Genre’s of music. It’s all incredibly hard to keep track of at first. And learning which tune is what exact form of whatever music is something that comes with time, there is no “red flag” to stand up and tell you what it is.
Now I’ll completely admit that I’m not the best at this. It’s taken me awhile, and years of listening, to understand the complexities of electronic music. And there are still some styles which I really can’t name, just because I’m fairly particular when it comes to what I enjoy and immerse myself in.
As I’ve said before, I generally only listen to a few styles; Dubstep, Drum and Bass, Breaks, and Electro House. I appreciate the other styles, but those are the ones that I really like to groove out to. Throw some minimal or trance at me, and I’d probably be at a loss for words about the particulars of it.
There’s a link on the right side of this blog to Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music. It’s worth taking a look at if you haven’t seen it before. It is a bit dated at the moment, I remember looking through it in High School right around the turn of the century. But it has a great history of a lot of different genre’s.
The one thing that is constantly bothering me lately, is people are coming up with all sorts of new genre’s to label things with. House music has a million different genre’s, and things are honestly bridging across genre as well. I mean, deep house is different than electro house, but sometimes fidget house has some electro vibe to it. It gets difficult.
And with Dubstep, it’s the opposite in a way. Everything with that slow drum line and wubbly bass, is labeled dubstep. There’s the laid back chill stuff, and then the all out filthy shit your pants disgusting stuff. And there’s no easy way to tell a difference between the two label wise.
There’s no real easy solution to being able to name the genre of a tune by ear except by listening to a lot of different styles of music. As time goes on, and new styles immerge (ie Dubstep is a recent addition), it gets even more difficult. But in the end, it’s all worth the time to try and figure it out.