By Caleb Rector
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Electronic music is a pretty popular genre. At this point in time, the first thing that
comes to mind when people think of "electronic music" is probably dance music.
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However, electronic music goes much deeper than that. While dance music is certainly popular, there's
also a large number of sub-genres that are much better known from an independent or underground standpoint.
To name just a few: Ambient, Drum and Bass, Dub, Electro, Vaporwave, Jungle, Industrial, Electronica, Alternative Hip-hop, Video game music...
The list goes on.
The point I'm trying to reach is that there's a wide divide between popular, trending electronic musicians and lesser-known underground ones.
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My project is to create an album of electronic music filled with a variety of songs based on the different sub-genres of electronic music.
I'll also release my album online to help people become aware of the variety of electronic music as a whole.
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Electronic music became relevant in the mid-1970s when the German band Kraftwerk became popular. In the following decade,
many artists such as New Order and The Human League built off the genre Kraftwerk helped establish. However, the underground
scene of electronic music didn't truly emerge until the 1990s with Jungle music, popularized by the U.K. rave scene.
Independent electronic music had another breakthrough in the early 2000s, when the internet allowed artists to easily
share their music not just to a local group of friends, but to the entire world. Sites like Newgrounds allowed even the
smallest artists to establish a foothold in music without even having to leave their own homes. Over the span of the next several
years, more and more sites popped up that allowed artists to not only share their music, but to generate a profit off it.
Streaming services like Spotify offered royalties to artists who hosted their music, and online music stores like Bandcamp
allowed anyone to sell their music regardless of whether they were signed to a record label or not.
As of today, these services are still active and have the most influence on how artists can share their music.
FL Studio
FL Studio (Formerly known as Fruity Loops) is the software I used to develop all the tracks in the album.
As a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), it allows me to mix and add effects to instruments. It's the most vital part of the music I made.
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Maximus
Maximus is a compressor mixer effect, and I mostly use it to 'master' songs (making the song clearer and more concise by equalizing all levels).
I also frequently use it to give drums a little more kick to them.
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Massive
Massive is an extremely powerful digital synthesizer that I used for most of the "instruments" in the album.
It has such a wide range of uses that I've used it for basses, leads, strings, pads, and even drums.
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Vocodex
Another mixer effect, Vocodex is a simple vocoder plugin that I've used on heavier basses.
By adding simple vocal vowel sounds to my basses, I was able to make them sound richer and more detailed with much less difficulty than I thought.
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SFZ
SFZ is a soundfont player. Soundfonts are collections of instruments that are typically extracted from videogames.
I used SFZ in quite a few tracks, implementing soundfonts from games like Super Mario 64, Earthbound, and many others.
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Looking back on the whole process of producing this album, I'd say that I learned a lot
as far as research and innovation goes.
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Probably the most useful thing I gathered from this project was that variety is the spice of life.
Frequently while working on this album I felt like a lot of the songs I was making were too generic or too similar-sounding.
So, I decided to rework quite a few of the songs to make them sound more varied, and sometimes I just replaced them altogether.
I learned that you can't have innovation by doing the same things over and over - sometimes you need to make things that you aren't too familiar with. It's okay to change.
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While working on the album, there were also three things especially that I felt like I'd learned. These include:
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1. Work outside your comfort zone. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten,
and I think that especially applied to the work I did on this album.
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2. Don't be afraid to get feedback. A lot of times I felt like the music I'd been working on was TOO experimental and was a little
bizzare for most peoples' tastes. However, that was exactly why getting feedback was important to me - having more than just 1 person's
opinion on a track can really help you improve it.
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3. Instrumentation and mixing are just as important as composition. A lot of the songs on this album rely heavily on complex solo melodies,
but they can't fully be realized as tracks of the subgenres they were intended for without proper instrumentation (for example, a song
intended to sound like fintage videogame music wouldn't be fitting with orchestral instruments). Also, mixing plays a huge role in how
much people will like a song. Tension and release can be improved drastically by good mixing.
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If you'd like to, you can listen to the album by clicking this link.
Or, if you have a mobile device, you can scan this QR code:
