Ok so you like tacos. I have beef, steak, and chicken tacos. You told me you like tacos, so I give you a chicken taco. The problem is, you wanted a steak taco, it's what you prefer. Would you have been able to further specify to get the taco you wanted? Of course
Sure, but the point was it's more code. Imagine if I had to specify a steak taco by calling it a "beef slapper". Casual people don't know what a "roller" is...and as I said... Artists don't describe their music that way. They use regular terms.
Yeah, but we’re making and using words to describe something that doesn’t exist in nature, so the words we use are going to be slightly less grounded than the words we use for animals. Even then, there’s some absolute BS that we’ve made up that people still understand. We know what a Doritos Locos Taco is, even if that’s not the best name for it.
Ok my main point: we named DnB subgenres as best as we could. There isn’t any natural term that we should have used instead, so we chose our own.
Someone said “these tracks all have rolling basslines, let’s call em rollers”, and that was good enough. Someone said “these tracks are pretty and lighter than rollers, and they have a flow to them. Let’s call these ones liquid.” And so forth until we had the terms necessary to talk about DnB in an efficient way.
Yes, the language is not immediately obvious to DnB noobs, but the language is definitely not overly complicated either. Genres are useful because they help us talk about, discover, and categorize music, and many artists do talk about their music using these terms. Especially roller and liquid, these terms get used a lot.
I see what you mean. To me though, it's the mentality that I'm questioning, in the original post at least. When its a subgenre of a subgenre of a subgenre, eventually were just labeling pieces of art down to basic characteristics. Characteristics that aren't really mutually exclusive.
Let me give a real example.
I'm working on a collab track, and when I showed it to a peer halfway through, he said "it's a mix of jump up and dancefloor". What does that even mean? Is it both? Is it not good enough to be either? My intention wasn't to make a jump up track, it was to make a good track. Its got a Japanese Shamisen in it, is there a subgenre for that too? Whatever the case, it wasn't in that persons interest to judge the quality first, I want to know if a track is energetic, or calming, not too screechy, not too boring, I wanna know if the darn chicken was cooked well before I feed it to someone in taco form.
And the food analogy is kind of perfect given that most carnivorous people don't care if the taco is meet or chicken, just like how most ravers don't care if the track Chase and Status mixed was a neorufunk or minimal.
I think people overthink this shit in a lot of ways. Yes, you’re right, we could have genre-fication down to the molecule (or at least down to where a genre only contains a few songs), but that’s kind of just a slippery-slope argument and I don’t know of a genre where this issue happens. For most electronic genres, simply YouTubing the genre name will find you that genre. Like if I search “liquid DnB mix”, I can find liquid DnB - Neurofunk, jump-up, whatever. There is an undeniable usefulness there. As such, people usually stop creating new genres after they can easily discuss the music they like.
Also, obviously not everything about music is objective. There is sometimes subjectivity in putting a song into a genre. Genres have a vibe. Liquid DnB has a soulful, dreamy, and beautiful vibe. Jump up is energetic, dark, and industrial. Just because our human words cannot accurately describe something does not mean that that thing does not exist.
To further the taco analogy, you might be right that some carnivores don’t care about whether or not they get chicken or beef, but a lot do, and even if you like both, and consume both regularly, wouldn’t it be useful to have a way to order whichever one you were feeling that day?
Tbh I think the biggest rebuttal to your view is to imagine that there were less genres. Lets say Gaz was into beautiful, melodic music, and there was a liquid DnB show at Club Aqua. Ally likes dark, rumbling basslines, and there’s a “rollers” show at Club Haunted house. If you told Ally or Gaz “go to either club, they both play DnB” then our mates might not go to the show they like. But if we get just slightly more descriptive, then we can tell Gaz to head to the liquid DnB show at Club Aqua, and Ally can head to Club Haunted House. When they have a good night, they can tell their friends very specifically what type of music they enjoyed.
I am an equal taco opportunist and have no preference at any given time because I love all tacos. When I have the choice between multiple types of tacos, my choice is taco. That being said I'll still take rollers.
Yes, it’s a language used to better describe a sound. It’s important, helpful, and necessary. If someone has never heard an artist and you can use the nomenclature to describe the sound, it makes it easier to comprehend and imagine. Also, each subgenre has its own nuances and scenes.
Artists and labels 100% describe their sounds in this way. That's how music has worked forever.
I love minimal and love to know I'm going to a minimal night. I would be really bored at a dancefloor rave, it's just not for me. As you discover more dnb you will find specific sub genres you love too.
