Mixing a DJ Set (Intermediate)

Author(s):  
Mark E. Perry

This chapter describes an activity that takes place over a semester, where students learn to mix a DJ set of electronic dance music (EDM). No previous musical experience is necessary, only the ability to recognize the beat in dance music. DJs utilize multiple sound sources in conjunction with a mixer to create continuous dance music. Students create a DJ set by mixing previously recorded music, which is not simply playback. By adjusting track selection in the course of performance, aspiring DJs learn how to make musical decisions and manipulate pre-recorded sound to construct continuous dance music, crafting a musical set.

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-232
Author(s):  
Eirik Sørbø

The massive invasion of electronic dance music in the popular music scene in combination with accessible and affordable technology has created a large group of young musicians having acquired their skills and experience via online resources, often in solitude. This, in turn, creates challenges for the teachers regarding what the expected knowledge base is for the students entering the programs, how to maintain a balanced program, and how to relate to ever-evolving technologies, just to mention a few. In an educational system such as the Norwegian system, based on learning objectives and effectivity, some aspects of the broader educational purpose tend to get downsized. Based on the framework of Biesta’s educational purposes, this article proposes that educators in higher electronic music education emphasize subjectification in addition to qualification and socialization, and the objective of this article is to address questions pertinent to how teachers and curriculum-makers in popular electronic music might create balanced programs for their students. It is argued that subjectification might be approached through the emphasis on the students’ unique artistic expression, and that this opportunity is distinct in art education in general and in electronic music education in particular. Further, it is argued that electronic music students might benefit from having a conscious relationship to the technologies they are immersed in, in order to see alternative ways of making (popular) electronic music.


Author(s):  
Tammy L. Anderson ◽  
Philip R. Kavanaugh ◽  
Ronet Bachman ◽  
Lana D. Harrison

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Barna

Contemporary trends in popular music incorporate timbres, formal structures, and production techniques borrowed from Electronic Dance Music (EDM). The musical surface demonstrates this clearly to the listener; less obvious are the modifications made to formal prototypes used in rock and popular music. This article explains a new formal section common to collaborative Pop/EDM songs called the Dance Chorus. Following the verse and chorus, a Dance Chorus is an intensified version of the chorus that retains the same harmony and contains the hook of the song, which increases memorability for the audience. As the name implies, the Dance Chorus also incorporates and acknowledges the embodiment performed in this section.


Author(s):  
David Temperley

This chapter zooms out to examine the broader historical and stylistic context of rock. The roots of rock—especially in common-practice music, the blues, and Tin Pan Alley / jazz—have been widely discussed, but this chapter attempts to identify more systematically the features that rock shares with these previous styles, as well as its unique features. A historical survey of rock itself and its various subgenres finds that it underwent major changes in the early 1960s but remained rather stable over the next three decades, and in some respects rather homogenous. The chapter then considers some other genres with which rock has interacted and sometimes fused: folk, Latin pop, jazz, electronic dance music, rap, and country. Finally, it considers the development of rock since 2000, finding some changes in the style but also many continuities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 205920432097421
Author(s):  
Agata Zelechowska ◽  
Victor E. Gonzalez Sanchez ◽  
Bruno Laeng ◽  
Jonna K. Vuoskoski ◽  
Alexander Refsum Jensenius

Moving to music is a universal human phenomenon, and previous studies have shown that people move to music even when they try to stand still. However, are there individual differences when it comes to how much people spontaneously respond to music with body movement? This article reports on a motion capture study in which 34 participants were asked to stand in a neutral position while listening to short excerpts of rhythmic stimuli and electronic dance music. We explore whether personality and empathy measures, as well as different aspects of music-related behaviour and preferences, can predict the amount of spontaneous movement of the participants. Individual differences were measured using a set of questionnaires: Big Five Inventory, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire. Liking ratings for the stimuli were also collected. The regression analyses show that Empathic Concern is a significant predictor of the observed spontaneous movement. We also found a relationship between empathy and the participants’ self-reported tendency to move to music.


This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-129
Author(s):  
Clinton McCallum

This article investigates melodic figures and harmonic sequences that miraculously only step up to illuminate an aesthetic lineage that connects gospel to electronic dance music. It argues that the synth-risers and ever-opening filters of contemporary euphoric rave music like happy-hardcore and uplifting-trance find precedence in compositional devices that made their way into funk/soul and disco/garage from Black gospel music, and that these gospel inventions were derived from the Afro-diasporic ring-shout. Cognitive linguistic and psychoacoustic theories premise an analytical framework for musical representations of endless ascent. Through close readings of representative recordings—a 1927 Pentecostal sermon by Reverend Sister Mary Nelson, James Cleveland’s “Peace Be Still,” Chic’s “Le Freak,” Trussel’s “Love Injection,” and DJ Hixxy’s remix of Paradise's “I See the Light”—the article examines various historical intersections with parlour music, European art music, and modal jazz, and suggests that musical ascent has a non-causal but, nevertheless, objective relationship with a type of spiritual transcendence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hillegonda C. Rietveld ◽  
Alexei Monroe

Gabber is a hardcore electronic dance music genre, typified by extreme speed and overdrive, which developed in the Netherlands, with Rotterdam as its epicentre, during the early 1990s, when house music-inspired dance events dominated. The use of distorted noise and references to popular body horror, such as Hellraiser, dominated its scene, and soon gabber was commented on as ‘the metal of house music’, a statement that this article aims to investigate. Applying a genealogical discographic approach, the research found that the electronic noise music aesthetic of industrial music was crucial for the formation of the sound of gabber. The hardcore electronic dance music that developed from this is at once ironically nihilistic, a contrary critique, and a populist safety valve. The digital machine noise of hardcore seems to offer an immersive means to process the experience of (emasculating) fluidity within post-human accelerated technoculture, itself propelled by rapid digital capital and information technologies.


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