Hello, welcome to my podcast. Our discussion today will be about the many subgenres of electronic dance music.
I have not listed all of the different subgenres, for there are too many to list. But i think i’ve covered most of the main subgenres in EDM.
There are many genres of EDM because EDM is not its own genre its a term used to describe electronic music, because of this there are many genres within EDM. The first one we are going to cover is one of the most popular House.
House – house is one of the most recognisable sounds in the electronic world. Its warm and pleasant, has a steady four to the floor beat and contains a lot of bass. Its roots go back to the 70's disco and thats often hearable in songs.
Progressive House – what makes a song progressive? Less drops and a more evolving structure. Prog house songs are calmer, layered, well thought out and slowly change throughout. The songs are usually longer and reward the listener for paying attention.
Deep House – More bass, more calmness, slower and easily accessible. This subgenre focuses on the part of the house thats more about the low frequencies and mellow feelings
Electro house – today electro house is all around us. Its the popular and club oriented incarnation of house. Melodic, lots of synth, intense and highly dancable.
Tech house – the successful hybrid between house and techno. The beat is warm like house but the structure and feeling of the song says techno.
Acid house – the iconic "acid" bassline sound was used in many other subgenres, but acid house got popular like nothing else. It was the main genre played in raves in the 80's
Jackin' house – also called bass house, and for a good reason. The focus is fully on the bassline, jerky beats and minimalistic style.
Disco house – sampling old school disco grooves to a house track works for this subgenre. Reliving the 70's in a house coating.
Funky/french house – french house takes sampling to a whole new level. It relies on sampling funky elements and punchy grooves to create its unique style.
Garage – garage music is the best effort to relive the original old school house from the 80's. Simple, groovy and twitchy like in the olden days.
Big room house – take away all the stuff that makes house great and keep the beat, overcompress that and add a heavily reverbed melody line and lazy song progression. Only to be played in big rooms apparently…
Nu disco – a modern revisit to the days of disco and funk with a futuristic beat and up to date grooves. All within a house setting of course.
Eurodance – europe in the 90's gave birth to an intense, cheesy but highly popular subgenre. Relying on big, rememberable hooks and high energy vocals, this genre has died off today but can still be heard in gymd and malls worldwide.
The second EDM genre we are going to cover is Trance.
Techno – first of all, techno is not a way to describe all electronic genres. Its a genre on its own and it comes in all shapes and sizes. It has been around for decades and its sound is simple, robotic yet effective. The overall feeling of techno is cold, mechanicaland soulful at the time. Techno has evolved over the years, ofcourse. The term has become huge and so many different sounds can be told to the label of "techno". Its not easy to describe it as a whole, but in general: techno is cold, progressive, soulful and always reinventing itself
Next up is Trance.
Trance – trance is often said to be the opposite of techno. Uplifting, melodic, emotional and highly dancable. Its shaped by buildups and drops unfolding huge melody lines and an uplifting feeling like no other genre.
Classic trance – old school trance is just like the trance we hear today, but more basic. It lacked the technical advances of today so ot had to rely heavily on its uplifting melodies and buildups to be viable in clubs.
Epic trance – epic trance takes the energy to a whole new level. The formula is simple and the same for every song, but it compensates with a burst of uplifting goodness: heavy kicks and synth melodies that take you to heaven.
Progressive trance – trance can get pretty uplifting, but progressive trance keeps it cool. Its calmer and more controlled than other trance subgenres. Still melodic and uplifting, but with an overall calmer feeling.
Goa/psy trance – goa is a psychedelic version of trance. Faster, trippier, more arpeggiating acid sounds etc. Inspired by the acid genres popping up, it brought acid sounds to the trance genre.
Nightcore – inspired by trancecore, nightcore is all about sampling dance tracks and speeding them up. You end up with high tempo, high-pitch vocals and cheesy feel-good melodies.
The Fourth Genre is DownTempo,
Downtempo – downtempo is the general term for all the slower, more relaxed, easy-listen styles of electronic music. The songs found in this genre vary greatly from eachother. Coming up with a subgenre for each is ridiculous. Calling it "downtempo" is therefore not wrong.
Ambient – ambient was invented by brian eno. All electronic music without beats, only padding, after brian enos invention fall under this category.
Chillout – this is a general term for a lot of mellow, mod-tempo, groovy songs that chill you out. Self-explanatory name if you ask me.
Downbeat – downbeat is a way to collect the subgenres that have a beat but also a lot of ambient elements in them. Genres like ambient-house and ambient-techno fall under this term.
Chillhop – the combination of hiphop beats and chillout. Most of the time using samples of downtempo jazz, soul, or funk.
Chillstep – now what if you combine dubstep beats with chillout. Well you get something like chillstep. Sometimes the songs go more tworads the chill, sometimes more to the dubstep side. Every track is different.
