Genre blurbs

[Zoop 8,384]

I had a thought while looking round the genre listing and realizing that if if I weren't on this board and/or in the Skype group I... would honestly not have any idea what EDM is as a musical genre. Similarly, I might find myself somewhat confused as to what goes into synthpop, and such things.

 

While I will be the first to confess that I'm a bit of a dunce when it comes to anything and everything remotely musical (just ask anyone that has ever heard me sing), I think it's safe to say that I'm not the only person with nary a single clue that will hop onto this site.

 

With that in mind... how about adding small text blurbs to each genre directory? Talk a little about what makes that genre unique, and perhaps give some examples of some subgenres within the genre. My thought is that this would help to steer users toward the type of music that they're interested in finding, and perhaps clear up some confusion as to what things like the soundtrack genre is intended for.

 

Thoughts?

[SCS 7,443]

I support this suggestion. I just took a look at the genres page, and I don't know what several of them are. Some of those I have heard of, but I don't truly understand what they mean.

 

Here is a list of all of the genres that I don't understand the meanings of:

• Chiptune
• Darkwave
• Downtempo (My guess is that this means slow music, but I don't know for sure)
• EDM
• Eurobeat
• House
• IDM
• New Age
• Soundtrack (What constitutes a soundtrack on pony.fm?)
• Ska / Punk
• Synthpop
• Trance
• Experimental 
   

Also, I don't know what the difference between "Hardcore" and "Hardstyle" is, nor do I know what would differentiate songs in the Easy Listening genre from songs in other genres, due to the subjective nature of what is considered easy listening.

[Dreamsong 253]

I like this idea a lot!

 

I get the feeling it'd be helpful for uploaders as well listeners!   (It'd be verra helpful for me!

 

(I'd also love to see a little reminder on the uploader pages regarding the kinds of music that belong on Pony.fm.  : )

[Arcanel 3,041]

I approve of this idea as well! Especially because of, mostly, the fact that there are SOOOOOOOOOOO many sub-genres of Electronica that FEW musicians out there know exactly how to differentiate them, or even know about them. VERY few. There's also the fact that trying to describe a music genre is always a hard thing to do.

 

I tried to think up of a way to try and show this as less hassling as possible. My only idea however, is that whenever you click on a genre, a small bubble pops up giving a small description on the genre.

 

 

subgenres within the genre.

Perhaps instead of sub-genres, put something below that says "Related genres"?

 

 

I'd also love to see a little reminder on the uploader pages regarding the kinds of music that belong on Pony.fm.

 

But... isn't technically any music allowed so long as it is pony related? The difference being on which genre is it from? 

Edited March 22, 2013 by Eevee

[Freewave 1,145]

I support this suggestion. I just took a look at the genres page, and I don't know what several of them are. Some of those I have heard of, but I don't truly understand what they mean.

 

Here is a list of all of the genres that I don't understand the meanings of:

• Chiptune
• Darkwave
• Downtempo (My guess is that this means slow music, but I don't know for sure)
• EDM
• Eurobeat
• House
• IDM
• New Age
• Soundtrack (What constitutes a soundtrack on pony.fm?)
• Ska / Punk
• Synthpop
• Trance
• Experimental 

   

Also, I don't know what the difference between "Hardcore" and "Hardstyle" is, nor do I know what would differentiate songs in the Easy Listening genre from songs in other genres, due to the subjective nature of what is considered easy listening.

 

Hardcore generally refers to fast breakbeats (sometimes verging on drum &  bass) and that includes speedcore and breakcore. Technically if pony.fm wanted to they could alternatively use Breakbeats but that could mean drum & bass could get thrown in that as well..

 

 

Hardstyle refers to fast and heavy 4/4 beats. Used to be called Gabber.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-_x34py8MU

 

Pony.FM could point to BMD's genre page if you want to provide an explanation at the bottom of your page.

http://bronymusiciandirectory.blogspot.com/2012/07/hardcore.html

I'd be happy to make you a special banner in fact.

