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| Techno | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins: | Electro, industrial, synthpop, electronic art music, Chicago house |
| Cultural origins: | mid-1980s Detroit, Michigan, USA |
| Typical instruments: | Keyboard, synthesizer, drum machine, sequencer, sampler |
| Mainstream popularity: | Moderate, largely in late-1980s and 1990s Europe, more popular in Eastern Europe and Brazil currently |
| Derivative forms: | IDM, trance, acid house, jungle, hardcore |
| Subgenres | |
| Acid, ambient, minimal, wonky | |
| Fusion genres | |
| Microhouse, ghettotech, tech house, tech trance, techstep | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Detroit techno, Nortec, Schranz, Yorkshire Bleeps and Bass, Jtek | |
| Other topics | |
| Electronic musical instrument – computer music – record labels – raves – free party – teknival | |
For the comic book character previously known as Techno, see Fixer (comics). For the prefix, see techno-.
Techno is a form of electronic dance music originally developed in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. during the mid to late 1980s. Many styles of techno now exist, but Detroit techno, a genre in its own right, is seen as the foundation upon which many other subgenres have been built.Keyboard Magazine Vol. 21, No.7 (issue #231, July 1995.
The initial take on techno arose from the melding of various African American styles such as Chicago house, funk, electro, and electric jazz with Eurocentric synthesizer-based music. Added to this was an interest in futuristic and fictional themes that were relevant to life in American late capitalist society: most particularly the novel Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. Techno music pioneer Juan Atkins cites Toffler\'s phrase "techno rebels" as inspiring him to use the word "techno" to describe the musical style he helped to create. This unique blend of influences aligns techno with the aesthetic referred to as AfroDiasporic Futurism.Kodwo, E., "More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction", Quartet Books, 1998. To producers such as Derrick May, the transference of spirit from the machine to the body is often a central preoccupation; essentially an expression of technological spirituality. In this manner "techno dance music defeats what Adorno saw as the alienating effect of mechanisation on the modern consciousness."Mc Leod, K.,"Space oddities: aliens, futurism and meaning in popular music", Popular Music (2003) Volume 22/3. Copyright 2003 Cambridge University Press, pp. 337–355.
Music journalists and fans of techno are generally selective in their use of the term; so a clear distinction can be made between sometimes related but often qualitatively different styles, such as tech house and trance. "Techno" is also sometimes confused with generalized descriptors, such as electronic music and dance music.Critzon, Michael. "Eat Static is bad stuff", Central Michigan Life, 2001-09-17. Retrieved on 2007-08-12. Hamersly, Michael (2001-03-23). "Electronic Energy". The Miami Herald: page 6G. Retrieved on 2007-08-26.
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The template for a new style of dance music (that by the mid to late 1980s was being referred to as techno) was primarily developed by four individuals, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May (the so called "Belleville Three"), and Eddie Fowlkes, all of whom attended school together at Belleville High, near Detroit, Michigan. By the close of the 1980s, the four had operated under various guises: Atkins as Model 500, Flinstones, and Magic Juan; Fowlkes simply as Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes; Saunderson as Reese, Keynotes, and Kaos; with May using the aliases Mayday, R-Tyme, and Rhythim Is Rhythim. There were also a number of joint ventures, the most commercially successful of which was the Atkins and Saunderson (with James Pennington) collaboration on the first Inner City single Big Fun. Prior to achieving notoriety the budding musicians, "mix" tape traders, and aspiring DJs"Techno music pulses in Detroit", CNN, 2003-02-13. Retrieved on 2007-08-11. found inspiration in Midnight Funk Association, an eclectic, 5-hour, late-night radio program hosted on various Detroit radio stations including WCHB, WGPR, and WJLB-FM from 1977 through the mid-1980s by DJ Charles "The Electrifying Mojo" Johnson.A Brief History of Techno – Gridface overview from 1999
