When Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer made “I Feel Love” in 1977, the idea was to imagine what dance music might sound like in the future. Moroder constructed almost the entire instrumental backing electronically, including bass, kick, snare and hi-hat, creating the mechanical pulse that became the track’s defining feature.
What still surprises me is how little the bassline actually needs to do.
It repeats relentlessly, but the sound is alive because modulation, filtering and the relationship between the electronic pulse and Summer’s voice keep changing our perception of it.
The machine supplies precision. The voice supplies something the machine cannot.
That combination became more influential than either part alone.
Today a sequenced synthesizer bassline is completely ordinary. In 1977, hearing a dance record whose rhythmic foundation sounded deliberately artificial was another matter.
The future Moroder imagined eventually became so familiar that we stopped hearing how strange it once was.
Time – Meet Giorgio Moroder, the Godfather of Modern Dance Music