 

I would certainly appreciate the support back to my site as that's part of what we do, try to make sense of it all and point people to the music they are looking for. While I have been talking to Fed0 a LOT on ways to get pony.fm i really haven't talked about ways we can help each other and this might be one of those places that a referral my way may do both of us a lot of good. As always i picked genres at my site that i knew had brony examples, that were needed, and a lot of people were making some dedicated music in that style for.Feel free to compare what's on there and add here if you like.

Edited March 23, 2013 by Freewave

[CloudFyre 848]

This is actually a very good idea. I read in the Skype conversations that some people didn't even know what EDM meant - meaning that the term will be useless without some background knowledge. I'd be willing to attempt a couple of writeups to shed some light on the different styles.

I support this suggestion. I just took a look at the genres page, and I don't know what several of them are. Some of those I have heard of, but I don't truly understand what they mean.

 

Here is a list of all of the genres that I don't understand the meanings of:

• Chiptune
• Darkwave
• Downtempo (My guess is that this means slow music, but I don't know for sure)
• EDM
• Eurobeat
• House
• IDM
• New Age
• Soundtrack (What constitutes a soundtrack on pony.fm?)
• Ska / Punk
• Synthpop
• Trance
• Experimental 
   

Also, I don't know what the difference between "Hardcore" and "Hardstyle" is, nor do I know what would differentiate songs in the Easy Listening genre from songs in other genres, due to the subjective nature of what is considered easy listening.

 

For SCS:

To give a (very) brief overview:

 

• Chiptune music will usually be very 8-bit sounding - think of very early video games, and you're probably 99% there.
• Darkwave (from what I understand) is a very small branch of post-punk music that carries a dark, and sometimes sad undertone.
• Downtempo may be better known as "chill-out" or "chill" music. It's usually electronic, but slower and softer than dance music. (Jazz-style sounds will often find their way into some chill tracks.) The speed varies greatly.
• Eurobeat, also known as Hi-NRG, is literally it's namesake - high energy tracks originating in Europe, and more specifically, Britain. It's hard to describe it without giving you an example, but most Eurobeat songs make use of a fairly standard instrument, synthesized from something known as a sawtooth wave. The waveforms themselves are made to be loud, short, bursts of musical notes (known in the music world as "arps").
• EDM stands for Electronic Dance Music, which encompasses a MASSIVE spectrum of music. Most of these other genres in the list will fit under this category.
• House and the more popular spinoff: Progressive House, genre is a specific branch of EDM that utilizes 4/4 timing, electronic drum kits, syncopated hi-hats, and deep, synthesized bass lines. House tracks normally rest around the 128-130 BPM (Beats Per Minute) range. Think of club music. Tadaaaa!
• IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) is more or less a term that's only found in the U.S. It's name came from the IDM list, a very early U.S. mailing list of highly rated songs, composed mainly of music from Warp Records' compilation called Artificial Intelligence. Nowadays, it usually refers to EDM artists who have put their own stylistic spin on their music via random experimentation, etc. There's no single defining factor that makes IDM what it is, other than an artist labeling himself as such.
  
  While the idea was that the separation would define music that was "equally comfortable on the dance floor as in the living room", it was the subject of mass criticism from artists as being either 1) an insult to other EDM tracks, or 2) a term that overly confident, and under qualified artists used to make themselves look better.
• New Age is an umbrella term for the aforementioned Downtempo genre. A lot of times, it's used for yoga, meditation, relaxing, etc., and will sometimes have a drone-ish sort of bass.
• Soundtrack...is something that Feld0 made up for video game music. It's going to be removed, from what I understand.
• Ska is a form of Jazz, Blues, Calypso, etc. that originated in Jamaica, and was the precursor to reggae, or Jamaican dance music.
• Punk is a form of rock music that came about in the 70's. Short songs, stripped down instruments, were common, alongside the occasional anti-establishment lyrics.
• Synthpop is literally pop music with synthesizers added for instruments (more common back when physical synths came out to the consumer market). Kesha is a good example of modern Synthpop.
• Experimental is a catch-all phrase that usually refers to music that either 1) goes outside of the normal bounds of a genre's standards, or 2) mixes multiple genres in unpredictable ways.
• Trance is branch of EDM that usually has a high energy, uplifting sound to it, and almost always runs at 138 BPM. A popular trick is to keep an even drum beat, but use syncopated or uneven lead instruments to give it a memorable sound. 99.9% of the time, it's designed to make you feel happy, energized, and up on your feet.