Mojo\'s show featured heavy doses of electronic sounds from the likes of Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream alongside the funk of Parliament and the new wave sounds of the B-52s.Shapiro, Peter (2000). Modulations: A History of Electronic Music, Throbbing Words on Sound. Caipirinha Productions, Inc., 108-121. ISBN 1-1891024-06-X. Atkins has noted that "he (mojo) played all the Parliament and Funkadelic that anybody ever wanted to hear. Those two groups were really big in Detroit at the time. In fact, they were one of the main reasons why disco didn\'t really grab hold in Detroit in \'79. Mojo used to playa lot of funk just to be different from all the other stations that had gone over to disco. When \'Knee Deep\' came out, that just put the last nail in the coffin of disco music". Despite the short-lived disco boom in Detroit it had the effect of inspiring many individuals to take up mixing; Juan Atkins among them. Subsequently, Atkins taught Derrick May how to mix records, and the pair started working together as a DJ duo called Deep Space. By \'80-\'81 they had met with Mojo and were proposing that they should provide mixes for his show, which they did the following year.Atkins Interview, from Music Technology Magazine, December 1988.[1]
The music was initially conceived of as party music that was played on daily mixed radio programs and played at high school club parties in Detroit. High school clubs such as Snobbs, Hardwear, Brats, Comrades, Weekends, Rumours, and Shari Vari created the incubator in which techno was grown. These young promoters developed and nurtured the local dance music scene by both catering to the tastes of the local audience of young people and by marketing parties with new DJs and their music. As these local clubs grew in popularity, groups of DJs began to band together and market their mixing skills and sound systems to the clubs in order to cater to the growing audiences of listeners. Locations like local church activity centers, vacant warehouses, offices and YMCA auditoriums were the early locations where the underage crowds gathered, and where the musical form was nurtured and defined.[citation needed]
Of the four individuals responsible for establishing techno as a genre in its own right, it is Juan Atkins who is recognized as the originator; indeed in 1995 American music technology publication Keyboard Magazine honored Atkins as one of "12 Who Count" in the history of keyboard music; at that time Detroit techno was still relatively unknown in the United States despite its notoriety in Europe. In the early 1980s Atkins began recording with musical partner Richard "3070" Davis (and later with a third member Jon-5) as Cybotron. This trio released a number of electro inspired tunes, the best known of which is "Clear". Atkins coined the term techno to describe their music, taking as one inspiration the works of futurist and author Alvin Toffler; from whom he borrowed the terms "cybotron" and "metroplex". Atkins has used the term techno to describe earlier bands that made heavy use of synthesizers such as Kraftwerk, although many people would consider Kraftwerk\'s music and Juan\'s early music in Cybotron as electro.Juan Atkins official Myspace page
Eventually, Atkins started producing his own music under the pseudonym Model 500, and in 1985 he established the record label Metroplex. In the same year he released a seminal work entitled "No UFOs" which, in terms of its aesthetic values, is credited as the first Detroit techno production. Of this time Atkins has said:"When I started Metroplex around February or March of \'85 and released \'No UFOs\', I thought I was just going to make my money back on it, but I wound up selling between 10,000 and 15,000 copies. I had no idea that my record would happen in Chicago. Derrick\'s parents had moved there, and he was making regular trips between Detroit and Chicago. So when I came out with \'No UFOs\' he took copies out to Chicago and gave them to some DJs, and it just happened."[2]Atkins Interview, from Music Technology Magazine, December 1988.
The music soon attracted enough attention to garner its own club, the Music Institute at 1315 Broadway in downtown Detroit. It was founded by Chez Damier, Derrick May and a few other investors. Though short-lived, this club was known internationally for its all night sets, its sparse white rooms, and its juice bar stocked with "smart drinks" (the Institute never served liquor). Relatively quickly, techno began to be seen by its originators and up-and-coming producers as an expression of Future Shock post-industrial angst.[citation needed] It also took on increasingly high tech and science-fiction oriented themes.
