Commit d7a0517

rank: 32

family: Electronic

source: ARCHIVE

sub: The sound of one misused Roland TB-303 and the scene that grew around it

spec: 86,88,72,50,44,50,60,70,78,82,80,76,74,78,80,74,64,54,44,36

freqs: 55, 68.94, 420.08

- Phuture - Acid Tracks (1987) | The origin track of Chicago Acid House, 11 minutes of 303 filter tweaks

- 808 State - Pacific State (1989) | UK acid house classic, bird calls, soprano sax over 808 rhythms

- Josh Wink - Higher State of Consciousness (1995) | Screaming 303 filter sweep pitch bends at 130 BPM

- A Guy Called Gerald - Voodoo Ray (1988) | Haunting vocal sample, squelchy 303 bassline, Haçienda classic

id: anadolu-rock

rank: 06

name: ANADOLU ROCK & TURKISH ALTERNATIVE

family: Turkish

years: 1965 → present

source: ON REPEAT

sub: Turkish melody and lyric tradition run through rock instrumentation — the country's longest-running hybrid

spec: 64,72,78,74,66,68,74,78,80,76,72,74,78,76,70,62,54,46,40,34

synthType: triangle

freqs: 86.41, 267.37, 335.14

what:

Anadolu rock began in the mid-1960s when Turkish musicians started setting *türkü* melodies and Divan poetry to electric guitars and drum kits — Erkin Koray, Barış Manço, Cem Karaca and Moğollar are the founding generation, and the 1970s Altın Mikrofon competitions institutionalised it. The 1990s produced a second wave with Western alt-rock production values, and the 2010s a third: lo-fi, wry, lyric-first indie bands like Adamlar and Yüzyüzeyken Konuşuruz.

artists:

Erkin Koray, Barış Manço, Cem Karaca, Moğollar, Selda Bağcan. Then *mor ve ötesi* (İstanbul, 1995; Harun Tekin on vocals; represented Turkey at Eurovision 2008), *Redd* (Ankara, fronted by Doğan Duru), *Seksendört*, and the newer İzmir/İstanbul indie wing: Adamlar, Yüzyüzeyken Konuşuruz, Kuytu, Gaye Su Akyol.

trivia:

Anadolu rock is one of the few cases where a national scene solved a real technical problem: Turkish makam melodies use microtonal intervals that a fretted guitar cannot play, so *Erkin Koray had custom fretless electric guitars built* in the early 1970s — years before Western fretless-guitar experiments. "Bir Derdim Var" is a Barış Manço–era phrase reworked by mor ve ötesi on *Dünya Yalan Söylüyor* (2004), an album that became the reference point for the 2000s scene.

sonic:

Melodies built on makam scales — Hicaz and Kürdi especially — over Western rock harmony, which produces the characteristic minor-with-a-flattened-second colour. Rhythms frequently sit in 9/8 or 7/8 even under a rock kit. The newer indie wing mixes deliberately narrow and mid-heavy, vocals close-mic'd and conversational, guitars thin and jangly rather than saturated.

gear:

Bağlama (saz) and its electrified version, sometimes fed through fuzz and wah; darbuka and bendir alongside the kit; zurna and ney for hooks. Modern bands use Fender offsets, Vox AC30-style cleans, and Turkish-made pedals. Koray's fretless is the single most influential piece of gear in the genre's history.

prod:

Classic-era records were tracked live to four or eight tracks at TRT or Istanbul studios with minimal overdubs, which is why they swing. The 2000s wave (mor ve ötesi, Redd) adopted Western multi-track and loudness practice. The 2010s indie bands went the other direction on purpose — home and small-studio recording, audible room, little compression — because the appeal is the writing and the deadpan delivery, not the polish.

tracks:

- P1·30 | Bir Derdim Var | mor ve ötesi

- P1·26 | Vicdani Redd | Redd

- P1·06 | Acının İlacı | Adamlar

- P1·15 | Hikaye | Adamlar

- P1·08 | Anlayamazsın | Seksendört

- P1·27 | Ne Farkeder | Yüzyüzeyken Konuşuruz

- P2·08 | Ada | Kuytu

id: art-pop

rank: 21

name: ART POP & THE STUDIO AUTEUR

family: Pop & Soul

years: 1997 → present

source: ON REPEAT

sub: Pop songwriting where the producer, engineer and performer are the same person

spec: 68,74,72,62,58,62,68,74,80,82,80,78,80,84,82,76,68,60,52,44

synthType: triangle

freqs: 335.14, 420.08, 526.55

what:

