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172-405: Much of the instrumentation in techno is used to emphasize the role of rhythm over other musical aspects . Vocals and melodies are uncommon. The use of sound synthesis in developing distinctive timbres tends to feature more prominently. Typical harmonic practices found in other forms of music are often ignored in favor of repetitive sequences of notes. More generally the creation of techno

344-520: A keypad to enter note information and 16 KB of RAM which allowed a maximum sequence length of 5200 notes, a huge step forward from the 8–16 step sequencers of the era. While it was commercially unsuccessful due to its high price, the band were among the few bands at the time to utilize the MC-8, which they described as, along with its music programmer Hideki Matsutake, an "inevitable factor" in both their music production and live performances . " Behind

516-438: A "pulse-group" that corresponds to the poetic foot . Normally such pulse-groups are defined by taking the most accented beat as the first and counting the pulses until the next accent. Scholes 1977b A rhythm that accents another beat and de-emphasises the downbeat as established or assumed from the melody or from a preceding rhythm is called syncopated rhythm. Normally, even the most complex of meters may be broken down into

688-504: A European synth-pop aesthetic with aspects of soul , funk, disco, and electro, pushing EDM into uncharted terrain. They deliberately rejected the Motown legacy and traditional formulas of R&B and soul, and instead embraced technological experimentation. Within the last 5 years or so, the Detroit underground has been experimenting with technology, stretching it rather than simply using it. As

860-524: A German "rave establishment," spearheaded by the party organisation Mayday , with its record label Low Spirit , WestBam , Marusha , and a music channel called VIVA . At this time the German popular music charts were riddled with Low Spirit "pop-Tekno" German folk music reinterpretations of tunes such as "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and "Tears Don't Lie", many of which became hits. At the same time, in Frankfurt,

1032-644: A Sunday morning session at Dorian Gray , a plush discothèque near the Frankfurt airport . They initially played a mix of different styles including Belgian new beat , Deep House , Chicago House, and synth-pop such as Kraftwerk and Yello and it was out of this blend of styles that the Frankfurt trance scene is believed to have emerged. In 1990, the Babalu Club , the first afterhours techno club in Germany, opened in Munich and

1204-437: A basic pulse but a freer rhythm, like the rhythm of prose compared to that of verse. See Free time (music) . Finally some music, such as some graphically scored works since the 1950s and non-European music such as Honkyoku repertoire for shakuhachi , may be considered ametric . Senza misura is an Italian musical term for "without meter", meaning to play without a beat, using time to measure how long it will take to play

1376-430: A chain of duple and triple pulses either by addition or division . According to Pierre Boulez , beat structures beyond four, in western music, are "simply not natural". The tempo of the piece is the speed or frequency of the tactus , a measure of how quickly the beat flows. This is often measured in 'beats per minute' ( bpm ): 60 bpm means a speed of one beat per second, a frequency of 1 Hz. A rhythmic unit

1548-413: A change in rhythm, which implies an inadequate perception of musical meaning. The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is called prosody (see also: prosody (music) ): it is a topic in linguistics and poetics , where it means the number of lines in a verse , the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented. Music inherited

1720-523: A characteristic tempo and measure. The Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing defines the tango , for example, as to be danced in 4 time at approximately 66 beats per minute. The basic slow step forwards or backwards, lasting for one beat, is called a "slow", so that a full "right–left" step is equal to one 4 measure. ( See Rhythm and dance .) The general classifications of metrical rhythm , measured rhythm , and free rhythm may be distinguished. Metrical or divisive rhythm, by far

1892-429: A commitment to the underground aesthetic of the music, or perhaps influenced by UR 's paramilitary posturing. In the same period, German DJs began intensifying the speed and abrasiveness of the sound, as an acid infused techno began transmuting into hardcore . DJ Tanith commented at the time that "Berlin was always hardcore, hardcore hippie , hardcore punk, and now we have a very hardcore house sound." This emerging sound

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2064-402: A cover of "Kimi ni Mune Kyun" was used as the ending theme song for the anime adaptation of Maria Holic , sung by Asami Sanada , Marina Inoue , and Yū Kobayashi , the voice actresses of the main characters. In 2015, in the anime Sound! Euphonium , episode 5, the song "Rydeen" is played by Kitauji highschool's orchestra. The popular anime series Dragon Ball Z also paid homage to

2236-455: A decade later as "soulful grooves" melding the beat-centric styles of Motown with the music technology of the time. May described the sound of techno as something that is "...like Detroit...a complete mistake. It's like George Clinton and Kraftwerk are stuck in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company." Juan Atkins has stated that it is "music that sounds like technology, and not technology that sounds like music, meaning that most of

2408-463: A double tempo (denoted as R012 = repeat from 0, one time, twice faster): However, the motive with this rhythm in the Moussorgsky's piece is rather perceived as a repeat This context-dependent perception of rhythm is explained by the principle of correlative perception, according to which data are perceived in the simplest way. From the viewpoint of Kolmogorov 's complexity theory, this means such

2580-541: A form of "dance floor socialism," where the DJ was not placed in the middle and you "lose yourself in light and sound." As the techno sound evolved in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it also diverged to such an extent that a wide spectrum of stylistically distinct music was being referred to as techno. This ranged from relatively pop oriented acts such as Moby to the distinctly anti-commercial sentiments of Underground Resistance . Derrick May's experimentation on works such as Beyond

2752-717: A genre which emerged at the start of the 1980s. In 1993, Johnny Black of Hi-Fi News , in a review for the record Hi-Tech/No Crime , described YMO as "the most adventurous and influential electro-techno-dance technicians the world has produced" and further argued that "without them (and Kraftwerk ) today's music would still sound like yesterday's music." In 2001, Jason Ankeny of the Allmusic Guide to Electronica described YMO as "a seminal influence on contemporary electronic music – hugely popular both at home and abroad" and placed them "second only to Kraftwerk as innovators of today's electronic culture." YMO are considered pioneers in

2924-480: A live performance together as Yellow Magic Orchestra for the Live Earth , Kyoto, event on July 7, 2007, which raised money and awareness of a "climate in crisis". In August 2007, the band once again reformed, taking the name HASYMO or HAS/YMO, combining the names of Human Audio Sponge and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Their first single under this name, "Rescue", was written for the film Appleseed EX Machina . They released

3096-634: A mechanized cover version of " Day Tripper " by the Beatles. Solid State Survivor went on to sell over 2 million records worldwide. By 1980, YMO had become the most popular group in Japan, where they were performing to sold-out crowds. Their first live album Public Pressure set a record in Japan, topping the charts and selling 250,000 copies within two weeks, while their next studio album X∞Multiplies had 200,000 pre-orders before release. The same year, their albums Solid State Survivor and X∞Multiplies held

3268-648: A more "joyous and liberating" approach to electronic music. According to Sakamoto, they were "tired" of Japanese musicians imitating Western and American music at the time and so they wanted to "make something very original from Japan." Kraftwerk was particularly an influence on Sakamoto, who heard the band in the mid-1970s and later introduced them to his fellow band members. They were impressed with Kraftwerk's "very formalized" style but wanted to avoid imitating their "very German" approach. He described Kraftwerk's music as "theoretical, very focused, simple and minimal and strong". Their alternative template for electronic pop

3440-661: A new trend in clubs and discotheques. In 1988, the Ufo opened in West Berlin , an illegal venue for acid house parties, which existed until 1990. In Munich at this time, the Negerhalle (1983–1989) and the ETA-Halle established themselves as the first acid house clubs in temporarily used, dilapidated industrial halls, marking the beginning of the so-called "hall culture" in Germany. In July 1989 Dr. Motte and Danielle de Picciotto organized

3612-777: A new two song single titled "The City of Light/Tokyo Town Pages" on August 6, 2008. HASYMO played two live concerts in Europe in the summer of 2008, one at the Royal Festival Hall , London on June 15, as part of the Meltdown festival of music curated by Massive Attack and another in Gijón , Spain, on the 19th. Although the primary YMO members (Yukihiro Takahashi, Haruomi Hosono, and Ryuichi Sakamoto) were effectively known as HASYMO and played both these concerts, these concerts were billed simply as "YMO" but featured only 4 YMO songs in each concert while

