What is Hardstyle?

One of the popular genres in the electronic dance music is hardstyle, which is mixing influences from hardhouse, hard trance, hardcore and hardtechno. This includes a hard- sounding kick drum, reversed basslines together with the synth. It also consists of distorted and detuned sounds and vocals.

Starting Point

Hardstyle was also known as hard trance before. It was developed due to the influence of different genres such as hardhouse and mainly hardcore.

Since there was a revolution of different genres of dance music, around 2004-2006 hardstyle already created its own independent style which is now called early.

As a result, it was separated from the hard trance genre. It is also the beginning of more uplifting melodies. Read more about the story of hardstyle.

Contributions of Hardstyle

One of the greatest contributions of hardstyle is the development of the jumpstyle genre. However, others believe that it is the direct rival of it. As it developed in the dance genres, hardstyle now has two sub-genres.

It starts splitting into two different styles which are rawstyles and euphoric. These two genres divided the scene in the year 2008.

Recently, it has had more and different sub-genres all depending upon the mood, the tempo and other features of the track. Here are the main subgenres of hardstyle and small definitions.

  • Early – It is also considered as old school hardstyle.  It is mostly known  for a reverse bass and raw screeches without vocals.
  • Nustyle – It started to become one of the sub-genres of hardstyle for it has a great mainstream touch. It is also consists of “cheesy” lyrics and modern house/big room elements and melodies which are very typical.
  • Euphoric – It is one of the sub-genres of hardstyle that was formed because of the melodic mainpart, vocals and mid-intro.
  • Rawstyle – One of the sub-genres which is the modern counterpart to the original hardstyle. It also emphasizes the usage of “harder” kicks and raw sounds, vocals.
Fusion of Different Genres

As the different genres evolve, different genres have made fusions which is the combination of two or three genres including hardstyle.

  • Tekstyle – One of the fusion happened is the fusion of tek music influenced by jumpstyle.
  • Dubstyle – It is the combination of two genres, dubstep and hardstyle, as the name implies. In the early 2010, this new variation of hardstyle was formed. This fusion inclines to have a reversed, wobble basslines in combination with the kick styling of hardstyle tracks. This is usually a 2- step or also known as breakstep rhythm.

A change is the only constant thing that will always happen as hardstyle proved it already. However many still preferred the older style which is the early hardstyle and the split between the genres gets bigger and bigger. Do you agree with this definition? We need your help to understand what hardstyle truly is! Help us to complete this text!