are you rhythmically innovative ?

[steevio]

My point is, give it a little time. People (including myself) are trying very hard to make new and exciting things happen with minimal music. I think many of the half assed producers will drop out of the minimal race because they will get bored with it but there are so many fresh minds starting to make this music that it is only a matter of time before some people break the mold and show us all what is REALLY possible.
ps Im kinda drunk so this may have rambled on a bit.

i know mate, i know, i'm just impatient thats all.
a very synchronistic thing happened last night, an old mate of mine who i hadnt seen for a while turned up for a visit with a CD of stuff he'd just written.
the last time i saw this guy he was a guitarist / singer in a surf-garage band, and he's the owner of an amazing collection of vinyl, mostly rare groove, funk, 60's garage etc, stuff like that, and he turns up saying he's been making minimal techno for three months on ableton, (he had no previous experience of techno or producing but hes a good musician)
i was kind of expecting some roughly produced generic minimal techno, and i got the biggest shock of my life, when it turned out he'd written 18 quality minimal tunes in 3 months with not only no 2/4 snares, but no snares at all, just quality rhythms, interesting twists and turns, intricate percussion.
he'd come to ask my opinion, and get some constructive criticism, expecting me to pull it to bits, and in the end i was asking him how he'd got certain sounds !! i couldnt fault it at all, and it was very inspiring.
the reason it sounded so fresh and different, was because this guy doesnt listen to techno or house, he's just a quality musician playing with new toys. He'd never touched a synthesizer or music software in his life till 3 months ago.

[steevio]

jeez, i'm rambling on now.
but another story thats relevant......
recently i was playing in Berlin, and made the obligatory trip to Hardwax.
the first thing i did was ask the staff to point me in the direction of fresh and interesting music, and they handed me a pile of Dubstep. so i told them i liked dubstep but i was looking for techno and minimal stuff, and they shook their heads.
so i go into the most famous techno record shop in the world, and they can't suggest any fresh sounding material to me.
why ? i can only guess that these guys have heard it all before day in day out, and the only thing that is interesting to them rhythmically and otherwise is dubstep.
and another.........
i was at a festival in the summer and was checking out Mala from Digital Mystikz (Dubstep) it was simply the only thing i heard at the festival that sounded fresh. the rhythms sounded awkward to me at first, and i found it hard to dance, then all of a sudden it clicked, my brain figured it out, and i found myself dancing in new funky ways. it was invigorating.
so why did my body not figure it out first ? because it was being over-ruled by my brain which has been conditioned to techno for so long.
it made all the generic sludge in the house and techno tents sound jaded, and there was some pretty famous people on there who i prefer not to mention.
does this mean i should be making dubstep, and knock techno on the head.
NO WAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[victorgonzales]

.
so why did my body not figure it out first ? because it was being over-ruled by my brain which has been conditioned to techno for so long.

This is the problem , most producers want their music played by djs. Djs only buy stuff that moves the floor. It is VERY difficult to make something not on the standard patterns that people (other than musicians) will even enjoy, much less dance to. Unless everyone at the event is playing that music all night if you walk on after a dj playing solid 4/4 crowd stompers you will lose the crowd immediately by throuwing them off of the pattern.

I guess that is why dubstep is so innovative. You can barely even dance to it in the first place so it doesn't matter if it breaks the rules.

[steevio]

.
so why did my body not figure it out first ? because it was being over-ruled by my brain which has been conditioned to techno for so long.

This is the problem , most producers want their music played by djs. Djs only buy stuff that moves the floor. It is VERY difficult to make something not on the standard patterns that people (other than musicians) will even enjoy, much less dance to. Unless everyone at the event is playing that music all night if you walk on after a dj playing solid 4/4 crowd stompers you will lose the crowd immediately by throuwing them off of the pattern.