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3784-496: A particularly big influence on 1980s hip hop and pop music. Beyond electro acts, " Computer Game / Firecracker " was also sampled by a number of other later artists, including 2 Live Crew 's " Mega-Mixx II " (1987), De La Soul 's "Funky Towel" (for the 1996 film Joe's Apartment ), Jennifer Lopez 's " I'm Real " (2001), and the original unreleased version of Mariah Carey 's " Loverboy " (2001). The band has also been very influential in its homeland Japan, where they had become

3956-492: A pattern that is short enough to memorize. The alternation of the strong and weak beat is fundamental to the ancient language of poetry, dance and music. The common poetic term "foot" refers, as in dance, to the lifting and tapping of the foot in time. In a similar way musicians speak of an upbeat and a downbeat and of the "on" and "off" beat . These contrasts naturally facilitate a dual hierarchy of rhythm and depend on repeating patterns of duration, accent and rest forming

4128-553: A piano-roll recording contains tempo deviations within [REDACTED] . = 19/119, a span of 5.5 times. Such tempo deviations are strictly prohibited, for example, in Bulgarian or Turkish music based on so-called additive rhythms with complex duration ratios, which can also be explained by the principle of correlativity of perception. If a rhythm is not structurally redundant, then even minor tempo deviations are not perceived as accelerando or ritardando but rather given an impression of

4300-546: A recording of clock tower bells. May explains: It all happened at the right time by mistake, and it didn't last because it wasn't supposed to last. Our careers took off right around the time we [the MI] had to close, and maybe it was the best thing. I think we were peaking – we were so full of energy and we didn't know who we were or [how to] realize our potential. We had no inhibitions, no standards, we just did it. That's why it came off so fresh and innovative, and that's why ... we got

4472-425: A representation of the data that minimizes the amount of memory. The example considered suggests two alternative representations of the same rhythm: as it is, and as the rhythm-tempo interaction – a two-level representation in terms of a generative rhythmic pattern and a "tempo curve". Table 1 displays these possibilities both with and without pitch, assuming that one duration requires one byte of information, one byte

4644-572: A result of Frankie Knuckles ' using a drum machine he bought from Derrick May. He claims: Derrick sold Chicago DJ Frankie Knuckles a TR909 drum machine. This was back when the Powerplant was open in Chicago, but before any of the Chicago DJs were making records. They were all into playing Italian imports; 'No UFOs' was the only U.S.-based independent record that they played. So Frankie Knuckles started using

4816-655: A seminal work that is generally considered the first techno production. Of this time, Atkins has said: When I started Metroplex around February or March of '85 and released "No UFO's," I thought I was just going to make my money back on it, but I wound up selling between 10,000 and 15,000 copies. I had no idea that my record would happen in Chicago. Derrick's parents had moved there, and he was making regular trips between Detroit and Chicago. So when I came out with 'No UFO's,' he took copies out to Chicago and gave them to some DJs, and it just happened. The music's producers, especially May and Saunderson, admit to having been fascinated by

4988-419: A series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the music as it unfolds in time". The "perception" and "abstraction" of rhythmic measure is the foundation of human instinctive musical participation, as when we divide a series of identical clock-ticks into "tick-tock-tick-tock". Joseph Jordania recently suggested that the sense of rhythm was developed in the early stages of hominid evolution by

5160-517: A shape and structure of their own, also function as integral parts of a larger ["architectonic"] rhythmic organization. Most music, dance and oral poetry establishes and maintains an underlying "metric level", a basic unit of time that may be audible or implied, the pulse or tactus of the mensural level , or beat level , sometimes simply called the beat . This consists of a (repeating) series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time. The "beat" pulse

5332-439: A similar fusion between electronic music and traditional Japanese music in early 1978. Hosono also contributed to one of Sakamoto's songs, "Thousand Knives", in the album. Thousand Knives was also notable for its early use of the microprocessor -based Roland MC-8 Microcomposer music sequencer , with Matsutake as its music programmer for the album. While Sakamoto was working on Thousand Knives , Hosono began formulating

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5504-410: A single, accented (strong) beat and either one or two unaccented (weak) beats. In the performance arts , rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences that occur over time, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry. In some performing arts, such as hip hop music , the rhythmic delivery of the lyrics is one of the most important elements of

5676-428: A solo artist, actor, and film composer , winning Grammy , Oscar , and Golden Globe awards. Yellow Magic Orchestra released a one-off reunion album, Technodon , and credited it to 'NOT YMO' (YMO crossed out with a calligraphy X) or YMO in 1993. Instead of traditional vocals, about half of it features field audio recordings and samples of authors and scientists reading their work. During their brief reunion in

5848-414: A strong pulse are strong , on a weak pulse, weak and those that end on a strong or weak upbeat are upbeat . Rhythm is marked by the regulated succession of opposite elements: the dynamics of the strong and weak beat, the played beat and the inaudible but implied rest beat , or the long and short note. As well as perceiving rhythm humans must be able to anticipate it. This depends on repetition of

6020-472: A success in the United States and Europe. Following an advertising deal with Fuji Cassette , the group sparked a boom in the popularity of electronic pop music, called " technopop " in Japan, where they had an effect similar to that of the Beatles and Merseybeat in 1960s Britain. For some time, YMO was the most popular band in Japan. Successful solo act Akiko Yano (later married to Sakamoto) joined

6192-404: A superior example of the music he envisioned. Inspired, he resolved to continue experimenting, and he encouraged Saunderson and May to do likewise. Eventually, Atkins started producing his own music under the pseudonym Model 500 , and in 1985 he established the record label Metroplex . The same year saw an important turning point for the Detroit scene with the release of Model 500's " No UFO's ,"

6364-399: A supposed alternative was a music characterized by Simon Reynolds as "moribund, middlebrow Electro-Trance music, as represented by Frankfurt's own Sven Väth and his Harthouse label." Illegal raves, however, regained importance in the German techno scene as a countermovement to the commercial mass raves in the mid-1990s. In Germany, fans started to refer to the harder techno sound emerging in

6536-508: A techno supergroup called Intellex. But, when the group were on the verge of finalising their contract, May allegedly refused to agree to Top of the Pops appearances and negotiations collapsed. According to May, ZTT label boss Trevor Horn had envisaged that the trio would be marketed as a "black Petshop Boys ." Despite Virgin Records ' disappointment with the poor sales of Rushton's compilation,

6708-629: A term already existed in Germany but was to a large extent undefined. Dimitri Hegemann has stated that the Frankfurt definition of techno associated with Talla's Technoclub differed from that used in Berlin. Frankfurt's Armin Johnert viewed techno as having its roots in acts such DAF, Cabaret Voltaire , and Suicide , but a younger generation of club goers had a perception of the older EBM and Industrial as handed down and outdated. The Berlin scene offered an alternative and many began embracing an imported sound that

6880-769: A third member, Jon-5) as Cybotron. This trio released a number of rock and electro-inspired tunes, the most successful of which were Clear (1983) and its moodier followup, "Techno City" (1984). Atkins used the term techno to describe Cybotron's music, taking inspiration from Futurist author Alvin Toffler, the original source for words such as cybotron and metroplex . Atkins has described earlier synthesizer based acts like Kraftwerk as techno, although many would consider both Kraftwerk's and Juan's Cybotron outputs as electro. Atkins viewed Cybotron's Cosmic Cars (1982) as unique, Germanic, synthesized funk, but he later heard Afrika Bambaataa 's " Planet Rock " (1982) and considered it to be

7052-448: A time was the standard bearer for techno and played host to many of the leading Detroit producers, some of whom had relocated to Berlin. The club brought new life to the careers of Detroit artists such as Santonio Echols, Eddie Fowlkes and Blake Baxter, who played there alongside established Berlin DJs such as Dr. Motte and Tanith. According to Dan Sicko, "Germany's growing scene in the early 1990s

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7224-488: A tongue-in-cheek Japanese text-only history of the group that spans to 2036. The band have reunited in 2007 for an advertising campaign for Kirin Lager which lampooned their longevity and charted No.1 on various Japanese digital download charts (including iTunes Store chart) with the song "Rydeen 79/07", released on Sakamoto's new label commmons . Recently performing live as Human Audio Sponge; Hosono, Sakamoto, and Takahashi did

7396-403: A wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds (as with the riff in a rock music song); to several minutes or hours, or, at the most extreme, even over many years. The Oxford English Dictionary defines rhythm as "The measured flow of words or phrases in verse, forming various patterns of sound as determined by

