How simple is techno – that genre that seems unstoppable, from Asia to Antarctica? It’s simple enough that it can be reduced to … six steps. No, kind of – seriously.
I expected to have my intelligence insulted by this video, and yet … uh, well, I’m an addict, because it just made me want to go make some new percussion samples. The approach is oddly on point and – let’s be honest – looks like fun.
You don’t need six steps, even, as I’m not sure what that acappella is about.
(The video was evidently created by artist Hobo, aka Canada/Detroit artist Joel Boychuk. And maybe part of why this works is, he’s a great artist.)
So, wait, before either a) some techno purists scoff at how wrong this is or how it’s just a joke, or b) some techno haters scoff at how this proves techno isn’t even music … let’s talk about what’s going on here.
So here’s my theory. Even before I get into my “techno is the new folk music” spiel, I can say this:
Making techno is like making pasta.
Anyone can make pasta. Anyone can enjoy making pasta. You can dump in a box of dry pasta, boil it, dump a can of tomato sauce on it and some cheese, and it’s pretty delicious. That might … cause … health problems after a while, so you can make pasta out of veggies or gluten-free pasta. You can add meat or fish or whatever. It’s still a pretty simple thing.
Even the sophisticated ways of making great pasta are not hard to understand. There are recipes. There are video tutorials. You can do it.
None of that accessibility has made pasta less desirable. (Again, if you’re anti-carbs, you can even do this veggie pasta thing – insert “experimental techno” forms here.)
Pasta is available all over the world now.
And yet even given all those things, none of this has robbed expert chefs of making truly exceptional pasta. What they’re doing is fundamentally no different from what you’re doing. You can even learn from what they’re doing and improve your dinner. But they’re still able to master truly great pasta, because that’s not about complexity, but about nuance.
And the beauty of simplicity is, it allows you to focus on nuance. When the template is this basic, then it’s obvious that variation is everything. And some of those variations can be discovered in an instant.
Of course, it’s possible I’m totally wrong, and the use of pans for sampling threw me off, or this is all ridiculous and I’m actually just hungry. But that’s okay, because some noodles will satisfy me, and then I won’t really care about what anyone else thinks, and I won’t really even need a metaphor.
Actually – that last bit may have been more important than any of the others.
And Hobo is still a master chef.
https://www.facebook.com/hobo.soundz/
Obligatory – I got carried away, and left this out. This is a how-to to some proper oldshool 90s rave action, here.