I guess that is why dubstep is so innovative. You can barely even dance to it in the first place so it doesn't matter if it breaks the rules.

this is so hard for me, i dont think people are really getting what i'm saying.
i'm a dance musician, i play out all the time and i dont lose the floor, the majority of my tracks have a 4/4 kick pounding all the way through, i'm not advocating the total abandonment of 4/4, i'm talking about the percussive elements of a track, and the way so many people stick to the obvious, and the fact that there is a total lack of imagination if you entirely ignore the totally danceable cross-rhythms which are a fundamental feature of tribal, and latin-american rhythm.
the most danceable music of the 20th century, latin american, is full of polyrhythm. if you took the average minimal techno track into a salsa club, you'd loose the floor immedeately.
does anyone out there know what i'm on about ?
or should i give up ?

[victorgonzales]

.
so why did my body not figure it out first ? because it was being over-ruled by my brain which has been conditioned to techno for so long.

This is the problem , most producers want their music played by djs. Djs only buy stuff that moves the floor. It is VERY difficult to make something not on the standard patterns that people (other than musicians) will even enjoy, much less dance to. Unless everyone at the event is playing that music all night if you walk on after a dj playing solid 4/4 crowd stompers you will lose the crowd immediately by throuwing them off of the pattern.

I guess that is why dubstep is so innovative. You can barely even dance to it in the first place so it doesn't matter if it breaks the rules.

this is so hard for me, i dont think people are really getting what i'm saying.
i'm a dance musician, i play out all the time and i dont lose the floor, the majority of my tracks have a 4/4 kick pounding all the way through, i'm not advocating the total abandonment of 4/4, i'm talking about the percussive elements of a track, and the way so many people stick to the obvious, and the fact that there is a total lack of imagination if you entirely ignore the totally danceable cross-rhythms which are a fundamental feature of tribal, and latin-american rhythm.
the most danceable music of the 20th century, latin american, is full of polyrhythm. if you took the average minimal techno track into a salsa club, you'd loose the floor immedeately.
does anyone out there know what i'm on about ?
or should i give up ?

I know what you are talking about now. I thought you meant stretching the whole structure off the 4/4. I try to throw my hats and synths off that path evry now and then. I try to do very experimental things every now and then but when I do it rarelly comes out the way I imagine it and things don't work out right. It is also really hard to mix in with all the other tracks i get off beatport and whatnot.

[steevio]

this is exactly the point, it's not easy, and that is why people give up and slap the obvious snares and hats in there, they dont go deep enough.
like Torque said, if it was easy everyone would be writing killer tunes.
if you're going to work in multi-dimensional rhythm, you've got to be dedicated, and you've got to be willing to scrap a lot of what you do.
i've been experimenting for years, and i still consider myself a beginner.
i record everything i do live, and i've got hundreds of hours of recordings of which 95% just dont quite work, it's why i release records spasmodically.
i totally understand why that isnt very appealing to a young musician who wants to get his/her stuff out there, and get involved in the scene.
shortly after i got involved in techno, a lot of my friends abandoned it and moved on to drum and bass, because techno wasnt satisfying them in the rhythm department, i stuck with it because i could see how it could evolve, and maybe i had more patience back then.
i can see how dubstep could be the new drum and bass in that there could be an exodus of young minimal producers in the next few years, especially with places like Hardwax, and people like Ricardo championing it.

[victorgonzales]

. if it was easy everyone would be writing killer tunes.
if you're going to work in multi-dimensional rhythm, you've got to be dedicated,

beleive me, many of us are dedicated. I spend many hours a day trying to create good music. I am constantly learning and researching techniques used in every genre of music. I grow as an artist daily. I self teach myself evrything though. I have no professional training in any music whatsoever so it is a slow going process. My goal is to make unique music but with techno I am still mastering the basics. I think over time all these producers will get bored of their sound and start making more unique music. This seems to be the only genre of edm that is capable of change so hopefully it will.

It only takes one person to break the boundaries and everyone else will have the balls and the motivation to do the same.

Also, is there anywhere I can hear a list of your tracks? Im curious what your music sounds like the way you speak about ti.

[Bogdan]

steevio you should check frank bretschneider's "rhythm" on raster-noton