Plenty of Reason, Just No Sense

Today I thought I'd share another piece of the multimedia journalism student's university experience. This photo was taken in the sound lab today and it's an image of a piece of music production software called Reason. Believe me, at times, that seems to be the least reasonable thing anyone should have called it. It's a digital audio workstation or DAW, and it's a music making machine for
us "tonally challenged" members of the community. School music lessons were always a nightmare for me, I was never good at all the ''how many notes in a quaver" type of stuff and the only bar I can get my head around is one that sells beer.

After five weeks of wrestling, Reason and I can now play reasonably nicely together with only the occasional temper tantrum. I can put together some level of ''music'' though there are times when I take my headphones off thankful that I don't have to listen to that racket anymore. 

My main problem at the moment is the looming deadline of my first music media assignment, the production of a techno dance track. I'm sure my eighteen year-old classmates will have no problems at all producing one of these tracks but I find myself stumped at the first hurdle. What the hell is techno? 

I was fine in the lectures when we looked at the history behind electronic music. I liked listening to Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin and I knew the words of The Eurhythmics and New Order songs we listened to. I even remembered Kraftwerk speeding down their Autobahn. I'm just having trouble understanding what kind of loud "doof  doof" I have to come up with. I've looked at YouTube and I've tried Googling techno and it's left me more confused than ever. Is the difference between Techno and Tekkno simply a matter of dyslexia? Is Acid House more dangerous than normal House? What is normal House? Does it have to be listened to there or will some other large dwelling do? If it's played outside a house, does that constitute a rave? It's all much too confusing for me, I'll be much happier when I can get back into my own little time warp and listen to Mick and Keith again.