Someday when I have a kid, the young squirt will sit upon my knee and ask:
Daddy. What's the difference between Progressive House and Progressive Trance? What does Dub sound like and how did it influence Chicago House? And where the hell does Speed Bass fit in all this?
Ha ha whoa there little one. One at a time please. Clean your room and all will be revealed.
Well now, I have just the site to show the little one. Ishkur's Guide To Electronic Music v2.5. This flash site provides an exploratory interface to discover the various genres and sub-genres of electronic music. Starting at the top level with House, Trance, Techno, Breakbeat, Jungle, Hardcore, and Downtempo, the site graphs the various predecessor genres leading up to the genre and then shows how the genre splits into sub-genres. The graphs place the genesis of these various genres in their proper time context. It's really quite nice.
For example, click on BreakBeat and you can see that the roots of BreakBeat are in Hip Hop. Plenty of musical samples are provided to help you gain understanding.
The best part is the author's irreverent descriptions. For example, in describing Happy House the author states:
The official music genre of Dance Dance Revolution, this is by far the most syrupy, saccharine music known to mankind. I bet they play this kind of stuff to calm lunatics at insane asylums locked in padded room with pink walls.
And he goes on and on. In any case, have fun exploring the various genres. And I highly recommend turning up your stereo volume as loud as possible and check out SpeedCore. Do it. Do it. Do it.