Explainations of Terms in Rock Music

1.) Rock music: A type of jazz originally called Rock and Roll which evolved in the early 1950s from bebop, blues, and country & western music. It is generally composed as popular songs and characterized by a prominent, steady, heavily syncopated rhythm with a powerful backbeat; a blues modality; guitar, drums, and bass instrumentation; loud singing and overall high volume; and lyrics about rebellion and other topics often calculated to offend non-fans. As rock music has become the dominant form of jazz and, in much of the world, the dominant style of music, it has grown under the direction of its own spirit and many other influences so that fifty years after its debut much of it would be unrecognizable to its early performers and fans. The only element that is still universal is the backbeat (stress on the second and fourth beats of each measure). For examples of the original rock music, listen to Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Chuck Berry.

2.) Progressive Rock: A type of rock music developed in the very late 1960s to mid 1970s, primarily in the U.K., that expanded the form with classical influences, longer songs with intricate dynamics, non-traditional instruments and synthesized sounds. Many songs had movements, some of which dropped the essentials such as the backbeat and the blues modality. Examples: Yes, Genesis.

3.) Psychedelic Rock: Also known as Acid Rock, a type of rock music developed in California and the U.K. in the mid 1960s to mid 1970s (the era called in retrospect, inaccurately, "the Sixties"), which added Middle Eastern modalities and instruments such as the sitar, long improvised sections, abstract or even nonsensical lyrics, and other motifs which were said to appeal to listeners who took drugs, to enhance the drug experience, to be more accessible during a drug experience, or to encourage drug use. Examples: Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix.

4.) Soft Rock: Rock music stripped of its harsher attributes such as loudness, driving rhythms, and rebellious themes. The term was coined in the 1970s by radio stations trying to appeal to listeners in their thirties and has since fallen largely into disuse.Examples: James Taylor, Carly Simon.

5.) Rock' n' Roll: The original name of Rock music, also spelled Rock and Roll.

6.) Hard Rock: Rock music with the original harshness intact. The term was coined in the 1970s to contrast with "soft rock," but it is still in use for music thought to embrace the original spirit of rock and roll. Examples: Ozzy Osbourne, Korn.

7.) Grunge: A type of rock music developed in the 1990s in Seattle. It does not stand out today as more than an interesting variety of harder-edged rock. At the time it was touted as a reaction to some of the softer, keyboard-dominated rock that was prominent in the 1980s, with its gruff-sounding vocalists and its return to lyrics of rebellion and the basic guitar-drums-bass configuration. Examples: Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots.

8.) Heavy Metal (or just "Metal"): A type of rock music that arose in the very late 1960s, achieved its definition in the 1970s, and continued into the 1980s, using intricately syncopated repeating guitar figures, virtuoso guitar solos, distorted sounds, and lyrics often about depressing or shocking subjects. Examples: Black Sabbath, Metallica.

9.) Harder than Heavy Metal (death, gothic etc.). (I'm not as familiar with all of these. Their defining characteristics tend to be the lyrics rather than the instrumental music.) Examples (I think): Tool, Type O Negative.

Some important genres you omitted:

Rockabilly: With a name derived by combining "rock and roll" with "hillbilly", one of the prominent forms of early rock music, with a bebop twelve-beat instead of the eight-beat that has become almost universal. With a rhythm similar to the Western Swing rhythm that dominated Country & Western music during the 1950s and generally performed by American Southerners, rockabilly songs appealed to fans of both rock and country & western music. This unifying power of rock music was overlooked by older critics who decried its iconoclastic spirit. Examples: Bill Haley & the Comets, the Everly Brothers.

Folk Rock: Traditional folk music and folk-inspired original compositions in traditional styles became popular during the 1950s and reached their peak in the mid 1960s. Amid great controversy, folksingers and rock musicians came together and fused the two styles, peforming more-or-less traditionally inspired melodies with lyrics about contemporary social issues on amplified instruments backed by the ever-growing rock drum kit. Examples: Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel.

Soul: The original unifying power of rock music began to dissipate in the mid 1960s. Black American musicians and audiences were drawn to a type of rock music that drew less from its country & western roots and added a strong influence from gospel music but directed that energy into songs about secular themes, prominently love and sex. Examples: Aretha Franklin, James Brown.

Southern Rock: Rock music influenced by the motifs of country music, with lyrics about life in the American South and its issues. One of the hallmarks of Southern Rock is the "twin guitar solo," actually a duet in harmony by two guitarists. Examples: the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Funk: An intricately syncopated form of rock music using sixteenth-notes. Funk was originally a motif of soul music but has since become more widespread, most ironically in Southern Rock. Examples: Stevie Wonder, the Black-Eyed Peas.

Reggae: A type of rock music deliberately invented by Jamaican musicians in the 1960s to stop Jamaica from being identified with calypso, the music of Trinidad. It has a loping, doubly syncopated beat with lyrics that tend to speak of world peace and harmony, the Rastafarian faith, and the smoking of ganja. Examples: Bob Marley, Burning Spear.

Disco: Short for "discotheque," a type of dance club which arose in the late 1960s that played only recorded music. Disco music was a stripped-down form of soul-flavored rock music crafted in the early 1970s for dancing, with a steady beat almost devoid of syncopation and with a barely audible backbeat. The lyrics of disco songs tended to be about dancing and night life. Passionate rock fans regarded disco as a sign that rock was dead. Examples: The Bee Gees, the Village People

Punk: A type of rock music that arose in the mid 1970s, arguably largely as a reaction to disco, a shout that rock was not dead. It reverted to the roots of rock in instrumentation and attitude, and was often very simple with only three chords and no solos, as if the musicians were barely trained. The lyrics were generally about youth rebellion, although the genre also produced songs about deeper issues. Examples: The Sex Pistols, the Ramones.