Following the release of an album compiled by Neil Rushton (an A&R scout for 10 Records10 Records catalog on Discogs website) and Derek May, entitled Techno! The New Dance Sound Of Detroit,Tracklisting of \'Techno! The New Dance Sound Of Detroit\' from Discogs website. the music press began to characterize techno as Detroit\'s relatively high-tech, mechanical brand of house music; as it retained the same basic structure as the soulful, minimalist post-disco styles which were forged in Chicago and New York City at the start of the decade. The music\'s producers, especially May and Saunderson, admit to having been fascinated by the Chicago club scene and being influenced by house in particular. May\'s 1987-88 hit "Strings Of Life" (released under the nom de plume Rhythim Is Rhythim), for example, is considered a classic in both the house and techno genres.[citation needed] At the same time, there is evidence that the Chicago sound was influenced by the Detroit sound, allegedly, May loaned Chicago-based house musician Keith "Jack Master Funk" Farley the equipment to make the classic track "House Nation"; early Detroit techno records reportedly sold well in Chicago; and Atkins believes that the first acid house producers, seeking to distance house music from disco, emulated the techno sound.http://www.timlawrence.info/linernotes/pdfs/Acid-final-web.pdf
Some commentators, who believe things are not so clear cut, have attempted to redefine the origins of techno by incorporating musical precursors to the Detroit sound as part of a historical survey of the genre. This essentially removes any chronologically distinct point of origination. To support this view they point to examples such as "Shari Vari" (1981) by A Number Of Names, the earliest compositions by Cybotron (1981), Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder\'s "I Feel Love" (1977), Moroder\'s "From Here to Eternity" (1977) and the more dancefloor-orientated selections from Kraftwerk\'s repertoire (between 1977 and 1983).[citation needed] These electro-disco tracks share with techno a dependence on machine-generated beats and dancefloor popularity. However, the comparisons remain contentious; as do the efforts to regress further into the past to find antecedents. The logical extension of this rationale entails a further regression: to the sequenced electronic music of Raymond Scott, whose "The Rhythm Modulator", "The Bass-Line Generator" and "IBM Probe" are considered early examples of techno-like music."Raymond Scott\'s Manhattan Research", 2006-02-21. Retrieved on 2007-08-11.
The original techno sound drew heavily from its funk and soul music roots to create characteristically intense grooves and percussive basslines. Early pioneers of the genre melded the beat-centric styles of their Motown predecessors with the music technology of the time. In merging the sensibilities of soul music, funk, house music, and electro, with a European synth-pop aesthetic, the early producers pushed dance music into previously unexplored territory. The resulting style came to exert an influence on widely differing genres of electronic music yet it also managed to maintain its identity as a genre in its own right; one which is commonly referred to as "Detroit techno". The sound was refined even further, and given added sophistication, with the addition of jazz tinged colors. Arguably, it was the UK act 808 State that fueled this development, with tracks such as Pacific, and Cobra Bora, taken from the 1989 release Ninety. Another Detroit producer also heavily influenced by said jazz sensibilities at this time was Mike Banks; demonstration of which can be found on the influential Underground Resistance release Nation 2 Nation (1991). By 1993 Detroit acts such as Model 500 and UR had made explicit references to the genre, with the tracks Jazz is the Teacher (1993) and Hi-Tech Jazz (1993); the latter from the groundbreaking EP Galaxy 2 Galaxy. Back in the UK a number of techno producers were showing the influence of both jazz and UR, with Dave Angels Seas Of Tranquility EP (1994) being a case in point."Dave Angel: Background Overview at Discogs", 2003-02-13. Retrieved on 2007-08-11. By this time (1992-94) the term intelligent dance music (IDM) had gained common usage: in an attempt to differentiate the increasingly sophisticated takes on electronic dance music Anker M., Herrington T., Young R., (1995)"New Complexity Techno", The Wire,Issue #131 (January \'95) , http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/220/ from two other strands of techno that had emerged; one being a harder, faster, industrial sounding variant, and the other, an overtly commercial strain that was simply referred to as "cheese".
