Electronic Dance Music | Gentle Sleep Reading

Relax with a calm bedtime reading about electronic dance music, gently guiding you toward sleep and easing insomnia. This calm bedtime reading blends simple, soothing facts to support sleep during insomnia and restless nights, helping your thoughts unwind naturally. Unwind as Benjamin explores the origins, sounds, and cultural impact of electronic dance music in a steady, comforting cadence that allows you to learn while relaxing. There is no whispering here, just peaceful, fact-filled education designed to ease stress, quiet anxiety, and support restful sleep when insomnia makes nights feel long. Press play, get comfortable, and let this gentle exploration carry you toward rest. Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,

Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster,

And today's episode is about electronic dance music.

Electronic dance music,

EDM,

Also referred to as dance music or club music,

Is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres,

Originally made for nightclubs,

Raves,

And festivals.

It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create seamless selections of tracks,

Called a DJ mix,

By segwaying from one recording to another.

EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA.

Since its inception,

EDM has expanded to include a wide range of sub-genres.

During the late 1980s to early 1990s,

Following the emergence of electronic music instruments,

Rave culture,

Pirate radio,

Party crews,

Underground festivals,

And an upsurge of interest in club culture,

EDM achieved mainstream popularity in Europe and Japan.

However,

Rave culture was not as broadly popular in the United States.

It was not typically seen outside of the regional scenes in New York City,

Florida,

The Midwest,

And California.

Although the pioneer genres of electro,

Chicago house,

And Detroit techno were influential both in Europe and the United States,

Mainstream media outlets and the record industry in the United States remained openly hostile to it until the 1990s and beyond.

There was also a perceived association between EDM and drug culture,

Which led governments at state and city levels to enact laws and policies intended to halt the spread of rave culture.

Subsequently,

In the new millennium,

The popularity of EDM increased globally,

Particularly in the United States and Australia.

By the early 2010s,

The term electronic dance music and the initialism EDM was being pushed by the American music industry and music press in an effort to rebrand American rave culture.

Despite the industry's attempt to create a specific EDM brand,

The name remains in use as an umbrella term for multiple genres,

Including dance pop,

House,

Techno,

Electro,

And trance,

As well as their respective sub-genres which all predate the name.

Various EDM genres have evolved over the last 40 years.

For example,

House,

Techno,

Drum and bass,

Dance pop,

Etc.

Stylistic variation within an established EDM genre can lead to the emergence of what is called a sub-genre.

Hybridization,

Where elements of two or more genres are combined,

Can lead to the emergence of an entirely new genre of EDM.

In the late 1960s,

Bands such as Silver Apples created electronic music intended for dancing.

Other early examples of music that influenced later electronic dance music include Jamaican dub music during the late 1960s to 1970s,

The synthesizer-based disco music of Italian producer Giorgio Moroder in the late 1970s,

And the electro-pop of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Author Michael Veal considers dub music,

A Jamaican music stemming from roots reggae and sound system culture,

That flourished between 1968 and 1985,

To be one of the important precursors to contemporary electronic dance music.

Dub productions were remixed reggae tracks that emphasized rhythm,

Fragmented lyrical and melodic elements,

And reverberant textures.

The music was pioneered by studio engineers such as King Tubby,

Errol Thompson,

Lee Scratch Perry,

And Scientist.

Their productions included forms of tape editing and sound processing that Veal considers comparable to techniques used in Musique Concrète.

Dub producers made improvised deconstructions of existing multi-track reggae mixes by using the studio mixing board as a performance instrument.

They also foregrounded spatial effects,

Such as reverb and delay,

By using auxiliary send routings creatively.

The Roland Space Echo,

Manufactured by Roland Corporation,

Was widely used by dub producers in the 1970s to produce echo and delay effects.

Despite the limited electronic equipment available to dub pioneers,

Such as King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry,

Their experiments in remix culture were musically cutting edge.

Ambient Dub was pioneered by King Tubby and other Jamaican sound artists using DJ-inspired ambient electronics,

Complete with dropouts,

Echo,

Equalization,

And psychedelic electronic effects.

It featured layering techniques and incorporated elements of world music,

Deep bass lines,

And harmonic sounds.

Techniques such as a long echo delay were also used.

Hip-hop has had some influence in the development of electronic dance music since the 1970s.

Inspired by Jamaican sound system culture,

Jamaican-American DJ Kool Herc introduced large bass-heavy speaker rigs to the Bronx.

His parties are credited with having kick-started the New York City hip-hop movement in 1973.

A technique developed by DJ Kool Herc that became popular in hip-hop culture was playing two copies of the same record on two turntables in alternation and at the point where a track featured a break.

