Jazz is the teacher

Topic of today is what, if anything, can be learned from other genres, particularly genres that aren't that close to house music. Of especial interest are genres that aren't either direct predecessors such as disco and funk or otherwise very close to house, such as techno. What can be learned from jazz, from rock, from dub or reggae, from metal, from classical, from EDM?

Quick and simple answer: A lot. Even though house is a well-defined genre that has remained pretty close to it's roots for 30 years now that doesn't mean that listening to and drawing influence from other genres is wrong, quite the contrary in fact. While house is my number one love of all the music genres that doesn't mean that I'm some sort of a starry-eyed dreamer who thinks all house is great or that house is in some way a superior genre compared to others. It's just personal taste, house gives me the strongest positive emotions and I enjoy listening to it more often than other genres.

Trying to write a meaningful post about this subject isn't easy. I'm no music theory expert who can just sit down and analyse everything down to the smallest of details. I know very little about music theory and I don't have the sharpest set of ears, so my analysis is often very superficial.

I think the easiest way to approach this subject is simply by listing some genres, listening to some examples, thinking about it and writing down my thoughts. I'm in no way trying to include every single genre out there, it'd take me a month and a bookworth of text to do so.

Jazz: As I love jazz, especially the free kind of jazz, this should be an easy target. However, it's not. It definitely is not. I love jazz but I don't really understand jazz. I just listen to jazz because it sounds nice to my ears. I can listen to house, techno, drum&bass, ambient, all kinds of genres and often hear how they were made, at least on a superficial level. With jazz, all I hear is some cool cats playing great music, but I got no idea how they do it.  More specifically, I don't hear what makes jazz jazzy. As if there's some sort of a magic trick or a combination of tricks I simply ain't aware of. Magic jazz scales, magic jazz chords, magic jazz magic? I simply don't know. What can I learn from jazz then, if I can't analyse it musically? Technically, quite a bit actually. If you look at some sort of a greatest jazz albums of all time you'll probably notice how old most of them are. They are from an era when modern studio technology was at it's infancy, many of the studio tricks that are standard practice in 2016 were either nonexistent or very expensive. Still, many of those old jazz albums sound absolutely amazing. Why? It all boils down to arrangement and sound selection. In other words, tricks that aren't just useful but of paramount importance. While I'm a half-decent synthesist and sample mangler, arranging is one of my many Achille's heels. I really have to learn how to make a coherent whole out of decent enough elements.

Rock: What can an aspiring house producer learn from good old rock'n'roll then? A guitar solo perhaps? How to write lyrics with sexual innuendo? How to throw a television set out of a hotel room window? While those are of course very useful skills to possess, the best thing to learn from rock music from a house music perspective is energy. At least before Nirvana killed rock music it was all about the raw, sexual energy of the music. From the openly homosexual lyrics of Tutti Frutti to W.A.S.P.'s Animal, rock music has often been about doin' it. Sometimes quite subtly, sometimes blatantly. It's not that uncommon to hear house music with the same kind of raw, unrefined sexual energy as rock used to have. The infamous Dance Mania records and the artists associated with them  are a typical example.  Their take of the subject was often quite direct, with lots of swearing and using deragotary terms of females and their body parts. While I've done my fair share of swearing I nowadays favour a more subtle approach. I want to have that energy but get rid of all the sexual references, direct or not. That said, it's only a question of time before in a moment of insanity I grab the mic and make a song where I try to find a word that perfectly rhymes with the word bitch.

Metal: How about the bastard son of rock then? What possibly could a house producer learn from metal? Especially since the only form of  metal I know anything about is of the black kind. Sure, I could burn a few churches for inspiration, but that's not exactly #1 on my to-do list. Answering that question properly needs some careful thinking about what metal is about. Like house music, metal is about the expression of emotions. Maybe a different set of emotions than house, but emotions nonetheless. In that regard, listening to metal for inspiration and to learn something from is not as far out an idea as it might sound like. I often do it actually, when I'm stuck in a musical rut. It gives you a different perspective and forces your mind on a different path.

