electronic dance music
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An Article On Creativity In Electronic Music Production
My article “Popular Music Production in Laptop Studios: Creative Workflows as Problem-Solving Within Ableton Live” is available in Perspectives on Music Production: Producing Music (Routledge 2019). The article takes a problem-solving approach to creativity by exploring electronic music production techniques within Ableton Live, one of the most influential and widely used DAW (digital audio workstation) Continue reading
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On The Trickle-Down Of Electronic Dance Music Aesthetics V: Coldplay’s “A Sky Full Of Stars”
Though it has been fashionable to criticize the English band Coldplay for one reason or another–they’ve been too popular, their music is too sentimental, their singer Chris Martin overuses his falsetto voice–they do what they do well. Their music uses pop materials precisely, and for many listeners, Martin’s concise and catchy vocal melodies are worth Continue reading
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On Unconventional Measures: That “Selfie” Song
By conventional measures, “Selfie” by the DJ duo The Chainsmokers is a clichéd, threadbare, and annoying piece of music. But if you can endure it, it’s also a fascinating bit of meta-commentary on the rituals of nightlife and club culture circa 2014. The song enacts its stance through copious use of voice samples of a fictional Continue reading
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On Endless Vibrations: Locating Soca Music
Lots of people recently returned from Trinidad and Tobago Carnival thoroughly energized from the parties, dancing, and most of all, the powerfully loud and beat-driven soca music. If you’ve never hear this music up close, blasting from the slow-moving soundsystem trucks that crawl their way through the streets of Port Of Spain, it’s quite an Continue reading
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On Sinister And Dynamic Rhythmic Energy: Laurel Halo’s “Oneiroi”
“I guess I just wanted to record what I was doing live. Basically when I got into the studio to record those tracks I found myself playing around with the patterns more, playing around with the samples more, trying to find what was particularly gripping, or dynamic. I wanted the tracks to have this sinister Continue reading
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On Composing At 40,000 Feet: Afrojack And The Soaring Economics Of EDM
In a recent New Yorker article, Josh Eells describes the economics of the electronic dance music (EDM) scene in Las Vegas. Here, working at gambling resort clubs, marquee-name DJs (Armin van Buuren, Tiesto, David Guetta, Diplo, Deadmau5, Afrojack, and others) are paid mind-boggling sums to perform their sets for big spending and very drunk audiences. Increasingly, Continue reading
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