This technique was further used to manually loop a purely percussive break,

Leading to what was later called a breakbeat.

Turntableism has origins in the invention of the direct-drive turntable by Shuichi Obata,

An engineer at Matsujita,

Now Panasonic.

In 1969 Matsujita released it as the SP-10,

The first direct-drive turntable on the market,

And the first in their Influential Techniques series of turntables.

The most influential turntable was the Techniques SL-1200,

Which was developed in 1971 by a team led by Shuichi Obata at Matsujita,

Which then released it onto the market in 1972.

In the 1980s and 1990s hip-hop DJs used turntables as musical instruments in their own right,

And virtuosic use developed into a creative practice called turntableism.

In 1974,

George McRae's early disco hit,

Rock Your Baby,

Was one of the first records to use a drum machine,

An early Roland rhythm machine.

The use of drum machines in disco production was influenced by Sly and the Family Stone's Family Affair,

1971,

With its rhythm echoed in McRae's Rock Your Baby and Timmy Thomas's Why Can't We Live Together,

1972.

Disco producer Bidu used synthesizers in several disco songs from 1976 to 1977,

Including Bionic Boogie from Rainforest,

1976,

Soulcoaxing,

1977,

And Eastern Man and Futuristic Journey,

Recorded from 1976 to 1977.

Acts like Donna Summer,

Sheik,

Earth,

Wind & Fire,

Heatwave,

And The Village People helped define the late 1970s disco sound.

Giorgio Moroder and Pete Balot produced I Feel Love for Donna Summer in 1977.

It became the first well-known disco hit to have a completely synthesized backing track.

Other disco producers,

Most famously American producer Tom Moulden,

Grabbed ideas and techniques from dub music,

Which came with the increased Jamaican migration to New York City in the 1970s to provide alternatives to the four-on-the-floor style that dominated.

During the early 1980s,

The popularity of disco music sharply declined in the United States,

Abandoned by major U.

S.

Record labels and producers.

Eurodisco continued evolving within the broad mainstream pop music scene.

Synth-pop,

Short for synthesizer pop,

Also called techno-pop,

Is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument.

It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock,

Electronic,

Art rock,

Disco.

Early synth-pop pioneers included Japanese group Yellow Magic Orchestra and British bands Ultravox,

The Human League,

And Berlin Blondes.

The Human League used monophonic synthesizers to produce music with a simple and austere sound.

After the breakthrough of Gary Newman in the UK singles chart in 1979,

Large numbers of artists began to enjoy success with a synthesizer-based sound in the early 1980s,

Including late 1970s debutantes like Japan and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark and newcomers such as Depeche Mode and Eurythmics.

In Japan,

Yellow Magic Orchestra's success opened the way for synth-pop bands such as P-Model,

Plastics,

And Hikashu.

The development of inexpensive polyphonic synthesizers,

The definition of MIDI,

And the use of dance beats led to a more commercial and accessible sound for synth-pop.

This,

Its adoption by the style-conscious acts from the New Romantic movement,

Together with the rise of MTV,

Led to success for large numbers of British synth-pop acts,

Including Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet in the United States.

The use of digital sampling and looping in popular music was pioneered by Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra,

YMO.

Their approach to sampling was a precursor to the contemporary approach of constructing music by cutting fragments of sounds and looping them using computer technology.

Computer game Firecracker 1978 interpolated a Martin Denny melody and sampled Space Invaders video game sounds.

Technodelic 1981 introduced the use of digital sampling in popular music as the first album consisting of mostly samples and loops.

The album was produced using Toshiba EMI's LMD649 digital PCM sampler,

Which engineer Kenji Murata custom-built for YMO.

The LMD649 was also used for sampling by other Japanese synth-pop artists in the early 1980s,

Including YMO-associated acts such as Chiemi Manabe and Logic System.

The emergence of electronic dance music in the 1980s was shaped by the development of several new electronic musical instruments.

Particularly those from the Japanese Roland Corporation.

The Roland TR-808,

Often abbreviated as the 808,

Notably played an important role in the evolution of dance music.

In 1980,

Ryuichi Sakamoto's cold hit Riot in Lagos from the album B-2 Unit introduced the 808 to clubs,

Demonstrating a new type of electro music that laid the groundwork for modern dance music,

Making it one of the most important tracks in the history of dance music.

In 1982,

Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock made the 808 very popular on dance floors.

The track,

Influenced by Sakamoto's Riot in Lagos,

As well as Kraftwerk,

Informed the development of electronic dance music and sub-genres including Miami Bass and Detroit Techno,

And popularized the 808 as a fundamental element of futuristic sound.

