THE WORLD OF HARDSTYLE

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Defqon.1 Festival

A few days ago as I was seated in our ICT lab searching for some files, I decided to give a listen to some music. As I usually do since I get bored fast when I don't have my ears thumping to any good eargasmic beats. Then as I searched, I decided to go through my subscriptions and saw Defqon.1Holland Mix. Since I wasn't concentrating, I just clicked on it. The after-movie starts with some ladies singing in I think Danish. Then follows the hard EDM beats as the after movie unveils itself. Then I remembered my long lost found love. Hardstyle!! I got to remember the songs I used to hear in 2012. The likes of COONE and Headhunters. Before I bore you much with my history about  Hardstyle, just know it is an electronic dance genre mixing influences from hard-techno , hard house,hard trance, and hardcore. Hardstyle typically consists of a deep, hard-sounding kick drum, intense faded or reversed basslines accompanying the beat, a synth playing a melody, and detuned and distorted sounds. It bears some similarities to hard trance . Many hardcore artists produce hardstyle tracks as well, and many newer Hardstyle tracks are written in compound time.History Origins Hardstyle was influenced by hard trance, gabber , acid house and hard house. Hardstyle has its origins in the Netherlands where artists like Dana, Pavo, Luna and The Prophet , who produced Hardcore, started experimenting while playing their Hardcore records.

The love sign in all EDM events at Q Dance

The first Hardstyle events, like Qlubtempo, took place at the beginning of the 21st century. The first few years of Hardstyle were characterized by a tempo of around 140-150 BPM, a compressed kick drum sound, a short vocal sample, a screech and the use of a "reverse bass", which can be heard on the offbeat after each kick. After several successful editions of Qlubtempo and Qlimax, Q-dance registered the word hardstyle as their brand on the 4th of July 2002.

Festival Grounds for Defqon 1 Aussi

Around 2002, more Hardstyle labels emerged. Fusion (with artist as DJ Zany and Donkey Rollers) and Scantraxx (founded by Dov Elkabas ) are two of the Dutch labels that started to bring out Hardstyle tracks around that time. Around 2004-05 the genre became more melodic and uplifting, somewhat faster (usually 150 BPM), and distorted, sharp kick drum sounds were added. Many producers started to pitch- shift a distorted kick drum to create a melodic bassline that usually plays in pitch with a typical hard trance supersaw or a thinner electro house synth melody. The melody often is in tuplet form, which gives the genre a pulsating rhythm, whereas older Hardstyle as well as other genres such as jumpstyle have more basic melodic structures to them. Thus, nowadays many people refer to the older style as early Hardstyle.
Rawstyle Since around 2008, more terms to identify developments of Hardstyle were introduced. Rawstyle is a type of Hardstyle influenced from Dutch Hardcore or older Hardstyle resulting in darker melodies and deeper-sounding kick drums with more distortion through VST plug-ins such as Devastor, CamelPhat, Ohmicide & TriDirt.

Coone live at a Q DANCE event

Dubstyle In early 2010s, a new variation in hardstyle, named Dubstyle was introduced. Dubstyle is the name given to the genre fusion of Hardstyle and Dubstep. Dubstyle tends to have reversed wobble basslines and take the kick styling of hardstyle tracks, while combining them with the rhythm, groove, and dubstep tempo and effects a fusion of elements of hardstyle with a dubstep rhythm, usually a 2-step or a breakbeat rhythm. Because of the sporadic beat in Dubstyle, the bass is often more dragged out and/or it doesn't follow a strict offbeat pattern that regular Hardstyle incorporates, which in turn results in Dubstyle basslines bearing similarities to dubstep basslines. The first mainstream Dubstyle track was Headhunterz & Brennan Heart's "The MF Point of Perfection".

Tent Arena, Defqon 1 Aussi

These are the genres that were given birth to by Hardstyle. However, before Hardstyle was born a few people came up and did parties. Today they are recognized as the World's premiere Hardstyle festival warriors. They are Q DANCE!!! Q-dance is a Dutch company that organizes events and festivals that focuses on the harder styles of dance music like Hardcore, Hardstyle, Dubstyle, Techno and Hardhouse. Popular events and festivals organized by Q-dance are Defqon.1 Festival , Q BASE, Qlimax and X-Qlusive The events of Q-dance are easily identified by the letter “Q” on the event names.The logo of Q-dance is inspired by the power button, which if turned 120degrees to the right creates the letter “Q”. Q-dance was founded in 1999 as Qlass Elite by a couple of friends in the northern suburbs of Amsterdam (Landsmeer, the Netherlands). The first event created by Qlass Elite was Houseqlassics, an event that played old school house music. After two editions of Houseqlassics, in the year 2000 a few more events were scheduled for the year: 91-92 and Qlimax . A year later, in 2001, the name of the company was changed into Q-dance and a new concept was introduced

MASSIVE Q Dance stages

But what I can say is, I love this genre. Looks creepy by the attire of the revelers, the creatures and the whole setup of the stages.. Even the DJs dress sooo gothic! You might think you're in a rock n roll concert. But Defqon.1 Aussi is my first go! When I take a trip down there (Australia), I will go to Bondi Beach to experience this Hard Q dance experience!