A strand of pop defined by total authorship — the artist writes, plays, engineers, produces and mixes. Kate Bush is the precedent; Björk the 1990s standard-bearer; *Imogen Heap* the case that most directly shaped 2010s production, and her influence on vocal processing as an expressive tool is everywhere in current pop.

artists:

Kate Bush, Björk, Imogen Heap (solo and as half of Frou Frou), Bat for Lashes, FKA twigs, Grimes, Caroline Polachek. Producers who absorbed the approach: Guy Sigsworth, Jon Brion, BJ Burton.

trivia:

Heap was dropped by her label and made *Speak for Yourself* (2005) alone in her home studio, funding it by remortgaging — she is credited as writer, performer, producer and engineer on every track. It became her breakthrough. She later co-invented the *Mi.Mu gloves*, wearable controllers that let a performer shape audio effects with hand gesture, and released "Tiny Human" as the first song ever paid out through blockchain-based royalty distribution.

sonic:

Voice as the primary instrument in every role — lead, pad, percussion, bass. Heap stacks dozens of vocal takes into choral beds, then processes them into textures that no longer read as voices. Underneath: piano or Rhodes, restrained programmed drums, and a mid-heavy, close, headphone-scale mix. Nothing is loud; the density does the work.

gear:

A Digitech Vocalist / harmoniser pedal used live (the "Hide and Seek" technique that spawned a thousand imitations), Logic Pro, an mbox-scale home setup, a Yamaha upright, and Mi.Mu gloves from 2014 onward. The point is that the gear list is modest — the technique is what's expensive.

prod:

Because one person does everything, arrangement decisions happen at the same moment as sound-design decisions, and it shows: the vocal harmony _is_ the reverb, the percussion _is_ a processed breath. Vocal comping runs into the hundreds of takes. Mixes are made on headphones and small monitors for headphone playback, which is why they translate so well to earbuds and so poorly to a club system.

tracks:

- P2·09 | Headlock | Imogen Heap

id: boom-bap

rank: 11

name: BOOM BAP & UNDERGROUND HIP HOP

family: Hip Hop

years: 1988 → present

source: ON REPEAT

sub: Sample-based, drum-machine-driven rap built on crate-digging and technical rhyme

spec: 72,86,90,74,60,62,68,74,76,72,68,70,76,80,78,70,62,54,46,38

synthType: square

freqs: 68.94, 86.41, 335.14

what:

"Boom bap" is onomatopoeia for the kick-snare pattern that defined East Coast rap from about 1988 to 1996 — DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, RZA. Its afterlife has been unusually long: the Griselda camp out of Buffalo (Westside Gunn, Conway, Benny) revived it wholesale in the late 2010s, sometimes stripping the drums out entirely for a "drumless" variant.

artists:

Gang Starr, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, A Tribe Called Quest, *De La Soul*, Wu-Tang Clan, Nas. The underground continuum: *MF DOOM*, Evidence (of Dilated Peoples, and a producer in his own right), The Alchemist, Roc Marciano, Ka, and Griselda. *ASM* (A State of Mind) is a French duo — DOOM guested widely with European acts in his later years.

trivia:

The title track of De La Soul's *Stakes Is High* (1996) was the first beat the group took from a young Detroit producer named *J Dilla*, and it introduced him to a national audience. Separately, De La Soul's catalogue was *absent from all streaming services until March 2023* because of unresolved 1980s sample clearances — three decades of a foundational discography effectively invisible. MF DOOM's death in October 2020 was not announced until December 31 of that year.

sonic:

Dusty, band-limited loops — usually a 2–4 bar chop from a soul, jazz or library record — with the drums sitting slightly behind or ahead of the grid rather than quantised flat. Kick around 60–80 Hz, snare thick and mid-heavy at 200 Hz with a short room tail. Griselda-era production pushes this further: loops left unlooped, tape hiss audible, sometimes no drums at all under the verse.

gear:

The *Akai MPC60 and MPC3000* are the genre's defining instruments — their 12-bit converters and slightly loose internal timing produce the grit and the swing. Also the E-mu SP-1200 (even lower fidelity, prized for it), Technics 1200 turntables for the digging and the scratches, and a Roland TR-808/909 for supplementary drums.

prod:

The signature swing is a sequencer setting, not a performance: the MPC's timing-correct/swing parameter set around 54–62% pushes every off-beat late by a few milliseconds. Producers deliberately record loops through the sampler's low bit-depth and sometimes through a cassette deck for saturation. Modern practitioners recreate this with plugins but many, Alchemist and Evidence included, still track through hardware because the artefacts are the point.

tracks:

- P1·24 | Stakes Is High | De La Soul

- P2·05 | The Red Carpet | Evidence, Raekwon, Ras Kass

- P2·29 | Masking | ASM, MF DOOM

- P2·25 | KITCHEN LIGHTS | Westside Gunn, Stove God Cooks

- P2·23 | Still Dreaming | Nas, Kanye West, Chrisette Michele

rank: 31

family: Rock & Metal

source: ARCHIVE

sub: Mid-90s British guitar pop with Sixties melodic craft and a national argument attached

spec: 58,70,78,76,70,72,78,82,84,80,76,78,82,84,78,70,62,54,46,38

synthType: square

freqs: 267.37, 335.14, 420.08

- Oasis - Live Forever (1994) | Sky-scraping guitar solos, anthemic vocal melody, classic 90s British rock

- Blur - Parklife (1994) | Witty spoken word verses, catchy ska-pop brass and guitar chords

- Pulp - Common People (1995) | Dramatic synth buildup, social commentary lyrics, disco-indie climax

- The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony (1997) | Iconic orchestral string loop, swaggering urban stride

rank: 33

family: Electronic

source: ARCHIVE

sub: Music written for the sound chips of 8-bit consoles, then kept as a discipline

spec: 20,28,42,56,66,72,78,82,86,88,86,82,84,88,90,86,78,68,58,48

synthType: sawtooth

freqs: 335.14, 420.08, 526.55

- Anamanaguchi - Endless Fantasy (2013) | NES synth hardware mixed with modern pop-punk live drums

- Rob Hubbard - Commando Theme (1985) | Commodore 64 SID chip arpeggio masterpiece

- Disasterpeace - FEZ Original Soundtrack (2012) | Ambient chiptune, detuned square waves, tape warmth

- Koji Kondo - Super Mario Bros. Theme (1985) | World famous 8-bit Latin jazz syncopated pulse lead

id: classic-rock-aor

rank: 04

name: CLASSIC ROCK & AOR

family: Rock & Metal

years: 1965 → 1989

source: ON REPEAT

sub: Album-oriented radio rock — big choruses, session-grade musicianship, arena-scale mixes

spec: 55,66,74,72,66,68,72,76,78,74,70,72,76,78,72,64,56,48,40,34

synthType: square

freqs: 86.41, 267.37, 335.14

what:

AOR — album-oriented rock — was a US radio format before it was a genre. Between roughly 1976 and 1986 it defined a sound: melodic hard rock with keyboard beds, multi-tracked harmony vocals and a guitar solo in the third minute. The Who predate it and sit in the older classic-rock lineage; Journey are its commercial peak; America represent its soft-rock, folk-descended wing.

artists:

*The Who* (Townshend, Daltrey, Entwistle, Moon — with Kenney Jones drumming by 1982), *Journey* (Steve Perry's tenor over Neal Schon's guitar), *America* (Beckley, Bunnell, Peek), plus Boston, Foreigner, Toto, Styx, REO Speedwagon.

trivia:

"Eminence Front" (1982) is one of the rare Who songs with *Pete Townshend, not Roger Daltrey, on lead vocal* — it's a sneer at cocaine-era self-delusion, sung by someone who was inside it. Journey's "Separate Ways" video, shot on the Astoria, Oregon docks with the band miming on painted-on instruments, was mocked for decades and then reclaimed as an artefact. And America's *Silent Letter* (1979) was produced by *George Martin*, who took over their records after Beatles duties ended and stayed for six albums.

sonic:

Mid-forward and dense. Rhythm guitars chorused and doubled, keys filling every gap, snare with plate reverb and a long decay, and lead vocals compressed hard so they sit above a wall of harmony. "Eminence Front" is the outlier: it's built on a locked synth arpeggio and a clean funk guitar figure, closer to a groove record than a rock one.

gear:

Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3, and by 1982 polysynths — Yamaha CS-80, Oberheim OB-Xa, Prophet-5 — for the arpeggios and pads. Guitars: Les Pauls and Strats into Marshall or Boogie stacks. Studios ran *Neve or SSL desks to 24-track 2-inch tape*, with EMT plate reverbs and the then-new Lexicon 224 digital reverb on snare and vocals.

prod:

Everything is arranged around the chorus arriving in the first minute, because radio programmers auditioned records on a small speaker. Vocal stacks are recorded as three or four separate passes rather than copied, which is why the harmonies shimmer instead of phasing. The mix leaves a deliberate hole around 2–4 kHz for the lead vocal — the "AOR pocket" — and the bass is played with a pick for definition on car speakers.

tracks:

- P1·07 | Eminence Front | The Who

- P1·16 | Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) | Journey

- P2·22 | No Fortune | America