Genre boundaries can often become fuzzy as artists blend styles together and craft unique renditions of established genres. Tropical house is one such subgenre, yet could also be considered its own genre due to its emphasis on relaxation and catchy melodies.
1. EDM
EDM (Electronic Dance Music) is an expansive genre that encompasses various subgenres. These include drum and bass, dubstep, future garage as well as influences such as jungle rave and breakbeat music.
Drum and bass music is created by sampling drum breaks from funk and soul records and speeding them up to house and techno tempos, along with bleeps, bloops, and crazy pitch modulation effects.
Disco music has long been considered one of the cornerstones of Electronic Dance Music (EDM), sometimes used as an umbrella term for rave culture when at its height in the 80s. Even today, disco remains an integral component of pop and dance music genres.
Kawaii bounce is a modern offshoot of trap music characterized by Japanese pop culture influences, high-pitched vocals and bouncy drums reminiscent of Jersey Club or Footwork music. This genre can range from upbeat and feel-good songs to moodier tracks that may range anywhere between upbeat and downtempo tunes.
2. Techno
Techno is a genre characterized by repetitive beats created using drum machines, sequencers and electronic synthesizers to produce pulsating patterns. Techno tracks commonly feature vintage instruments like Roland TR-808s and TR-909s along with Roland TB-303 synthesizers – or modern software emulators of them such as Roland’s TR-909.
Techno has quickly become an international cultural movement, drawing crowds of hundreds of thousands at festivals such as Tomorrowland. Techno is a genre that transcends borders and unites people with its collective ethos: freedom and connection.
One of the earliest pioneers of electronica music in Detroit was The Belleville Three, who took influence from Kraftwerk and George Clinton’s Southern American funk music in developing their signature style. These pioneers are widely credited with helping popularize it across America; since then it has expanded globally, impacting trance, minimal and gabber genres alike.
3. House
House is among the most beloved electronic music genres, hailing from Chicago originally and featuring 4/4 kick drums with swinging percussion and hats; basslines in these tracks can’t help but move your body!
Disco is another widely enjoyed genre. Here, traditional music styles such as rhythm and blues, funk and soul meet synthesizers and drum machines.
Deep house is a subgenre of house music characterized by spacious pads and chords mixed with modern Blues, Jazz and Soul vocals, often at 110 to 125 BPM tempos.
4. Electro
Ghetto House is an eclectic genre that blends elements from Miami Bass, Hip House, and Detroit Techno into one lo-fi fourx4 electro-techno beat, typically created using Roland 808 or 909 drum machines. This style employs synthesized tom-tom sounds along with short, dirty vocal samples often repeated several times throughout its composition – its BPM can vary accordingly.
Electro Swing uses sampled swing and jazz records warped to fit a consistent beat that is common in DJ and EDM dance music productions, often featuring vocals processed using a vocoder.
Big room house is a modern form of electro that has quickly taken over major dance music events. With its bombastic style, minimal melodies, and electro-house style drops that suit peak time slots perfectly, as well as big euphoric leads and upbeat piano chord progressions it has quickly become one of the preferred choices among mainstream DJ’s.
5. Electro-Soul
This genre combines rhythm and blues, funk and soul music with electronic synths to form its signature sound, as well as featuring elements from industrial music styles. The BPM can range from 120-135BPM.
Electro is often an instrumental genre, defined by drum machines and samplers such as Roland TR-808 and AKAI S900 drum machines and samplers. Electro was one of the precursors to Detroit techno, which features heavier beats with less emphasis on melodies; additionally it often incorporates vocal processing using speech synthesis or vocoder as seen with Cybotron’s iconic Planet Rock or Warp 9’s automatous chanting.
Electro-soul has made an inroad into modern culture thanks to artists like Pretty Lights who pioneer its use in their intricately complex style. Although not widely recognized, electro-soul music is quickly gaining attention and growing more mainstream by the day. Look out for other electro-soul artists such as:
6. Slap House
Slap House is one of the newest EDM subgenres. It combines drum’slap’ rhythms from deep house music with aggressive basslines, creating an energetic and propulsive dance genre. Slap House stands out due to its short percussive kick sound used during drops – something easily created using either an original TR-808 or modern emulators such as Logic Pro X.
Electro swing is an infusion of 1920s and ’40s jazz styles with 2000s drum ‘n’ bass music, mixing double-time clave triplets with fast 808 beats to form its unique sound. Jungle, on the other hand, uses rapid breakbeats, syncopated drum loops, and strong reggae influences for its music, while speed garage takes cues from all three genres as well as breakbeats and jungle elements.
7. Wave
Trance music combines club energy with emotion-driven chords and melodies for a fast-paced experience that’s often anthemic and uplifting.
EDM, Drum & Bass and Dance Music genres converge into what is known as Chillout/Meditation Music, distinguished by the modulated sounds of Roland TB-303 synthesizers modulated with high-energy beats and dark or more melodic tones. Chillout/Meditation Music can also be used as an aid to relaxation or even meditation.
Synthwave is an influential electronic music genre resembling 80s computer adverts and early internet culture, often instrumental and featuring Pop and emo undertones with dark visual aesthetics and experimental lo-fi styles. Although Vaporwave is more of a meme genre, both forms belong to the electronic music scene.
8. Nu-Disco
Nu-disco music experienced a recent resurgence in the 2010s. It coincided with an increased interest in classic disco and synthesizer-heavy 1980s European dance music styles from this era, specifically 4/4 drum patterns using hip-hop and funk beats sped up to house and techno tempos; oscillators with crazy pitch modulation; repetitive bassline stabs without traditional melodies as its hallmark characteristics.
Remix funk features classic 80s Italo disco-style synths and an iconic dance floor rhythm characterized by kick drum on every beat and open hi-hat on every eighth note – often remixes or re-edits of original disco or funk songs from this period.
9. Vapor Twitch
Vapor Twitch is a sub-genre that expands upon electronic styles to produce futuristic pop music. It blends elements from pop, hip-hop and Glitch genres into its sound; tracks feature autotuned vocals distorted into cartoon-like tunes with cartoonish cartoon-esque melodies; its lyrics often deal with identity politics or emo-anxiety themes.
Vaporwave music has had an enormous influence on art, shaping an innovative aesthetic that celebrates glitches and flaws. This style blends postmodernism with nostalgia to challenge traditional art forms.
Glitch-hop is a hybrid genre that blends hip-hop rapping, song structures and bass production techniques with glitch, glitch and modern bass production techniques to produce unexpected sounds and visuals. BPM may vary and techniques such as circuit bending, data bending and physical manipulation may be utilized to produce unexpected sounds and visuals that resonate with listeners of all ages – especially younger generations due to its accessibility and its dreamlike qualities – creating something new within music that challenges classical forms.
10. Gabber
Gabber was one of the Netherlands’ most significant youth culture movements during the 1990s, often linked with soccer hooliganism and extreme right movements. A subgenre of hardcore techno, gabber became famous for its “rough” sound and fast beats.
The online exhibition A Brief History of Gabber, created by Dutch art journal and magazine Sound and Vision exclusively for Google Arts & Culture, tracks its rise and fall using archival TV and rave footage, audio recordings and images from private collections. Furthermore, it explores how digital production techniques allow artists to vary the beat speed resulting in both hard, more sinister tracks as well as happy gabber (characterized by distorted basslines and wild atmospheric elements) which is rapidly growing in popularity today. This exhibition follows Gabber from its creation until today through various images, TV clips from TV and rave footage as well as audio recordings and private collection images from private collections around the world.