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Thomas GΓΌnter

Where the road ends, my music begins

techno-music

What the hell is techno music?

February 8, 2016 by Aaron
Music Genres, What The Hell Series
juan atkins, kraftwerk, techno, techno music, techno music history

Aaron here. We’ve been researching genres lately. It may be obvious, but it helps to be able to “pigeonhole” your music as much as possible so you can find the people who will really be into you. With us it’s not easy! Everything we come across sounds nothing like us, even though if we look at the elements, it looks like we match. But the whole is more than the sum of its parts in music.

So we thought we’d go through some genres and post a little about them, as a way to help us find our niche, and to share the info we gain, and to make new friends in the process…

So – Third Option has long been called “techno/classical/poetry fusion”. So let’s look at “techno”.

The Wikipedia definition of techno begins like this:

Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States during the mid-to-late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno in reference to a specific genre of music was in 1988. Many styles of techno now exist, but Detroit techno is seen as the foundation upon which a number of subgenres have been built.

In Detroit techno resulted from the melding of African American music including Chicago house, funk, electro, and electric jazz with electronic music by artists such as Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, and Yellow Magic Orchestra.[6] Added to this is the influence of futuristic and fictional themes[7] relevant to life in American late capitalist society, with Alvin Toffler’s book The Third Wave being a notable point of reference.

Sounds about right. But what does it really sound like? Well Wikipedia’s got an example of very early Juan Atkins techno:

That sounds right to me, but it actually sounds like some of the old hip-hop/breakdance music I used to jam to as a kid…like this one:

Whodini’s “The Freaks Come Out At Night”, which is classified as “hip-hop/electro”.

Omg that’s nothing like Third Option! Hmm…perhaps the instruments used don’t define the genre? Because indeed, we use very similar techniques…

Ok well techno didn’t just come from Detroit – it also came from Germany, and everybody who talks about techno talks about Kraftwerk. Here’s some early Kraftwerk:

I used to LOVE this jam! It was on the SAME mix tape as The Freaks Come Out At Night. πŸ™‚ Wikipedia calls this song “electronic”.

But that still doesn’t sound like Third Option…but you know what, it doesn’t sound like modern techno either. Here’s somebody’s mix set of what sounds more like modern techno to me:

Hmm. That’s closer. But still…let’s see – Wisegeek says techno “emphasizes rhythm and utilizes advancements in music technology and production”…they say more of course, but if that was all you had to go on, this would define EVERY SINGLE GENRE OF MUSIC.

AYE YAI YAI! Let’s cut to the chase here. Music genre, like many things, is something that is very easy to see and hear. We can say “that sounds like that” and “that is not like that” very easily. And if we’re trained we can describe things. For example, we can say that techno music is pretty much always in the 120 BPM to 140 BPM tempo range, whereas hip-hop is almost always between 80-100. We can say that pretty much every kick drum in techno is some version of a TR-808 sample. We can say that techno usually consists of the use of synthesizer patches like sawtooth and square waves. We can say that it usually consists (nowadays) of “transcendant, rising melody” and almost never consists of a whole lot of vocals outside of sample snippets. But exceptions to these rules exist everywhere, and really, you can’t successfully describe what it is. You just know. It either is or it isn’t.

Is “techno” a catchall term? According to a lot of folks, no, it isn’t. I think of it as a catchall..but perhaps it’s not. Certainly the few examples here fit together pretty well. It either is or it isn’t…

So…is we or isn’t we? If you want to help us figure it out, travel over to thirdoptionmusic.com, grab the free download there, and email us at thirdoption @ nquit . com – and suggest a genre! πŸ™‚

We’ll continue this genre journey later…

— Aaron

Climb, Monkey, Climb

September 16, 2008 by Aaron
Monkey Set
aaron trumm, climb monkey climb, climb to the earth, monkey set, poetry, slam poetry, techno music