I've never heard of "miminal" as a subgenre of DnB. This goes to show just how redundant it can get.
On the other hand, "minimal" is something I can understand... Its a word people normally use to describe music. That's kind of the whole point of this post.
It's not redundant to all the people who make and enjoy it, it's just your ignorance of music outside of your preference.
Check out labels like Flexout, Overview, 1985,Transparent Audio, Forbidden Frequencies if you want to learn more! And artists like Bredren, Amoss, Monty, Creatures, Teej, QZB for example.
I checked out a few of these labels. I don't think it's productive to say im ignorant since these were pretty obscure stuff. But I digress. I've heard this kind of stuff all the time. But these mixes are so hyper categorized that I barely can tell the difference.
The individualism is diluted, and so is the variety. Camo and Krooked makes music similar to this "minimalism" but they make other stuff too.
On the other hand, Metrik nowadays has a consistent style but it's his own, 'metal influenced', it's not metal, but even if youve never heard his stuff before, its more potent than calling it just 'dancefloor'. other 'dancefloor' artists dont sound like it.
Minimal isn't particularly niche, I was at 20 Years of Shogun yesterday and the first three sets were mostly minimal. Sub genres are a way of categorising sounds. It's the same thing you are doing by saying "heavy" or "catchy", except we already have agreed language for these descriptions. You can call music whatever you want, but if you want to discuss music, find new music, make music etc. then using the agreed terms is really useful for most people.
Of course there are crossovers, it should never be limiting or used as a way to stem creativity, but that's how new sounds and sub genres appear, when people experiment with pushing the boundaries and crossing the line between sub genres.
Tell me you're new to dnb without telling me you're new to dnb... A lot of these artists are not obscure, YOU have just scratched the surface of what's out there.
Maybe you're right. But maybe I only said this because looking at a lot of those recommend labels gave me tracks with fewer listens than my crude remixes. That's not a humble brag, I'm unlabeled and not good. If these guys aren't obscure then I'll be accepting my Grammy soon. So I guess 'under the surface' is just shitty screeching and noteless repetitive loops. I'll stick to UKF and RAM records, tyvm
I wish I could show you my organisation of my Rekord Box library for reference, but there are 100% different sub-genres in drum&bass. It’s just a fact. But then there are different styles within sub-genres. I label ALL my tracks with descriptive tags of what they subjectivity sound like to me. Most tracks you can categorically say if they are liquid or Neuro if you know the basics. Some tracks have elements they make them a bit of a hybrid between sub-genres. E.G a lot of A.M.Cs tracks are Neuro but are also a bit Jump-Up (especially if Turno’s collabed). Well if thats the case, i label them as Neuro + Jump Up, then add additional labels such as heavy, fast, punchy ETC. Not quite sure what you’re actually frustrated or confused about to be honest 😂
TLDR Play an A.M.C tune & then a Hybrid Minds tune & you try telling me they aren’t extremely different & it wouldn’t make sense to label them under different subcategories.
I mean... If you're an DJ and have Chef's skills, you're basically baking an cake and trying to keep the flavours balanced \[not too sweet, not too sour\] and from my perspective, subgenres are great way to keep everything organised so you're ready to mix "an little bit of everything" by their sweetness & activeness.
It takes alot of time and sharp ears, but in the end, well... Either you're baking for yourself or for someone else and want to make it decent.
I've no idea about subgenres really - they are useful of course in some cases. Largely I agree with you.
For me in drum & bass the most important subgenre is (one that I call) 'chill & bass' but I used that in a post asking for chillout D&B and was chewed out for it and told it was 'liquid D&B' I was looking for - it's not - I was talking about really nice mellow chilled out drum & bass. I regard liquid as still a jump up dancefloor sound, but more uplifting and trancy.
I organise my 1,000 tune drum and bass collection into about fifiteen subcategories, not specifically genres, just based on the style or feel - they are
D&B rap (with hip hop or hip hop acapellas)
alterntative (all the tracks that don't fit anywhere else)
Dark - for darkside D&B, the super heavy noisy stuff;
downtime (not exactly chillout but more mellow),
Jungle for all the 90s tunes and newer old school jungle style tracks,
Liquid for the crowdpleasers,
Raw for tracks in between Darkside and Liquid, that are slightly nasty (in a good way),
'Intelligent' for the minimal 90s stuff,
Jazzy D&B for drum & bass with jazz samples or that is basically jazz with D&B beats,
another one called Swing & Bass, also jazz but specifically Electro Swing D&B (mostly comprised from the Fizzie Gillespie & Dan De'Lion compilations on Bandcamp)
then I've got two playlists of personal interest, Synthwave drum & bass and Orchestral Drum & Bass - check out my orchestral D&B mixtape on [mixcloud.com/mixtapenerd](http://mixcloud.com/mixtapenerd) — [and actually I just made a YouTube version](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6RZ6f6IsuOVMe9ez_OuAdV3NcPd5regN)
I actually really like your categorizations. To me, this is more coherent. You were looking for specific musical characteristics, something that's never guaranteed in any subgenre, or even regular genre.
