Music Genres for Dummies

[BadSanta1281]

Help me out here, please. I'm no musician and have never studied music until I started studying bass a few months ago. I have only been a consumer of music, not a student of it.

This is surely a stupid question but the TB community has been very patient with my newbie questions so far. Bass players seem to be a great source of information. More cerebral than guitar players or drummers.

I was reading another thread about funk going the way of blues and realized something.

I sincerely do not understand the importance of classifying artists and their music into all these genres and sub-genres.

Did a google search on the subject and now it's even more confusing. Found a list that had at least hundred different genres and sub-genres, most of which I'd never even heard of. Really got my head spinning. I thought there was maybe ten.

As a teenager my album collection was mostly limited to music labelled as "rock". Probably due to peer pressure I guess. In my neighborhood you could get beat up for admitting to being a Bowie fan. Hey, it was the Ziggy Stardust days and I hung out with a rough crowd. Missed out on a lot of great music by being concerned about the label or genre.

These days I only think about whether it sounds good to me and try to actively listen for the bass line. Labels don't matter.

So is it merely a way of cataloging artists and music?
A way of protecting the origins of the music?
Are you thinking about genre when you're working on original music?
Aren't you kind of putting artists and music in a box with so many labels?
Do I ask too many annoying questions?

Thanks in advance for any help figuring this out.

 

[5StringBlues]

You got your funk in my western swing!

 

[bholder]

Do I ask too many annoying questions?

Yes, definitely. But yeah. Labels are kind of necessary and also kind of evil. I use them primarily to force myself to listen to stuff I wouldn't hear otherwise, rather than to try to force-categorize what I'm listening to or playing. YMMV.

 

[Oddly]

I rarely bother putting whatever music I listen to in a category.
There's so many, and the sub-genres? I recently looked at a list of Metal genres, and was amazed at how many styles there are.

Well, one advantage of labelling is that, to use the example above, it avoids going to a Western Swing show when what you want is some Funk.
Also, it's handy when you're looking for music of a certain style to have some sort of name as a basic search filter.
It's useful to have genres, where you know what to expect , but don't let yourself be limited by them.
Who knows, a Western Swing / Funk fusion might just be the next big thing.

 

[bholder]

Here's some genre-busting Texican rock played on a traditional Korean instrument:





(Edit: corrected Japanese -> Korean)

 

[BadSanta1281]

Here's some genre-busting Texican rock played on a traditional Japanese instrument:

Holy cow!
I've been to three county fairs and a goat-roping and I ain't never seen nothing like that!

 

[mrcbass]

Music categories are largely for marketing. It gives consumers an idea if something it will fit their taste. I could easily see people losing interest in anything they don't know after exploring random new artists, if they happened to encounter a string of stuff they don't like - kind of how I am with current music.

It makes it easier for radio stations to know who to look at for considering programming shifts; radio stations may have just been the genesis of putting music in to boxes. Before radio, there was pretty much just "music". Sure the may have been some regional distinctions, but was classical music called that before the 20th century?

But genre boxes also serves to exclude anything that doesn't fit into a box - makes it hard for those who make good music that doesn't conform to the labels to get heard.

In this day and age, it also helps musician find the right fit for them - I won't audition with a band unless I know their genre is something I'd be into.

 

[bass12]

Categorizing music into styles and genres (some musicologists differentiate between the two) can be very useful. When studying a given style of music is can be helpful (and often essential) to establish stylistic parameters. It is also much easier to look at music in a historical/developmental context if stylistic categorization of some kind has been established. From a performer's perspective, a lot of information can be conveyed with the mention of just one word to describe the music to be played. "Reggae", "dancehall", "bossa", "calypso", "Afrobeat", etc. all provide a very good idea of what is likely to be expected in terms of patterns, types of chords/progressions, tempo range, dynamic range and general role of a given instrument. That's pretty amazing for just one word. On the flip side, categories such as "world music" and "acid jazz" offer much less in the way of clear stylistic indication and have basically been created solely for the purpose of marketing.

 

[Oddly]

Holy cow!
I've been to three county fairs and a goat-roping and I ain't never seen nothing like that!

I am taking that line.

 

[BadSanta1281]

I am taking that line.

