Sunday, April 12, 2015

Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and guitar?

Here's my son John just playing with a sound - I get to join in right at the end on one note -just a bit of fun - but though I am a guitar player mainly;the background music I put together to play the guitar over is often electronic music. I've always listened to both. Watch this clip first (goes for under 40 seconds)



Even though Guitar is my 'voice' I've always liked electronic music too.
My main influence was initially my father Rudi Oestmann who played all sorts of music at home from rock to brass also bought electronic Moog based records in the 1970's.

When we were young children, the first 45 (single record) we had was - not - a guitar based tune would you believe - but - a total electronic one but Hot Butter's version of "Pop Corn" originally composed by Gershon Kingsley.

We had a little suitcase record player with the speaker in the lid - which rang out this tune constantly:




Later on we had a compilation album which featured Kraftwerk's "Autobahn"


I had no idea at the time what an Autobahn was but the music just sounded great:





My dad had bought a number of Jean-Michel Jarre's records which were good melodically as well as with 1970's electro wizardry





Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" got played on our turntable a lot - still a classic electronic dance music... way before it's time:




My dad was buying all this stuff during the 70's including a lot of other styles.
He also had the original Moog classic "Switched on Bach" some "Tangerine Dream" (to which my school mate asked "does your dad smoke dope?" "No"), and some lesser known Moog experimental records that I have no idea who played on them.


When I was finally old enough to get my own records I got rock guitar and 60's...and ...electronic. This was in the batch of one of the first singles I bought "Are Friends Electric" by Tubeway Army (Gary Numan)





Mi Sex's "Computer Games" was a massive song and I played it ...a lot...




I also bought Flowers first album "Icehouse" (the band soon becoming Icehouse - with Iva Davies at the helm). The combination of electro and guitar in both these tracks suite me just fine.


Now we are in the 80's and electronic music really took off - there are so many bands that could be listed...I always listened to both guitar based and electro music.


The Fairlight sampler was invented and the game changed even more. I would have loved one but back in the day they cost as much as a house. The influence of the Fairlight and all the sampler spin offs is incredible and most people have never heard of it...I'll talk more about this stuff at a later date. I'm trying to explain some of the influences..there'll be more on this topic soon.

No comments:

Post a Comment