Dub and reggae: This one is actually quite easy to answer, particularly when speaking about dub and not it's poppier cousin reggae. Sense of space, creative use of effects and using a mixer as an instrument on it's own are what make dub. It's often not about what you play but what you don't play, and filling that space with all kinds of strange, yet fitting effects. Echo or delay is of course the effect most commonly associated with dub, but it doesn't end there and neither does the use of an echo unit make you a dub record. I've actually tried to make dub music a few times, but let's just say that it's not exactly my forte. I do, however, occasionally try to imitate the methods of dub, even when the output sounds nothing like it. This was particularly true when I was strictly a hardware user, I always recorded my tracks straight to 2-track, using the mixer and effects creatively while recording. It's a bit harder to imitate with just a laptop, but all the tricks I learned back then are extremely valuable now.

Classical: The hardest of them all, considering my disdain towards classical music. It's way too pompous and opulent for my small mind to handle. I admit, I just don't get it. I do like some of the music created with the same instruments in the 20th century, Steve Reich particularly, but classical or anything resembling it is simply not for me.  Still, I have an open mind and there's always a trick or two to be learned from any and every kind of music.  However, it's very, very difficult to think about anything worthwhile to be learned from classical music. It's so far detached from modern music, from club music even more so. Steve Reich is easy in comparison, it's basically just techno performed with different instruments. Perhaps looking at it from a different angle might be more fruitful? The thing I dislike about classical the most is the lack of concentration. The central motif is either nonexistent or it's so vague that casual listening doesn't reveal it. I like loops. Either actual, repeated loops or just the same thing played over and over again with real instruments, like in rock music. I see no point in writing a great melody, rhythm or chord progression and then only using it once. It seems like wasting something valuable. I've been listening to classical music for a few hours now nonstop and I really have to stop as I feel a bit nauseous. I didn't find an illumination, it only made me more certain about my own personal taste.

EDM: Why include EDM, isn't it basically just a poppified versio of house? To an extent, that's true. It's dance music, it's four on the floor, it uses the same kind of elements as house does. However, the similarities are quite superficial. They are about as close as Blink 182 and GG Allin are to  each other. Since I consider EDM as just a commercial ripoff of house, what possibly could I learn from it? Musically, not much to be honest. It uses all the cheap tricks in the book to create music that might sound interesting to a 15-year old but doesn't offer much of long-term value. Not that far away from the stuff that 2 Unlimited and such did in  the 90's.  However, what I can learn is marketing. By nature I'm quite shy, quiet, reserved type of character.  It's not easy for me to contact an unknown person and tell him that I'm really great and that my music is super awesome. But that's exactly what I have to learn to do. Maybe not in those exact words, but I have to learn to market myself and my music if I want my music to ever leave my bedroom and a handful of Soundcloud listens.  This blog has been a great first step, it being public and somewhat popular. It wasn't an easy decision, making it public, possibly facing humiliation and ridicule. That's not enough however. As my tracks (hopefully) get better and better, I need to find some kind of an outlet for them, which means I have to contact unknown people and convince them that my music is worth their attention. I won't be throwing cakes at people's faces, neither do I believe in fireworks (literal or not).  First, I have to write a track that I really believe in and then I have to market it properly. Try to be my humble self, yet confident. Not the easiest of combinations to achieve.

As usual, I could go on forever but I decided to stop here. I have a bad habit of babbling about given the chance, but I'll try to control myself and keep these blog posts compact.



As with most of these posts, I made a track to go with it too . Originally, I wanted to make a jazzy house track but I'm not so sure of the outcome. It samples a well-known free jazz record (if a free jazz record can be said to be well-known that is), so most of the musical ideas don't originate from my mind. I don't usually like to sample stuff with melodic or harmonic content, due to my inability to recognize notes and chords by ear. I got basically no idea if this track contains off-scale notes, as I simply don't hear them that easily. I went with a feeling, instead of building something theoretically correct. It is what it is. 20% wonky, 30% jazzy, 50% housey, 110% barfunkely.



Note: As this blog is a real-life document, not a way for me to glorify or put myself on a pedestal, I must admit that I was quite drunk when I wrote all this and I also made the final mix of the accompanying track while drunk.  Typos, grammatical erros as well as errors in the track are a result of a few pints of Finnish Karhu beer. It is what it is.