Underworld during a live performance
By the late 1980s and early 90s the original techno sound had garnered a large underground following in the UK, Belgium, and Germany, yet it was virtually ignored in the United States. Its popularity in Europe was largely due to the growth of the free party scene known as rave, something that was slower to take root in the US. As the original sound evolved it also diverged; to such an extent that a wide spectrum of stylistically distinct musics was being referred to as techno. This ranged from overtly pop oriented acts such as Moby to the distinctly anti-commercial sentiments of the appropriately named Underground Resistance.
In the early 1990s, a number of notable techno producers in the UK and Europe built upon the Detroit sound but at this time an abundance of electronic dance music derivatives were emerging. Some drew heavily upon the Detroit aesthetic, while others fused components of preceding dance music forms. This lead to the appearance of what was often inventive new music, much of which bore little if any relation to the original techno sound; the initial jungle (drum and bass) excursions being primary examples.
In contrast to the collectivist sentiment prominent in the early rave scene, each new faction had its own particular attitude and vision of how dance music (or in certain cases non-dance music) should evolve; some examples include ambient techno, trance, industrial techno, breakbeat hardcore, gabber, IDM, acid techno, happy hardcore, minimal techno, and electronica. Less well-known styles related to techno or its subgenres include the primarily Sheffield (UK) based bleep techno, a regional variant which had some success between 1989 and 1991; and a scene that was responsible for putting Warp Records on the map (LFO\'s self-titled 12" being its debut release). More recent off-shoots are nortec, wonky techno, and ghettotech (a style that combines some of the aesthetics of techno with hip hop and house music). Other notable niche scenes include nu jazz, speedcore, breakcore, broken beat, digital hardcore, glitch and so-called "no-beat techno".Loubet E.& Couroux M., Laptop Performers, Compact Disc Designers, and No-Beat Techno Artists in Japan: Music from Nowhere, Computer Music Journal, Vol. 24, No. 4. (Winter, 2000), pp. 19-32.
Artists such as Orbital and Underworld have been instrumental in finding a mainstream stream audience for techno, this is in large part due to the extensive touring schedules they have endured over the years.[citation needed]
Whilst techno and its derivatives only occasionally produce commercially successful mainstream acts, the genre has significantly affected many other areas of music. In an effort to appear relevant, many established artists, for example Madonna and U2, have dabbled with dance music, yet such endeavors have rarely evidenced a genuine understanding or appreciation of techno\'s origins.Ross, Andrew; Lysloff, René & Gay, Leslie (2003), Music and Technoculture, Wesleyan University Press, pp. 185–186, ISBN 0819565148 The mainstream music industry has been responsible for the growth of a huge remix industry. This is largely a drive to gain exposure for artists that are not identified with club styles such as house, techno, and drum and bass. Many club acts and dance DJ\'s have made very successful careers out of remixing alone; Armand Van Helden being a good example.
More recently, contemporary R&B has taken a significant foray into the dance genre thanks largely to club scene remixes such as Freemasons\' recent interpretations of Beyonce and Kelly Rowland and whilst some criticise this as indicative of the music industry seeking greater exposure for its big act roster, it can also be viewed as a natural part of the process of musical evolution. One R&B artist, Missy Elliott, inadvertently exposed the popular music audience to the Detroit techno sound when she featured material from Cybotron\'s Clear on her 2006 release \'Loosing Control\'; this resulted in Juan Atkins receiving a Grammy Award nomination for his writing credit. Elliott\'s 2001 album Miss E...So Addictive also clearly demonstrates the influence of club culture.
In recent years, the publication of relatively accurate histories by authors Simon Reynolds (Generation Ecstasy aka Energy Flash) and Dan Sicko (Techno Rebels), plus mainstream press coverage of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, have helped to diffuse the genre\'s more dubious mythology.Gorell, Robert. "Permanent record: Jeff Mills talks Detroit techno and the exhibit that hopes to explain it.", Metro Times. Retrieved on 2007-08-11.
