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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by AudioPervert (talk | contribs) at 20:10, 9 July 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Err... Spoken Word? Music? Are you sure about that one? Lezek

Suggest we create a subheading for Experimental music inside this list, move Noise Music and Free Music to it, add possibilies of Industrial Music and Free Jazz - Greg Godwin

I don't see why not. Go ahead!;-) -- WojPob

Sorry about reverting your edit, Lezek - I just wasn't paying attention. It was a perfectly good change you made. --Camembert

NP. It seems a bit out of place tho...
Yeah, as I said before I noticed I'd messed up, I was tempted to just take it out. I might try to trim it down a bit later - there's no doubt that a lot of people think these labels do more harm than good, but I'm not sure we need a pretty lengthy quote from Zorn to make that point. --Camembert
It's much better now... yay :) Lezek

--- I would suggest musique concrete be shifted to the heading of experimental music. I have doubts that many of those concerned in its early production ever classified it as "classical" music. Although I could be wrong - Greg Godwin

Well, I guess nobody really classifies themselves as "classical" (or anything else) do they? And there's a problem in defining what "classical music" is anyway (something of a problem in defining "musique concrete" as well). But I think musique concrete is generally seen as classical, inasmuch as its practitioners were working in traditional musical institutions, had been given more or less traditional music educations and generally wrote conventional classical music when they weren't writing musique concrete (Varese, Xenakis and so on). They were also quite theoretic about what they were doing (Pierre Schaeffer wrote big books on the subject). It's experimental as well as classical, I guess - it could be listed under both. --Camembert

Prehaps the problem lies in the actual classification of "experimental music" then. Minimalism could also fall under this heading, as could forms of electronica and free-jazz. I'll leave it as is for now. All talk of genre is going to be quite controversial, especially in this day and age where a hodge-podge of hybrid forms is the norm. (hearing concrete in Bjork, free-jazz in Radiohead) -- Greg Godwin

Yeah, "experimental" is a troublesome label as well (they all are, as you say) - John Cage wrote an essay just about what experimental music might be, if I remember correctly. Anyway, if you want to suffle things around this article, then by all means feel free - I certainly won't change anything back. --Camembert

I just wanted to note that, if anyone was waiting until I was done reorganizing the list to say anything, I'm done so feel free to excoriate/lavish praise upon me as you see fit. Tokerboy

First, good job on the list. It's very well laid out.

I wrote the article for synth pop and would like to see it on the list. You would know better where you would want that than I, so I'm letting you decide where you want to put it. --Two Halves

Synth pop added and, as a crazy-whack-chaos-theory result, punk is moved to its own section. Tokerboy

(Lezek's comments moved from top of page)

wtf?! Why are all those types listed as subcategories of black metal?! utter, utter nonsense. Gothic metal is not a subcategory of Black metal, it is closer to Doom metal but not a subcategory of that either. A lot of people think that Cradle of Filth are Gothic metal, but they aren't. They're more symphonic black metal, which is probably what has led to Gothic metal being listed under Black Metal. Industrial Metal, Nu Metal and Rapcore(!!!) bear absolutely no relation to Black Metal whatsoever, and not Thrash Metal either IMO. Rapcore is a fusion of Rap and Hard Rock, and sometimes Hip Hop. Listing it under Heavy Metal is skating on thin ice in many cases. Listing it under Black metal is just wrong. --Lezek

