Genres of Music

Music Genres

Genre in music helps us categorise different styles of music into conventional categories that have set conventions. It means classifying a text according to its content and style as well as its structure and way of production. Generalising, most music can be divided into these categories, with the exception of sub-genres - each of them contains a variety of sub-genres, as well as hybrids and mash-ups. 

• Pop
• Classical
• Hip-Hop/Rap
• Dance/Techno/House
• R&B
• Rock
• Metal
• Country
• Jazz
• Blues
• Reggae

Pop

Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, but as a genre is particularly associated with the rock and roll and later rock style. The embedded video below is Lana Del Rey's 'National Anthem', which falls into the sub-genre of Indie Pop.

Sometimes genres can cross over, in this instance Charli XCX's pop song is interrupted by a rap verse from Danny Brown:

Classical

Classical music, strictly defined, means music produced in the Western world between 1750 and 1820. This music included opera, chamber music, choral pieces, and music requiring a full orchestra. To most, however, the term refers to all of the above types of music within most time periods before the 20th century.

Rhythm & Blues


Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B or RnB, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the late 1930s. The term 'Rhythm and Blues' was first introduced into the American lexicon in the late 1940s:  designate upbeat popular music performed by African American artists that combined Blues and Jazz.

  

Hip-Hop/Rap

The music genre was the developed after product of Hip-Hop culture, a subculture which can be defined and recognised by four key elements: MCing/Rapping, DJing/scratching, break dancing and graffiti writing. As Hip-Hop is one of my favourite genres - I will show a few sub-genres that are part of the main genre.

Hip-Hop - Psychedelic Hip-Hop

Psychedelic Hip-Hop is a style of Hip-Hop music that is defined by complex sample-based beats, often about obscure material, witty and with abstract lyrics with far-out references. The video I have embedded below is a modern day example of this sub-genre.

Hip-Hop - Drill-Hop

The video embedded below is Chief Keef's 'Everyday', this song falls into the sub-genre of Drill Music/Drill-Hop, originating from the south side of Chicago. The genre is defined by it's grim, violent lyrical content and heavy trap influenced beats. 

EDM Hip-Hop

Electronic Dance Music Hip-Hop is a sub genre which falls under the sub genre of Experimental Hip-Hop, producers and DJ's that usually make EDM music create very fast paced instrumentals that work extremely well when rapped over. EDM Hip-Hop is becoming very commercialised as of the EDM factor. Below I have embedded A-Trak's 'P*ss Test' this shows a popular indie EDM artist with a few rappers featuring on the track.

Rock Music

Rock music evolved from rock and roll and pop music during the mid and late 1960s. Harsher and often self-consciously more serious than its predecessors, it was initially characterized by musical experimentation and drug-related or anti-establishment lyrics.

Rock and Roll

'Rock and Roll' is a sub genre of Rock, a type of popular dance music originating in the 1950s, characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. Rock and roll was an amalgam of black rhythm and blues and white country music, usually based around a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, double bass, and drums. I have embedded my a live video of my favourite Rock and Roll artist below.

Metal

Heavy Metal is a genre of rock that includes a group of related styles that are intense, virtuosic and powerful, the aggressive sounds of the distorted electric guitar drive metal to be arguably one of the most commercially successful sub genres of Rock Music. The video below I have embedded is my favourite metal and band - Trash Talk 'Awake'.

Blues

Blues is a genre of music developed from rural African-American experience, derived from an oral tradition of field hollers and work songs, usually performed in unison by slaves and prisoners. Although the blues' roots are in African rhythms, early Mississippi Delta blues musicians often incorporated elements of folk and Appalachian-derived "hillbilly" music into the creation of the blues.

 House

House music is an electronic up-tempo style of disco music characterized by deep bass rhythms, piano or synthesizer melodies, and soul-music singing, sometimes with elements of rap music. I have embedded an example of a house track below.

Jazz

Jazz is defined as a style of music, an American culture and distinguished by flexible rhythmic tempo, as a base accompanied with improvisation of solo and ensemble on basic tunes and chord patterns. 

  

Reggae

Reggae music is a genre that first took form during the late 1960s in the country of Jamaica. It is a genre that is defined by its distinctive rhythm, instrumentation and lyrical content.

Country

a form of popular music originating in the rural southern US. It is a mixture of ballads and dance tunes played characteristically on fiddle, banjo, guitar, and pedal steel guitar. Also called country and western.