Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music (opens in new tab)

BTW v2.5 of the guide can still be found here (requires flash):

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

I was just talking about this the other day with glowing nostalgia. What a delightful unexpected event. I had a similar experience to you with the flash version and it lead me to start making music myself and get involved in a scene that really was one of the most valuable experiences of my young life. Having the graph to explore the lexicon for what exists and examples side by side to get an understanding of why felt like finding a secret treasure map. I can only think of one other flash program I've gone and searched out in the years since and it's the dumb Something Awful Jeff K cartoon making fun of Linux users [0]. Any time I've shown the old version to people over the years it blew their minds. If I ever make anything half as impactful I'll consider myself pretty lucky.

[0] https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/jeff-ks-user...

"The word Garage doesn't mean anything pertinent other than its name comes from the legendary Paradise Garage nightclub in New York City where DJ Larry Levan would play anything he damn well pleased."

"Today what most people think is House music is actually Garage. And what most people think is Garage is some dodgy nonsense the British sharted into their trousers. Someone should really try and set the record straight about that. Like make a guide or something."

I love a bit of UK Garage but laughed out loud when I read that line about trousers. This Ishkur guy is a beast.

"There are subgenres of Deep House that get even deeper, jazzier, and more soulful. One of my favorites is something I like to call "Dad House", because its liberal employment of walking basslines and saxophone solos evoke images of your dad walking around the house in his bathrobe on a Sunday morning before settling into his favorite chesterfield chair to smoke a pipe and read the newspaper in front of a roaring fire. Well, mine anyway."

Provided link: http://ishkur.com/oldmixtapes/Jeffro%20-%20Five%20In%20Da%20...

I know what I'm doing this Sunday morning.

“Spacesynth is best known as an energetic non-threatening genre with a surprising amount of commercial applications, almost like royalty free music. You may have heard it as background music in 80s VHS boardroom presentations or educational videos, community access TV show theme songs, commercial interstitials, pornography, and Amiga/Tracker conferences. You know, the stuff dorky guys in their 40s are into.”

yes, it required a big adjustment going to 100% step style all the time. it was a subgenre that took over the whole scene

I got at least one reaction :) So here you go: https://github.com/dukeofharen/listology-lists

I've also sent a mail to the webmaster of Listology to see if there is any possibility to get the community back online (I've also offered my time for helping).

Yeah, please upload them!

A 2GB mp3 - woah!

Actual link for easier save-as: http://ishkur.com/mixes/Ishkur_-_The_Longplay.mp3

Is there a torrent around anywhere? His site is being slammed.

The "path of Ishkur" for most people is to arrive at the site, marvel at the artistic layout and amount of info presented, then immediately drill down to one's favorite genre to find... that Ishkur roasts it like an old episode of SNL, mildly offending the casual visitor who feels their taste has been somehow called out.

Later on one discovers that Ishkur roasts all of the genres in similar fashion and that this is part of the appeal. It is in the trashing of each style that Ishkur reveals what makes that type of music unique.

People like what they like and they don't like what they don't like, there's an art to conveying what you don't like about particular art, this art is called criticism. When criticizing art, the only sin you can commit is not being expressive enough.

If you start to place positivity above expressiveness in art criticism, you get puff pieces that don't teach anyone anything. People love this guide not because they want to feel good about being a snob but because they actually learn about music.

For example, in the guide for New Jack Swing he makes the argument that Thriller aged better than Dangerous or Bad because of the drum sounds, I might or might not share his assessment, but the point he made about the tinniness of the drums was well-taken.

> Either Ishkur is getting old and resentful or we live on completely opposite sites of music taste.

Ishkur's guides have always had this tone. It is part of the fun. Even when he is trashing your preferred genres, you are laughing. Or I am.

I think this is unfair. Only someone with a deep love of music would put in this colossal and ongoing effort. A mere curmudgeon would have quit years ago. And in any case, the music itself is provided, so you can just listen for yourself.

Haven't read the update yet, but with the olde version Ishkur's tongue was pretty much piercing his cheeks. His knowledge of the old scene still was good and valuable.

However, it's rather clear from the update timing that he's not getting younger, and you can't really follow all the micro-scenes these days unless it's a full-time job, so I won't be surprised if the guide's spirit is not the same.

The universal genre bashing is a required element. Nothing good can come from talking about musical genres without constant reminders of not taking yourself too seriously.

Spent so much time browsing an older version, so happy to see it again, so sad that Casiocore apparently did not make it into the current incarnation. "Just push 'samba' on that thing and away you go."

The thing is, it's not really genre bashing.

These "genres" mostly fit very comfortably into their parent category. Even to the point that if you treat it as a strict history of the music, the majority of the subgenres are unnecessary.

It's poorly presented in this regard. It doesn't do a good job of delineating the music and the cultural history.

What is being taken as genre bashing is really tribalism and the subcultural awareness of the author. In contrast to it's failings as a strict musical history, it presents extremely well the cultural history around the music.

I mean, he has clear deep love for dance music and the history of the genre which shines through in everything he writes and the examples he picks. And that's chimed with people for the last 20 years, it's a bible of a site. Maybe you just have crap taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'd love to see something about tearout

Here's an example I found

https://soundcloud.com/iamthedreameater/the-cleansing

If you read the FAQ, he stopped working on most of this around 2014, so a lot of the newer stuff will be missing.

