The Technodrome Forums - The Definitive Interactive Guide to Electronic Music

Allow me again to reiterate DH just how much you kick ass :D :D Thanks for finding this.

Well, I've always been a fan of VGM and synthpop (referring to the old FM synthasizers such as the DX-7, KX-76 and such from the 1980's for their classic metallic sound. There was just something warm, hard, and welcoming about that sound (think "Sweet Dreams - Eurythmics, Africa - Toto, All Through the Night - Cyndi Lauper, ect). It reminds a lot of gamers of the Sega Genesis' sound, but I should say that it is really the other way around. The Genesis sound reminds people a lot about 80's pop because it used a stripped down FM synth chip to make music, and I mean really stripped down, because it was quite limited compared to the real thing.

Anyway, I've always loved that sound as it has a purely artificial vibe to it. There isn't really anything else like it. The problem is that most people seem to see that era as a focal point of ridicule (aka "Let's laugh at the Big Hair") and jokes. As that guy who made the website says,

"Today, electronic musicians, especially the bad ones, seem to be mostly lazy, uncreative morons who don't know a damn thing about music because they let the sequencer and preset banks do all the work. It's no wonder that the music 20 years ago still sounds way more interesting than it does today."

I fully agree with that statement. People today seem to believe that all there is to electronic music is just to take a current hit, slap a techno beat onto it and head bang in a club. There is so much more, but most people are too lazy to dig deeper past the damned presets on their synth sets (hardware or software) and explorer what they are capable of. In the old days, this was more of an issue because the old synths forced you to explorer. It's so easy now, that most don't bother, Let me explain...

In the 70's there were synthsizers, but they were big and clumbersome. They were mostly known for their soft "string like" electronic sound. Those are now called analouge synths because the method of control use to manipulate their sound was primarially mechanical, hence analog. There were only so many sounds you could get out of them unless you really digged into it hardcore, and it was a pain to remember how to get a sound back later because you had to log what position all the knobs and levers were in (probobly on paper), and most people didn't bother to dig that deep. Not to say that the analouge synths were not capable, because now that the things have gone software in modern times, people are creating all kinds of new sounds with them since they can save their work, but back then they were a nightmare to operate.

Now, in 1983 Yamaha created the DX-7. That little sucker changed everything. It was just as far reached as the old synths, but it was based on a new form of sound manipulation called FM synthesis. The DX-7 was what you can thank for that 80's specific metallic sound (think "Micheal Jackson's Bad", as every song used it heavily). The deal was, the thing only came with 32 preset sounds, and that was it. In the professional music world, you couldn't get away with everyone using the same sound (even if nowadays everybody seems to thing that all you need is a bad singer, two guitars and a drummer). As such, everybody started programming the thing. Thanks to the lack of knobs, levers, and mechanical parts, it was cheaper to manufacture and sell, so anybody could afford it, yet it was still top of the line. You see, this was the first digitally controlled synth, meaning, you had a little LCD to program values and such into it, and there was a memory cartridge that saved any combiniations you made (or you could use floppys). Any saved sound combination you made was called a "patch". From 1983-1991, there were over 90,000 different variations of the FM sound from everybody under the sun. The little thing was a b*tch to program though, so a small industry of programmers actually sprang up to do the dirty work for the artists to find the sound they wanted. DOS programs were written to simplify the process and that is why that sound is associated with the 80's. It was simply everywhere, and everyone wanted to toy around with it either for leads, background, support sounds (eg: Queen's "Radio GaGa"), bass.....man, the bass on that thing was legendary.

Past 1992, grunge took over and synthpop kinda died a quick painful death and the whole world started to make fun of the whole era by taking every cheap pot shot they could get to sway people so the record industry could promote new things. It's been like that since.

Now see, I love all kinds of music, but I'll always have a little place in my heart for the classic synthpop of the 80's. I don't give a damn about the big hair and fashion of the 80's (blame Cyndi Lauper and Madonna for that, but hey, it was more colorful than it is now *shrugs*). All I care about is the originality of the sound itself. You can still do any of that stuff now on modern synth sets. Problem is, since it wen't software based, everything is so easy that nobody bothers to explorer. Everything you could do then, you can do now, but nobody bothers to dig aroung and make their own dscoveries. People aren't motivated to search for unique sounds now like they were then. That is the problem. I just wanted to explain how we got there.

Anyway, electronic music will always rule, but that in no way means I'm exclusive to it. I like things from just about every genre you can think of. I just like to talk about Electronic music to people because I don't think it will ever be what it used to be.