The Rise of the EDM
Bedroom Producer
When we think of EDM*, we picture disc jockeys bobbing their heads behind turntables, and playing to a young crowd who is usually tipsy enough to want it harder, better, faster.
You’d hardly imagine that the men or women behind the beats will need well-lined pockets to pursue this line of music, but for a long time, they did. EDM production has always been expensive, which is why the term ‘bedroom producer’ only popped into existence a decade ago.
But run a quick search now and you’ll find a host of passionate hobbyists composing, recording and mixing their own music. And they do it all with inexpensive recording equipment out of basements, spare rooms and garages.
The glass ceiling of exclusivity in the EDM industry is cracking under the pressure of rising, small-time producers.
Deadmau5, The Flashbulb, Vinayaka, Mat Zo, Arty, Luigi Lussini, Martin Roth, Matt Lange are all popular EDM artists who started out on their own and have climbed to the top of the charts. Hans Zimmer experimented with electronic music in the 1970's and his pieces still have a decidedly digital element in them.
In an interview with The Huffington Post , Hans Zimmer explained his history with digital music:
“In the ‘70s I started making music with computers because I thought, ‘Wow, great, you can misappropriate these things which are designed for accountancy and you can actually go and make weird noises with them.”
To understand why EDM is gaining a dizzying amount of global momentum, it helps to explore the reasons behind the upshot in production simplicity and what it means to the genre at large.
(*EDM stands for Electronic Dance Music, which is an umbrella term for many sub genres like drum and bass, trance, house, electro, break beat and dubstep.)
The Progression of Production Tools
As a hobby, any kind of music production was unaffordable until the invention of computer-based recording systems (remember Pro Tools?). However these tools were still uncommon and they weren’t exactly inexpensive. You could go for cheaper equipment, but recording quality separated, as they say, the boys from the men.
It all changed with the invention of the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). No more huge mixing decks and tapes — just microphones, instruments and a computer and you could record some high quality tracks.
And then it got even better.
In 1996, Steinberg released the VST (Virtual Studio Technology) format which allowed virtual instruments and effects to be used in DAWs, and DAW manufacturing companies emulated the digital signal processing in a synth to create VSTis (VST instruments).
Bedroom producers were now able to create entire albums at home at only 1% of the cost of hiring a professional studio.
Songwriting for EDM
Cheaper equipment broke down barriers in EDM songwriting as well.
Most EDM songs follow an intro — breakdown/hook repeat — outro pattern, but apart from that EDM has no conventions or rules when it comes to songwriting. Artists usually write based on their intuition for the groove.
For example, trance music’s melodic chord variations are perfect for an upbeat atmosphere, while house is more jazzy. But because most producers use the same synthesis/sampling techniques to create EDM, everything ‘sounds the same’ to most people and they’re quick to label it as generic club music.
EDM is moving away from this perceived formula and producers like Porter Robinson, Flume and The Flashbulb are breaking stereotypes with their work. At large, bedroom production is also making it necessary for artists to create unique sounds and cultivate their own distinctive style to stand out.
The Other Side of Bedroom Production
Speaking of standing out, it’s very easy for tracks from unknown players to get lost in the back alleys of the internet.
Most bedroom producers have a small but sizeable following on social media which helps them get their work out, but ironically, at the end of the day nothing helps like a record deal.
This is a chicken and egg problem. A good record label deal only comes knocking at your door when you have a few hit songs and songs don’t usually become popular unless they’re backed by a record deal.
And even after the advent of the DAWs and VSTis, bedroom production is not a cheap hobby. Equipment becomes obsolete every few years and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
But for all that, this is the only time in history that passionate producers have a decent chance of hitting it big and in the worst case, recovering their investment if it doesn’t click — something that would have been impossible to pull off in the 80s and 90s.
And that is motivation enough for those of us who love creating EDM to keep the beat going.
To learn more about the EDM bedroom production scene, hit me up at @vijayyellepeddi.
