Why do people loathe my music taste so much? Am I an alien?

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Hah, I've found a great example of perception differences in me and other people what concerns music:

When normal people hear the term Hardcore Techno this is what they think about:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV64SjAJPMY[/youtube]

But when I hear Hardcore Techno I think of this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEflndCvnB8[/youtube]

What's the difference between this and the first one to most people = there is none. But to me the difference is so huge it's almost unbearable. I wish I have the mental energy and concentration to explain it further, but it's hard transferring my thoughts into text. It's sort of like how the first one sounds like fake hardcore to me while the second one is what I consider the real equivalent. This comes from endless exploration and obsession with these styles, I guess that's my aspie side, the fixation on details lol.

I can definitely tell the difference as well. The first one is what I'd consider hardstyle/jumpstyle, and the second one is what I'd consider harsh electronics. Big difference.

And the problem is, they're both labeled Hardcore Techno. The first one does sound like hardstyle jumpstyle but due to the more distorted kick it passes off as hardcore. The second one is hardcore techno too, but is on the deeper and darker side of the spectrum and borrows influences from industrial, noise and dark ambient I think. But I like your reply on this, gives me stuff to think about.

Southern US where they eat almost no fiber, haha.

So I guess that's where the term "stone crappers" comes from.

lol, I guess so

I tend to listen to the specific synth sounds and effects used to try to categorize electronic music like that. Harsh electronics seems to use mostly saw wave synths with a lot of waveshaping and FM synthesis. A prime example being Arm of Justice, by SAM. Not that rhythmic structure, riffs, melodies and keys don't play into my genre definitions, as well, though.

I guess if we could categorize our music by the sounds rather than the tempo and rhythm it would be a lot easier for us to divide the music. Like labeling all dark dnb, dark psytrance and dark dubstep as industrial, since 99% of the sounds used in those genre comes from the industrial genre. This will make it all more organized IMO.

That's the kind of stuff my friendcrush listens to. Other people probably just think you're hipster, but I wouldn't worry about it.

So you're saying that people who look like this:


would listen to this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Qmi3aWhRY[/youtube]

?

Last edited by Uprising on 06 Apr 2012, 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Most people don't have a clue how certain sounds are created, particularly for electronics-based music. Since I started making my own music a number of years ago, I've become familiar with sound design, and can identify many of the effects used in electronic music just by listening to a track. Unfortunately, just describing them to someone would require a background in physics and mathematics; you have to know what sound qualities you're listening for to be able to identify them. Most people don't have that knowledge, except maybe in passing.

Neither do I actually and I am a bedroom 'producer' with the necessary gear that comes along with it. But yeah I do know saw wave, pulse wave, sine wave, triangle wave and all that stuff that comes with it like filters, equalizers, chorus, flanger, phaser, distortion, overdrive, saturation, reverb, delay, bitcrush, compression, time-stretching, pitchshifting etc...

I just listen to whatever I want on headphones. I like avant-garde rock that's a bit on the dark/depressing side. Godspeed You Black Emperor, Slint, Mogwai, and a few others. I also like some electronic music, mainly drum and bass, IDM/breakcore, and dark ambient, all sort of harsh/dissonant styles.

Holy crap dude, I f****n love me some techno! All i listen to. Mostly vocal trance (I LOVE YOU JUSTINE SUISSA) and Gabber/happyhardcore. I can get into industrial too. Love Covenant, Bring the Light on their album Modern Ruin is one of the better songs I've heard in a while.

Good point!

My background is more in "academic" electronic music. I had a great composition teacher. But the thing that was unfortunately lacking was that my prof did not understand modern (digital) synths quite enough to explain sound design. His idea of "sound design" was push some buttons, twiddle some knobs, and see what they do. He emphasized just using synth presets. I figured out how to do some cool things with noise, non-pitched percussion sounds, mod routing, and that kind of thing. But it did not teach me how to really get control over the sounds I made. It was hit and miss for years. Several years after graduating, I took an online course in sound design, and that made all the difference. My current obsession is my Oberheim Matrix 1000, which offers absolutely no programming at all from the front panel, so I'm using the jSynthLib editor. I'm used to softsynths like ES2 and Thor, so having all those flexible mod routings on a cheap DCO synth is really nice, and there are a lot more sounds I can make than I can on my Roland alpha Juno 1.

I suck at math AND physics, btw, but I can describe the differences in the most commonly used subtractive waveforms: Saw is "buzzy," square is hollow sounding like a nylon-string guitar or a clarinet, and triangle somewhat resembles a flute sound. A pulse wave with a 10% duty cycle is very "thin" sounding with very little low-end, while other pulses around, say 20% to 40% are very nasally, like double-reeds or clavis. I also have an adequate understanding of additive and FM, though I don't understand linear FM on analog synths. The problem is that the resulting sidebands in linear FM push the perceived fundamental frequency higher or lower dependent on the amount of FM used. That frequency shift causes the output frequency to be highly unstable across they keyboard, so linear FM on analog synths is mostly useless. On digital synths, this problem is resolved by causing the modulator to vary the PHASE of the carrier, leaving the fundamental pitch-stable.

All you have to do in layman's terms to describe sound design is explain what the different waveforms are and what they sound like, that they are very rough-sounding, bright sounds, and you use something called a "filter" to sort of round them off. Additive might be harder to explain, as would FM. I'd explain FM this way: You have a modulator and a carrier, just like with FM radio. They form sidebands according the sum and differences of the FM components, resulting in a rich spectral output, which yields waveforms much like analog waveforms. Classic FM synths don't have filters, but you can simulate a filtering effect by varying the mod index by different modulation sources. A high mod index will result in a bright sound and even distortion, while a low mod index brings you in the neighborhood of a pure sine wave corresponding to the harmonic coefficient of your carrier wave.