Maybe the article should explain what the list means -- the placement of gothic metal under black metal does mean that it is a subcategory, it is meant to show the genealogical origin of the genres. I did such using a variety of web pages, but I have not been into much modern metal outside of Tool and System of a Down, so I may have misinterpreted some occasionally very badly written prose. No offense intended. Also note that such a structure can never be wholly accurate because of the constant give and take between genres, even wholly unrelated ones -- a complex discussion of the origins of any form of music needs to be done in paragraph form in an article on the subject, so don't worry too much about trying to communicate meaningful information through an outline format, as it can't be too informative, it is merely a collection of links and broad generalizations to organize the links in a meaningful way. Tokerboy
Hmm no offense intended here either, but some of that did seem extremely odd :). Anyway the genealogical origin of a genre comes pretty close to defining what I would call a subcategory. The vast majority of metal genres seem to have developed either almsot independently, or from a fusion of several pre-existing metal genres so in many cases I think it's best to leave them at the top level. If you can't accurately show the genealogical origin of a genre or subgenre in this format then it at least makes sense to put them in a place where they will be located easily. I hope I've improved that situation. Feel free to revert if you disagree. (The placement of Rapcore under Hip-Hop > Alternative Rap is almost certainly incorrect in this light however. You might also want to move Heavy Metal back under Rock & Roll; just keep in mind that it is a bad idea to have it both there and as a top level category). --Lezek
I think heavy metal should both be under rock and roll and as a top-level hierarchy starter. If the focus of the outline is on expressing genealogical derivation, that makes sense because heavy metal definitely arose from rock and roll, but also has dozens of subgenres that deserve to be mentioned. Putting all of them under heavy metal under rock and roll would be difficult to look at, hence placing just the parent genre there and putting the subgenres in a separate domain. I won't fiddle around with the genres within heavy metal, as you seem to know a lot more about that than me -- my system may have been an oversimplification. I don't like rapcore as alternative rap, gangsta rap or old school rap, nor as its own category, so I'll just ignore that for now.Tokerboy
Okay, that partly answers my comments below. I wonder if tracing a "family tree" of music shouldn't be a seperate article. Something to say "see below" when you've taken a genre to the head of another branch would be useful too. Bagpuss 00:03 Jan 21, 2003 (UTC)
I agree, I've thought about adding something to the effect of "see below" for styles of heavy metal where heavy metal is first listed under electric blues and then British Invasion (BTW, I wouldn't have much of a problem if that was changed to British blues, to make it less Americ-centric, though also somewhat more misleading since some of the groups included there are blues only by the most bizarre stretch of the word possible) Tokerboy


I don't want to diss your hard work Tokerboy, and I may not be up to rewriting it myself, but some of the subdivisions seem odd to me. Firstly, "Rhythm and Blues" seems an odd place to put Garage, Merseybeat and British Invasion (the latter is a very American term for British music as well, so although it's fine to link to the article, I'd rather it wasn't a category). Secondly, Britpop under Dream Pop (what is this?) under New Wave under Punk Rock? I'm not sure about listing influences as genres. Britpop is not punk. Bagpuss 23:56 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

For the record, dream pop is something like the Cocteau Twins. Tokerboy
Agree with the statement about the influences. List an entry under the main one or two influences; if there are too many move it up a level and repeat until the position makes sense. Example: Gothic Metal may have Black metal influences but they aren't significant enough to list it under Black Metal IMO. Just listening to Gothic Metal should confirm this. There are many other influences to Gothic Metal and it certainly isn't possible to list it under all of them. If a genre's parent doesn't make up a significant part of its sound you should consider moving it up a level, or else end up with either a highly bloated or highly misleading list. --Lezek
Agreed -- my intention was to place genres within parent genres only if its reasonably uncontroversial to do so (most of them are, I think). If there is a controversy, the most NPOV fashion to deal with it is to place the genre at the highest level in which there is no controversy and discuss its origins in the article itself. Tokerboy

Lezek, did you mean to move black metal et al to come from rapcore? That doesn't make any sense since black metal appeared a good couple years before rapcore was even dreamt of. Tokerboy

No I didn't intend that at all, just pasted Rapcore in the wrong place. --Lezek

As for putting rapcore under hip hop, I don't really care -- I'm much more into hip hop than metal, and I can assure you I've not heard any rapcore that sounds anything like hip hop, (though I haven't heard much beyond Limb Bizkit and the like) and I'm told such groups do (or did) exist. If the consensus is to organize the list by sound instead of influence, I can go along with that, but I think it will be too confusing and difficult and will probably end up being a bland list of links in alphabetical order, and I don't want that to happen. Tokerboy

Really? Suggest you listen to Senser. --Lezek
I'll give it a try. Tokerboy
Coolies. I recommend Parallel Charge as a good introduction. --Lezek

I don't know quite where to talk to you now, so I'll go down the bottom here. I'm afraid I don't know who the Cocteau Twins are, so that didn't help. Now that I understand your method, I've put in Madchester, which everyone goes on about as having been a big fusion, but I've left it under Dream Pop. Hope it's okay. Bagpuss

