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About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (May 31, 2017)
New music craze echoes the past ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC IS BECOMING THE NEW CLASSICAL STORY AND PHOTOS BY SAM WESTON Sum m er concerts are alm ost upon us and as Portland supplies some o f the best live music around, th ere’ s one genre I ’ m excited to experience once again. Electronic Dance Music, or EDM, is the newest^ craze of the current generation o f th is generation know n for student debt and A D H D ..> | If you’re a music fan of any kind, you will have run into this genre at some point on the radio or chatted to that one guy a t the party who calls him self a “ Basshead.” So why is this rising genre so popular? Why would someone go see a person basically push play and dance around fo ran hour?- 1 W ell, w hy not ask people w ho go see classical composers? After all, both structure their performances in a similar manner. I For example, initially, Beethoven and Skrillex do not appear similar. However, both are musicians who do not perform the music them selves, but compose music to be channeled by another medium. As Beethoven guides a violinist to play his creation for him , Skrillex guides his turntables to channel his beats. Both types of music rely on multiple instruments and m usicians to produce the music being played. If you forget the formality of classical compared to today’s EDM scene, EDM is really just today’ s classical symphonic music. 8 Clackamas Print MAY 31,2017 theclackamasprint.com EDM, dubstep, trap, house, drum and bass, techno or so much electronic and techno heavy music being made g any number of other names is a craze that has gained that delves on the brink of being timeless musical hits. much popularity since the ’90s but has its roots as early ODESZA, Flume, Tycho, Illenium, James Blake, Massive as the 1930s. Synths and turntables have been used Attack, Moby and Purity Ring are all artists that have for the creation o f electronic sounds for decades now. utilized this synth,electronic style and made music that W ith an increased use o f technology, their presence is not simply the rave/club style of music. has increased in our m usic. It is very hard today to find music that doesn’t include some form of synth or electronic sound. It was only a matter of time that we began to make music solely w ith com puters and it m akes sense as to why. Every sound, drum and beat being made was recordedand cleaned to mim ic classical sound. If you 1 listen to the end results of EDM music, you won’t find a better quality sound. I’m not saying this is a necessarily a good thing,-but to understand why this is so widely popular, you must look at music’ s obsession with perfection. Pretty much every major artist out there uses some form of voice cleaning/alteration or synth in their music to perfect the sound. This not only makes the music cleaner to listen to but it makes the process easier. In the docum entary “ Press Pause P lay,” m ultiple artists, including Moby, explain how today’ s music is so much easier to make compared to 10-20 years ago. Above: German techno artist Pantha Du Prince The software and tools available to everyone make it preforms at the Doug Fir Lounge on May 28 in insanely easy and affordable for anyone to produce a Portland. | potential billboard hit. However, just because it’s easy does not mean that all Below: Odeza preforms at the inuagral vertex festial £ electronic artists, and artists in general, are lazy. There is in Buana Vista, Colarado, on August 6 2016.
