Why there's about to be a big scene shift in semi-underground electronic music

[Hygro]

We're in for a game changer in the electro and related scenes, and here's why. The loudness war capped out in the 90s at some point, but pop music, trying to outdo each previous record, already compressed to maximum volume, started cutting more and more bass to give more perceived volume. After all one high pitched decibel sounds a LOT louder than a low pitched decibel. So bass takes up a HUGE amount of room for very little of the perceived volume. Keep only your kick in the bass range and make your "bass" in the midrange and you can make LOUD banging music.

At some point more and more people started to go "I dont care how catchy this is, this music just sucks". It's why you saw an early break in sound when JT went from NSync to a solo career produced by the Neptunes/Timbaland in 2003ish, they ditched the loudness and brought back the bass. Largely, pop music completely shifted starting in 2004 but really in 2006 and 2007 into a completely different, bassier fuller sound. People just got so tired of the millennium pop, because the production techniques were literally fatiguing to the ear. And soulless sounding. The same thing is happening in electro and dubstep right now. And that's why it's going to change.

(stolen and edited from a facebook post I wrote a month or two ago). Edit: woot hundreth post lol

[howitzer]

+1, I've been feeling the same about current popular electro house/dubstep for a long time, I've just never had the level of knowledge to put it down as succinctly as yourself.

+rep, well said, bring back the bass!

[Hygro]

Thanks, man

and LMAO who the hell edited my title? My original was more accurate... if less "poetic".

[sobi]

I dont't think its anything more than the same thing that happened to trance and progressive 10 years ago. I've said it before and I'll say it again... Trends come and go in dance music, but it always goes back to it's one constant. Straight up House music.

[Adzm00]

I hope both wubble wubble step and electrohau5 both die a quick death.

[nevin]

Thank you hygro.. you've actually helped me improve my mixing as i didnt understand the loudness war thing. Now i've got some new ideas to craft

[Hygro]

haha you're welcome nevin! show us your results!

[Era 7]

me wants chest pounding bass

[l0ckd0wn]

I think this is a classic observation, done up to look like a profoundly new discovery.

In short, music rotates in cycles and popular music has done this many times over, only now the "club scene" is the mainstream.
I think there is some truth in the dance-movement of boybands to 4x4 dance-to-mainstream stuff like lady gaga, but I think Electro and the whole "dirty electro" scene has withered and went.

Electro just had it's rotation with the Bangalter/Justice party come through where it was center of the universe.

Then dubstep stole the wobble and the glitch.

I predict something more melody driven in the next few years that isn't nu-disco or the more freeform dance music because they have always had that. Maybe reconnecting with a more big synth sound again.

But I do hope that circus-shit music by the likes of Afrojack, some Calvin Harris and a few others that bang the single note piano and make it sound like a cheesy air raid or something similarly terrible.

[login]

I think this is a classic observation, done up to look like a profoundly new discovery.

In short, music rotates in cycles and popular music has done this many times over, only now the "club scene" is the mainstream.

What club scene? U.S. club scene?