electronic soul

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steevio
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electronic soul

Post by steevio »

i'm intrigued to know what anyones interpretation of electronic soul is.

how do you make soul music with machines ?

Is it down to whether the musician has soul or not ?

is it quanitifiable ?,
down to mathematics ?
down to the machines themselves ?

Ive always believed techno is soulful music, not the industrial stuff, the deep abstract psychedelic stuff that hypnotizes, and touches our promordial core,

Hi-Tek Soul wtf is it ??
oblioblioblio
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Re: electronic soul

Post by oblioblioblio »

hooray! interesting topic to talk about.

The first thing that I thought about is that lots of the machines are already built with soul in them. Good instrument designers are faced with this same question, how do I make a collection of mechanical parts have a soul? Maybe they don't think about this specific issue, but we all know that many instruments unquestionably have a life of their own, hardware usually more noticeably but software can also lead a vibrant inner mechanical life that begs to be communicated to.

I believe a lot of industrial music is soulful, often the music of certain artists like say, Swans or Coil deal with parts of the universal mind that is insane, lost or out of control, but it has soul, to me at least. Sometimes even more beautifully to me than more obviously beautiful soulful music. I saw Swans live recently, the gig was tough and intense but ultimately transcendent. I felt strongly that everyone who opened themselves to the experience left the venue a few stone lighter, leaving a big pile of life's baggage behind!

I too face this question almost everyday. A lot of the music that I listen to is acoustic, and I always hold my work up against it. How can this electronic music touch those same inner places, communicate those struggles, that beauty, and offer inner peace, harmony and understanding? I don't know how but I think it can be done. I think it's ethereal and hard to pin down but with mindful (or soulful!) work it can be done. To use a crude analogy, all instruments are simply tools until they are put into use. Language is just a collection of mechanics: grunts, grammar. You could bash someone over the head with an expensive violin if you like. It's from a different place that causes these tools to make music.
mehta
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Re: electronic soul

Post by mehta »

The original detroit electro and techno is descended from soul music. But I think it's possible for contemporary work to be viewed as "electronic soul" even if it does directly reference historic musical trends. The approach is key. I don't think it's enough to say that the deep stuff is soulful while harder stuff isn't. It's too coarse of a definition. Great topic though, been mulling it over for a couple hours.
Casanova808
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Re: electronic soul

Post by Casanova808 »

It all comes down to whether you can express personality and emotion through your music.

Most electronic music isn't soulful because it requires a great deal of skill across a variety of fields in order to do it well.

It is rare for an individual to be able to transcend the mediation of all those layers and show the world who they are.
Barfunkel
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Re: electronic soul

Post by Barfunkel »

I always wonder why people say that electronic music is cold and soulless. To me it sounds raw and emotional, something about that mechanical groove touches my soul. When listening to, say, rock or jazz, my mind's always wandering on the players' playing ablilities, I'm intellectualizing and analyzing the music. With electronic music, at which there are no human distractions because the music is played by a machine, I'm just enjoying the music in a more pure way, I don't (usually) think about how it's made.

It could be just that I'm a bit weird though.

And there are of course exceptions.
MagpieIndustries
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Re: electronic soul

Post by MagpieIndustries »

If its not made on an analog modular it aint got soul.
oblioblioblio
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Re: electronic soul

Post by oblioblioblio »

on this forum of an aging trend that died years ago, with some blindly jumping on the bandwagon almost a decade too late, with others still here who didn't get carried into the next wave but hang around for the atmosphere, you are consistantly the most negative and hostile contributor. congrats!
thomasa
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Re: electronic soul

Post by thomasa »

For me, soul is all about feeling imo. All the feeling, or love you put into your music, the listeners will be able to feel that. It's like you are encoding that raw emotion into your music. This has nothing to do with chords uses, vocals used or not, what melodies or poly-rhythms used. If you are making a tune, and you are feeling what you are doing, and you capitalize on that emotion and put in more of it in, all of that will be not only heard but felt once played back.



The crazy thing though, the longer one spent on working on a tune, the less soul is in the music.

Well, I think so anyway.
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