Monday, August 16, 2010

Monthly Moderation

As the loading screen tip tells us: "Take everything in moderation (even World of Warcraft!)"

I'm going to take a moment for today's Monthly Moderation to talk about music. Or at least one specific (super)genre of music. Electronic music.

I'm going to preface this saying that I treat music like I treat everything else in my life that captures my interest. Just like I totally get wrapped up in the intricacies and lore of WoW, I'm very conscious of the intricacies of electronic music.

There's a lot of things I see scrolling through my chat window that frustrate me, leave me bewildered, or make me want to weep. But there are few things that make my skin crawl quite like someone saying "I like techno." It's a statement that only comes from the keyboards of the uninformed. And it's always, always followed with examples that represent the very worst of UK Hard House and (Epic) Eurotrance. (Don't get me wrong, there is some good stuff in each of those. But it's far, far outweighed by the bad. Kind of like Hunters.)

Seriously, though. It takes everything I have not to become a total elitist d-bag in gchat at that point. So instead, I'm going to do it on my blog.

Enter Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music. I love this thing. It did the same thing for me with electronic music that Wowwiki did for me with lore. Hours and hours of dissecting and understanding and following progressions. And learning why "I like techno" is akin to "I like eating."

I was once a noob, too. I made ignorant statements about music I love. Then I learned.

Go now. Learn.

And please, please take the tone of this post with a grain of salt (just in case I haven't included enough safety winks).

5 comments:

  1. Dude did you just compare Hunters to Trance? That is so awesome.

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  2. Technically I compared Trance to Hunters. But it all works out the same, I suppose. :-P

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  3. Sorry to be totally random but how goes the new look version of the blog and how hard is css to work with? My personal blog needs some layout tweaking and css looks scary.

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  4. It's stalled at the moment, largely because of one thing I can't get to work the way I want it to. I get kind of ocd about being able to execute things wholly according to plan sometimes, and if one aspect of the plan doesn't go right, I'm loathe to do any of it.

    As for CSS, it is kind of intimidating at first. but once you get the hang of it, it's actually kind of easy. I haven't used it extensively before, so a lot of stuff was tricky for me during the start of my redesign, but it eventually clicked. Check this site for a quick primer that does a really good job (I think) of explaining the basics: http://wendypeck.com/css101.html.

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  5. Wow! This was great! I never knew all the names for the different types of electronic music. Going through this I can hear the different influences/styles a lot of artist I listen to pull from but I did not KNOW what I was hearing.

    The great thing about being a noob in anything is the thrill you get from moving from your initial noob state to a more informed/educated state.

    I will of course share this to all my noob friends...who don't know they like techno or think it all sounds the same or like it but don't truly know what they love or why. They can now unlearn what they have learned and learn to let go of their noobish ways. :)

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