For three years, I've delayed putting a mass of techno on my empeg. The reason: my existing genre / sub-genre structure is too simplistic and downright inaccurate.

Does anyone know a good reference which defines the different genres and sub-genres of techno? Heck, is "techno" even the proper parent? Should I address it all as "electronica"?

Considering how much and for how long I've loved electronic music, it's about time I learned the proper way to address it. Thanks.

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music

Brilliant.

The use of flash is likely more annoying than most pop-up sites I've seen. Arrrrgh.

The Intro was annoying as hell. I mean, do 1 or maybe 2 back-peddles but don't keep going backwards and start calling analogue process 'electronic'

It's a huge undertaking developing something like this, but to tell the reader to take their heads out of their asses when the author clearly still needs to do the same is a little too much.

FREESTYLE: "A style that's been around since at least the late 80's..." I don't know how he defines late, but many of his example songs I consider early to mid 80's. Case in point, Debie Deb, 1983, Shannon, 1984. I was certainly listening to freestyle prior to 1985. In fact I was past that phase by the end of 1986.

Trying too hard with genre matching is extremely futile. For many compilations you'll end up having to tag different genres to multiple (or each) track. Even studio albums often contain multiple genres or genre-bending tracks. It's far easier/safer to use meta genres and forget about the fine details of sub-genres when working with archived/digital music.

Yeah, the intro was new since the last time I looked there. It was irritating. I kept waiting for him to have some actually useful information.

And, you're right, it's not 100% accurate. However, it's a thousand times better than the next best collection of that sort of information. Well, it would be, if there was another exhaustive survey of electronic music.

Thanks for the info. Sure it's tough to accurately ID3 tag every individual note of every individual song, etc, etc. I'm just looking to get in a better ball park than I'm in, and be able to speak clearly about music that I love. Or, rather, not be laughed at by people who are in the know when I speak about it.

And for the record, the other site worth your Flash install is Homestar Runner (which I found on a post here years ago and have been thankful ever since).

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Wow, and that site made me feel like a complete tool for liking the kind of electronic music that I like. Guess I need to expand my horizons so I can be cool like the guy who wrote that site.

Heh - I was just pleasantly surprised to see Sisters of Mercy on a site devoted to Techno. Yay for goths