7568-423: A year, however, up to 10,000 people at a time were attending the first commercially organized mass parties, called raves , and a media storm ensued. The success of house and acid house paved the way for wider acceptance of the Detroit sound, and vice versa: techno was initially supported by a handful of house music clubs in Chicago, New York, and Northern England, with London clubs catching up later; but in 1987, it

7740-405: Is a durational pattern that has a period equivalent to a pulse or several pulses. The duration of any such unit is inversely related to its tempo. Musical sound may be analyzed on five different time scales, which Moravscik has arranged in order of increasing duration. Curtis Roads takes a wider view by distinguishing nine-time scales, this time in order of decreasing duration. The first two,

7912-570: Is a subject of particular interest to outsiders while African scholars from Kyagambiddwa to Kongo have, for the most part, accepted the conventions and limitations of staff notation, and produced transcriptions to inform and enable discussion and debate. John Miller has argued that West African music is based on the tension between rhythms, polyrhythms created by the simultaneous sounding of two or more different rhythms, generally one dominant rhythm interacting with one or more independent competing rhythms. These often oppose or complement each other and

8084-448: Is any durational pattern that, in contrast to the rhythmic unit, does not occupy a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying metric level. It may be described according to its beginning and ending or by the rhythmic units it contains. Rhythms that begin on a strong pulse are thetic , those beginning on a weak pulse are anacrustic and those beginning after a rest or tied-over note are called initial rest . Endings on

8256-539: Is considered an "interesting contribution" to the development of Detroit techno and the group Cybotron . "Computer Game" (1978) also influenced Sheffield's bleep techno music; the Warp record, Sweet Exorcist 's " Testone " (1990), defined Sheffield's techno sound by making playful use of sampled sounds from "Computer Game" along with dialogues from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). "Computer Game" (1978)

8428-535: Is fundamental, so that a person's sense of rhythm cannot be lost (e.g. by stroke). "There is not a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck, or move in synchrony with an auditory beat", Sacks write, "No doubt many pet lovers will dispute this notion, and indeed many animals, from the Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna to performing circus animals appear to 'dance' to music. It

8600-649: Is heavily dependent on music production technology . Use of the term "techno" to refer to a type of electronic music originated in Germany in the early 1980s. In 1988, following the UK release of the compilation Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit , the term came to be associated with a form of EDM produced in Detroit . Detroit techno resulted from the melding of synth-pop by artists such as Kraftwerk , Giorgio Moroder and Yellow Magic Orchestra with African-American music such as house , electro , and funk . Added to this

8772-402: Is needed for the pitch of one tone, and invoking the repeat algorithm with its parameters R012 takes four bytes. As shown in the bottom row of the table, the rhythm without pitch requires fewer bytes if it is "perceived" as it is, without repetitions and tempo leaps. On the contrary, its melodic version requires fewer bytes if the rhythm is "perceived" as being repeated at a double tempo. Thus,

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8944-524: Is no border between music and noise." Their approach to sampling music was a precursor to the contemporary approach of constructing music by cutting fragments of sounds and looping them using computer technology. Their 1978 hit " Computer Game / Firecracker ", for example, sampled Martin Denny 's 1959 exotica melody "Firecracker" and arcade game sounds from Space Invaders and Circus . According to The Vinyl District magazine, they also released

9116-507: Is not a common word or phrase in the English Language, appearing approximately 0.01 times per million words in modern written English. Counter Rhythm has been on a steady decrease in usage since its conception, with the exception of a spike in usage in the 1970s. Previous definitions that have been phased out include, "The musical counter-rhythms which Marlowe introduced" and "Splashes of counter-rhythms, flashing tremolos" (OED ).   In

9288-434: Is not clear whether they are doing so or are responding to subtle visual or tactile cues from the humans around them." Human rhythmic arts are possibly to some extent rooted in courtship ritual. The establishment of a basic beat requires the perception of a regular sequence of distinct short-duration pulses and, as a subjective perception of loudness is relative to background noise levels, a pulse must decay to silence before

9460-468: Is not necessarily the fastest or the slowest component of the rhythm but the one that is perceived as fundamental: it has a tempo to which listeners entrain as they tap their foot or dance to a piece of music. It is currently most often designated as a crotchet or quarter note in western notation (see time signature ). Faster levels are division levels , and slower levels are multiple levels . Maury Yeston clarified "Rhythms of recurrence" arise from

9632-494: Is one of the three aspects of prosody , along with stress and intonation . Languages can be categorized according to whether they are syllable-timed, mora-timed, or stress-timed. Speakers of syllable-timed languages such as Spanish and Cantonese put roughly equal time on each syllable; in contrast, speakers of stressed-timed languages such as English and Mandarin Chinese put roughly equal time lags between stressed syllables, with

9804-471: Is related to the effectiveness of their upholding community values. Indian music has also been passed on orally. Tabla players would learn to speak complex rhythm patterns and phrases before attempting to play them. Sheila Chandra , an English pop singer of Indian descent, made performances based on her singing these patterns. In Indian classical music , the Tala of a composition is the rhythmic pattern over which

9976-400: Is the dependence of its perception on tempo, and, conversely, the dependence of tempo perception on rhythm. Furthermore, the rhythm–tempo interaction is context dependent, as explained by Andranik Tangian using an example of the leading rhythm of "Promenade" from Moussorgsky 's Pictures at an Exhibition :( This rhythm is perceived as it is rather than as the first three events repeated at

10148-464: Is the influence of futuristic and science-fiction themes relevant to life in contemporary American society, with Alvin Toffler 's book The Third Wave a notable point of reference. The music produced in the mid-to-late 1980s by Juan Atkins , Derrick May , and Kevin Saunderson (collectively known as The Belleville Three ), along with Eddie Fowlkes , Blake Baxter , James Pennington and others

10320-414: Is thought to have been influenced by Dutch gabber and Belgian hardcore; styles that were in their own perverse way paying homage to Underground Resistance and Richie Hawtin's Plus 8 Records . Other influences on the development of this style were European electronic body music (EBM) groups of the mid-1980s such as DAF , Front 242 , and Nitzer Ebb . Changes were also taking place in Frankfurt during

10492-572: Is viewed as the first wave of techno from Detroit. After the success of house music in a number of European countries , techno grew in popularity in the United Kingdom , Germany , Belgium and the Netherlands . In Europe regional variants quickly evolved and by the early 1990s techno subgenres such as acid , hardcore , bleep , ambient , and dub techno had developed. Music journalists and fans of techno are generally selective in their use of

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10664-568: The Midnight Funk Association , an eclectic five-hour late-night radio program hosted on various Detroit radio stations, including WCHB , WGPR , and WJLB-FM from 1977 through the mid-1980s by DJ Charles " The Electrifying Mojo " Johnson. Mojo's show featured electronic music by artists such as Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Tangerine Dream , alongside the funk sounds of acts such as Parliament Funkadelic and dance oriented new wave music by bands like Devo and

10836-591: The Barbican Centre in London; Takahashi and Sakamoto joined him on stage to perform "Absolute Ego Dance", marking the final time that the three would appear together in public. (The band featured in Hosono's second and third "Yellow Magic Show" on Japanese TV, both recorded in 2019; their appearance in the third was in front of a live audience, but Sakamoto appeared via prerecorded video.) On January 11, 2023, Takahashi died at

11008-533: The Bigod 20 collective. While this early work was strongly characterized as experimental electronic music fused with strong EBM, krautrock , synth-pop and technopop influences, the later work during the mid and late 1980s clearly transitioned to a clear techno sound. By 1987 a German party scene based around the Chicago sound was well established. In the late 1980s, acid house also established itself in West Germany as

11180-454: The British electronic scene of the early 1980s in particular. They influenced many early British synthpop acts, including Ultravox , John Foxx , Gary Numan , Duran Duran , Depeche Mode , Camouflage , OMD , The Human League, Visage , and Art of Noise , as well as American rock musicians such as Todd Rundgren . " Technopolis ", a tribute to Tokyo as an electronic mecca that used

11352-519: The Cultural Revolution era), Indian music (such as Ravi Shankar and Bollywood music ), arcade game samples, American rap , exotica , Caribbean ska, Giorgio Moroder 's disco work, the Beatles, the Beach Boys and their leader Brian Wilson , Van Dyke Parks , classical music, animal sounds , and noise . Sakamoto has expressed that his "concept when making music is that there