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This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) |
Roland TB-303 bassline synthesizer
In general, techno is very DJ-friendly, being mainly instrumental (commercial varieties being an exception), and is produced with the intention of it being heard in the context a continuous DJ set, wherein the DJ progresses from one record to the next via a synchronized segue or "mix". Much of the instrumentation in techno emphasizes the role of rhythm over other musical parameters but the design of synthetic timbres, and the creative use of music production technology in general, are important aspects of the overall aesthetic practice.
The main drum part is almost universally in common time (4/4); meaning 4 quarter note pulses per bar. In its simplest form, time is marked with kicks (bass drum beats) on each quarter note pulse, a snare or clap on the second and fourth pulse of the bar, with an open hi-hat sound every second eight note. This is essentially a disco (or even polka) drum pattern and is common throughout house music and its derivatives (of which techno is one). The tempo tends to vary between approximately 120 bpm (quarter note equals 120 pulses per bar) and 150 bpm depending on the style of techno. Much of the drum programming employed in the original Detroit based techno made use of syncopation and polyrhythm, yet in many cases the basic disco type pattern was used as a foundation; with polyrthythmic elaborations added using other drum machine voices. It is this syncopated feel (funkiness) that initially differentiated the Detroit strain of techno from other variants; indeed this is a feature that many DJs and producers still use to distinguish their music from commercial forms of techno, the majority of which are devoid of syncopation.
Much of this electronic dance music tends to be produced with the aid of interfaces (synthesizer keyboards) that are designed with the Western musical tradition in mind. However, techno does not always adhere to conventional harmonic practice, and such strictures are often ignored in favor of timbral manipulation alone. The use of motivic development (though relatively limited), and the employment of conventional musical frameworks, is more widely found in commercial techno styles, for example Euro-trance; where the template is often an AABA song structure.
There are numerous ways to create techno, but they all depend upon the use of loop based step sequencing as a compositional method . Many techno musicians, or "producers", rather than employing traditional compositional techniques, will work in an improvisatory fashion; often treating the electronic music studio as one large instrument. This assemblage of devices will include units that are capable of producing unique timbres but technical proficiency is required if the technology is to be successfully exploited. The equipment will be synchronised using a hardware or a computer based MIDI sequencer; this enables the producer to combine, in one arrangement, the sequenced output of many devices . A typical approach is to create successive layers of material until a suitable cacophony is achieved. Once a usable palette of material has been generated, a producer may then focus on developing a temporal framework; a process of dictating how the work will unfold in time. Some producers achieve this by adding or removing layers of material at appropriate points in the mix. Quite often this is achieved by physically manipulating a mixer, sequencer, effects, dynamic processing, equalisation, and filtering, while recording to a multi-track device. Other producers achieve similar results by using the automation features of computer based digital audio workstations.
In recent years, as computer technology has become more accessible, and music software has advanced, interacting with music technology is now possible using means that bear no relationship to traditional musical performance practice. Some techno music consists of little more than cleverly programmed rhythmic sequences and looped motifs, combined with signal processing of one variety or another; frequency filtering being a commonly used process.
Instruments utilized by the original techno producers based in Detroit included classic drum machines like the Roland TR-808 and TR-909, devices such as the Roland TB-303 bass line generator,Techno Music >> Synthtopia (Retrieved on 2008-01-02) with synthesizers such as the Roland SH-101, Kawai KC10, Yamaha DX7, and Yamaha DX100. Much of the early music sequencing was executed via MIDI using hardware sequencers such as the Korg SQD1, and Roland MC-50 and the limited amount of sampling that was featured in this early style was accomplished using an Akai S900.Keyboard Magazine Vol. 21, No.7 (issue #231), July 1995, 12 Who Count: Juan Atkins.
Works that comprehensively explore the subject of techno music and its related culture:
| Techno | |
|---|---|
| Acid - Detroit - Free tekno - Ghettotech - Jtek - Minimal - Nortec - Schranz - Tech house - Tech trance - Wonky - Yorkshire Bleeps and Bass | |
| Other electronic dance music genres | Ambient - Breakbeat - Drum and bass - Electro - Hardcore - House - Industrial - Synthpop - Techno - Trance - Trip hop - UK garage |
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