EPTMetal and classic rock carried me into high school. At this point I knew about electronic music, but it wasn't popular especially amongst me and my friends, who joked that it was nothing more than a repetitive bassline and a few beeps and boops. I hadn't heard very much, except Sandstorm, which I've never liked, even now. I was perfectly content with my guitar music and expected to stay that way. That all changed when I first started playing World of Warcraft. I played a warrior named Manowarrior after the band Manowar (I'm so badass) which is how I ended up as Mano.
Anyways, there were these videos of a guy named Dopefish who went around exploiting the game, finding areas you couldn't just walk to. I found the videos looking for WoW stuff, but what I really ended up getting was my first taste of trance, and electronic music outside of the generic techno I'd heard at school. It was just like when I first heard Metallica, the music hit my ears in a way I'd never felt before. It was amazing, it filled my body, made my head nod, and made me want to get up and dance. I started playing those videos in the background instead of listening to my itunes playlist. At the same time though I was embarrassed, because my friends still only listened to rock, and still made fun of electronic music. I didn't know much about electronic music and I had no idea what the songs from the videos were called, so I couldn't procure more for myself. Luckily for me the server I played on was host to 3 hobbyist home DJ's who would make hour long mixes of trance and house music and post them on the server forums for free download. Suddenly I had hours upon hours of electronic music on my computer and Ipod. I would listen to those mixes on the way to school, in between classes, on my way home, all afternoon and night while I did my homework and played wow, and then finish off the night by falling asleep to it. I was already in love with electronic music, and I'd only heard a small sampling of one of the simpler genres.
I finally had some song and artists names to base my search of more electronic music. One of the first new artists I found was Daft Punk. Finding Daft Punk is probably in the top 5 of most important/influential moments in my life. I don't listen to my old trance much these days, but I'll never stop listening to Daft Punk. From Daft Punk I found the Chemical Brothers another one of my all time favorite artists. That led me to other big beat artists, The Prodigy, Crystal Method, Fatboy Slim. Next I found Bassnectar's Mesmerizing the Ultra album, this was another big step for me. Bassnectar was the first electronic music I'd heard that was just straight dance music. For a week I couldn't stop listening to this one album. I know after Bassnectar came Dubstep, but how I made that transition has been muddled in my memory from excessive cannabis smoking. When I first heard dubstep I practically made that Skrillex "yes! oh my gosh!" sample. To this day I can't get enough dubstep, I want to make dubstep gravy and pour it inside my ears. Every time I hear a drop I have a brain orgasm.
After dubstep my musical taste really exploded. I found all kinds of dnb, fidget house, breakcore, chiptunes, electro, instrumental hip-hop, some select regular hip-hop, minimal techno, IDM, jumpstyle, happy hardcore, ambient, psytrance, and trip-hop. Basically if it's electronic music I listen to it, with the exception of techno, never got into regular techno, it really is a repetitive bassline with a few beeps and boops.
Nowadays I mostly listen to a variety of dubstep and dnb mixes, with a smattering of whichever other genre I feel like listening to in between. My friends recently converted to electronic music as well thanks to college and my own persistence.
That about sums up how I got to where I am musically. I hope you enjoyed reading this or enjoyed looking at/skimming it and deciding not to read it. I'd appreciate any feedback on how interesting or boring it was, any comment of any kind is fine. I plan to do more music themed blogs in the future. Geez I haven't written this much at one time in the 4 years I've been out of school.
references (probably the most worthwhile part of the whole blog)
The Dopefish WoW videos
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3217672353419724136
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7608672074631385072
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-165254040668109634
I love this song, it's not the most popular Daft Punk, but you've probably heard their popular stuff.
This isn't really dubstep
This is dubstep
My next blogs will be more about the actual music, with more links and such. So look forward to those even if you didn't like this one.