11524-488: The Dorian Gray club in 1987. Talla's club spot served as the hub for the regional EBM and electronic music scene, and according to Jürgen Laarmann , of Frontpage magazine, it had historical merit in being the first club in Germany to play almost exclusively EDM. Inspired by Talla's music selection, in the early 80s several young artists from Frankfurt started to experiment on cassette tapes with electronic music coming from

11696-484: The Fender Rhodes piano and Fender Jazz Bass . The band has been described as "the original cyberpunks " and their early work has been described as " proto-techno " music. By the 1990s, YMO were also frequently cited as pioneers of ambient house music. YMO also popularized a style of live performance that eschewed human movement in favour of electronics such as rhythm boxes and samplers. They also influenced

11868-468: The Griot tradition of Africa everything related to music has been passed on orally. Babatunde Olatunji (1927–2003) developed a simple series of spoken sounds for teaching the rhythms of the hand-drum, using six vocal sounds, "Goon, Doon, Go, Do, Pa, Ta", for three basic sounds on the drum, each played with either the left or the right hand. The debate about the appropriateness of staff notation for African music

12040-816: The Hollywood Bowl on June 26, 2011. Not long after, a concert for June 27, 2011, at The Warfield was added. It was announced in February that YMO would perform at the Fuji Rock festival in July and the World Happiness festival 2011 on August 7. In 2012, Sakamoto helped organize the No Nukes 2012 festival held in the Makuhari Messe hall in Chiba , Japan, on July 7 and 8, 2012. Among

12212-405: The Netherlands and Belgium . The growth of techno's popularity in Europe between 1988 and 1992 was largely due to the emergence of the rave scene and a thriving club culture. In the United States during the early 90s, apart from regional scenes in Detroit, New York City , Chicago and Orlando, interest in techno was limited. Many Detroit based producers, frustrated by the lack of opportunity in

12384-515: The New Romantic movement, including British bands Duran Duran and Japan , whose member Steve Jansen was influenced by drummer Takahashi, while lead member David Sylvian was influenced by Sakamoto, who would later collaborate with Sylvian. Various cover versions of " Kimi ni Mune Kyun " (1983) have also been produced by other artists, including The Human League in 1993 (" YMO Versus The Human League ") and Asako Toki in 2006. In 2009,

12556-522: The disco productions of Giorgio Moroder . They released the surprise global hit " Computer Game " in 1978, reaching the UK Top 20 and selling 400,000 copies in the U.S. For their early recordings and performances, the band was often accompanied by programmer Hideki Matsutake . The group released several albums before pausing their activity in 1984. They briefly reunited several times in subsequent decades before Takahashi and Sakamoto's deaths in 2023. Prior to

12728-693: The gamelan . For information on rhythm in Indian music see Tala (music) . For other Asian approaches to rhythm see Rhythm in Persian music , Rhythm in Arabic music and Usul —Rhythm in Turkish music and Dumbek rhythms . As a piece of music unfolds, its rhythmic structure is perceived not as a series of discrete independent units strung together in a mechanical, additive, way like beads [or "pulses"], but as an organic process in which smaller rhythmic motives, whole possessing

12900-567: The infinite and the supra musical, encompass natural periodicities of months, years, decades, centuries, and greater, while the last three, the sample and subsample, which take account of digital and electronic rates "too brief to be properly recorded or perceived", measured in millionths of seconds ( microseconds ), and finally the infinitesimal or infinitely brief, are again in the extra-musical domain. Roads' Macro level, encompassing "overall musical architecture or form " roughly corresponds to Moravcsik's "very long" division while his Meso level,

13072-517: The " electropop boom" of the 1980s. They are credited with playing a key role in the development of several electronic genres, including synthpop , J-pop , electro , and techno , while exploring subversive sociopolitical themes throughout their career. The three members were veterans of the music industry before coming together as YMO, and were inspired by eclectic sources, including the electronic music of Isao Tomita and Kraftwerk , Japanese traditional music , arcade games , funk music, and

13244-499: The 909 at his shows at the Powerplant. Boss had just brought out their little sampling footpedal, and somebody took one along there. Somebody was on the mic, and they sampled that and played it over the drumtrack pattern. Having got the drum machine and the sampler, they could make their own tunes to play at parties. One thing just led to another, and Chip E used the 909 to make his own record, and from then on, all these DJs in Chicago borrowed that 909 to come out with their own records. In

13416-527: The B-52's . Atkins has noted: He [Mojo] played all the Parliament and Funkadelic that anybody ever wanted to hear. Those two groups were really big in Detroit at the time. In fact, they were one of the main reasons why disco didn't really grab hold in Detroit in '79. Mojo used to play a lot of funk just to be different from all the other stations that had gone over to disco. When ' Knee Deep ' came out, that just put

13588-410: The Chicago club scene and influenced by house in particular. May's 1987 hit " Strings of Life " (released under the alias Rhythim Is Rhythim [sic]) is considered a classic in both the house and techno genres. Juan Atkins also believes that the first acid house producers, seeking to distance house music from disco, emulated the techno sound. Atkins also suggests that the Chicago house sound developed as

13760-526: The City Music record store, mixing the latest catalogue with additional electronic sounds and pitched BPM. This became known as the Frankfurt tape scene. The Frankfurt tape scene evolved around the early and experimental work done by the likes of Tobias Freund, Uwe Schmidt , Lars Müller and Martin Schopf. Some of the work done by Andreas Tomalla, Markus Nikolai and Thomas Franzmann evolved in collaborative work under

13932-475: The Dance (1989) and The Beginning (1990) were credited with taking techno "in dozens of new directions at once and having the kind of expansive impact John Coltrane had on Jazz". The Birmingham -based label Network Records label was instrumental in introducing Detroit techno to British audiences. By the early 1990s, the original techno sound had garnered a large underground following in the United Kingdom , Germany,

14104-486: The Detroit scene led to the opening of a nightclub called the Music Institute (MI), located at 1315 Broadway in downtown Detroit. The venue was secured by George Baker and Alton Miller with Darryl Wynn and Derrick May participating as Friday night DJs, and Baker and Chez Damier playing to a mostly gay crowd on Saturday nights. The club closed on 24 November 1989, with Derrick May playing "Strings of Life" along with

14276-543: The European synthesizer tradition. He also identified Japanese synth-pop act Yellow Magic Orchestra , particularly member Ryuichi Sakamoto , and British band Ultravox , as influences, along with Kraftwerk. YMO's song " Technopolis " (1979), a tribute to Tokyo as an electronic mecca, is considered an "interesting contribution" to the development of Detroit techno, foreshadowing concepts that Atkins and Davis would later explore with Cybotron. Kevin Saunderson has also acknowledged

14448-533: The Mask " (1979) made use of synthesizers for the melodies and digital gated reverb for the snare drums . They were also the very first band to utilize the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer , one of the first and most influential programmable drum machines, as soon as it was released in 1980. While the machine was initially unsuccessful due to its lack of digital sampling that the rival Linn LM-1 offered,

14620-406: The Mask ", which YMO had first produced in 1978 for a Seiko quartz wristwatch commercial, and then for Solid State Survivor with lyrics penned by Chris Mosdell . The song was later revised by Michael Jackson , who added new lyrics and had intended to include it in his album Thriller . Despite the approval of songwriter Sakamoto and lyricist Chris Mosdell , it was eventually removed from

14792-517: The Mayday mix (for the show Street Beat on Detroit's WJLB radio station) and run Transmat records. Commercially, the release did not fare as well and failed to recoup , but Inner City's production " Big Fun " (1988), a track that was almost not included on the compilation, became a crossover hit in fall 1988. The record was also responsible for bringing industry attention to May, Atkins and Saunderson, which led to discussions with ZTT records about forming

14964-559: The TR-808 featured various unique artificial percussion sounds, including a deep bass kick drum , "tinny handclap sounds", "the ticky snare , the tishy hi-hats (open and closed)", and "the spacey cowbell ", which YMO utilized and demonstrated in their music, as early as its year of release in 1980, paving the way for the TR-808's mainstream popularity several years later, after which it would be used for more hit records than any other drum machine and continue to be widely used through to

