I disagree, there’s precedent for specific rhythms and styles of rhythm.
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there are so many genres of music that inspired “IDM” and its archetypal sounds. idm is pulling from house, techno, hiphop, dnb, jazz, etc. to create unique sounds that were new and strange at the time. personally i think the classic idm random-ish drum beats are heavily informed by jazz drumming which may have “random” sounding qualities but in reality are very refined and complex beat and rhythm structures.
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Lots of complex inter-track sidechain compression, if you listen to Autechre for example, I believe they already include that in the generation of sequences, before mixing.
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The first sample i loaded into my Akai s950 when I got it in '99. Got lost for hours and hours with just one sample haha.
True. The Machinedrum for example also has the ability to sequence different pattern lengths, mute positions and bpm variations via Song Mode. This follows the scheme of a tracker and provides “controlled randomness”. I would let polyrythmic pads run in the background over tricky drum beats, because then the brain gets into the area of “I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but it’s catchy”, which is base for Braindance (“IDM”).
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I think this is a great fundamental.
Also important is to have something that anchors the rhythm, something “normal” for the rest to play around. It could be a 1/8 hi hat pattern or a snare at 5 and 13.
The key is controlled chaos.
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This is one of my favourite videos that shows in detail how Four Tet composes his music. It reinforces what others have said already about very deliberately crafting every element - no sequencers involved, nothing generative or random, just meticulously placing things and looking for the groove. He also is very careful about carving sounds to have their place in the frequency spectrum. I believe he mentions that for that album he chose not to have it mixed or mastered.
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There really is no one “IDM” regardless.
It’s yet another post-hoc writer attempt to shoehorn a broader movement into a narrow category.
Which sure, i get the need to be reductive sometimes for explanatory purposes, but taking it seriously as a factual genre is unhelpful/unproductive.
You can describe beats and sequencing convention that MAY occur under the banner, but theres no catch-all cliche involved in all artists lumped into “IDM”.
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legendary video. Had a huge influence on me back then
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What happens with these Squarepushers, u-Ziq’s and Aphex Twin’s is they program a 1 bar drum beat, copy paste and change things up. There’s always a recognizable pulse and repeating rhythmic element. Lunatic Harness was programmed / played in a Cubase Atari piabo roll. Paradinas had Cubase Atari, D50, Yamaha DX, E-mu samplers, mixer, cassette decks and guitar pedals. Very straightforward setup, and no randomizers. He later added the Micro Modular but this was after Lunatic Harness. Squarepusher, for Big Loada, used a bass guitar, a rudimentary Boss sequencer/drumcomputer and an Akai S950, tape recording device, mixer, tr707, sh101, tb303. Everything was recorded in one take out from the S950. Again, no randomised sequencing apart from maybe the S/H LFO on the 101. Aphex Twin used Pro Tools quite a bit. With PT chopping audio bits and trying out different break patterns is a breeze. He also used Trackers. He would put scales into a sampler, seuence them. Not much randomization either for him back then. For both Squarepusher and Twin, after their masterpieces in 2001 -the height of their artistic endeavours- they probably looked into other stuff like Reaktor etc, computers became more powerfull. But I am 99,99% sure that everything up until Druqks and Go Plastic and Lunatic Harness in the case of Paradinas was all hand crafted. Perhaps they used software or hardware arpeggiators to spit out some semi random drum beats once in awhile. But at the end, and you hear that it’s intentional, all of it is played and programmed by hand. Keep in mind that Paradinas is a trained musician (he said in an interview everything on Lunatic Harness is played in, take it with a grain of salt). Squarepusher is one of the most skilled bass players of our times. He uses a Audio To MIDI converter plenty to play synths etc with his electric bass. Aphex, well…., he’s just really good at this stuff. There isnt much secrecy really. They’re all just veey good at sequencing sounds.
Lastly, and I find this quite funny, is that Paradinas for Lunatic Harness used nothing but presets on the D50 and DX11. He said he was “too lazy / didn’t bother to program these synths”. Add to these presets a few E-mu sample libraries, guitar effects, James Brown breaks and there you have it: Lunatic Harness 
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I really liked the Infiltrator VST in this example, thanks for the video
That might be true, but there are some certain patterns and specific tools that seem to be semi consistent, that being:
- Samplers
- Huge influence by DnB / Jungle and Breakbeats
- complex chopping, processing and filtering of segments of (sometimes self crafted) loops
- carefully re-arranging elements of these results in a DAW or Tracker
- sometimes, but not exclusively, using synth pads in minor scales to “glue” these Clicks’n’Cuts / Drill and Bass segments
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By programming, I meant “sequencing sounds” Post edited!
The S950 doesnt do a whole lot. You can modulate the filter with velocity and there’s a pitch warp. Two ADSR envelopes and a ping pong / alternate sample loop. Thats pretty much it. It doesnt even have any panning You’d pan on a mixer. Also the outputs are mono and also monophonic. Except for the mix out, which is polyphonic, but still mono
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I started reading the breakbeat bible by Mike Adamo and it has actually been the single most helpful thing I have ever done for my drum programming. A really systematic approach that has helped a lot with my thought process instead of just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. It is cheap and I highly recommend it.
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I really like programing out my drums for IDM however I want them with some conditional trigs and retrig shenanigans, but then make all of the retrig lengths much longer than I usually would.
Once I get this programmed in, I like to set the track chance down to 50-60%, and those long retrigs will fill in some of the empty space left by missing trigs, then you can keep ramping up the % chance until it’s at the beat you programmed at the start. fun to perform with!
this is on the models boxes btw
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some cool ideas in this thread for sure
my two cents
IDM was very hand made in the early era because that was the only way it could be made
generative / random tools today allow you to get that sort of freakiness without having to get in and over compose everything, which is a huge deal IMO.
i’ve spoken with some IDM OGs that like all that stuff now
generative and random tools can help us go into a ‘post-idm’ world where it all doesn’t sound like one genre but pushes things forward once again
there are a lot of ‘idm’ things people do that are indicative of the genre, but idm as a whole was about taking things as far as they can go
sequencing wise, trig conditions, modulation of sequencer values, logic, combining multiple sequencers and modulations together to make forever morphing sounds, there are a lot of ways to do it
if you want to make aphex style braindance, the formula is pretty laid out
if you want to make something you’ve never heard before, then the floor is yours.
try everything until it sounds good to you
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still everybody tries, but nobody does it like him
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The Super 6 sounds suuuuuuper sweet in that video!
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exactly! so do your own thing
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IDM is a bit like “Industrial”, basically: -try to be as free as you can be-
Albeit each one has it’s very loose guidelines…
IDM: Exploit technology to the max
Industrial: Be deep in concepts and unrelentless in intensity
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