What is the difference between House, Techno, Trance, Freest

[Ricardo_Mata]

Hi everybody! Please excuse my ignorance but I have a question to ask. Since I got married almost 8 years ago I hadn't stepped into a music store up to a few weeks ago. Now, still married but with a bit more time and information available, I have been going to stores and I am finding all these styles that I don't know. I ask the sales people and they are either clueless teenagers whose answer to very question is: "Oh, that's awesome!" or some guy in his late thirties like me who tells me: "You know... I'm still stuck on Saturday Night Fever."

Can somebody explain the difference between all these music styles? If you could post some links to sites where I can actually hear some of this stuff it would be wonderful. Thanks!

[BrunoRepublic]

Techno: a somewhat dated term used to describe fast, aggressive, electronic music (or what was considered to be fast around 1991).

Trance: Repetitive, hypnotic electronic dance music. Even faster than techno, bpms above 150 are not uncommon. Usually instrumental. Nowadays a blanket term for much of the stuff that gets played at raves. It can be very trippy, or aggressive (hard trance), or just plain weird (psy trance).

I'll leave the other definitions to those more knowledgeable.

[Ricardo_Mata]

Thanks! I wonder how anybody can dance to a song at 150 bpm!

[BrunoRepublic]

One word: amphetamines.

[disco1999]

Since we live a simple world, to have an idea of what hard house, tribal house, hard techno, funk house, filter house, disco house, acid house, tech house, deep vocal house, drum&bass, trance, breakbeats, 2step garage, etc, etc, sounds like you may want to ear a few samples here: http://www.djmr.com/scripts/category.cgi?category=home

[pumavisor808]

just a few corrections to what someone said above.
For Trance music, bpm's hardly ever go abpve 136bpm..If you're going higher than that you're going into drum N bass, jungle, happy hardcore or gabber land...
I own crates of house and trance records and none of them are over 140bpm. I'd say 90% of house/trance is around the 130bpm range.

[pumavisor808]

for examples of styles...

House - Danny Tenaglia, Roger Sanchez
Trance - Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk
Techno - Mauro Picotto
Progressive - Sasha, Digweed, Danny Howells, Deep Dish

D&B, jungle, etc... I don't listen to this so don't really know

just go check out these djs for starters...

[K-Bee]

Check out these definitions:
http://www.btinternet.com/~sully-olops/dance_terms.htm
They're kind of short but they're worthwhile

also try this site:http://www.eurodancehits.com/dict.html#GAH

I actually wrote a 75-page thesis on the subject of electronic dance music genres a few years ago. Unfortunately it's in danish so it wouldn't make much sense around here. :cry:

[Com King]

There is an enormous problem with house, it's that there are a lot of many different styles of house : deep house, disco house, hard house, chicago house .

Listen to cassius " The Sound of Violence" and then listen to Martin Solveig " The heart of Africa" ( both masterpieces), and try to find one common point : impossible, but they are both house songs so ...

To differenciate house from other electronic styles you mentioned ricardo, I'd say that it's a little bit slower ( even if there are house songs that are dancefloor killers), maybe more classy, and it sounds more like 70's or 80's ... Tehno or Transe seem to come right out of a computer and it's hard to find a melody in it ....

Maybe I'm not objective ;) but listen to the best "french touch" stuff issued, it's a good example of what house can be ( Daft Punk - Homework, Bob Sinclar - Paradise, Martin Solveig - Sur la Terre, Kiko - Midnight Magic, and the best electronic album issued last year Cassius - Au Rêve)