15136-457: The UK, a club following for house music grew steadily from 1985, with interest sustained by scenes in London, Manchester, Nottingham, and later Sheffield and Leeds. The DJs thought to be responsible for house's early UK success include Mike Pickering , Mark Moore , Colin Faver , and Graeme Park (DJ) . The early producers, enabled by the increasing affordability of sequencers and synthesizers, merged

15308-446: The US, looked to Europe for a future livelihood. This first wave of Detroit expatriates was soon joined by a so-called "second wave" that included Carl Craig, Octave One , Jay Denham, Kenny Larkin , Stacey Pullen , and UR 's Jeff Mills , Mike Banks , and Robert Hood . In the same period, close to Detroit ( Windsor, Ontario ), Richie Hawtin , with business partner John Acquaviva , launched

15480-512: The USA who were in the process of setting up a partnership deal with Alfa Records. This led to the YMO being offered an international deal, at which point (early 1979) the three members decided the group would be given priority over their solo careers. The most popular international hit from the album was "Firecracker", which would be released as a single the following year and again as "Computer Game", which became

15652-563: The United States and Europe. The single "Computer Game" had sold 400,000 copies in the United States and reached No. 17 in the UK Charts. The group also performed "Firecracker" and " Tighten Up " live on the Soul Train television show. At around the same time, the 1980 song "Riot in Lagos" by YMO member Sakamoto pioneered the beats and sounds of electro music . The band was particularly popular with

15824-466: The X-tasy Dance Project, were organizing the first large scale rave events in Germany. This development would lead to a permanent move away from the sound associated with Techno-House and toward a hard edged mix of music that came to define Tanith and Wolle's Tekknozid parties. According to Wolle it was an "out and out rejection of disco values," instead they created a "sound storm" and encouraged

15996-573: The age of 70, following a case of pneumonia. He had undergone surgery to remove a brain tumor in 2020 but continued to have health troubles that interfered with his musical activities in the intervening years. That same year, Sakamoto died on March 28 at the age of 71, following a lengthy battle with cancer; leaving Hosono as the last surviving member of the group. While their contemporaries in Düsseldorf , and later Detroit, were using synthesizer technology to create bleak dystopian music, YMO introduced

16168-423: The album due to legal issues with YMO's management. Jackson's version was never released until his first posthumous album, Michael , though his additional lyrics were included in later cover versions of the song by Greg Phillinganes , Eric Clapton , and Ryuichi Sakamoto himself in his 1986 solo release Media Bahn Live . Solid State Survivor included several early computerized synth rock songs, including

16340-565: The band for its live performances in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but did not participate in the studio recordings. On the other hand, the YMO trio contributed to her own albums and became part of her live band, during these same years. Legendary English guitarist Bill Nelson , who had disbanded Be-Bop Deluxe and Red Noise to more recently explore Electropop himself, likewise played on YMO's Naughty Boys (1983), its non-vocals variant Naughty Boys Instrumental (1984) and subsequent solo Yukihiro Takahashi projects, before featuring

16512-445: The band with the song "Solid State Scouter" as the theme song of the 1990 TV special Dragon Ball Z: Bardock – The Father of Goku . In HMV Japan 's list of top 100 Japanese musicians of all time, YMO were voted second place, behind only Southern All Stars , a pop-rock band who remain largely unknown outside Japan. In 2006, Senor Coconut paid tribute to the band with his Yellow Fever! album. YMO were pioneers of synthpop ,

16684-423: The bar. A composite rhythm is the durations and patterns (rhythm) produced by amalgamating all sounding parts of a musical texture . In music of the common practice period , the composite rhythm usually confirms the meter , often in metric or even-note patterns identical to the pulse on a specific metric level. White defines composite rhythm as, "the resultant overall rhythmic articulation among all

16856-555: The best of the best. Though short-lived, MI was known internationally for its all-night sets, its sparse white rooms, and its juice bar stocked with " smart drinks " (the Institute never served liquor). The MI, notes Dan Sicko, along with Detroit's early techno pioneers, "helped give life to one of the city's important musical subcultures – one that was slowly growing into an international scene." In 1982, while working at Frankfurt's City Music record store, DJ Talla 2XLC started to use

17028-411: The compilation put techno into the lexicon of music journalism in the UK, the music was initially viewed as Detroit's interpretation of Chicago house rather than as a separate genre. The compilation's working title had been The House Sound of Detroit until the addition of Atkins' song "Techno Music" prompted reconsideration. Rushton was later quoted as saying he, Atkins, May, and Saunderson came up with

17200-666: The compilation's final name together, and that the Belleville Three voted down calling the music some kind of regional brand of house; they instead favored a term they were already using, techno . Derrick May views this as one of his busiest times and recalls that it was a period where he I was working with Carl Craig , helping Kevin, helping Juan, trying to put Neil Rushton in the right position to meet everybody, trying to get Blake Baxter endorsed so that everyone liked him, trying to convince Shake ( Anthony Shakir ) that he should be more assertive... and keep making music as well as do

17372-650: The concept of transformation . Yellow Magic Orchestra Yellow Magic Orchestra (abbreviated to YMO ) was a Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978 by Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards, vocals), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, lead vocals, occasional keyboards) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards, vocals). The group is considered influential and innovative in the field of popular electronic music. They were pioneers in their use of synthesizers, samplers , sequencers , drum machines , computers, and digital recording technology, and effectively anticipated

17544-625: The development of the effective defense system of early hominids. Rhythmic war cry , rhythmic drumming by shamans , rhythmic drilling of the soldiers and contemporary professional combat forces listening to the heavy rhythmic rock music all use the ability of rhythm to unite human individuals into a shared collective identity where group members put the interests of the group above their individual interests and safety. Some types of parrots can know rhythm. Neurologist Oliver Sacks states that chimpanzees and other animals show no similar appreciation of rhythm yet posits that human affinity for rhythm

17716-428: The dominant rhythm. Moral values underpin a musical system based on repetition of relatively simple patterns that meet at distant cross-rhythmic intervals and on call-and-response form . Collective utterances such as proverbs or lineages appear either in phrases translated into "drum talk" or in the words of songs. People expect musicians to stimulate participation by reacting to people dancing. Appreciation of musicians

17888-481: The early 1970s. Yellow Magic Orchestra and Ryuichi Sakamoto's Thousand Knives were one of the earliest popular music albums to utilize the Roland MC-8 Microcomposer , which was programmed by Hideki Matsutake during recording sessions. Roland called the MC-8 a " computer music composer" and it was the first stand-alone microprocessor -based music sequencer . It also introduced features such as

18060-420: The early 1990s also played an instrumental role in the techno and acid house movements towards the end of the 20th century. The band's use of oriental musical scales and video game sounds has continued to be an influence on 21st-century electronica acts such as Dizzee Rascal , Kieran Hebden , and Ikonika . YMO's success with music technology encouraged many others, with their influence strongly felt in

18232-587: The early 1990s as Tekkno (or Brett ). This alternative spelling, with varying numbers of k s, began as a tongue-in-cheek attempt to emphasize the music's hardness, but by the mid-1990s it came to be associated with a controversial point of view that the music was and perhaps always had been wholly separate from Detroit's techno , deriving instead from a 1980s EBM-oriented club scene cultivated in part by DJ/musician Talla 2XLC in Frankfurt. At some point tension over "who defines techno" arose between scenes in Frankfurt and Berlin. DJ Tanith has expressed that Techno as

18404-547: The early 1990s, they continued to experiment with new styles of electronic music, playing an instrumental role in the techno and acid house movements of the era. The early 2000s saw Hosono and Takahashi reunited in a project called Sketch Show . On a number of occasions Ryuichi Sakamoto has joined in on Sketch Show performances and recording sessions. He later proposed they rename the group Human Audio Sponge when he participates. Barcelona performance at Sonar festival and Wild Sketch Show DVDs chronicle these reunions, and include

18576-487: The early locations where the musical form was nurtured. Of the four individuals responsible for establishing techno as a genre in its own right, Juan Atkins is widely cited as "The Originator". In 1995, the American music technology publication Keyboard Magazine honored him as one of 12 Who Count in the history of keyboard music. In the early 1980s, Atkins began recording with musical partner Richard Davis (and later with

