EDM - Where trap gets some influence

This post is gonna be a little different. In this post, I'm not going to talk about the trap I usually talk about - the hip-hop, southern culture influenced trap that is my favorite. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about EDM, a style that trap is heavily influenced by.

EDM stands for "Electronic Dance Music", a genre that quickly gained popularity in the past few years. Although the term "EDM" was first heard around 1985, that wasn't the type of EDM you think of when you hear someone say EDM. EDM really first started in the 80's and 90's with disco and analog (non-digital) synthesizers. If you take a listen to the EDM back then, you can hear some similarities.

Take a listen to this.

You can hear the similarities to modern-day EDM - syncopated and exaggerated timing, random synthesizer sounds, experimental mixing, sampling, southern "clicks", and of course the hi-hats!

Now-a-days EDM, specifically Trap EDM, uses virtually all digital synthesizers on computers. It is just way too easy to take a synthesizer on the computer and change it to sound however you'd like. No need to mess with analog anymore - it takes way too much time to set up, program, record, etc... Using MIDI keyboards (mini keyboards that plug directly in your computer) makes the EDM production world so much easier.

The EDM capital of the world is MIAMI, which hosts Ultra fest every year, a festival that is ONLY EDM. When you hear "clubbing" it's all EDM they're going to be playing. It gets everybody in the rave mood - EDM isn't supposed to be deep. It's supposed to be interesting - waiting for the bass drop, experimental sounds, crazy sampling - it's arguably the most versatile type of music because an EDM producer can add any sound they like. I've never heard two EDM songs that sound similar.