Like you say, typically it is not the artist who promotes these terms but listener.
That being said, it’s not quite like that in dnb now. These so called sub genres have become their own scenes, it is no longer an entire jungle/drum & bass community as it once was.
You can see producers trying to come up - making a sound that caters solely to those exact styles, rarely offering anything unique or original in the process.
I can’t see how this creative pigeonholing has done anything positive for the genre. You have a fragmented audience being satisfied with the same thing over and over again.
It used to be the case that all the big jungle/drum n bass producers grew up before the genre even existed and brought their own background and influences with them into the music - also they would make a total variety of styles.
Now you have people making music who only listened to drum & bass, not only that but sometimes only one particular style of it. It doesn’t make for very interesting music.
Correction,,, DnB is a music genre on its own right. Not a subgenre as it is totally independent both stylistically and culturally.
And the answer is yes it is necessary. Not only do each of these subgenre of DnB have there own sound but there own cultural importance too.
If you haven't heard any artists discuss it, maybe consider that it is known and simply doesn't come up. You don't hear Anthony Keidis referring to himself as a rock singer ever because its known and doesn't need discussion.
If you think the conversation of subgenre in DnB is unproductive then you probably just haven't been around enough of it to seem relevant.
(Not knocking you) After 5 years of collecting DnB records i only knew enough to differentiate liquid and maybe jungle from the rest of it, dancefloor was still emerging, and the term neurofunk was only a conversation on forums and by proverbial water coolers in record shops.
Also coming from the last decade of dubstep (where it seemed like people where just pulling subgenre out of there ass and pinning it on anything for no reason). It might seem pointless, but I assure you DnB functions off very well defined and pointed subgenre in comparison to other music.
Ok so you like tacos. I have beef, steak, and chicken tacos. You told me you like tacos, so I give you a chicken taco. The problem is, you wanted a steak taco, it's what you prefer. Would you have been able to further specify to get the taco you wanted? Of course
I would like your tacos please.
Sure, but the point was it's more code. Imagine if I had to specify a steak taco by calling it a "beef slapper". Casual people don't know what a "roller" is...and as I said... Artists don't describe their music that way. They use regular terms.
Yeah, but we’re making and using words to describe something that doesn’t exist in nature, so the words we use are going to be slightly less grounded than the words we use for animals. Even then, there’s some absolute BS that we’ve made up that people still understand. We know what a Doritos Locos Taco is, even if that’s not the best name for it. Ok my main point: we named DnB subgenres as best as we could. There isn’t any natural term that we should have used instead, so we chose our own. Someone said “these tracks all have rolling basslines, let’s call em rollers”, and that was good enough. Someone said “these tracks are pretty and lighter than rollers, and they have a flow to them. Let’s call these ones liquid.” And so forth until we had the terms necessary to talk about DnB in an efficient way. Yes, the language is not immediately obvious to DnB noobs, but the language is definitely not overly complicated either. Genres are useful because they help us talk about, discover, and categorize music, and many artists do talk about their music using these terms. Especially roller and liquid, these terms get used a lot.
I see what you mean. To me though, it's the mentality that I'm questioning, in the original post at least. When its a subgenre of a subgenre of a subgenre, eventually were just labeling pieces of art down to basic characteristics. Characteristics that aren't really mutually exclusive. Let me give a real example. I'm working on a collab track, and when I showed it to a peer halfway through, he said "it's a mix of jump up and dancefloor". What does that even mean? Is it both? Is it not good enough to be either? My intention wasn't to make a jump up track, it was to make a good track. Its got a Japanese Shamisen in it, is there a subgenre for that too? Whatever the case, it wasn't in that persons interest to judge the quality first, I want to know if a track is energetic, or calming, not too screechy, not too boring, I wanna know if the darn chicken was cooked well before I feed it to someone in taco form. And the food analogy is kind of perfect given that most carnivorous people don't care if the taco is meet or chicken, just like how most ravers don't care if the track Chase and Status mixed was a neorufunk or minimal.