Here is a screenshot of the classic Flash version: https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/ishkurs-guide-elect...

It's not totally serious though, i mean look at this gem annotating a futuristic world render:

> The future is a hellish dystopia where everyone's needs are taken care of and they all live in the clouds and listen to Progressive Breaks.

[edit]

oh there's more :D

> Progressive Breaks is still around today because being a Breaks version of essentially another scene ensures it indefinite survival, like a domesticated animal that will never go extinct because man depends on it too much as a ready source of food. That's what Progressive Breaks is: The chicken of electronic music.

All music genres burn out, they all devolve into trash or repetition, so inevitably every almost genre description is going to bookended with when/why/how that happened else it wouldn't really be an accurate history. There's no need for the hyperbolic "Does the author actually like any music?" when about half the descriptions are him talking about great music

> The peak period for any popular genre is 3-5 years, and then everyone wants to move on to the big thing

Read the Q&A:

> Q: Why did you make this?

> A: Because educating others and fighting ignorance is one of the noblest activities that anyone can ever engage in. Also, jokes.

Part of the fun the is genre bashing. But don't take the genres too seriously.

> Suggested usage: Ignore scenes and genres. Instead, pick a single year and move through the guide vertically, listening to different music released in that year.

From the stuff I like, he hates Trip Hop, is somewhat OK (but amusing) about Synthwave and seems to like Dark Ambient.

I've looked through about 6 so far, and pretty sure he likes jungle... I feel like if you know enough about the origins of anything (think tech), you can be predisposed to have a negative opinion against newer incarnations.

Missing Future Funk aswell

Some of the writing is funny, some is distracting from its purpose. The Dubstep entry for instance spends most of its time bashing brostep and skrillex which is a shame as it glosses over the first few years of interesting music before it devolved.

Not really. Bashing someone because they like a style of music is one of the lowest of low. inb4 it's just a banter

Same for McProg

I think you should click the link. This is not what you were using in the early 2000s :)

Audible Genius (http://www.audiblegenius.com) -> This is really a good resource. The subscription will be online tomorrow, 14,99$/m. I'm using it for some months now and it's really helpful, it develop your ear enormously. It's from the same guy who created Syntorial (http://www.syntorial.com).

Dance Music Manual (http://www.dancemusicproduction.com) from Rick Snoman, version 4 has been recently released and it's the only book you need (for a time being). I don't own it but Secrets of Dance Music Production looks good too.

Melodics (http://www.melodics.com) is also good for practicing keyboard, if you're interested in learning to play the keyboard.

Music Production is very similar to front-end development, especially Javascript development. Your hardware-software studio is like your bundle system, continuous integration etc. So there are many moving parts to learn and it takes time and many many readings (books, blogs, forums, facebook groups, music store product descriptions etc.). It also takes time to develop your ear and in time you will see that new levels will be opened in your mind, like a game. You will hear more details, you will easily describe the qualities of the sound (is it sine wave or a square, what kind of sonic movements happening, what kind of effects with what kind of settings make that specific sound sound like that)

It's fun, takes time, may take money (if you're interested in hardware studio and premium software plugins). But it's basically so much fun!

If you know how to use the tools but can't make anything that feels like music, you just have to keep copying songs until you understand how it works. It's just practice like anything else. There's a bunch of fantastic youtube channels that show the whole production process now too.

If you don't know how to use the tools, that's a whole world. There's a bunch of different camps, but if you're trying to do EDM, then Ableton Live or FL Studio are pretty popular. There's open source stuff too, but I don't know much about it. Some people prefer to use hardware instead. Then there's those weird modular synth nerds. It really depends what you want to do and how much you want to spend. A commercial package like FL Studio will come with a bunch of standard plugins that would get you pretty far before venturing into the world of virtual instruments.

There's a few books on the subject (Dance Music Manual comes to mind), but honestly I don't think they're very helpful. You can get extremely far without knowing any music theory, and it's hard to describe audio stuff in a book, so you'll probably get more out of youtube searches about whatever you're trying to do.

Resources in the sibling comments are good.

Aside from those, get a demo version of Ableton and start playing around. Your efforts will suck. Accept it and enjoy the process :) Once you've reached a certain level of competence it's worth asking more experienced producers how to improve, ideally in person, quite possibly via paying for a lesson or two.

Also, listen to a lot of music. OP will be a great starting point!

Not sure about books, but there are sites like adsrsounds.com which have (paid) video tutorial courses for learning music production with DAWs, and I think videos are the best medium for learning this sort of software because of the combination of audio and visual. I'm sure there must be other similar sites, but this is the only one I have any experience of. YouTube would also probably be a useful resource, but you'd have to search through a load of cruft before finding something useful.

Just bear in mind that writing music with DAWs requires the same level of commitment (time, effort and financial) as learning a traditional instrument.

edit: just seen the sibling comment, so as I suspected there are plenty of resources available! :)

back in the day, from drum and bass/jungle, essentially it consisted of hanging out on dogasonacid.com the grid subforum. not srure about other genres. there are some online courses nowadays