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What garage music is
On YouTube this video is called Dj help,What is Garage MUSIC?
What this lesson teaches
A short lesson, notable mostly for being honest about the limits of genre definitions.
What he says
Garage shares the frame with house: the same 4/4 time, the same chugging bassline.
He then says garage is a bit slower, immediately points out that he said that in the house lesson and that it is a total contradiction, because garage can run at roughly the same tempo.
What he settles on is feel rather than specification: more soulful, more depth. And he invites anyone who can define it better to say so in the comments, on the grounds that he is no expert.
Why the vagueness is the right answer
Because genre boundaries in dance music are a social fact rather than a technical one. Records get called garage because of who made them, where they were played, and what they feel like - not because they satisfy a definition.
His demonstration track is described as a true garage record and the reasons given are mellow, chilled, chugging bassline, a bit of soul. None of those is measurable and all of them are recognisable.
The part that matters for mixing
Here is the practical consequence, which the lesson implies rather than states.
Because house and garage share a time signature and a tempo range, they mix into each other without any difficulty at all. The argument about which is which has no effect on what you can do with them.
So for a DJ the boundary is interesting and not operational. What matters is that a record sitting in that territory will sit comfortably next to most other records in it - and that gives you a very large pool of material that works together.
The places you have to be careful are the edges of the pool, not the lines drawn inside it.
Contents of the video
Alright folks, in this one we're going to talk about the structure of Garage. Garage is similar to House, same sort of 4-4 time, chugging bassline, nice and beefy. Garage though, well I did actually say in the structure of House it's a bit slower. Total contradiction now because it isn't really slower. It can be sometimes roughly about the same speed. But it's very difficult to define the difference between garage as opposed to house. If you would like to tell me and put a comment underneath, please do so because I'm no bloody expert, believe me. But I would say garage, a bit more soulful, a bit more deep. Again, there's a song that says house is a feeling, which is true. Garage is a feeling. A lot more depth to it. So track I've got for you here now.
The track is by 95 North featuring Sabrina Pope. It's called My Life. What I'm going to do, you're going to hear a bit of a click because I'm going to bung this guy in to the side to the mic input so you can hear it in proper stereo quality. Again, I'm only trying to play the songs that I really like. This one is a true garage track and it's an absolute stonker. So I'll plug it in, no more of me unless you listen to the tune. Check it out. So there you go folks, a bit of garage for you. Very mellow, very chilled, chugging bassline and a bit of soul guaranteed in a bit of garage. So I hope you enjoyed that and don't forget, please leave your comments, good, bad and ugly, don't give a monkey's. See you soon, bye bye.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
