idm. intelligent dance music . . . ... i have never heard of anything more pretentious. congratulations.

Eh, I don't think many people use the term at face value. The name has been criticized by standout artists of the genre. When I see the term used to describe music, I'm waaaaay more likely to think "so it must sound like *insert artist who's also been called idm*" rather than "so it must sound intelligent". When describing music, I'm much more likely to call something electronica, ambient techno, some kind of house, etc when it comes to something considered idm. A lot of electronic music subgenres are fairly interchangeable.

@buboy24 I actually liked If I Get High better. Ban All The Music seems really simple and repetitive to me. Most rock songs seem that way to me, because they tend to have nothing guitar chords and vocals for melody, and simple guitar chords at that. If I Get High has a lot more variation. Also, I like how they actually had Walter Jr. smoking pot in the music video.

I tried listening to Crown of Horns, but that's really not my style. I mean, people accuse dubstep of sounding like noise, but I don't think I've ever heard a dubstep song that sounded that cluttered and noisy to me. But then again a lot of people do like music like that, so I guess it's a matter of personal taste. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

velocity:design:comfort is much more to my liking. It reminds me of Savant, especially Invasion (which is free BTW). And no, Yaya, it doesn't sound much like The Future.

And IDM may be a pretentious term, but honestly I think that fits it pretty well, since IDM seems to be a pretentious sort of music. It's like "I'm so artsy since I have tempo changes and all sorts of unique sh*t like that". Kind of like how indie music is to pop.

I understand. If I listened to it 2 years ago, or even last year, I might not have cared for it. Metal is one of those genres where most fans start out with the traditional/vanilla stuff and then get into progressively more extreme stuff over time. I joined this site roughly around the same time my music tastes were really developing, so I think this quote helped shape my current outlook.
I won't say my entire music philosophy is based off of that quote, but I really do treat vocals as just another instrument unless I can make them out as clear as day while listening to the music. If I really like an album, I'll look up its lyrics, and then it's usually a plus (there have been a few cases where reading the lyrics actually makes an album worse).  And noisiness isn't an inherently bad thing in my book

@Yaya That's my philosophy with vocals too, which is why I listen to EDM instead of pop. Pop focuses on the vocals to the point where the background music suffers. But after listening to EDM, the mastering on that sort of metal just sounds awful. Not to mention the timing of everything is much less precise. In EDM, every bit of the song is polished with meticulous care, but with that sort of metal, it seems to be more about how fast the performers can play than how precisely they can, and all the instruments play over each other, leaving it muddy sounding.

Do I sound like a snob? Yeah, probably. D:

I mean, one important tenet of my music philosophy (along with "the human voice is just an instrument, not the focus") is that what matters is the finished product of the song - the actual audio file which you listen to - as opposed to the performance of it. Starting from this assumption, electronically produced music and well-mastered studio albums stand out as the best music, and how fast the notes or drums on a song are is kind of pointless. Because of course, the drums could be made as fast as you want in the finished product, the important part is picking a good drum scheme, making the drums sound good, and knowing when to have the drums cut out to leave room for the other sounds. I mean, no matter how fast and hard you hammer on those drums, they're never going to sound like these drums.

As soon as you discount performing skill, the focus falls onto composers and producers more than performers, and even lackluster performances can sound awesome. For instance, the vocals on Boyinaband - Limelight feat. Cryaotic sound awesome... because of autotune. This is how it actually sounds when Dave from Boyinaband tries to sing the high part of the vox.

But a lot of people (I'm guessing yourself included, Yaya) do value songs for the skill of the performers, and I can't fault them for that. That's just not a big factor in my music philosophy or my music taste.

Side note, perhaps my favorite case of "every bit of the song is polished with meticulous care" is pitched drums. In a surprising number of EDM songs, the drums are pitched to harmonize with the melody. It's most apparent in hardstyle where the pitch of the kick drum changes as the melody progresses, but a lot of other songs have precisely pitched snare drums, such as Au5 & Fractal - Blue, which I linked above, or Rogue - Rattlesnake.

if you value vocals as an instrument you should try out cocteau twins. it's far from edm - it's dream pop - but it's absolutely beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3H25aWC3L0
Cocteau Twins - Donimo

Interesting musings, Droidfreak. I think you've put a lot more thought into things than I have, lol. I love music, but I know very little about music theory or production. And honestly, I don't reaaalllyy think about the skills of the performers either. I know referenced the "playing" of everyone else in regards to the last song I posted here, but I could've just as easily said "instrumentation" or "sounds". I guess I tend to take music at face value for the most part.  So since you seem to be interested in mastering, finished products, etc, are you one of those 320 kbs/FLAC or gtfo people? That's not a bad thing, it just seems like the kind of ethos that would fit you given what you've said so far. I'm the kinda person who's entire digital music library consists of 128 kbs or lower AAC files. Also, going off your stance on drums, what do you think of a group like Agoraphobic Nosebleed, a decently "cluttered and noisy" metal band that uses a drum machine in all of their songs? I'm just curious for the most part, there isn't usually this in depth of discussion in the thread, so I'm trying to make the most of it.

The various EDM songs you linked were pretty good. They remind me a lot of the various J-core/Speedcore I've listened to.