According to Slade,

Planet Rock didn't so much put the 808 on the map,

So much as reorient an entire world of post-disco dance music around it.

The Roland TR-909,

TB-303,

And Juno-60 similarly influenced electronic dance music such as techno,

House,

And acid.

During the post-disco era that followed the backlash against disco,

Which began in the mid to late 1979,

Which in the United States led to civil unrest and a riot in Chicago,

Known as the Disco Demolition Night,

An underground movement of stripped-down disco-inspired music featuring radically different sounds started to emerge on the East Coast.

This new scene was seen primarily in the New York metropolitan area and was initially led by the urban contemporary artists that were responding to the over-commercialization and subsequent demise of disco culture.

The sound that emerged originated from P-Funk,

The electronic side of disco,

Dub music,

And other genres.

Much of the music produced during this time was,

Like disco,

Catering to a singles-driven market.

At this time,

Creative control started shifting to independent record companies,

Less established producers,

And club DJs.

Other dance styles that began to become popular during the post-disco era include Dance Pop,

Boogie,

Electro,

High Energy,

Italo Disco,

House,

And Techno.

In the early 1980s,

Electro,

Short for Electro-Funk,

Emerged as a fusion of synth-pop,

Funk,

And boogie.

Also called Electro-Funk or Electro-Boogie,

But later shortened to Electro,

Cited pioneers included Ryuichi Sakamoto,

Afrika Bambaataa,

Zapp,

D-Train,

And Cinnamon.

Early hip-hop and rap combined European and Japanese Electro-pop influences,

Such as Giorgio Moroder,

Dan Laxman,

Telex,

And Yellow Magic Orchestra,

Inspired the birth of Electro.

As the electronic sound developed,

Instruments such as the bass guitar and drums were replaced by synthesizers,

And most notably by iconic drum machines,

Particularly the Roland TR-808 and the Yamaha DX-7.

Early uses of the TR-808 include Sakamoto's Riot in Lagos in 1980,

Several Yellow Magic Orchestra tracks during 1980-81,

And the 1982 track Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa.

In 1982,

Producer Arthur Baker,

With Afrika Bambaataa,

Released the seminal Planet Rock,

Which was influenced by Yellow Magic Orchestra,

And had drum beats supplied by the TR-808.

Planet Rock was followed later that year by another breakthrough electro record,

Nunk,

By Warp 9.

In 1983,

Hashim created an electro-funk sound with Al-Nafish,

The Soul,

That influenced Herbie Hancock,

Resulting in his hit single,

Rocket,

The same year.

The early 1980s were Electro's mainstream peak.

According to author Steve Taylor,

Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock serves as a template for all interesting dance music since.

In the early 1980s,

Chicago radio jocks The Hot Mix Five and club DJs Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles played various styles of dance music,

Including older disco records,

Italo Disco,

Electro-funk tracks by artists such as Afrika Bambaataa,

Newer Italo Disco,

B-boy hip-hop music by Man Parish,

Jelly Bean Benitez,

Arthur Baker,

And John Robie,

And electronic pop music by Giorgio Moroder and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Some made and played their own edits of their favorite songs on reel-to-reel tape,

And sometimes mixed in effects,

Drum machines,

And other rhythmic electronic instrumentation.

The hypnotic electronic dance song On and On,

Produced in 1984 by Chicago DJ Jesse Saunders and co-written by Vince Lawrence,

Had elements that became staples of the early house sound,

Such as a Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer,

And minimal vocals as well as a Roland drum machine and Korg synthesizer.

On and On,

Sometimes cited as the first house record,

Though other examples from around that time,

Such as J.

M.

Silk's Music is the Key,

1985,

Have also been cited.

House music quickly spread to American cities,

Including New York City and Newark and Detroit,

All of which developed their own regional scenes.

In the mid-to-late 1980s,

House music became popular in Europe,

As well as major cities in South America and Australia.

Chicago House experienced some commercial success in Europe,

With releases such as House Nation by House Masterboys and The Rude Boy of House,

1987.

In the 1980s,

Detroit DJs Juan Atkins,

Derek May,

And Kevin Saunderson laid the foundation for a new style of music,

Which would be dubbed techno.

They fused Chicago house-influenced electronic and Detroit-influenced funk sounds with the mechanical vibes of the post-industrial city,

Creating the techno sound of four-on-the-floor beat driven by a kick drum on the quarter notes and a snare or hi-hat on the second,

Fourth,

Or eighth notes.

In the mid-1980s,

House music thrived on the small Balearic island of Ibiza,

Spain.

