I thought these were some fairly perceptive comments. This made me think, perhaps some of the divide we see in techno heads today, is occurring because many people have grown tired of the possibilities of non-melodic rhythm and texture based techno? It seems most people on this list now prefer what could be termed melodic techno of one kind or another. Of course this split doesn't hold true 100%, but I think in general one can see a split between the more melodic, and often slower techno, and techno which emphasizes rhythm and texture and allows only minimal amounts of melody.
The interesting thing about this, I think you are clearly going to have to have quite different aesthetic criteria to judge a track without melodic content as "good", as opposed to a track that does have some kind of melody. I am curious to hear what other people on this list think about this. Another thing I wonder, are tracks with melodies generally percieved as more "soulful" to the people on this list then tracks that have no melody at all? .dave -----Original Message----- From: Ploegmakers, Joost [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 1:30 PM To: 313@hyperreal.org Subject: RE: (313) The techno/trance divide - reprise? In my view, the main characteristic difference between trance and techno has always been: melody. In techno generally the only real melody (if you follow the pure definition of what a melody is) you are going to find is in the bassline (if even). For the rest the music is composed of layer on top of layer of different rhythms of sounds at one or two pitches. (ok, ok, basically a rhythm of two tones is already a melody, but you will understand what I'm getting at) In a lot of cases these layers create a melody of it's own, but that's not what I mean with a "real" melody. Trance (and to a lesser extend house!) doesn't have that. The music is much more traditional to the extend that there is mostly a clear melody in the mid range. That's also why techno was so different from other western music, when it originated. The only music where you find a similar way of composing, is ethnic music.