 

 

To go further in depth on Trance: Trance's secret weapon is the magical S7 wave (or superstrings), which is a highly modified sound wave that didn't resemble any of the standard four (sine, square, triangle, and sawtooth waves). It was, in essence, an entirely new sound that nobody had ever heard before.

The S7 wave (which is a heavily modified sawtooth wave) first appeared on the Roland JP-8000 synthesizer back in 1997, and was used extensively by music legends such as Rank 1. It spread through the music community like wildfire due to the way the sound wave reacted when filters were applied. (There's actually some very interesting math behind what makes the S7 sound the way it does, but that's for another time.)

To give you an idea of what classic Trance is:

Rank 1, the group that basically defined Trance music, performing live. If the link didn't work properly, jump to 19:58. They begin a standard club beat, with soft S7 chords rising and falling as background ambiance, and another syncopated synthesizer in the higher octaves acting as the lead instrument. (If you want to hear more of how the filters change the sound, jump back an extra minute to 19:00 and listen for a while.)

I hope that helps!

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,520]

I like this idea, though last night's changes to Pony.fm (which involved scrapping the genre directories in their original form, in favour of parametrized queries to the tracks index) may complicate the exact implementation. While adding a blurb directly to what is now a "genre directory" would be a bit tricky, it should be relatively simple to add blurbs to tooltips that appear whenever you rollover a genre link. This would be possible on both various tables of tracks as well as the genre index.

 

 

Pony.FM could point to BMD's genre page if you want to provide an explanation at the bottom of your page.

http://bronymusiciandirectory.blogspot.com/2012/07/hardcore.html

I'd be happy to make you a special banner in fact.

 

I would certainly appreciate the support back to my site as that's part of what we do, try to make sense of it all and point people to the music they are looking for. While I have been talking to Fed0 a LOT on ways to get pony.fm i really haven't talked about ways we can help each other and this might be one of those places that a referral my way may do both of us a lot of good. As always i picked genres at my site that i knew had brony examples, that were needed, and a lot of people were making some dedicated music in that style for.Feel free to compare what's on there and add here if you like.

 

Freewave, would you be willing to let me use BMD's genre descriptions on Pony.fm, with credit for it and a link back to BMD on a "credits" page? Sending people directly off-site from Pony.fm's genre index wouldn't really work, as the entire idea of that page is to make visitors check out Pony.fm's internal music library; however, you've done an awesome job with putting your genre list together, and I'd be happy to give you credit with a link back if I incorporate some of it into Pony.fm.

[Freewave 1,145]

I like this idea, though last night's changes to Pony.fm (which involved scrapping the genre directories in their original form, in favour of parametrized queries to the tracks index) may complicate the exact implementation. While adding a blurb directly to what is now a "genre directory" would be a bit tricky, it should be relatively simple to add blurbs to tooltips that appear whenever you rollover a genre link. This would be possible on both various tables of tracks as well as the genre index.

 

 

 

Freewave, would you be willing to let me use BMD's genre descriptions on Pony.fm, with credit for it and a link back to BMD on a "credits" page? Sending people directly off-site from Pony.fm's genre index wouldn't really work, as the entire idea of that page is to make visitors check out Pony.fm's internal music library; however, you've done an awesome job with putting your genre list together, and I'd be happy to give you credit with a link back if I incorporate some of it into Pony.fm.

 

Yeah i guess that will work ok. Anyway you find that will work best i guess as i will do plan to send a lot of people to pony.fm via links from my site when its goes live and already have a small link on the right for now.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Freewave