Climb, Monkey, Climb, by Third Option

Not sure if I improv’d some of this or not. I think maybe I did. If I didn’t, then I just jotted something down real quick. You can tell by all the repetition that it’s not a long-crafted work of utter care. πŸ™‚

I like the notion “this isn’t a monkey’s job all this beating down of apes” – I remember that one. It isn’t really our calling to be all violent and dominating – our calling is to climb and exalt and whatever you wanna say. So yeah, here you go.


this isn’t
this isn’t
this isn’t wasted time
wake up in the morning
and find your tail wrapped around a naked rhyme

this isn’t
this isn’t wasted time

climbing
flying is for the birds

monkey climb
climb
climb to the top of everything
dance into the desert
lead
into the ancient monkey breath of time

this isn’t
this isn’t
this isn’t a monkey’s job all this beating down of apes

monkeys were made to climb
travel
to feed the universe cackling
and screach
screach
screach eternity into the truth

climb
climb
climb, monkey, climb
climb
climb to the earth
climb to the earth
climb to the top of the soiled world

now rule
rule
monkeys
gods
daybreak
lust
rule
RULE
RULE
RULE

monkey in the sky!

And…You’ve seen me say it before I’m sure, but FREE STUFF AWAITS RIGHT HERE πŸ™‚

— Aaron

[purchase_link id=”1318″ text=”Download The Monkey Set Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

iTunes US

Yellow And White

August 11, 2008 by Aaron
Cult Of Nice
aaron trumm, amalia ortiz, bluebonnet poetry slam, conroe, san antonio poetry slam, shaggy, tamara nicholl, techno music, third option, yellow and white


Yellow And White, by Third Option

This was one of my slam poems that I used a lot. I ended up retiring it from slam as I got better in slam, because it actually doesn’t fit the form well enough to consistently get great scores. It doesn’t have the right rise and fall of energy pattern for slam.

But my ‘ol buddy Spec always really liked it. πŸ™‚ We did it as a three voice poem at the National Poetry Slam in Providence, RI in 2000. It was me and Tamara Nicholl and Esther Griego. It worked alright but wasn’t great. It’s just not “slammy” enough.

I actually wrote the poem to this music, which is rare on this album. I had basically the whole track minus any vocals already done, and me and Tamara were travelling from Albuquerque to Houston in the middle of the night (maybe we left Albuquerque at 1AM or so). We were also going for some visiting I guess, but what I remember is that we were going to go to the Bluebonnet Poetry Slam in Conroe, TX. That was in the year 2000, I guess.

Tamara was sleeping and I kept playing the track over and over and over and over for about 5 hours while I “wrote” this poem by saying lines, memorizing, rearranging, memorizing. I had to just keep doing it over and over because there was no other way to write it down. And Tamara really would wake up barely enough every once in a while to randomly tell me to slow down and watch out for cops. For some reason she was really worried about getting stopped.

I considered trying to do the poem in the slam, but I wisely opted against using a new untested shaky piece. I actually blew up the spot with what I did do (not sure what it was in the first round – probably this year 2000 poem called No Apocalypse) and was the “flash point” poet. The first poet to get a really high score and blow up the room, but then everybody after that gets higher scores.

I remember they had it in this honky tonk bar type thing, with all these golden Christmas lights strewn about, which really gave the place a down home, cozy, yet glamorous, “i’m a superstar out in the world” type feel.

At that slam is where we met Amalia Ortiz and Shaggy, who were then married and the leaderz of the slam in San Antonio. They invited us to feature in the San Antonio slam, which we did. Later that summer, they brought the first team to come from San Antonio to Nationals, and they got 2nd place! It was amazing!

I was always proud of how tight the drum and bass mix in this song sounded. There’s also a spot in the middle where I had a distorted vocal that didn’t quite sound right, but I figured fuck it, I need to get done, and I cut that corner and left it. Well of COURSE Tamara noticed that VERY thing when she listened, which at that time was a VERY frustrating thing, because it meant going back for another 8 hour mix session, since we were using analog equipment – you can’t just recall a mix on an analog board. You try, by having photos of the knobs and notes galore, but it just doesn’t work that way.