18748-454: The emerging hip hop community, which appreciated the group's electronic sounds, and in the Bronx where "Firecracker" was a success and sampled in the famous Death Mix (1983) by Afrika Bambaataa . Meanwhile, in Japan, YMO remained the best-selling music act there up until 1982. The band had paused their group activities by 1984. After the release of their musical motion picture Propaganda ,

18920-864: The field of popular electronic music, and continue to be remixed or sampled by modern artists, including experimental artist Yamantaka Eye , electronica group LFO , jungle band 4hero , electrolatino artist Senor Coconut , ambient house pioneers The Orb and 808 State , electronic music groups Orbital and The Human League , hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa , and mainstream pop musicians such as Michael Jackson , Quincy Jones , Greg Phillinganes , Eric Clapton , Mariah Carey , and Jennifer Lopez . YMO also influenced techno music, including its pioneers Juan Atkins , Kevin Saunderson , and Derrick May , who cited YMO as an important influence on their work alongside Kraftwerk. YMO continued to influence later techno musicians such as Surgeon , μ-Ziq , and Cosmic Baby . " Technopolis " (1979) in particular

19092-715: The first Love Parade in West Berlin, just a few months before the Fall of the Berlin Wall . Following the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and the German reunification in October 1990, free underground techno parties mushroomed in East Berlin . East German DJ Paul van Dyk has remarked that techno was a major force in reestablishing social connections between East and West Germany during

19264-636: The first DJ in Germany to be worshipped like a rock star. He performed center stage with his fans facing him, and as co-owner of Omen, he is believed to have been the first techno DJ to run his own club. One of the few real alternatives then was The Bruckenkopf in Mainz , underneath a Rhine bridge, a venue that offered a non-commercial alternative to Frankfurt's discothèque -based clubs. Other notable underground parties were those run by Force Inc. Music Works and Ata & Heiko from Playhouse records ( Ongaku Musik ). By 1992 DJ Dag & Torsten Fenslau were running

19436-410: The first album to feature mostly samples and loops (1981's Technodelic ). The pace at which the band's music evolved has been acknowledged by critics. According to SF Weekly , YMO's musical timeline has gone from "zany exotica-disco spoofs" and "bleeps and blips" in the 1970s to "sensuous musique concrète perfected" in their 1983 albums Naughty Boys and Service . Technodelic (1981)

19608-517: The following year. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, high school clubs such as Brats, Charivari, Ciabattino, Comrades, Gables, Hardwear, Rafael, Rumours, Snobs, and Weekends allowed the young promoters to develop and nurture a local dance music scene. As the local scene grew in popularity, DJs began to band together to market their mixing skills and sound systems to clubs that were hoping to attract larger audiences. Local church activity centers, vacant warehouses, offices, and YMCA auditoriums were

19780-405: The forces of natural selection . Plenty of animals walk rhythmically and hear the sounds of the heartbeat in the womb, but only humans have the ability to be engaged ( entrained ) in rhythmically coordinated vocalizations and other activities. According to Jordania, development of the sense of rhythm was central for the achievement of the specific neurological state of the battle trance, crucial for

19952-560: The group's formation, Sakamoto had been experimenting with electronic music equipment at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music , which he entered in 1970, including synthesizers such as the Buchla , Moog , and ARP . The group leader Haruomi Hosono had been using an Ace Tone rhythm machine since early in his career in the early 1970s. Following the break-up of his band Happy End in 1972, Hosono became involved in

20124-604: The idea of an instrumental disco band which could have the potential to reach success in non-Japanese-language territories, and invited Tasuo Hayashi of Tin Pan Alley and Hiroshi Sato of Huckleback as participants, but they declined. Hosono, Sakamoto and Takahashi eventually collaborated again to form the Yellow Magic Orchestra and they began recording their self-titled album at a Shibaura studio in July 1978. The band's 1978 self-titled album Yellow Magic Orchestra

20296-522: The influence of Europe but he claims to have been more inspired by the idea of making music with electronic equipment: "I was more infatuated with the idea that I can do this all myself." These early Detroit techno artists additionally employed science fiction imagery to articulate their visions of a transformed society. Prior to achieving notoriety, Atkins, Saunderson, May, and Fowlkes shared common interests as budding musicians, "mix" tape traders, and aspiring DJs. They also found musical inspiration via

20468-400: The influence of Kraftwerk and other European synthesizer music in commenting that "it was just classy and clean, and to us it was beautiful, like outer space. Living around Detroit, there was so little beauty... everything is an ugly mess in Detroit, and so we were attracted to this music. It, like, ignited our imagination!". May has commented that he considered his music a direct continuation of

20640-454: The interaction of two levels of motion, the faster providing the pulse and the slower organizing the beats into repetitive groups. "Once a metric hierarchy has been established, we, as listeners, will maintain that organization as long as minimal evidence is present". A durational pattern that synchronises with a pulse or pulses on the underlying metric level may be called a rhythmic unit . These may be classified as: A rhythmic gesture

20812-574: The last nail in the coffin of disco music. Despite the short-lived disco boom in Detroit, it had the effect of inspiring many individuals to take up mixing, Juan Atkins among them. Subsequently, Atkins taught May how to mix records, and in 1981, "Magic Juan", Derrick "Mayday", in conjunction with three other DJ's, one of whom was Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes, launched themselves as a party crew called Deep Space Soundworks (also referred to as Deep Space). In 1980 or 1981, they met with Mojo and proposed that they provide mixes for his show, which they did end up doing

20984-451: The latter on two of Nelson's own UK based releases. Making abundant use of new synthesizers, samplers , sequencers , drum machines , computers and digital recording technology as it became available, as well as utilizing cyberpunk -ish lyrics sung mostly in English, they extended their popularity and influence beyond Japan. Their second album, Solid State Survivor , released in 1979,

21156-581: The level of "divisions of form" including movements , sections , phrases taking seconds or minutes, is likewise similar to Moravcsik's "long" category. Roads' Sound object : "a basic unit of musical structure" and a generalization of note ( Xenakis' mini structural time scale); fraction of a second to several seconds, and his Microsound (see granular synthesis ) down to the threshold of audible perception; thousandths to millionths of seconds, are similarly comparable to Moravcsik's "short" and "supershort" levels of duration. One difficulty in defining rhythm

21328-449: The loop of interdependence of rhythm and tempo is overcome due to the simplicity criterion, which "optimally" distributes the complexity of perception between rhythm and tempo. In the above example, the repetition is recognized because of additional repetition of the melodic contour, which results in a certain redundancy of the musical structure, making the recognition of the rhythmic pattern "robust" under tempo deviations. Generally speaking,

21500-470: The many artists performing, Kraftwerk closed the July 7 concert, with YMO performing on both days, closing the July 8 concert. YMO also headlined their World Happiness festival on August 12, 2012. After these performances, the band once again went quiet; though no formal announcement was made of a hiatus or breakup, the band ultimately did not reconvene for further recordings or headlining concerts. On June 23, 2018, Hosono played his debut UK solo concert at

21672-534: The more redundant the "musical support" of a rhythmic pattern, the better its recognizability under augmentations and diminutions, that is, its distortions are perceived as tempo variations rather than rhythmic changes: By taking into account melodic context, homogeneity of accompaniment, harmonic pulsation, and other cues, the range of admissible tempo deviations can be extended further, yet still not preventing musically normal perception. For example, Skrjabin 's own performance of his Poem op. 32 no. 1 transcribed from

21844-534: The most common in Western music calculates each time value as a multiple or fraction of the beat. Normal accents re-occur regularly providing systematical grouping (measures). Measured rhythm ( additive rhythm ) also calculates each time value as a multiple or fraction of a specified time unit but the accents do not recur regularly within the cycle. Free rhythm is where there is neither, such as in Christian chant , which has

22016-400: The most important acts in Japan's " New Music " movement and paved the way for the emergence of contemporary J-pop in the 1980s. They also inspired early ambient techno artists such as Tetsu Inoue , and the classical music composer Joe Hisaishi . The manga author Akira Toriyama , creator of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump , cited Yellow Magic Orchestra as his favorite music band in

22188-658: The most popular group during the late 1970s and 1980s. Their albums Solid State Survivor and X∞Multiplies held the top two spots on the Oricon charts for seven consecutive weeks in 1980, making YMO the only band in Japanese chart history to achieve this feat. Young fans of their music during this period became known as the "YMO Generation" ( YMO世代 , YMO Sedai ) . The band significantly affected Japanese pop music, which started becoming increasingly dominated by electronic and computer music due to YMO's influence. YMO were one of