I don't know much about Madchester, but I think that's right. It occurred to me today that the only reason I wanted to make an organized outline was because a disorganized one already existed. There's no reason each of the top level domains can't have a small paragraph that can give these more difficult genres the attention they deserve. I'm thinking something like the below: (ignore the facts as they are made up where I don't know/can't remember - what do you think of the presentation?) Tokerboy
Heavy metal music originated in the mid- to late-1960s by bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Most of these original bands were playing blues mixed with rock, and they developed a dark, bombastic sound, with cryptic and often unintelligible lyrics. Heavy metal during the early 1970s was a cult phenomenon, with only a few bands (such as Blue Oyster Cult) achieving success with one or two mainstream hits. At the time, hair metal began evolving, influenced by glam rock musicians like David Bowie and Mott the Hoople. By 1983, hair metal was the dominant sound in heavy metal in terms of sales, though metal fans were largely listening to less popular thrash metal bands like Metallica or black metal bands like Celtic Frost. After the success of grunge rendered hair metal unhip in the early 1990s, there was an explosion of metal genres. Stoner metal, doom metal and death metal developed but never achieved widespread popularity. Later in the decade, some nu metal bands like Tool had achieved great mainstream success.
This is a bit longer than I wanted, but someone who knows more about the subject could probably tighten it a bit. This format probably wouldn't take up much more space than the current list, and would be easier and more effective at summarizing the development of different forms than using a strict hierarchical outline. Tokerboy
That'd work pretty well. We'd have to leave some genres as mere lists until someone who knew about them came along, but hey, Wikipedia's expected to be incomplete.

Question: Is there a better way to differentiate hip-hop? "Most Populare" and "less popular" seem highly arbitrary and could easily change with different audiences; I think there's got to be a better way to divide the two. Even 'Mainstream' and 'alternative,' no matter how wrong/rude it is, might be a better title. Atorpen 02:28 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

The only problem is that "alternative rap" refers to a specific type of rap. Christian rap, for example, is alternative (to P. Diddy) but not "alternative rap". I'll see if I can think of a better way. Tokerboy

Disco --> ambient ? This needs some serious rearranging! Gene Poole


It's still rock 'n' roll to me -- Billy Joel ;-)

I reverted the change of jazz rap to acid jazz because they are not the same thing. See a What is acid jazz FAQ, which describes acid jazz while barely mentioning the occasional existence of rap in it. They are related, and there is a lot of overlap, but they are not the same thing (acid jazz should be mentioned, maybe under hip hop or maybe not). The sentence wouldn't even be correct with acid jazz in there, because I don't think 3 Feet High and Rising was acid jazz. Tuf-Kat

I understand...though 3 Feet High and Rising cannot even be associated with Jazz Rap either. The samples are so diverse that you can't even nail the album into any kind of box. mGee

True. It's commonly considered the start of jazz rap only because they were the first (? - maybe) to sample any jazz. If it came out today, it would probably be considered some bizarre kind of alternative rap. Don't let me stop you from placing acid jazz somewhere -- I have no idea where, but any term commonly used to describe a genre should be somewhere in a paragraph (eventually, for now many are still on one of the lists). Tuf-Kat

Why does this page contain mini-descriptions of some of the genres mentioned? I suggest that information is better on the specific pages - I think 'musical genre' should give a description of how genres are defined and then jump straight to the list of genres... readers can find their way from there to the specific genre that interests them.

I'd make the change straight off, but it's quite a major alteration, so I thought I'd put it up for discussion first.

Basswulf 11:25 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me.
Magnus 11:39 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)
Okay, I've removed all the information that I considered extraneous - copied below for reference, in case anyone wants to double check any of the individual genres to make sure the information is represented there.
Basswulf 11:51 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

(I deleted the stuff moved from the main page cuz it takes up space. It's in the history for the talk page or the main article. I wrote it, and won't be mad.)

I disagree with the removal from the main article. At the very least, the styles that had been converted from a list to prose aren't mentioned at all anymore and should be re-added. See the above conversation for the reasons why the list was changed to paragraphs -- I doubt it will take up much more space than a list, and it more effectively conveys more information than a list. Relationships between genres aren't binary, as a list implies. Does emo go under punk rock in a list? Either way, it's a POV assertion that many will disagree with. In a sentence or three, we can neutrally describe how hardcore punk split into multiple genres in the late 80s and that purists don't consider them punk anymore. Tuf-Kat

Musical genre is a pretty POV subject anyway - it's a lot more fuzzy than the periodic table of elements ;-)

I think one solution is to allow the same genre name to be mentioned in more than one place in the list (and to clearly state this is the case at the top of the list). The related article can then upack the history, development and boundaries of that genre in more detail.

We could also have each major heading accompanied by a short, overarching description, without getting into too much detail or history. What I didn't like about the previous version of the page was that the overall layout seemed to be:

  1. Discussion of 'genre' in the context of music
  2. Background details on a limited range of genres
  3. A long list linking to a wide range of specific articles

2 and 3 seemed to be working at cross purposes and seemed somewhat disjointed. I guess that's also coloured by my perception of this page as more of a junction leading to lots of specific articles than a fully fledged destination in it's own right (bar point 1, the general discussion of the topic).

