More Music Genres
Music is divided into different groups based on the types of instrumental and vocal sounds that are made. These categories of music are called genres. There are many genres of music that take in sounds that are made to entertain and delight us. They range from classical to funk, rock and roll to country, pop to alternative. Each has something special about them that make them a unique style. It may be the type of instruments that used, the sounds made or the way the vocals are incorporated. One could never mistake opera for rock and roll since each genre is unique.
Rock and roll is certainly one of the most popular genres of music and maybe one of the broadest. It is known by its electric guitars and the stress on rhythm. Rock originated in the dust of other sounds. It was brought to the public by the likes of Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. It quickly found its place in the United States and soared in popularity with the younger generation. Then the 1960s saw the invasion of the British bands. The Beatles came and changed the face of rock and roll forever. Many wonder the direction music would have gone without their influence. Like most other genres of music it spawned its sub genres. There was progressive rock, psychedelic rock and hard rock. The 1970s brought glam rock and heavy metal. Then later it was punk rock. There are still sub genres of rock coming up but it still comes down to a genre that evolves for the younger generation.
The blues is a well know genre of music that began in the African American neighborhoods of the United States. It began as a combination of work songs, spiritual songs, calls and chants that obviously had their roots in Africa. This music was then influenced by other genres and eventually crept into jazz, rock, big bands and even country music. Blues heavily influenced pop music and is felt to be the place that pop spun off from.
Electronic music is thought to have started in the days of synthesizers, but actually it started way before that. It was first heard in the late 1950s and into the 1960s. It was begun with the use of tape loops. One of the first really big pieces of electronic music was the 1963 theme to the Doctor Who television series. This type of music was able to perform genres of all kinds including classical. From this electronic music developed New Age music. Electronic music and its sub genres were supposed to be a little sinister, just a bit more disturbing in the types of sound they produced.
Heavy Metal is another genre of music. It primarily uses multiple guitars, drums and extremely loud vocals sung by guys. Sometimes these vocals are shouted instead of sung. Recently they have added electronic sounds to their music. For some it is a drum machine that they have begun to use while for others it is what is called a vocoder. This is a machine that was originally a voice analyzer and synthesizer in one. It was first known as a voice encoder and was then shortened to a vocoder. This has become included in the heavy metal music as a new tool to make their music more interesting. A form of heavy metal is called black metal. It is a little different in that the music is often faster and somewhat jumbled together. The sound is more severe and the singing rather higher in pitch then in the average heavy metal song.