Feel free. I stole it myself from a friend years ago.
Did clean it up a bit to post it here, though.
I substituted goat-roping in place of goat-****ing, which is how he used to say it.

 

[bass40hz]

So is it merely a way of cataloging artists and music? Yup, thats one way.
A way of protecting the origins of the music? see first answer
Are you thinking about genre when you're working on original music? i think you inherently bleed one genre more than the rest, thats probably your sweet spot
Aren't you kind of putting artists and music in a box with so many labels? nah, we all need to be able to describe something with words, its a human thing
Do I ask too many annoying questions? does a bear poop in the woods?

 

[el murdoque]

So is it merely a way of cataloging artists and music?

Not only. As a musician, it might help a lot to know the genres for communication.
Some genres have common schemes, some have certain ways to do things.
'This is a standard blues in A. But we play it as a calypso' Should give you some Idea of what comes next.

 

[Clark Dark]

Funk's not going anywhere

 

[RichardW]

There are only two genres of music: good music and bad music.

 

[BadSanta1281]

Thanks for the replies. It makes a bit more sense to me now.

I get that you need a way of verbally communicating the style of music you're going after but the sheer number of variables is overwhelming. On this list there's 40 sub-genres just under the blues category. 21 different types of alternative. Is death metal really different than doom metal?

And what the heck is acid-jazz anyway? Timothy Leary playing the piano with Hunter S. Thompson on the bass?

www.musicgenreslist.com

 

[RichardW]

The "genre" that always makes me cringe is when a critic or someone in the media refers to Pink Floyd as "space rock."
1) there is no such thing as space rock;
2) the only reason lazy-minded people call Pink Floyd space rock is because PF put out an album with the word "moon" in the title;
3) if these dolts would spend five minutes listening to virtually any Pink Floyd music, they would understand it has nothing to do with "space."

Give me a break.

 

[BadSanta1281]

if these dolts would spend five minutes listening to virtually any Pink Floyd music, they would understand it has nothing to do with "space."

I don't know... I remember getting a little spaced out the first time I listened to Dark Side of the Moon with my headphones on.

 

[hrodbert696]

I think it's a good question. The problem, really, is that there isn't really any objective set of criteria that define what's even meant by a "genre" of music. In SOME cases, the "genre" refers to actual musical characteristics - certain kinds of rhythms, song structures, instrumentation, etc. In other cases, the "genre" refers to marketing or the original cultural group or audience of the music. For instance, you can point to certain specific traits that distinguish a waltz from a polka. What distinguishes bluegrass from Irish folk music, on the other hand, is a bit more vague. What separates black metal from death metal seems so trivial as to be meaningless, to me at least.

Some while ago I remember reading about the early days of the recording industry. It was said that, in the 1920s or so, the same song recorded in the same style would be labeled as "blues" if performed by a black artist and "hillbilly" if recorded by a white one. It was just marketing, on the assumption that the race of the artist would dictate the race of the audience. But then what happened was that these marketing decisions actually influenced the artists themselves, so that "blues" evolved into a more distinct form of its own and "hillbilly" started turning into "country." Although, of course, the link was never fully severed, as for instance in Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."

 

[Coolhandjjl]

I saw Steve Earle last fall in Oshkosh. (Copperhead Road, late ‘80s). He followed Townes VanZandt around in Texas in the ‘70s and was heavily influenced by Texas balladeer’s style of song writing. He’s got something like 17 albums out since 1985, but is hard to put in a genre. Country? No. Alt County? Sort of. Southern Rock? Maybe, maybe not. Rock? Kinda. Folk? Kinda. Bluegrass? Not really. Americana, no.

The genre he plays is sometimes called Roots. Never heard of it, and Steve doesn’t like it either as he thinks it’s too limiting.

His encore was Hey Joe. Rivals Hendrix’s version.

 

[Chicory Blue]

A guide-

3-4 chords, acoustically: folk
3-4 chords with overdrive: rock
3-4 chords with synthesizers: pop
3-4 chords with distortion: punk
3-4 chords with distortion, but faster: metal
3-4 chords with an accent: country
3-4 chords but nobody’s heard of you: indie
1 chord: funk or rap depending on how mad the singer is
3-4 chords but they’re insufferably complicated: jazz
More than 4 chords: ?!?!?!

Anything else: It’s alternative.

--^@