Tech-House is still House and not Techno

i'll first give you a very short introduction into the history of dance-music to understand the new definition of techno:

during the 1920s big-band-jazz was popular and played at the clubs. in the 1930s and 1940s swing became the common dance music, followed by rock and roll in the 1950s. the 1960s were coined by rhythm and blues and funk-tracks. "disco is a genre of dance music whose popularity peaked during the middle to late 1970s"(1).

house came up in the year 1980 because roland brought out the boss dr-55, a stand-alone drum machine for about 100$. furthermore underground disco-tunes were much longer than commercial radio tracks, therefore disco-tunes often had extended rhythmic and instrumental parts. frankie knuckels, was resident dj at the warehouse, a club in chicago. he found out that epecially the rhythmic parts made the people dance. so he began to mix various rhythmic parts together to new mixes and so house-music was born.

it's quite important to know that there are two definitions of techno! in the year 1982 the name "techno" was created and first mentioned by andreas tomalla aka "talla 2xlc". he worked at the record store "city-music" in hamburg, where "techno" was a new category for electronic music. at this time even artists like kraftwerk, depeche mode, front 242 and throbbing gristle were summarized as "techno" in his record shop. that was the old definition of techno, a definition which was not precise enough.

then a new club called the ufo, began to focus on acid-house tunes. (acid-house was born in chicago in 1981.) after some time you could hear acid-house in nearly every club. as you can imagine, after a while nobody could hear those housy sounds any more.

so time was ready for the "cyberspace" day at the ufo, where "dj tanith" was on the decks. he strictly played electronic tunes without any influences from soulful house tunes. it was a music-style without "soul" which was known from earlier housy tunes. he didn't play acid-house any more, because acid-house was a sub-genre of house and like the traditional house-music it always spread a certain warmth. as a result the definition of techno became more precise. from this time on techno never was warm or soulful like house-music. techno was redefined as a pure cold music style. only the energy of the cold music should make people dance into kinda hypnotic trance.

nowadays nobody would really categorize kraftwerk as techno for example. so the old definition of techno became outdated. though i know the old definition is still widely spread it makes much more sense to take the new definition of techno today.

so if we talk about techno in terms of the new and more accurate definition, acid house never was and never ever can be techno. that's why i say, that like acid-house, tech-house is a subcategory of house! both acid and techno just influenced house music.

there may be some tunes in between techno and techhouse. but if you feel a certain warmth in a track it will be techhouse, if the music is cold it's techno.

now if you had to decide whether a techhouse track was basically house or techno, house would be the correct choice, because techhouse is not a cold kind of music like techno.

like acidhouse techhouse gained its warmth from house and thus techhouse is definitely a sub-genre of house.