New Wave: A type of rock music that arose in the late 1970s almost as an adjunct of Punk. However, New Wave music was extremely disciplined and often complex, relied on keyboard synthesizers, and its lyrics were often nonsensical. Examples: Devo, the B-52s.

Rap: A type of rock music developed in the late 1970s in which the vocals are not sung but spoken rhythmically, similar to the "talking blues" of an earlier era. Rap has a loud, prominent rhythm, but the instrumentation is often spare and often derived from "sampling" recorded music. The lyrics are often rebellious to the point of seeming to condone extremely antisocial or downright criminal behavior. Examples: Snoop Doggy Dogg, Eminem.

Hip-Hop: An offshoot of rap music with melodic interludes and less aggressive lyrics. Examples: MC Hammer, Linkin Park.

Techno-Funk: An evolution of New Wave in the early 1980s as the musicians became more skillful, adopting funk rhythms. Although Heavy Metal, Soft Rock, Soul, and many other types of rock music were popular in the 1980s, Techno-Funk was and is often regarded as the era's defining musical style. Examples: Duran Duran, Eurythmics.

Fusion: By the late 1960s, rock music had become well established, earned respect, and developed a substantial library of motifs and techniques. Jazz and rock musicians began to collaborate to rejoin this offspring of jazz to its parent genre. The resulting "fusion" typically incorporates the following elements of rock: instrumentation anchored by electric guitar, electric bass, and huge drum kit; longer compositions with complex harmonic structure and chord patterns; prominent, steady, danceable eight-beat rhythm with a strong backbeat; fade-out endings; and the following elements of traditional jazz: diverse instrumentation such as horns and woodwinds; modalities not primarily limited to blues; purely instrumental compositions. The term "fusion" is no longer in wide usage and this music is now often categorized simply as jazz.

 

OK, I'm not going to quibble. I haven't kept track of Linkin Park too well since "In the End" reminded MTV that it's not impossible to still make good videos. I thought that song was clearly hip-hop: rap with a sung bridge, or vice versa. As an "old metalhead," to me "nu-metal" is Korn. I guess I just don't listen to death, black, goth, and the other hyphenated new forms of metal. I assumed that "Freaks of Nature" by Drain Sth with its lyrics about leeches, zombies, and necrophilia is a nicely done spoof of death metal and tried to imagine what the real stuff would be like. It doesn't sound like I was too far off, although their chord charts are more complex than you speak of and they have rather nice (all female) voices. It's amusing that your definition of death metal is pretty close to how parents would have described Black Sabbath in 1975, Judas Priest in 1980, or Metalllica in 1985. So Tool would simply have to be less talented musicians to qualify? ^_^

As for rap, it seems that its mention always stirs controversy. But I stick by my definition. If we can call rap music at all, and I believe that question has been settled at least on SciForums, then its roots are funk and funk is rock and roll. The only musical component left in pure rap is the rhythm, which is loud, steady, danceable, and intricately syncopated, has a prominent backbeat, and fades out at the end. That is a rock and roll rhythm and nothing else. Oh yeah, the iconoclastic lyrics are almost deliberately crafted to offend non-fans. That is also rock and roll!

Anyway, I hope I helped Zion get an A on his class paper. ^_^

 

Except that rap came first. The industry logs the first rap recording as one by Blondie in about 1977. Rap is street poetry. Kids had been rapping in the streets for at least five years before that.

Hip-hop is entertainment. More melody and harmony than rap (like any at all), lyrics about lighter stuff than rap. It took the exposure of music television for hip-hop to really come of age, in the early 1980s.

 

What are you talking about??? Every single one of those words is sung, not spoken, which is the essence of rap. Check out the sheet music, it's got real notes. Admittedly Brian Johnson has a vocal range comparable to James Hetfield or Johnny Cash, about half an octave on a good day, but he's still singing.

I suppose you're noting the slippery slope from the Caribbean dub style of rapping to Brian Johnson's singing. It can be argued that dubbing is at least "tonal" rather than pure speaking. But doing seven or eight syllables in a row on one note and then rising exactly one whole tone and doing the next seven or eight syllables there before dropping back down is not exactly "singing." There's no melodic or harmonic structure there. If that's singing, then speaking Chinese is performing grand opera.

Sorry, I call "Back in Black" a song, not a rap. Of course I have heard the funky guitar intro sampled into a rap song. It works pretty well.

Rhythmically spoken words over a musical background are of course nothing new. It's just an update on the old "talkin' blues" style of the mid-century. As recently as 1970 Kris Kristofferson had a popular talkin' blues: "To Beat the Devil."

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It was wintertime in Nashville down on Music City row,
And I was lookin' for a place to get my ass out of the cold.
To warm the frozen feelin' that was eatin' at my soul,
And to keep the chilly wind off my guitar.

My thirsty wanted whiskey and my hungry needed beans,
But it'd been a month of paydays since I'd heard that eagle scream.
So with a stomach full of empty and a pocket full of dreams,
I left my pride and stepped inside a bar...

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It had a sung bridge but the verses were spoken. I suppose today that would make it hip-hop instead of rap. ^_^

Actually, looking back on it, I think much of Bob Dylan's early songs were really talkin' blues. In some of his hits like "Mister Jones," he varied the pitch of his voice more pronouncedly than one would usually do in speech, but the tones weren't really melodic and it would be a real stretch to call it "singing." In fact there were millions of people who insisted that it wasn't. ^_^