22360-808: The music played at warehouse parties was predominantly house. That same year, the Balearic party vibe associated with Ibiza-based DJ Alfredo Fiorito was transported to London, when Danny Rampling and Paul Oakenfold opened the clubs Shoom and Spectrum, respectively. Both night spots quickly became synonymous with acid house, and it was during this period that the use of MDMA , as a party drug, started to gain prominence. Other important UK clubs at this time included Back to Basics in Leeds , Sheffield's Leadmill and Music Factory, and in Manchester The Haçienda , where Mike Pickering and Graeme Park's Friday night spot, Nude,

22532-523: The music you listen to is made with technology, whether you know it or not. But with techno music, you know it." One of the first Detroit productions to receive wider attention was Derrick May's " Strings of Life " (1987), which, together with May's previous release, "Nude Photo" (1987), helped raise techno's profile in Europe, especially the UK and Germany, during the 1987–1988 house music boom (see Second Summer of Love ). It became May's best known track, which, according to Frankie Knuckles, "just exploded. It

22704-422: The next occurs if it is to be really distinct. For this reason, the fast-transient sounds of percussion instruments lend themselves to the definition of rhythm. Musical cultures that rely upon such instruments may develop multi-layered polyrhythm and simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature, called polymeter . Such are the cross-rhythms of Sub-Saharan Africa and the interlocking kotekan rhythms of

22876-401: The present day. At the time, Billboard noted that the use of such computer-based technology in conjunction with synthesizers allowed YMO to create new sounds that were not possible until then. Yellow Magic Orchestra was also the first computer-themed music album, coming before Kraftwerk's Computer World (1981) by several years. As a result of such innovations, YMO were credited at

23048-469: The price of sequencers and synthesizers has dropped, so the experimentation has become more intense. Basically, we're tired of hearing about being in love or falling out, tired of the R&;B system, so a new progressive sound has emerged. We call it techno! The resulting Detroit sound was interpreted by Derrick May and one journalist in 1988 as a "post-soul" sound with no debt to Motown , but by another journalist

23220-411: The producer's own album E=MC. Atkins also mentions that "around 1980, I had a tape of nothing but Kraftwerk, Telex , Devo , Giorgio Moroder and Gary Numan , and I'd ride around in my car playing it." Regarding his initial impression of Kraftwerk, Atkins notes that they were "clean and precise" relative to the "weird UFO sounds" featured in his seemingly " psychedelic " music. Derrick May identified

23392-454: The record was successful in establishing an identity for techno and was instrumental in creating a platform in Europe for both the music and its producers. Ultimately, the release served to distinguish the Detroit sound from Chicago house and other forms of underground dance music that were emerging during the rave era of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period during which techno became more adventurous and distinct. In mid-1988, developments in

23564-427: The recording of several early electronic rock records, including Yōsui Inoue 's folk pop rock album Kōri no Sekai (1973) and Osamu Kitajima 's progressive psychedelic rock album Benzaiten (1974), both of which utilized synthesizers, electric guitars, electric bass, and in the latter, electronic drums , and rhythm machines . Also around the same time, the band's future "fourth member" Hideki Matsutake

23736-504: The regularity with which we walk and the heartbeat. Other research suggests that it does not relate to the heartbeat directly, but rather the speed of emotional affect, which also influences heartbeat. Yet other researchers suggest that since certain features of human music are widespread, it is "reasonable to suspect that beat-based rhythmic processing has ancient evolutionary roots". Justin London writes that musical metre "involves our initial perception as well as subsequent anticipation of

23908-460: The relation of long and short or stressed and unstressed syllables in a metrical foot or line; an instance of this" . Rhythm is related to and distinguished from pulse, meter, and beats: Rhythm may be defined as the way in which one or more unaccented beats are grouped in relation to an accented one. ... A rhythmic group can be apprehended only when its elements are distinguished from one another, rhythm...always involves an interrelationship between

24080-814: The rest of the concert featured Sketch Show, HASYMO music and members' solo works. In August 2009, the band played the World Happiness festival in Japan, featuring many Japanese artists. The band closed the night, and confirmed that "Yellow Magic Orchestra" was their official name, dropping the HASYMO title. They opened with a cover of " Hello, Goodbye " and performed old YMO songs along with their newer songs. In August 2010, YMO once again closed their World Happiness festival. They added classic songs from their back catalog into their set list. They also covered " Hello, Goodbye " and " Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) ". In January 2011, KCRW announced for their World Festival concert series that Yellow Magic Orchestra will perform at

24252-475: The same period but it did not share the egalitarian approach found in the Berlin party scene. It was instead very much centered around discothèques and existing arrangements with various club owners. In 1988, after the Omen opened, the Frankfurt dance music scene was allegedly dominated by the club's management and they made it difficult for other promoters to get a start. By the early 1990s Sven Väth had become perhaps

24424-426: The sense of a regular beat is absent because the music consists only of long sustained tones ( drones ). In the 1930s, Henry Cowell wrote music involving multiple simultaneous periodic rhythms and collaborated with Leon Theremin to invent the rhythmicon , the first electronic rhythm machine , in order to perform them. Similarly, Conlon Nancarrow wrote for the player piano . In linguistics , rhythm or isochrony

24596-465: The songs that influenced his early career. The song was also later included in Playgroup 's compilation album Kings of Electro (2007), alongside later electro classics such as Hashim 's "Al-Nafyish" (1983). The 1980 release of "Riot in Lagos" was also listed by The Guardian in 2011 as one of the 50 key events in the history of dance music . YMO's use of video game sounds and bleeps also had

24768-527: The split of the Sadistic Mika Band . Hosono invited both to work on his exotica -flavoured album Paraiso , which included electronic songs produced using various electronic equipment. The band was named "Harry Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band" as a satire of the idyllic perception of pacific and Hawaiian music America had been obsessed with and in late 1977 they began recording Paraiso , which

24940-757: The style. Rhythm may also refer to visual presentation, as "timed movement through space" and a common language of pattern unites rhythm with geometry. For example, architects often speak of the rhythm of a building, referring to patterns in the spacing of windows, columns, and other elements of the façade . In recent years, rhythm and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Maury Yeston , Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff , Jonathan Kramer , Christopher Hasty, Godfried Toussaint , William Rothstein, Joel Lester, Guerino Mazzola and Steffen Krebber . In his television series How Music Works , Howard Goodall presents theories that human rhythm recalls

25112-459: The techno imprint Plus 8 Records. A number of New York producers also made an impression in Europe at this time, most notably Frankie Bones , Lenny Dee, and Joey Beltram . These developments in American-produced techno between 1990 and 1992 fueled the expansion and eventual divergence of techno in Europe, particularly in Germany. In Berlin , the club Tresor which had opened in 1991 for

25284-413: The term techno to categorize artists such as Depeche Mode , Front 242 , Heaven 17 , Kraftwerk and New Order , with the word used as shorthand for technologically created dance music. Talla's categorization became a point of reference for other DJs, including Sven Väth . Talla further popularized the term in Germany when he founded Technoclub at Frankfurt's No Name Club in 1984, which later moved to

25456-516: The term " meter or metre " from the terminology of poetry. ) The metric structure of music includes meter, tempo and all other rhythmic aspects that produce temporal regularity against which the foreground details or durational patterns of the music are projected. The terminology of western music is notoriously imprecise in this area. MacPherson preferred to speak of "time" and "rhythmic shape", Imogen Holst of "measured rhythm". Dance music has instantly recognizable patterns of beats built upon

25628-410: The term "techno" in its title, foreshadowed concepts that Juan Atkins and Rick Davis would later have with Cybotron . The band was popular with the emerging hip hop community, which appreciated the group's new electronic sounds, and in the Bronx where Firecracker was a success and sampled in the famous Death Mix by Afrika Bambaataa . Afrika Bambaataa's influential song " Planet Rock "

25800-543: The term, so a clear distinction can be made between sometimes related but often qualitatively different styles, such as tech house and trance . In exploring Detroit techno's origins, writer Kodwo Eshun maintains that "Kraftwerk are to techno what Muddy Waters is to the Rolling Stones : the authentic, the origin, the real." Juan Atkins has acknowledged that he had an early enthusiasm for Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder , particularly Moroder's work with Donna Summer and

