Nerds vs Musicians

[parents]

I had this conversation the other day with some progressive - psychedelic trance friends about the profile of people doing dance music. Their percpective was that people who do trance are more musicians deep inside than people that do techno and people that do techno are more nerdish with music technology than people doing trance. Personally I ve met a lot of people with a strong theoritical - musical background doing both and also tech nerds doing both. What do you think of this?

[terly]

This is subjective but I think there is more musical creativity happening in techno than in trance. In trance there are more melodies but they are very same-y and cringey. The melodies in some techno are a lot more tasteful. Some might call it all trance but I consider someone like Mathew Jonson to be a techno artist rather than a trance artist.

There definitely are a lot of nerds in techno but being a nerd doesn't preclude you from being a musician. It actually helps.

[The_G]

Trance producers have been writing the same melodies for the same super saw leads for 20+ years now, so no.

[terryfalafel]

'trance people are this and techno people are this' is generalising on the same level as 'black people are good at basketball' or 'women are bad drivers'

Bullshit.

[Alume]

hear hear!

[collide]

Oliver Lieb did some awesome Trance in the '90 and he is very nerdy as well.

Kobosil is a shitty musician.

Totally subjectiv of course.

[mainst09]

lol trance is more than that progressive trance shit which is shit by the way. the new wave of dark psy trance is really good!

[zukenbauer]

'trance people are this and techno people are this' is generalising on the same level as 'black people are good at basketball' or 'women are bad drivers'

Bullshit.

Agree with this

[rmac]

I started producing trance years ago when a teenager and as I have aged into my late 20s have slowly slipped towards techno.

Trance i guess depends on more typical happy sounding harmonies and chords, but some types of techno is suited to dissonant type melodies which I personally find musically harder to pull off than the more happy type melodies of trance without sounding like a baby randomly smashing a keyboard. But thats just me!

[chava]

Musical nerds, they're the worst

[parents]

Musical nerds, they're the worst

Now that's the spirit!!!

[Huck Farper]

lol trance is more than that progressive trance shit which is shit by the way. the new wave of dark psy trance is really good!

No, it's really not.

[Lost to the Void]

lol trance is more than that progressive trance shit which is shit by the way. the new wave of dark psy trance is really good!

Yeah, I was kinda "nope, nothing new for me here any more" about trance (well, psytrance) as it was the same arpeggios, plop plop drums etc. But I heard a whole set of new, underground dark, hypnotic psy played by a girl at some afterparty I was at in spain, and it was phenominal, ended up grabbing her at the end of the set and having a long conversation. Really great music, definitely with a more feminine edge to it as well, as techno can be a bit testosteroneybaloney.

[Aurongroove]

Your friends are wrong, and have a simplistic view of what makes up music.
Trance isn't "more music-ier" then techno and the only way a person could be mislead into thinking it is, is if they held the incorrect assumption that harmony and melody are more important, or "higher ranked" musical elements them rhythm and texture are, when in fact, their is no stead fast "tier list" of which elements of music matter the most.

The truth is no musical element (Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Texture, Voicing, etc) "out ranks" any other. There are too many different styles of music that switch them around and even leave elements out completely.

Would they say "complex rhythmical tribal percussion musicians, are less musicians and more drum nerds, then the melodic tribal musicians"

[gedda]

Honestly, they are both geeks. electronic music is pretty nerdy anyways.

[Stace]

'trance people are this and techno people are this' is generalising on the same level as 'black people are good at basketball' or 'women are bad drivers'

Bullshit.

[Stace]

lol trance is more than that progressive trance shit which is shit by the way. the new wave of dark psy trance is really good!

Yeah, I was kinda "nope, nothing new for me here any more" about trance (well, psytrance) as it was the same arpeggios, plop plop drums etc. But I heard a whole set of new, underground dark, hypnotic psy played by a girl at some afterparty I was at in spain, and it was phenominal, ended up grabbing her at the end of the set and having a long conversation. Really great music, definitely with a more feminine edge to it as well, as techno can be a bit testosteroneybaloney.

Have you got a link to her stuff online by any chance?? Wouldn't mind a nosey.

[Lost to the Void]

Honestly, they are both geeks. electronic music is pretty nerdy anyways.

This. Electronic music is a geekfest of nerdy musicians.
I'm ok with that.
Embrace it, you will never look rock and roll pushing buttons and turning knobs.

[collide]

[tsaro]

Misleading thread title, expected something like nerds and musicians trying to slap each other with their keyboard of choice or something

Got me wondering though, how do they actually make the trance? Surely fiddling with DAWs and plugins is kind of nerdy, so that would be off the table for those cool and totally not-nerdy trance guys.... I guess they just have a fancy portable recorder or something and re-record the same track over and over, which actually does make a lot of sense when you think about it.

'trance people are this and techno people are this' is generalising on the same level as 'black people are good at basketball' or 'women are bad drivers'

Bullshit.

So you're basically saying it's true to some extent? Granted it's not really 'hard' science, but there's been plenty of research on those examples you give here.