Anyway, this is the song Yellow And White, available, of course, on the CD Cult Of Nice πŸ™‚ – and obviously – there is still always free stuff available at www.thirdoption.com/free-music

[purchase_link id=”1325″ text=”Download Cult Of Nice Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

iTunes US

Get the CD Here

Amadeus

May 9, 2008 by Aaron
Frosted Mini Wheats
amadeus, frosted mini wheats, mozart, spoken word, techno music, third option


Amadeus by Third Option

Here’s the next track on Frosted Mini Wheats. I almost want to say it should be obvious why it’s called Amadeus, but maybe people won’t recognize the melody. I’m not even entirely sure it IS Mozart. But the strings line is, I think, a Mozart melody which then goes elsewhere of my own creation. I was all proud because I figured it out one day on the piano. The other thing I did with this tune is I figured, I don’t have real strings, so I won’t try to make ’em sound real, I’ll try to make ’em sound fucked up with all this reverb and extreme EQ, and I felt like they sounded much more real that way.

*shrug*

Woo!

WAIT! Don’t forget to go get a FREE THIRD OPTION TRACK or two! πŸ™‚

Still

May 8, 2008 by Aaron
Frosted Mini Wheats
aaron j. trumm, frosted mini wheats, poetry, still, tamara nicholl, techno music, third option

Oh Still is very important in the realm of Third Option! Still was totally different and not as cool, but then I met the poet Tamara Nicholl, and she wanted to record some poems, so I said ok hey I’ll record you if you let me use the samples. I was working on Frosted Mini Wheats at the time, of course. So I recorded her, and put some samples of this short poem “Still” into the song that was then called – i don’t remember – something else ;). Then she listened and had a ton of suggestions and ideas about it. So I rearranged it with her and we had her do this singing, and I did some singing. So that eery vocal is multiple takes of both of us. The reason it’s so eery is because Tamara has a tin ear like nobody’s business. God bless ya, Tamara, love you, but goddamn that girl cannot sing. But somehow that’s exactly what the thing called for.

Ended up doing a maxi single of Still with 4 remixes. Sent some copy, either just Still or maybe the whole maxi-single, to Annie Nightingale of BBC Radio 1 in England. She’s like the premier techno/dance DJ in England. She broke Daft Punk is one thing she did. Well that was probably our biggest “success” as Third Option. She loved Still. She invited me to put together a 30 minute mix set, which I did, and it aired on BBC I in – June of 2002? Is that right? Something like that. Maybe 2001? I don’t know.

That was wicked fun. They called me up from London and everything. It didn’t turn us into superstars though. That’s one of the times that I learned that just having some airtime on a big radio show doesn’t really do anything for your “career” if you don’t have the rest of the infrastructure in place.

Now then – since you’ve been so kind as to read these little rants – why don’t you treat yourself to some free music? πŸ™‚

Goody Proctor

May 6, 2008 by Aaron
Frosted Mini Wheats
aaron trumm, goody proctor, nquit music, techno music, third option, trance


Goody Proctor by Third Option

This was fun. I kept being moved by it. The samples I took from a cassette tape of an audio play – or maybe it was a recording of a theater production of The Crucible. I don’t really remember who it was that did it. I think it’s in the credits on the album cover.

LIFE, WOMAN! A lot of times in life nowadays I’ll randomly say “there is blood on my head! cannot you see the blood on my head???” and this is where I get that. It’s fun. “HUSH!”

I am innocent to a witch! I know not what a witch is! How do you know then that you are not a witch??

THAT is some McCarthy era shit right there. Or some now era shit! *laughs and laughs*

I don’t even know what a terrorist IS!! THEN HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT A TERRORIST???

How do YOU know, that you are not a terrorist?? – A message from Homeland Security

I wonder why I said terrorist and not communist…you be the judge! lol

ok when you’re done laughing (at me), get you some free music over at thirdoptionmusic.com πŸ™‚

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