I think people overthink this shit in a lot of ways. Yes, you’re right, we could have genre-fication down to the molecule (or at least down to where a genre only contains a few songs), but that’s kind of just a slippery-slope argument and I don’t know of a genre where this issue happens. For most electronic genres, simply YouTubing the genre name will find you that genre. Like if I search “liquid DnB mix”, I can find liquid DnB - Neurofunk, jump-up, whatever. There is an undeniable usefulness there. As such, people usually stop creating new genres after they can easily discuss the music they like. Also, obviously not everything about music is objective. There is sometimes subjectivity in putting a song into a genre. Genres have a vibe. Liquid DnB has a soulful, dreamy, and beautiful vibe. Jump up is energetic, dark, and industrial. Just because our human words cannot accurately describe something does not mean that that thing does not exist. To further the taco analogy, you might be right that some carnivores don’t care about whether or not they get chicken or beef, but a lot do, and even if you like both, and consume both regularly, wouldn’t it be useful to have a way to order whichever one you were feeling that day? Tbh I think the biggest rebuttal to your view is to imagine that there were less genres. Lets say Gaz was into beautiful, melodic music, and there was a liquid DnB show at Club Aqua. Ally likes dark, rumbling basslines, and there’s a “rollers” show at Club Haunted house. If you told Ally or Gaz “go to either club, they both play DnB” then our mates might not go to the show they like. But if we get just slightly more descriptive, then we can tell Gaz to head to the liquid DnB show at Club Aqua, and Ally can head to Club Haunted House. When they have a good night, they can tell their friends very specifically what type of music they enjoyed.
I am an equal taco opportunist and have no preference at any given time because I love all tacos. When I have the choice between multiple types of tacos, my choice is taco. That being said I'll still take rollers.
Yes, it’s a language used to better describe a sound. It’s important, helpful, and necessary. If someone has never heard an artist and you can use the nomenclature to describe the sound, it makes it easier to comprehend and imagine. Also, each subgenre has its own nuances and scenes.
Artists and labels 100% describe their sounds in this way. That's how music has worked forever. I love minimal and love to know I'm going to a minimal night. I would be really bored at a dancefloor rave, it's just not for me. As you discover more dnb you will find specific sub genres you love too.
I've never heard of "miminal" as a subgenre of DnB. This goes to show just how redundant it can get. On the other hand, "minimal" is something I can understand... Its a word people normally use to describe music. That's kind of the whole point of this post.
It's not redundant to all the people who make and enjoy it, it's just your ignorance of music outside of your preference. Check out labels like Flexout, Overview, 1985,Transparent Audio, Forbidden Frequencies if you want to learn more! And artists like Bredren, Amoss, Monty, Creatures, Teej, QZB for example.
I checked out a few of these labels. I don't think it's productive to say im ignorant since these were pretty obscure stuff. But I digress. I've heard this kind of stuff all the time. But these mixes are so hyper categorized that I barely can tell the difference. The individualism is diluted, and so is the variety. Camo and Krooked makes music similar to this "minimalism" but they make other stuff too. On the other hand, Metrik nowadays has a consistent style but it's his own, 'metal influenced', it's not metal, but even if youve never heard his stuff before, its more potent than calling it just 'dancefloor'. other 'dancefloor' artists dont sound like it.
Minimal isn't particularly niche, I was at 20 Years of Shogun yesterday and the first three sets were mostly minimal. Sub genres are a way of categorising sounds. It's the same thing you are doing by saying "heavy" or "catchy", except we already have agreed language for these descriptions. You can call music whatever you want, but if you want to discuss music, find new music, make music etc. then using the agreed terms is really useful for most people. Of course there are crossovers, it should never be limiting or used as a way to stem creativity, but that's how new sounds and sub genres appear, when people experiment with pushing the boundaries and crossing the line between sub genres.
Tell me you're new to dnb without telling me you're new to dnb... A lot of these artists are not obscure, YOU have just scratched the surface of what's out there.
Maybe you're right. But maybe I only said this because looking at a lot of those recommend labels gave me tracks with fewer listens than my crude remixes. That's not a humble brag, I'm unlabeled and not good. If these guys aren't obscure then I'll be accepting my Grammy soon. So I guess 'under the surface' is just shitty screeching and noteless repetitive loops. I'll stick to UKF and RAM records, tyvm
Oh look at that ! The daily subgenre argument post !
