had an identity distinct from American house and techno. This music, much like hip-hop before it, combined sampled syncopated beats or break beats, other samples from a wide range of different musical genres and, occasionally, samples of music, dialogue and effects from films and television programmes. Relative to earlier styles of dance music such as house and techno, so called ‘rave music’ tended to emphasise bass sounds and use faster tempos, or beats per minute (BPM). This subgenre was known as “hardcore” rave, but from as early as 1991, some musical tracks made up of these high-tempo break beats, with heavy basslines and samples of older Jamaican music, were referred to as “jungle techno”, a genre influenced by Jack Smooth and Basement Records, and later just “jungle”, which became recognized as a separate musical genre popular at raves and on pirate radio in Britain. It is important to note when discussing the history of drum & bass that prior to jungle, rave music was getting faster and more experimental.
By 1994, jungle had begun to gain mainstream popularity and fans of the music (often referred to as junglists) became a more recognisable part of youth subculture. The genre further developed, incorporating and fusing elements from a wide range of existing musical genres, including the raggamuffin sound, dancehall, MC chants, dub basslines, and increasingly complex, heavily edited breakbeat percussion. Despite the affiliation with the ecstasy-fuelled rave scene, Jungle also inherited some associations with violence and criminal activity, both from the gang culture that had affected the UK’s hip-hop scene and as a consequence of jungle’s often aggressive or menacing sound and themes of violence (usually reflected in the choice of samples). However, this developed in tandem with the often positive reputation of the music as part of the wider rave scene and dance hall-based Jamaican music culture prevalent in London. By 1995, whether as a reaction to, or independently of this cultural schism, some jungle producers began to move away from the ragga-influenced style and create what would become collectively labelled, for convenience, as drum and bass.
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