At 07:16 PM 6/5/97 -0700, you wrote:
>The problem with labels is that sometimes people interpret them
>differently. For practical purposes, these are the labels I use.
>
>Acid Jazz- can cover any thing roughly hip-hop paced, mostly
>instrumental, sometimes with vocals, melodic sounding. Has a Jazzy feel
>to it
this doesn't seem to cover anything coming out of F Communications, one of
my fave labels ..... although I'd call all that stuff acid jazz ....
>Ambient- usually very electronic, can be melodic, sometimes has beats,
>sometimes doesn't, usually not danceable, has an "airy" feel to it
this wouldn't cover stuff like Synaesthesia, Scorn, etc ... all the
ambient-heads who used to be grindcore guys ....
>Abstrakt- rougher sounding than Acid Jazz, more focus on beats and
>scratches and space within the music than on instruments and melodies,
>has a Hip Hop feel to it
Nah ... I'd put anything electronic that fucks with your head in a
structural way. If I wrote a piece that changed meter like a bastard but
it was jungly I'd still call it abstrakt ....
>Experimental- Very atypical use of sounds, sometimes no melodies at all,
>can be abrasive, speeds vary, sometimes within the same song, not
>usually for dancing, Hard to describe the feeling you get from this
I'd reserve this one to describe Derek Bailey, Hafler Trio, etc. People
who have extra-musical motives explicitly for their pieces ... composition
is the focus here ....
>Trip-Hop- high energy beats, sound is more cluttered and faster than
>acid jazz, usually more electronic sounding and less turntablized than
>Acid Jazz/Abstrakt. Has a noisier, more techno-y feel to it
Most trip-hop that I think of as trip-hop (think Simply Jeff) is hanging
around 134 or so ... I don't think of that as that fast ....
>Head Music- This is a catch all term for all sounds Acid
>Jazz/Abstrakt/Experimental/Trip-Hop/Ambient that are Non-Dance. The
>focus is more on mental space within the track than on groove
>maintainance, A more subtle feel than the above
This describes to me a lot of music that goes back at least 100 years ....
>Instrumental Hip Hop- catch all, but for beats with a groove, made for
>dancing, anything with a dancey feel, around Hip Hop speed, and not too
>electronic sounding
hmmmm .... acoustic Goa, anyone?
>DownTempo-collective term for all the above, anything below 100BPM, or
>anything within a faster genre that sounds slower than the majority,
>(ie...a jungle track at 33 would be DownTempo Jungle, or a house track
>with a BPM of 100 would be DownTempo House)
here's a great example "Real Thing" by Peshay, the 90 bpm mix on the first
Headz 2 disc. That does not feel anything like 90 ... feels a lot faster
and busier than it is to me .... I would never really think of that as
Downtempo ... to me, downtempo is that record that you played that you had
to wait for the beatless break so you could change the bpm abruptly and it
wouldn't throw the dancers ... it could be a 200 bpm gabber record if the
one you played before it was at 220.
>I think thats all for now. Are these consistent with the rest of
>peoples defs?
not to pick on ya, guy, but ... the minute you define it like this, it's
not what you've defined it as. That's the beauty of the fluid nature of
music and that's what makes it interesting .... also the minute you define
it you've marked it as a cliche. I wonder if that's what makes people
stagnate ...
c'ya