Robots

Aakash Sheth
Process Essay
3/23/12
Professor Middleton

Over the past fifteen years, EDM, short for Electronic Dance Music has evolved from a few unknown artists and styles into one of the most popular genres in the entire music industry.   Today there are dozens of different unique genres and various artists that have adapted their styles following in the footsteps of a handful of pioneers who set the foundations for what people hear all around the world in dance halls and nightclubs.
While electronic dance music has been an active genre since the early 1950’s, the dance music that is common in our society today was not formed until the early 1980’s, when Techno was initially formulated. Techno is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the American city of Chicago, Illinois in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s disco halls catering to African-Americans  and Latino Americans, in Chicago around 1984, then in other locations such as New York City, New Jersey, Toronto, Montreal, London, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami. It then reached and began to influence popular music in Europe, with chart hits such as House Nation by House Master. The first song that was characterized as House is believed to be “On and On” by Jesse Saunders, although there is much controversy over whether it could be considered the birth of House music.
However, this was not the end of the evolution of EDM. Techno music would be the stepping stone for several other major progressive dance genres such as Trance and House. Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s and usually characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 beats per minute. The genre’s main focus was to create an emotional feeling that resembled a high euphoric, uplifting rush. Some of the most popular DJs and EDM producers such as  Paul Oakenfold , Sasha , Tiesto , Paul van Dyk  and Armin van Buuren  are all trance artists. House is a variation of... [continues]

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