The Balearic sound was the spirit of the music emerging from the island at that time.

A combination of old vinyl rock,

Pop,

Reggae,

And disco records paired with an anything-goes attitude made Ibiza a hub of drug-induced musical experimentation.

A club called Amnesia,

Whose resident DJ Alfredo Fiorito pioneered Balearic house,

Was the center of the scene.

Amnesia became known across Europe,

And by the mid-to-late 1980s,

It was drawing people from all over the continent.

By 1988,

House music had become the most popular form of club music in Europe,

With acid house developing as a notable trend in the United Kingdom and Germany in the same year.

In the UK,

An established warehouse party subculture centered on the British-African-Caribbean sound system scene fueled underground after-parties that featured dance music exclusively.

Also in 1988,

The Balearic party vibe associated with Ibiza's DJ Alfredo was transported to London,

When Danny Rampling and Paul Oakenfold opened the club Shoom and Spectrum,

Respectively.

Trance emerged from the rave scene in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s and developed further during the early 1990s in Germany before spreading throughout the rest of Europe as a more melodic offshoot from techno and house.

At the same time trance music was developing in Europe,

The genre was also gathering a following in the Indian state of Goa.

Trance is mostly instrumental,

Although vocals can be mixed in.

Typically they are performed by mezzo-soprano to soprano-female soloists,

Often without a traditional verse-chorus structure.

Structured vocal form and trance music forms the basis of the vocal trance subgenre,

Which has been described as grand,

Soaring and operatic,

And ethereal female leads floating amongst the synths.

Trance music is broken into a number of subgenres including acid trance,

Classic trance,

Hard trance,

Progressive trance,

And uplifting trance.

Uplifting trance is also known as anthem trance,

Epic trance,

Commercial trance,

Stadium trance,

Or euphoric trance,

And has been strongly influenced by classical music in the 1990s and 2000s by leading artists such as Ferry Corsten,

Armin van Buuren,

Tiesto,

Push,

Rank One,

And at present with the development of the subgenre orchestral uplifting trance or uplifting trance with symphonic orchestra.

By the early 1990s,

A style of music developed within the rave scene that had an identity distinct from American house and techno.

This music,

Much like hip-hop before it,

Combined sampled syncopated beats or breakbeats,

Other samples from a wide range of different musical genres,

And occasionally samples of music,

Dialogue,

And effects from films and television programs.

Relative to early styles of dance music such as house and techno,

So-called rave music tended to emphasize bass sounds and use faster tempos or beats-per-minute,

BPM.

This subgenre was known as hardcore rave,

But from as early as 1991,

Some musical tracks made up of these high-tempo breakbeats with heavy basslines and samples of older Jamaican music were referred to as jungle techno,

A genre influenced by Jack Smooth and basement records,

And later just jungle,

Which became recognized as a separate musical genre popular at raves and on pirate radio in Britain.

It is important to note when discussing the history of drum and bass that prior to jungle,

Rave music was getting faster and more experimental.

Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the late 1990s.

It is generally characterized by sparse,

Syncopated rhythmic patterns with basslines that contain prominent sub-bass frequencies.

The style emerged as an offshoot of UK Garage,

Drawing on a lineage of related styles such as two-step,

Dub reggae,

Jungle,

Broken beat,

And grime.

In the United Kingdom,

The origins of the genre can be traced back to the growth of the Jamaican sound system party scene in the early 1980s.

Electro house is a form of house music characterized by a prominent bassline or kick drum and a tempo between 125 and 135 beats per minute,

Usually 128.

Its origins were influenced by electro.

The term has been used to describe the music of many DJ Mag Top 100 DJs,

Including Demetri Vegas and Like Mike,

Hardwell,

Skrillex,

And Steve Oakey.

By the mid-2000s,

Electro house saw an increase in popularity with hits such as the Tom Neville remix of Studio B's I See Girls in 2005.

Trap music originated from techno,

Dub,

And dutch house,

But also from the original offshoot of southern hip-hop in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

This form of trap music can be simplified by these three features.

One-third hip-hop.

Tempo and song structure are similar.

Most tracks are usually between 70 and 110 beats per minute,

With vocals sometimes being pitched down.

One-third dance music.

High-pitched dutch synth work.

Hardstyle sampling.

As well as a plethora of trap mixes of popular EDM songs.

And one-third dub.

Low frequency focus and strong emphasis on repetitiveness throughout a song.

And one-third bass.

Reviews

Thanks, Benjamin! Another great one, interesting topic. 😻

Wonderful! How do you come up with the most random reasearch topics?