I’ve tried searching for other threads on this topic but to no avail.
I’m currently attempting to sort through my almost respectable music collection and I have reached a crossroads; I can no longer rely on indexing by artist for me to be able to easily find the appropriate music to suit my mood, so I’ve decided to index it according to style then by artist.
However I’ve always been a fan of such a huge range of music I just buy what I like and never bothered to think about textbook definition of genres/styles. So I’m looking through the popular classifications and I’m trying to figure out how to decide to categorise different artists.
So what defines each of the styles? Every man and his dog (from Cold Play to Cake to Papa Roach) is classified [by a local record store] as “Alternative” but they’re poles apart… on the other hand take “Pop” which [according to another store] includes anything from Sting to Britney Spears… and then there’s “Electronic” music and all it’s sub-genres with a range of artists from BT to Leftfield to Prodigy.
What exactly is the criteria that defines a music style/genre?
I am not a musician or in the industry, but my wild guess is that it has to do with marketing as much as the ‘style’ of the work itself.
I know you didn’t ask for textbook definitions - but I find this site pretty interesting. According to them ‘Pop-Rock’ is a catch-all category, and so is ‘Alternative’, both with numerous sub-divisions.
Alternative, pop, rock, metal, and electronica are not single genres. They’re supergenres, if you will. Within them, there are many genres. I know metal the best, and off the top of my head, I could probably come up with 15 different genres, and at least one band that doesn’t fit in any of them.
Punk is usually defined as music that is loud, has a raw sound to it, contains no guitar solos, shouting of lyrics, generally short, fast and with few lines.
Rap can be defined as music that is filled with street speak(“yo!” “Benjamins!”), with the end of one line rhyming with the end of the next line. The music is generally not generally provided by manual instruments, but rather looped beats/samples of riffs from other music. It is generally fast moving, but their are exceptions.
Electronica can be defined as music created thru the usage of a computer or other electronic machines. A portion of it is solely classical style music, in the sense they do not contain any vocals. When vocals are present, they are usually masked ie making the voice higher or deeper thru using computers.
Gotta disagree with your definition of electronica there, Aslan2. For instance, Portishead, commonly seen as trip-hop, arguable a form of electronica, has fairly straight-up vocals from Beth Gibbons, and features these vocals as much as your average pop song.
Unfortunately, I can’t offer a better definition, but I’ll think about it.
Gex Gex, you are correct that in saying some sub-genres of electronica/___ genre go against the main “rules” of that genre, but that is why it’s called a sug-genre, it breaks what is considered normal for that genre. Look at Pop Punk, the concept of punk being pop is entirely contrary to punk music standards. Pop Punk tries to give the messages of punk with a more radio friendly style of lyrics, and guitar solos. Yeah, I know most “punks” don’t consider it as real punk, but some classical Electronica fans might not call trip hop electronica.