Trip hop – trip hop is like chillhop, but from the UK and more psychedelic. The term itself has had a lot of popularity back in the 90's. Today triphop is not so common anymore but i still pit it on here because it was really popular in the 90s.
Next Is BreakBeat
Breakbeat – breakbeat on its own is not really a genre. In a song or genre, you either have a steady beat or a broken beat, breakbeat. Its more like a parameter of a genre than a genre itself. Here are some subgenres that use breaks as their main feature in sound and style.
Big beat – if breakbest would have been a genre, it would be called big beat. Big beat is all about the breaks and the rest is just filler. Most of the times samples from the past are used with breaks layered over them.
Funky breaks – again, a genre mainly focused around breakbeats, but now with a funky twist. Its not big beat, although the two may sound alike.
Rave breaks – rave parties in the 80s often played acid and hardcore tracks. Artists inspired by those raves created a sound that had to imitate the rave sound of the old days. Fast, goofy song with insane breaks.
Jungle – rave and jungle went hand in hand. Both fast and revolutionary. Jungle kept it interesting though. More chill than its rave counterpart and was the breeding ground for a lot of ideas that we see in genres of today.
Drum and bass – and one of those genres was drum & bass. This is one of my favorite genres in this list. Its defined by the fast drums inherited from jungle and omnipotent basslines. The intensity of DnB songs can vary greatly, bit all of them have the focus on drums and basslines.
Liquid DnB – drum and bass but on a lower intensity level. Smooth and deep as water, also very experimental and revolutionary.
NeuroFunk – Distorted and glitched out acid basses are the focus of neurofunk. Plus the trademark DnB breaks give it an iconic recognizable style.
2step garage – its related to the garage we saw in house, but this time with breaks. But not just ordinary breaks. Jerky, time-shifting beats and chunky bassline driven grooves.
Next to last is Bass
Dub – emphasis on the bass and drums while in a reggae setting. Dub takes the creativity of reggae to a whole new level with sampled vocals, reverbed effects and more bass and drums, but keeping the reggae vibes.
Dubstep – just like techno, dubstep is often used to describe the electronic music scene as a whole. Again, this is false. Dubstep is a genre on its own, originating from dub and 2step. It came from the underground scene in the uk and prefers a heavy (wobble) bass and a dark aesthetic.
Brostep – in the 2000's something bad happened to the name dubstep. Producers in the US began to develop an aggressive, glitchy, mid-frequency heavy genre, also calling it dubstep. Luckily this genre got its own name, because it was nothing like the oldschool UK Dubstep.
Drumstep – this is an interesting hybrid, playing dubstep rhythms at DnB tempo (ca. 175bpm). The beats and bass are the only qualifications for drumstep, so the intensity of the songs can vary greatly. Another one of my favorites.
Trap – born out of hip hop and influenced by techno, trap is a weird breed. Drum machines with hiphop aesthetics and aggressive synths. Drop heavy and a simplistic overall feeling.
Moombathon – fusing house vibes with reggaeton gave moombathon life in 2009. Characterized by eccentric basslines and dramatic builds, occasionally rappers and hiphop influences.
Bounce – well, the name says it all doesnt it. The songs are influenced by dirty house and have a bouncy bass as their main feature. Most of the times horns and vocal melody lines are used to create a goofy style.
Glitch – at some point in the evolution of electronic music, normal song structures and rhythms arent good enough anymore. Artists start to reach for experimental, unorthdox rhythms, structures and melodies. The sounds stutter, wobble, jitter and reach all frequencies, are random and come with a variety of beat patterns.
Last up is HardCore
Hardcore – hardcore as a general term contains all the harder styled electronic music. Everything that hits hard, has heavy kicks and an overall darker touch is hardcore.
Industrial – hardcore began with industrial. As an electronic music genre it has a long history, but im keeping it short here. In its origins industrial was a hybrid between rock and avant grade electronic stuff. Later it evolved into harder and noisier territory.
New beat – new beat and industrial lie at the roots of the hardcore genre. Acid house tracks are intentionally slowed down to sound sinister and drooling. Over time these sound were made harder and louder.
EBM – when industrial got more popular and darker, another subgenre poppes up to embrace the lightness and melodic side of industrial. That is EBM or electronic body music.
Futurepop – futurepop is an odd genre. Its more trance that hardcore, bit it came from the cold industrial side. Its a way to modernize EBM to mix it with trance. Futurepop is melodic, hard-hitting and still kinda dark.
Gabber/hardstyle – gabber is one of the older hardcore subgenres. Preffering a fast tempo, distorted kocks and dark synths. Hardstyle expanded on that idea and took it out of the underground. Lowering the tempo but keeping the same kick and synth sound and rhythm.
Hard dance/techno – a trance inspired, harder-hitting subgenre. Very noisy, lots of melodic synth (up or downlifting), high energy beats and a general oversatuturated feeling.