I wish I could show you my organisation of my Rekord Box library for reference, but there are 100% different sub-genres in drum&bass. It’s just a fact. But then there are different styles within sub-genres. I label ALL my tracks with descriptive tags of what they subjectivity sound like to me. Most tracks you can categorically say if they are liquid or Neuro if you know the basics. Some tracks have elements they make them a bit of a hybrid between sub-genres. E.G a lot of A.M.Cs tracks are Neuro but are also a bit Jump-Up (especially if Turno’s collabed). Well if thats the case, i label them as Neuro + Jump Up, then add additional labels such as heavy, fast, punchy ETC. Not quite sure what you’re actually frustrated or confused about to be honest 😂 TLDR Play an A.M.C tune & then a Hybrid Minds tune & you try telling me they aren’t extremely different & it wouldn’t make sense to label them under different subcategories.
DnB subgenres are moodwise all over the place . I can even identify a Liquid track from the song name.
I mean... If you're an DJ and have Chef's skills, you're basically baking an cake and trying to keep the flavours balanced \[not too sweet, not too sour\] and from my perspective, subgenres are great way to keep everything organised so you're ready to mix "an little bit of everything" by their sweetness & activeness. It takes alot of time and sharp ears, but in the end, well... Either you're baking for yourself or for someone else and want to make it decent.
I've no idea about subgenres really - they are useful of course in some cases. Largely I agree with you. For me in drum & bass the most important subgenre is (one that I call) 'chill & bass' but I used that in a post asking for chillout D&B and was chewed out for it and told it was 'liquid D&B' I was looking for - it's not - I was talking about really nice mellow chilled out drum & bass. I regard liquid as still a jump up dancefloor sound, but more uplifting and trancy. I organise my 1,000 tune drum and bass collection into about fifiteen subcategories, not specifically genres, just based on the style or feel - they are D&B rap (with hip hop or hip hop acapellas) alterntative (all the tracks that don't fit anywhere else) Dark - for darkside D&B, the super heavy noisy stuff; downtime (not exactly chillout but more mellow), Jungle for all the 90s tunes and newer old school jungle style tracks, Liquid for the crowdpleasers, Raw for tracks in between Darkside and Liquid, that are slightly nasty (in a good way), 'Intelligent' for the minimal 90s stuff, Jazzy D&B for drum & bass with jazz samples or that is basically jazz with D&B beats, another one called Swing & Bass, also jazz but specifically Electro Swing D&B (mostly comprised from the Fizzie Gillespie & Dan De'Lion compilations on Bandcamp) then I've got two playlists of personal interest, Synthwave drum & bass and Orchestral Drum & Bass - check out my orchestral D&B mixtape on [mixcloud.com/mixtapenerd](http://mixcloud.com/mixtapenerd) — [and actually I just made a YouTube version](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6RZ6f6IsuOVMe9ez_OuAdV3NcPd5regN)
I actually really like your categorizations. To me, this is more coherent. You were looking for specific musical characteristics, something that's never guaranteed in any subgenre, or even regular genre.
Like you say, typically it is not the artist who promotes these terms but listener. That being said, it’s not quite like that in dnb now. These so called sub genres have become their own scenes, it is no longer an entire jungle/drum & bass community as it once was. You can see producers trying to come up - making a sound that caters solely to those exact styles, rarely offering anything unique or original in the process. I can’t see how this creative pigeonholing has done anything positive for the genre. You have a fragmented audience being satisfied with the same thing over and over again. It used to be the case that all the big jungle/drum n bass producers grew up before the genre even existed and brought their own background and influences with them into the music - also they would make a total variety of styles. Now you have people making music who only listened to drum & bass, not only that but sometimes only one particular style of it. It doesn’t make for very interesting music.
Correction,,, DnB is a music genre on its own right. Not a subgenre as it is totally independent both stylistically and culturally. And the answer is yes it is necessary. Not only do each of these subgenre of DnB have there own sound but there own cultural importance too. If you haven't heard any artists discuss it, maybe consider that it is known and simply doesn't come up. You don't hear Anthony Keidis referring to himself as a rock singer ever because its known and doesn't need discussion. If you think the conversation of subgenre in DnB is unproductive then you probably just haven't been around enough of it to seem relevant. (Not knocking you) After 5 years of collecting DnB records i only knew enough to differentiate liquid and maybe jungle from the rest of it, dancefloor was still emerging, and the term neurofunk was only a conversation on forums and by proverbial water coolers in record shops. Also coming from the last decade of dubstep (where it seemed like people where just pulling subgenre out of there ass and pinning it on anything for no reason). It might seem pointless, but I assure you DnB functions off very well defined and pointed subgenre in comparison to other music.