Introduction As a little congratulations for getting through the course so far and taking the quizzes, I decided to include a little bonus lecture that contains some interesting material about the various differences between all the different sub-genres of dance music around at the moment. There is no test on this information, so you can read this purely for pleasure. The History of the Sub-Genre In the small amount of time that dance music has been around, it really is remarkable how quickly it is diversified and grown into all kinds of different sonic variety. Nowadays, it seems like a new genre is coming out every minute. Whole genres are being built up around one very popular idea or theme. Examples like Moombahton and Glitch Hop have only come about very recently. Now, there are so many genres that there is a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to just the listing of them. With that in mind, let’s have a look at some of the more popular ones, and try to define their different characteristics, before looking at just some of the more obscure and recent ones! House: House music really is the sound of “now”. Dance music has taken the world by storm recently over the past decade or so, and the sub-genre of house is really to thank for this massive explosion. Artists have turned the genre from its traditional deeper roots into something much more louder, and crowd pleasing. Different types of house now exist, from the stadium, arena-filling big room house (which is fused with electro to create that stereotypical ‘drop’), to the progressive house of Avicii and co, as well as the deep house of artists such as Duke Dumont. It is typically around 130BPM in tempo, and features a simple four-to-the-floor rhythm, centred around the kick drum Trance: Now largely dominated by the likes of Armin van Buuren and Above and Beyond, trance has been one of the longest surviving sub-genres of dance music, and is the one that people think of when they think about that “hands in the air” euphoric soaring lead. Typically around 140BPM, it used to be faster, and has slowed down to accommodate the ever-popular housey sounds of modern-day dance music. Now, many people are referring to the hybrid combination of “trouse” music as todays form of trance. Characterised by thumping kick drums, high bass lines and furious arpeggios, trance made famous the euphoric feeling associated with dance music and that is now synonymous with it across the board. Popular artists in the past such as Tiesto have now moved their focus on to house music, but trance will live on! Electro-House: Closely related to the house genre, electro house is especially popular today. Noted for its big drops and “main room” sound, it is now used as a catch-all term to describe many of the most popular DJs and producers in the world today. It is characterised by prominent, big basslines, short riffs, and big snares. Often, if it features vocals, these are only in the breakdowns and verses, or are short vocal samples that are placed right in the final bar or beat before a drop. Porter Robinson, deadmau5, and Knife Party are all examples of electro-house producers. Drum n Bass: Especially popular in the United Kingdom, as opposed to the United States, drum n bass (often shortened to DnB), is characterised by a very fast breakbeat drum pattern. Arguably, the first of these ever to be produced was sampled from the now infamous “Amen” break, a six-second short drum sample that has been used time and time again and forms the basic idea of a drum n bass drum pattern. It is growing in popularity, especially in recent years, and has emerged into the pop charts one or two times as well. Now artists such as Matrix and Futurebound have taken it one step further, breaking the top ten with their track “Control”. Often around 160-180BPM, it has in recent years retained more of an emphasis on vocals and lead sounds, rather than traditional drum n bass which focuses almost exclusively on the complex drum patterns and bass lines of old examples of the genre. Dubstep: Dubstep has become very popular throughout the world recently, and emerged out of South London in the United Kingdom. It actually first emerged in the 1990s as an offshoot of jungle and drum n bass, but stayed very underground. It began gaining popularity in the mainstream after artists such as Skrillex began storming the pop charts with songs such as “Bangarang”. Its fusion with heavy metal is what eventually brought it large success in the United States. Although not the case initially, it is now characterised by a “wobble bass” which is created by applying strong LFO elements to a bass sound. Dubstep is, importantly, characterised by a half-beat drum pattern at around 140 to 150BPM point which makes it sounds as though it is around 70 or 75BPMs. The drums tend to have reverb on them which tends to be unusual in dance music, and tend to be very fat and encompass large amounts of the mix. This is possible due to the half-beat nature of the genre. Chase and Status and DJ Fresh are examples of artists which have also had a massive effect on making dubstep so popular. Hardstyle: Hardstyle is a genre which has emerged out of high-tempo euro-trance, and has gradually made a transition into a harder, screechy genre. It is now popularly characterised by high-powered screeching distorted leads. When it first started it tended to represent simply a sped up version of euro-trance. However, now the pitched distorted kick drum has become very popular and is now synonymous with modern-day hardstyle. This pitches up and down with the bassline, to create a melodic type of drum. Popular artists include producers such as Headhunterz, who recently broke ground by releasing “United, Kids of the World” with Krewella. Moombahton: A very new and upcoming genre, it is characterised by a slow tempo (in EDM terms) of around 108BPM. Unlike many other genres, it really began as a result of the experimental attempts of the DJ Dave Nada, who slowed down an AFrojack remix of Chuckie’s track “Moombah” from 128BPM to 108BPM in order to blend it in more easily with the rest of his DJ set. He liked the sound so much that he then created a five track EP of similar sounding tracks. Called Moombahton because of its hybrid nature of the drum line from “Moombah” as well as its reggaeton influences, it takes influences from both Latin sources as well as Electronic Dance Music in general. It has grown in popularity recently but still arguably remains a fringe genre. .