Month: January 2025
Acoustic music has always been popular and has been around for many years. The art of acoustic music has been performed throughout the centuries, and throughout the world. So what is it about acoustic music that makes it so enjoyable and admired?
Music that is made from using instruments without using any form of electronic means, can be considered as acoustic music. This type of music started to get a name for itself, after the arrival of electrical instruments such as the electric guitar. Of course the advent of these electrical instruments is relatively new compared to the amount of time that music has been played for, therefore, you can almost class all musical instruments and all music as acoustic. If electrical instruments very never invented, acoustic music would be all music and may not have had a specific term named after it.
However acoustic songs can be produced and edited through electrical means and if there is a gig or concert being played by an acoustic artist, very often, the sound is amplified using electronic amplifiers. But it has to be done caringly to maintain the natural sound accurately. Electronic amplifiers are only used to increase the volume of the sound from the acoustic instrument.
One of the most popular types of acoustic music is acoustic guitar songs. These types of songs seem very intimate and personal as mostly it is just one person and their guitar performing the song. This type of music is often played in music bars, with open microphone nights and they seem to be very popular. Acoustic guitars create music through the vibration of the strings but to increase the sound, an acoustic guitar uses a soundboard, resonant cavity and a sound box.
There are many programs now supporting the acoustic music scene such as MTVs Unplugged, created in the 1990s, and Radio 1s Live Lounge where good acoustic songs are played to thousand of viewers and listeners. These types of productions try to promote acoustic music in an effort to get music back to basics and to increase the quality of music that people are subjected to.
Some see solo acoustic songs as a breath of fresh air due to the increasing production of often computerised, synthetic and cluttered music that tries to dominate the charts. Therefore some think of acoustic music as being more pure then other forms, as it is raw and natural.
Acoustic music is natural and when performed correctly, can produce sounds better than any computer generated sounds. It is an art form that will never lose popularity.
Establishing “House”
The birth of the words “house music” is a hotly argued question amidst artists and DJ’s. Some people assert it originated from a night club called “The Warehouse” where longtime resident Producer/DJ Frankie Knuckles played a distinctive brand of dance music until 1982 when the establishment closed down. Knuckles himself suggested he initially witnessed the term when driving by a bar on the south side of Chicago that hung a sign in its window reading “We play house music”. DJ Leonard “Remix” Rroy suggests the sign was likely a reference to the style of soulful songs one would listen to at your own house.
A second sentiment is that the phrase referenced the production of music in the residences of groundbreaking DJ’s and dance producers. These early creations would be recorded with synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers. Many others assert that “house” references the relationship of particular tracks with their respective DJ’s, as in the house DJ’s played their very own house records.
The Fathers of House Music
The Chicago night club scene of the early 80’s was spurred by DJ’s spinning a number of styles of music like disco, hip hop, funk, pop, and R&B. The beginning of somewhat economical electronic instruments led to some DJ’s crafting their own combination of existing tunes by mixing in drum machines and effects.
Seen by many to be the very first original house music record, “On & On” by Jesse Saunders was published in 1984. The album’s prosperity ignited a wave of tracks from the earlier DJ’s attempting their hand at putting out house music. The music soon branched off into subgenres of house such as deep house and acid house.
Through the support of club DJ’s such as Lil Louis, Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy, and radio stations like WBMX, house music quickly gained popularity in Chicago. Concurrently, house began to spread to nearby DJ’s and producers of Detroit, Michigan. Artists like Marshall Jefferson helped push house outside of Chicago with his hugely well known track “Move Your Body”. From the middle to late 1980’s artists such as Larry Heard, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Farley Keith, and Steve Hurley, persisted to popularize the style.
Now, house music is more prevalent than ever and can be heard in a variety of forms in night clubs spanning the earth. The genre has continued to fork off into subgenres including progressive house, electro house, techno house, breakbeat, and the list goes on. House isn’t just a style of music, but is a religion protected by loyal followers the world over.