I follow The Stretta Procedure blog in my feed reader. The author, Matthew Davidson, brings up a concept I’ve thought about often in the past:

Some (not all) of the well-regarded synthesizer pioneers were not very good musicians. They were the first to express a pedestrian musical idea using a new technology that made it sound fresh at the time. … Technology can lift a musical cliche, but only for a limited time. Technology ages ungracefully, then what is left to admire? It is like picking a beautiful apple, only to find it is hollow after biting into it.
A lot of software technology created today is based on automating a laborious process that was made popular by a pioneer. Things that were groundbreaking 10 years ago are common and easy today.

Davidson is mostly referring to early synthesizer gurus who performed traditional western compositions with these new instruments, but a related trend has occurred with composition for new instruments.

I’ve never owned a real TB-303, TR-808, or TR-909 but some of the first electronic compositions I made were created on a Boss Dr. Groove DR-202, a cheap mid-90′s step-based sequencer knockoff. These compositions were… not good. At best, I got a few interesting techniques and melodies out of them.

The reason that techno, house, etc sound the way they do is because the instruments used to create the early forms of electronic dance music were so damn difficult to program. If you’ve ever tried to program melodies and patterns on a step-based button sequencer, you’ll know that getting anything coming out with traditional western tastes intact is unlikely. It’s far easier to program a cool sounding riff that repeats and modulates in sound design ad nauseum. Hence techno.

What I find interesting is that I never touch step-based sequencers, I hate them. I compose almost exclusively these days in a typical DAW yet most of what I output is in the style of those compositions made with very limiting compositional tools. Obviously there’s now a few decades’ precedence of minimal electronic dance music on top of which to build, which culturally validates using the same drum patterns (four-on-the-floor, amen break, apache break, etc.) in much the same way that thousands of repetitions of the authentic cadence established IV-V-I as the dominant theme of western music theory for hundreds of years.

Part of what Davidson is getting at is this concept. The limiting instruments and the styles of composition which descend from their constrained interfaces defined a sound which has been repeated enough. While I enjoy listening to minimal techno and going dancing to it, I have little incentive to recreate the wheel. Yes, I’m essentially making pop electronic dance music, but I like to fancy that it’s at least a bit more interesting than repeating what’s already been done (and done better) by many other composers. I’m a sucker for solid catchy minimal dance tracks but that’s essentially pop appeal to a form of nostalgia.

At the end of the day I think it’s fine to use the basis of historical electronica to compose new works. The innovation of early electronica composers was their ability to craft pieces around the limitations of technology to create a style which was essentially a distilled sound of technology. Now that we have that sound of technology settled, we can develop it.

The part I find most interesting about all of this as a composer is that the now established and ordinary sounds and styles of writing associated with electronica were discovered through limitation. By working through the constraints of these horrible composition interfaces, early electronica artists created something unique (for the time). As a composer I believe it’s important to set limits and rules within which to work, that it is through these limitations that originality sometimes springs forth. I have a set of unwritten rules I follow when I compose for Panic Bomber and I believe those limits help me push out in other ways.