Basswulf 13:51 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

3 shouldn't exist, as it was being phased into 2 (slowly, I know, but in theory...). While I suppose listing genres wherever appropriate, even multiple times, would be an improvement, I think it would still be longer, less useful, more inacurrate, unwieldy and misleading than paragraphs. If there was no #3, would you have a problem with using prose?
Perhaps our disagreement lies in the purpose of this page. I don't see it primarily as a a junction to other articles -- that would be list of musical genres. Maybe we should have both. Thus, if one wants just a list of genres to check out, one can go there, but if one wants some concise information on the differences between them and the nature of generic classification in general, then this would be the place. Tuf-Kat
I would see #1 and #3 as the basic purpose of this page. While having more information about some genres is ok, I think trying to fit them all on one page is potentially very limiting - either you don't cover many genres, or you have very little information on each one, or you end up with an extremely big page (or probably a mixture of all three). Surely the advantage of a hypertext format is that you can break the information up into manageable chunks? Certainly I agree that there should be on this page some discussion of the nature (and problems) of classification, but to my mind any more comprehensive information on specific genres or the difference between them would be better on separate pages. Magnus 14:27 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)
Okay, how about we create a list of musical genres page, which is clearly linked to after the introductory text about genres in the context of music (#1). That would contain all the information from #3 and placing it at this point in the page makes it easy to find for someone who would just like to deal with a list (that's me - I can cope with one more load time to get to the information ;-)
The other information can come back, but after an explanatory paragraph that makes it clear that the rest of the contents of the page will be succinct descriptions of the relationships between different areas in overarching genres and referring readers to the specific genre pages for more detail.
That way we're using the benefits of hypertext to give the reader a range of choices and avoiding any one page from becoming too large, while still giving the slightly more extensive information that Tuf-Kat is after. It would also be useful to encourage people to link back to this overview from each article on a specific genre.
Basswulf 15:30 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

Accomplished. The info about genres still needs tidying up to make sure it's not replicating too much of what is on the individual pages but I've performed the major surgery discussed above. --Basswulf 16:10 Apr 22, 2003 (UTC)

Let's talk about an electronic music section

I'm new around here and I've been surfing around filling in the blanks in the electronic end of the music pages... I'd like to add a paragraph about electronic music, like the others with a short history and a bunch of links. Where should I put such a paragraph?

...Pema

Wherever you like, I'd say. The genres don't seem to be in any particular order, so I suppose it doesn't much matter. --Camembert

I've removed this paragraph:

Most music lovers would agree that the quality of music is not in its estetics, it's sound and texture, but rather in the spirit and character that goes into its composition. Because genre classification ignores this important musical principle, it could be argued that it even encourages music of poor quality to be made simply for its esthetic qualities.

What it seems to be saying is that "most music lovers would agree that it doesn't matter what a piece of music sounds like so long as it's been created in the right spirit," - this is probably true in the case of certain live performances (particularly in punk, for example, where attitude counts) but I doubt that "most" music fans feel this way about music in general. --Camembert

Hi Camembert. I put that paragraph in. Hmm I think you're right, I went too far with generalizing the opinions of the creative community. But I still think that the fact that genre classification ignores the content of music is still a really valid point, and can be fit in there better. Pema

OK I'm glad somebody added the paragraph on techno because I was too timid to do so, and would have not done as good a job of it. I made some minor edits to the paragraph, replacing Drum n Bass with Jungle, since Jungle is kind of a parent of drum n bass and some other genres, and I added "dance music" to the paragraph title, and made some other minor edits and spelling things.

Then I added the "outside electronica" paragraph. I felt this was a better idea than to try and fit the genres mentioned there into the techno section, where they really don't belong and don't get along. It makes it look like they're offshoots of techno, when in fact techno/dance and outside electronica, I feel, are two ubergenres that have developed in parallel and influenced each-other.

I also added the sentence about how all these genres have constantly-developing subgenres with subgenres of their own. The wording at the end of that is kinda messed (help!) who can say it better?

The call has been made: please add links and stuff to this. And dates. And artists :D

Pema

I've never understood techno genres, and the section here didn't really help. I'd like to propose replacing it with the below, which I wrote by modifying what was there and using allmusic -- the goal, I think, should be to link to all the genres of techno with a brief explanation of how each evolved and how they differ from each other. I removed the reference to the Giorgio Moroder album because the year given was 75, allmusic claimed 77 and gave earlier disco albums from Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer. If this early disco isn't considered techno, but later disco is (as the article originally implied), then this should be explained, because I'm confused. The vast majority of musical genres shouldn't be capitalized, so I kept them all lowercase. Tuf-Kat

Electronic music

Techno is a catch-all term for several types of electronic music, most of it intended for dancing. Purely electronic music existed as far back as the 1950s, though the birth of techno is generally considered to be in the early to mid-1970s. Earlier influences include avant-garde jazz, rock , musique concrete and funk experiments from David Bowie, John Cage, Stockhausen, Brian Eno, Tony Scott, George Clinton and Faust.