25972-438: The three members had returned to their solo careers. They were careful to avoid saying they had "split up", preferring to use the Japanese phrase meaning "spreading out" ( 散開 , sankai ) , and the trio continued to play on each other's recordings and made guest appearances at live shows. Takahashi, in particular, would play the band's material in his concerts. Meanwhile, Sakamoto would gain international success for his work as

26144-607: The time for having "ushered in the age of the computer programmer as rock star." Other electronic equipment used by the group included the LMD-649 sampler (see Sampling above), Roland MC-4 Microcomposer sequencer, Pollard Syndrum electronic drums , Roland VP-330 and Korg VC-10 vocoders , Yamaha CS-80 and DX7 synthesizers, Korg PS-3100 and PS-3300 synthesizers, Moog III-C and Polymoog synthesizers, and ARP Odyssey , Oberheim 8 Voice , and E-mu Emulator synthesizers. Electric instruments were also used,

26316-534: The timing of the unstressed syllables in between them being adjusted to accommodate the stress timing. Narmour describes three categories of prosodic rules that create rhythmic successions that are additive (same duration repeated), cumulative (short-long), or countercumulative (long-short). Cumulation is associated with closure or relaxation, countercumulation with openness or tension, while additive rhythms are open-ended and repetitive. Richard Middleton points out this method cannot account for syncopation and suggests

26488-438: The top two spots on the Oricon charts for seven consecutive weeks, making YMO the only band in Japanese chart history to achieve this feat. The 1980 song " Multiplies " was an early experiment in electronic ska . X∞Multiplies was followed up with the 1981 album BGM . "Rap Phenomena" from the album was an early attempt at electronic rap. They also had similar success abroad, performing to sold-out crowds during tours in

26660-688: The unification period. In the now reunified Berlin, several locations opened near the foundations of the Berlin Wall in the former eastern part of the city from 1991 onwards: the Tresor (est. 1991), the Planet (1991–1993), the Bunker (1992–1996), and the E-Werk (1993–1997). It was in Tresor at this time that a trend in paramilitary clothing was established (amongst the techno fraternity) by DJ Tanith ; possibly as an expression of

26832-399: The voices of a contrapuntal texture". This concept was concurrently defined as "attack point rhythm" by Maury Yeston in 1976 as "the extreme rhythmic foreground of a composition – the absolute surface of articulated movement". From 1927 and forward the recognized definition of "Counter Rhythm " is "A subordinate rhythm acting as a counterbalance to the main rhythm" (OED ). Counter Rhythm

27004-409: The whole piece is structured. In the 20th century, composers like Igor Stravinsky , Béla Bartók , Philip Glass , and Steve Reich wrote more rhythmically complex music using odd meters , and techniques such as phasing and additive rhythm . At the same time, modernists such as Olivier Messiaen and his pupils used increased complexity to disrupt the sense of a regular beat, leading eventually to

27176-459: The widespread use of irrational rhythms in New Complexity . This use may be explained by a comment of John Cage 's where he notes that regular rhythms cause sounds to be heard as a group rather than individually; the irregular rhythms highlight the rapidly changing pitch relationships that would otherwise be subsumed into irrelevant rhythmic groupings. La Monte Young also wrote music in which

27348-402: Was "Strings of Life" which eased London club-goers into acceptance of house, according to DJ Mark Moore. The mid-1988 UK release of Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit , an album compiled by ex- Northern Soul DJ and Kool Kat Records boss Neil Rushton (at the time an A&R scout for Virgin's "10 Records" imprint) and Derrick May, introduced of the word techno to UK audiences. Although

27520-460: Was YMO's pinnacle recording in Japan, winning the 1980 Best Album Award in the Japan Record Awards . It featured English lyrics by Chris Mosdell , whose sci-fi themes often depicted a human condition alienated by dystopic futures, much like the emerging cyberpunk movement in fiction at that time. One of the album's major singles, and one of the band's biggest international hits, was " Behind

27692-399: Was a place for the formation of the southern German techno scene, where protagonists such as DJ Hell , Monika Kruse , Tom Novy or Woody came together. In 1993–94 rave became a mainstream music phenomenon in Germany, seeing with it a return to "melody, New Age elements, insistently kitsch harmonies and timbres". This undermining of the German underground sound lead to the consolidation of

27864-419: Was an important proving ground for American underground dance music . Acid house party fever escalated in London and Manchester, and it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. MDMA-fueled club goers, faced with 2 A.M. closing hours, sought refuge in the warehouse party scene that ran all night. To escape the attention of the press and the authorities, this after-hours activity quickly went underground. Within

28036-521: Was being referred to as Techno-House. The move away from EBM had started in Berlin when acid house became popular, thanks to Monika Dietl's radio show on SFB 4 . Tanith distinguished acid-based dance music from the earlier approaches, whether it be DAF or Nitzer Ebb, because the latter was aggressive, he felt that it epitomized "being against something," but of acid house he said, "it's electronic, it's fun it's nice." By Spring 1990, Tanith, along with Wolle XDP , an East-Berlin party organizer responsible for

28208-549: Was later included in Carl Craig 's compilation album Kings of Techno (2006). In the 1990s, YMO influenced ambient house pioneers such as The Orb and 808 State , as well as Ultramarine and other ambient/house artists. This resulted in the release of the tribute remix album Yellow Magic Orchestra: Hi-Tech/No Crime in 1993, by leading ambient , house and techno musicians at the time, including The Orb, 808 State, and Orbital. The music YMO produced during their comeback in

28380-448: Was less minimalistic , made more varying use of synthesizer lines, introduced "fun-loving and breezy" sounds, and placed a strong emphasis on melody in contrast to Kraftwerk's statuesque "robot pop". The band also drew from a wider range of influences than had been employed by Kraftwerk. These influences on YMO included Japanese electronic music (such as Isao Tomita ), traditional Japanese music , experimental Chinese music (of

28552-409: Was like something you can't imagine, the kind of power and energy people got off that record when it was first heard. Mike Dunn says he has no idea how people can accept a record that doesn't have a bassline." By 1988, house music had exploded in the UK, and acid house was increasingly popular. There was also a long-established warehouse party subculture based around the sound system scene. In 1988,

28724-418: Was partly inspired by YMO. The "terse videogame- funk " sounds of YMO's "Computer Game" would have a strong influence on the emerging electro and hip hop genres. Sakamoto's "Riot in Lagos" was cited by Kurtis Mantronik as a major influence on his early electro hip hop group Mantronix ; he included both "Computer Game" and "Riot in Lagos" in his compilation album That's My Beat (2002) which consists of

28896-545: Was produced using the LMD-649 , a PCM digital sampler that Toshiba-EMI sound engineer Kenji Murata custom-built for YMO. Soon after Technodelic , the LMD-649 was used by YMO-associated acts such as Chiemi Manabe and Logic System . The band often utilized a wide variety of state-of-the-art electronic music equipment immediately as they were made available. The group leader Haruomi Hosono had already been using an Ace Tone rhythm machine since early in his career in

29068-581: Was released in 1978. The three worked together again for the 1978 album Pacific , which included an early version of the song "Cosmic Surfin". Hosono and Sakamoto also worked together alongside Hideki Matsutake in early 1978 for Hosono's experimental "electro-exotica" fusion album Cochin Moon , which fused electronic music with Indian music , including an early "synth raga " song "Hum Ghar Sajan". The same year, Sakamoto released his own solo album, The Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto , experimenting with

29240-497: Was successful and the studio project grew into a fully fledged touring band and career for its three members. The album featured the use of computer technology (along with synthesizers) which, according to Billboard , allowed the group to create a new sound that was not possible until then. Following the release of the album Yellow Magic Orchestra , a live date at the Roppongi Pit Inn was seen by executives of A&M Records of

29412-411: Was the assistant for the internationally successful electronic musician Isao Tomita . Much of the methods and techniques developed by both Tomita and Matsutake during the early 1970s would later be employed by Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Yukihiro Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following

29584-545: Was the beginning of techno's decentralization", and "techno began to create its second logical center in Berlin". At this time, the now reunified Berlin also began to regain its position as the musical capital of Germany. Rhythm Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός , rhythmos , "any regular recurring motion, symmetry " ) generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to

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