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Writer's pictureBasil Faisal Qureshi

Electronic: Deciding our music video genre

Updated: Jun 1, 2019

An interesting fact about my A2 group is that the rest of the three members are each geniuses in at least one field. Abdullah happens to be an electronic musician who has received wide recognition in Pakistan and has been acknowledged by some international websites, articles and magazines as well. So naturally he wanted our group to go with electronic as the genre for our music video and since he is the one who knows the most about music, we all had no issue following him in that direction.


The following description of Electronic Music I have taken from Abdullah's, because honestly, who can describe something better than a practitioner of that particular thing. Therefore, in this case, no one in our group can talk about electronic music than him as not only is electronic music his passion, he creates it and has received country wide recognition for it.


" Electronic music is constructed predominantly of synthesizers and manipulated samples. This wasn’t always the case. It began as more of a novelty, as an attraction reserved for exhibitions and fairs. And it was made using basic circuitry. Early instruments dating back to the late 19th century, like the theremin and the Telharmonium were not used to create new compositions but rather to play existing ones. In the 1920s and 30s, electronic instruments became smaller and more practical for live use. Artists like Charles Ives and Percy Grainger began to use them to make original avant-garde music.




This is around the time when the musique concrete movement began, which set an early precedent for modern electronic music. Electronic instruments then became quickly and widely proliferated. A major milestone came with the opening of the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne in 1953. This was the playground for pioneers like Karlheinz Stockhausen. Around this same time, electronic music began to be widely produced in Japan, and the CSIRAC in Australia became the first computer to produce music.

The first programmable analog synth was designed by Columbia and Princeton Universities in 1958, which was then used extensively by major American composers. In the 50’s and 60’s, the theremin quickly gained popularity due to its use in film scores, and synthesizer technology became widely accessible, with legendary brands like Moog at the forefront. Then in the late, 60’s, major pop acts like the Beatles began to use electronic sounds, with the song “Tomorrow Never Knows” being a breakthrough in the field of popular electronic music.



In the 70’s and 80’s, Japan invented FM synthesizers which are digital, and are still integral to contemporary electronica. Leading synth manufacturers in the 80’s like Roland, Oberheim, Yamaha and Moog developed MIDI, to allow the recording of melodic data on computer interfaces.

Then came the personal computer.

Pro Tools, Ableton, Reason, Logic, Cubase, Fruity Loops – the Digital Audio Workstations took over (personally, I’m partial to Logic). Large, inconvenient analog synths were replaced by plugins (software synthesizers) like Massive and Sylenth and KONTAKT. Sampling became ubiquitous; not unlike musique concrete, live recordings are manipulated digitally to create new sonic textures. VSTs (a common type of plugin) revolutionized the industry, with new possibilities of creating unique sonic palettes and textures like never before. Take, for example, Cher’s use of Antares’ Auto-Tune on “Believe”.



Now we’ve beat this thing to the ground.


Electronic music is inescapable. I dare anyone to find me a song in the Top 40 that doesn’t contain some kind of electronic element. Literally all contemporary popular artists, like your Biebers and Halseys and Drakes and Eilishes and Mendeses, use electronic music and digital synths and whatnot, and the industry has become saturated. And even if their sounds aren’t overtly electronic, they’re still using DAWs for recording.




But that’s not to say that there’s no more room for innovation. There are still plenty of artists finding virgin ground in electronica, like FKA twigs and James Blake."



Back to my own words, I really don't feel there is the need to add anything and therefore this concludes my post regarding our groups genre and now we need to move on to deciding the song. That sure is going to be tough.







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