The first major form of techno was disco, which was entirely electronic and became extremely popular in the late 1970s. After the popular demise of disco, techno went largely underground, surviving in the form of hi-NRG before splintering into dozens of subgenres. In the early 1980s, the pop structures were removed from disco and influences from jazz, dub and hip hop were incorporated. This was the birth of house music, which remained an underground phenomenon centered in cities like London, Detroit and Chicago for most of the decade.

House music fractured into subgenres including:

The 1980s saw the birth of other forms of techno as well, such as trance, which has complex chord progressions and melodies and its close relative, Goa trance, which incorporates industrial music to inject psychedelic sounds. In addition to trance, jungle (also drum n' bass) added reggae influences and sampled break beats (such as the amen break and the funky drummer) and tribal techno married advanced electronic instrumentation with rhythms from Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East.

In the 1990s, techno saw its first mainstream success since the demise of disco, primarily in big beat and funky break, very complex and highly produced forms of techno, trance and jungle popularized by artists like The Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers. In addition, a Dutch form called gabber added lots of overdrive and distortion to incredibly rapid tempos and mutated into a more accessible version called happy hardcore. By the end of the decade, the term techno had come to apply to a specific, extremely minimalist, melody-free version of techno. House music was no longer cutting edge through most of the 90s, though progressive artists at the end of the decade (like Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx) reinvigorated the genre. By the turn of the millennium, drum n bass had evolved into nu breaks, drill n bass and 2-beat (a.k.a. speed garage, underground garage and British garage).

Styles of electronic music that are not dance music are not generally considered techno. They are called electroacoustic, outside or left-field instead and are distinguished by an atmospheric, progressive quality and slower tempos. These styles include:

I think it bears pointing out at this stage that electronic music is such a bloody large genre, and it's edges are so transparent, it's like rock n roll. It's affected every type of popular music.

That having been said, by means of disclaiming any effort at comprehensively categorizing electronic music, I think your rearrangement makes sense for the most part.

I agree with putting Techno and Left-field electronica under the Electronic Music category. Maybe the best way of organizing this kind of stuff would be:

Early electronic music (stuff about cage, stockhausen, old synth stuff, tape delay stuff, musique concrete, that kinda thing)

Electronic Dance Music (I think Techno is too wide a term, a lot of techno isn't meant for dancing, like a lot of Plastikman's downtempo stuff... this category would include all the stuff about trance, dance techno, house, stuff that's meant for dancing to)

Electronic Listening Music (downtempo, trip-hop, illbient, stuff like that. stuff that's meant for sitting around and grooving to)

Jungle (I don't know where else to put stuff about jungle, drum n bass, dancehall, that kinda stuff. it may be dance music but i'm not sure. 'cause there's ambient drum n bass too :D)

Electroacoustic/Left-field/IDM

then maybe ambient music should be a totally seperate, maybe small, genre on its own. 'cause ambient isn't really much more connected with electronic music than it is with rock or new-age or anything else. maybe the ambient section could refer to ambient as something that stands on its own, and also gets applied to everything else.

I also have to say the article you put in has a lot of weirdness about it. What's hip-house? electro-hop? i've never ever heard of these genres. and obviously the list would have to be filled out.

anywayz. i've put a lot out on the table here. what do y'all think of it?

pema

Electro-hop is more hip hop than anything else, which may be why you haven't heard of it, and hip house is similar but more house than hip hop -- might not have heard of it because its popularity was brief and limited almost entirely to the Chicago area.
With regards to the other sections, I'd be inclined to keep them all in the same section, divided into subsections because that is how they are perceived, right or wrong -- they'd all be found in the same section of the record store, I think. The text could make it clear that they aren't very related, but they should be together, IMO. Tuf-Kat
I think a lot of people here have the wrong definition of Techno. Techno is a very specific genre of electronic dance music originating from detroit and with a 4 on the floor beat and usualy with industrial/electronic/non-melodic samples on top. It is really a sub-genre of House music. The section labeled Techno should be labled Electronic Music or something.
This page in general suprised me, why are there descriptions here. I agree with an earlier comment, this page should just be some kind of ordered links page, with a description at the top of how the LARGE musical genres are broken up.
Don't be supprised if this page gets RADICALY redone!
user:AudioPervert
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