@Isa That was really good. I've only listened to their Heaven Or Las Vegas album. I need to check out the rest of their discography

Sort of. I mean, if a song is in 128kbps, I can tell by listening to it. I doubt I can really tell the difference between 256 and 320, but all of my music is in 320 or V0. Really, if you listen to music at 128kbps you're cheating yourself out of hearing the crisp details of the sound since those get lost in the noise.


That's a drum machine? Could have fooled me tbh, it sounds just like a generic drum set, and it's still playing the same sort of drum scheme as any other metal band (e.g. spam the kick drum as fast as you can). The drums do sound like they're played a bit more precisely I guess, but other than that it sounds pretty much the same to me. BTW, Agoraphobic Nosebleed is a great name for a metal band.

For an example of drums which I'd consider to be well done in a rock context, check out Fall Out Boy - Immortals (from the soundtrack of Big Hero 6).

First of all, the drums on chorus, which are most like typical rock drums, have a huge boost in sound design/mastering over a basic drumset sound. They're crisp, loud, and don't sustain any longer than necessary. The drum scheme is also looser than the metal songs you posted, with a notable pause in the kicks just before and after each snare hits. The looser drum scheme and less sustain on the drums makes more room for the other sounds, to avoid making it feel cluttered, since drums that loud overpower the other sounds temporarily (or rather, the producer intentionally reduces the volume of the other sounds when the drum hits to leave room for the drum sound to shine).

The drums on the intro and verses, by comparison, are quieter and less pronounced, with none of those big kicks and snares. In this section, rather than having loud drums in a loose scheme, there's a tight drum scheme with quieter drums to build intensity without overpowering the hook and vocals. And in order for such a tight drum scheme to sound good, the drum sounds themselves have to be extremely crisp and short. The drum sound used is something like a snare or closed high hat, but with very little sustain. That sort of drum sound and scheme is used a lot in trap, I think that's where the inspiration for those drums came.

Side note: That same high production quality applies pretty much all of Fall Out Boy's music since they reformed, especially their latest album. You can tell by listening that they didn't just record themselves playing live and print it, a lot of work went into production. There's a good chance you've heard some of those songs on pop radio, if you ever listen to pop radio.


I tend to start in-depth conversations, especially about subjects I'm interested in, and ever since I went to college I've been interested in music. Actually, I sort of was before that too, but I pretty much only listened to one band, Casting Crowns. Casting Crowns, BTW, is still probably my favorite contemporary Christian band, but I have a general distaste for CCM these days because a lot of it is artistically bankrupt and/or composed of generic Christian-speak with no real meaning. Songs like this, on the other hand, are both artistically and spiritually powerful.

@Isa, thank you for sharing Donimo. I searched the band beforehand and thought it would sound old since it's made in 1984. It's very beautiful but I can't understand it so it kinda bothers me.

I have found something... interesting

You've got that right, rocket guy. Definitely interesting.

It's making me motion sick and I'm sitting down...

I think I'm going to listen to Sweet Trip on my way to uni today .

I'm enjoying these songs recently (both from my discover):
https://open.spotify.com/track/2nf5jJGMYedUuqOI552rUz
https://open.spotify.com/track/0yjuwt915fyyx6rcdke16p

Grabbitz - Follow Me has been on loop a lot today, since I finally got internet in my new apartment. I wasn't a big fan of Grabbitz's early Monstercat releases, but his recent ones have been pretty badass. Way Too Deep, Better With Time, and All Alone (with the Pegboard Nerds) have all been great.

Krewella - Marching On remove fascism from the great americas go back to yahtzee germoney u suckerzzzz.

I have made a new playlist of all the songs I use whenever i need to have a song for a video or something of the like

https://open.spotify.com/user/rocketguy2/playlist/3bDZ0QOt02pZtNrHAlP0Wa

I found this website on reddit that lets you listen to a bunch of radio stations all over the world, its pretty neat. The dots each have a radio station, and I think the big ones have multiple.

http://radio.garden/live/

My screen got stuck on planting radio garden it doesn't matter radio is for chumps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJFa05DgGmk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Lru6zH5suM

Currently listening to some radio station in the Dominican Republic using Radio Garden. That is a really cool website. For some reason though there only seems to be one radio station in Cuba that you can listen to. I wonder why.

I am currently enjoying Bjork's album, starting from Homogenic to the most recent, Vulnicura. I remembered that Harumbai used one of her songs in his walkthrough.
If you would like to hear some of my favorite tracks from her:
Family from Vulnicura
Mutual Core from Biophilia (I feel that someone already posted this in this topic that's why I discovered it.)
I haven't listened to Volta yet.
Where is The Line? from Medulla
I don't have any representative from Vespertine.
Bachelorette from Homogenic

you should try Hyperballad and Possibly Maybe from the Post album

Post is my favorite album of hers. Shame on me for picking prolly the most straightforward one, but it's really good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aY1Z15vTw0

Listen to all of this, it's all good

post is very varied

compare to homogenic, it's even in the name oo

Isa, I definitely agree.
I'm currently listening to Post. A track caught my attention, 'It's Oh So Quiet'. Gosh, it's the complete opposite: she screams somewhere in the middle. It's energizing and weird at the same time!