What We Get Wrong About Genres
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- Опубліковано 21 лип 2024
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What would you say if I told you that everything you thought you knew about musical genres was wrong? Well, don't worry, that's probably not the case, but there's a good chance you're not thinking about them as deeply as you should be, and that's a bit of a problem. Basically, I think the way we conceive of and talk about genres is fundamentally flawed, and I think there's a much better way that we could be using if we just viewed them a bit more complexly, so here I am making that case. Feel free to yell at me in the comments for it. (Please don't actually yell at me?)
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Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold for proofreading the script to make sure this all makes sense hopefully!
Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) This is all my opinion. Obvious, but worth saying.
2) One thing that's been really bolstering my appreciation of genre theory recently is PBS's new music show Soundfield. If you want to see a great template for how genres can be useful in nuanced musical discourse, definitely check them out. I think a good place to start would be this video on the use of 808 hi-hats in trap music: ua-cam.com/video/zKicD86F7KA/v-deo.html
3) I should note that, for the most part, what I'm saying here is not news to academic musicians, and the way genre theory is used in those circles is, as far as I've seen, perfectly healthy. this is more about fan culture.
4) If the cultural appropriation bit felt tacked on, that's… because it kinda was. I realized in the process of writing this that my argument could be misinterpreted as evidence against the existence of cultural appropriation, and I felt like it was important to clarify my stance. I do think it's relevant here, though: It's a lot easier to understand what appropriation _is_ when we start from a more nuanced view of genre rather than viewing it as simply a collection of arbitrarily associated sounds. I just don't think the section fits perfectly into the script, but leaving it out would've felt worse.
5) I like Imagine Dragons, and Radioactive is a banger. Fight me.
Imagine Dragon's seem to have a Nickleback problem: they keep releasing the same song and that's the basic problem? But people *hate* them, because in isolation that one song is a bop and a half and y'all actually like it. Just admit you like the song, it's the metaphorical overplay that's getting to you.
Radioactive is a good song but I just dislike the more recent imagine dragons stuff.
Radioactive might have been to popular to be accepted into the culture. Is a new and different song that your boss or teacher likes really a good representative of your favorite genre?
@@ndy8463 I know. I love Black Sabbath, especially the Dio era, and it annoys me so much that the only songs by Sabbath I ever hear on the radio are Paranoid and Iron Man. They have so many other awesome songs, have played with Ronnie James freaking Dio, Tony Martin, even Ian Gillan but every time it's just those 2 songs, it just makes me not like Ozzy that much anymore
Dude, great to hear another CoB fan tell it like it is. What did you think of Hexed?
Grew up on Def Leppard and never understood the hate.
Point 5 is really testing my loyalty on this channel.
Also, Imagine dragons mainstream pop, it has none of the 3 points that should identify them as rock. And it's also shitty mainstream pop. And the only thing that kinda remind of tock is it's loudness
But half of metal artistic fulfillment is getting to name the subgenre you just invented!
That's funny but there's a grain of truth to it. Venom invented the term "black metal" mainly as a way to set their music apart from the rest of the heavy metal genre. But in doing so, they set a precedent for other bands to do likewise, in addition to inadvertently creating a subgenre that other bands, much to Venom's frustration, claim membership in. You can still on occasion see Venom/Venom Inc. band members claiming that only Venom/Venom Inc. is truly black metal, and everything else that claims otherwise is false. They refuse to admit they opened Pandora's box, and that the concepts inside now exist beyond their control.
As Helm, founder of the Greek metal band Locust Leaves put it in a Bandcamp interview two years ago, "[W]e wanted to chart every ambiguous space totally, as any nerd subculture does." That comment stings a bit, but it's true. Metalheads tend to be huge, if somewhat closeted, nerds, and our bickering about subgenres comes across as inane and pointless as comic book nerds debating the merits of DC versus Marvel.
@Gromm Don't I know it. It's so bad that I only use the phrase "trve kvlt" in mockery. Not even irony, but actively satiring the idea that anything is true or that it belongs only to an exclusive group of "true" believers. It's also why some of my favorite black metal bands aren't strictly and forever black metal. Like, Samael's shifting from black metal to industrial metal and back again; or Blut Aus Nord, who practically switches from album to album, from symphonic black metal to industrial black metal to albums so weirdly avant-garde and ambient that one strains to call it metal at all; or Ulver, which created two classic black metal albums and one dark folk album, only to abandon rock-derived music nearly all together in favor of electronica and psychedelia. But maybe we shouldn't care about those categories if the artists themselves aren't so closely wed to them in the first place.
(Apologies if you know about these bands -- I mentioned them in detail in case others read the comment and lack context.)
@Gromm You sure you invented it? I'm sure if I dug around Metal Archives long enough, I might find a band that describes themselves like that....
@Gromm Sorry, all I listen to these days is Petomanic Deflowering. They're so obscure, I literally went spelunking to get a demo tape.
The density of subgenres in metal is a good thing, because you know what you're getting yourself into. I know to stay away from metalcore because it sounds annoying to me even though on a compositional level you could say it's closely related to groove metal for example.
If you like Beyond Creation, you can easily find many bands you'll also enjoy using the genre description "technical death metal".
If you like Snarky Puppy, you will probably need to spend a millenium before you find another band that feels the same to listen to in the "jazz" category.
Point is, if you care about finding new music you should want as many and as narrow genres as possible. It's easier to be a fan of two genres than a fan of one fifth of a genre.
Opposite of overspecification often happens with music created before recording industry happened. Very often it’s all gets bundled as “classics” 1000 years of music from Gregorian chant to avant-garde!
even with relatively newer stuff its like that because of marketing smears. like a v/a compilation i saw last year simply titled "90s Rock" with NIN, Butthole Surfers, The Verve, and Hootie & The Blowfish all put together for no reason or context other then being at least somewhat commercially successful music from the 1990s under the broad metagenre of "rock"
and now Imagine Dragons is the top 1 Rock band of the decade apparently.
So you're saying I don't necessarily have to wear my powdered wig when composing classical music?
Just for Baroque n' Roll
Splitter.
You aren't a REAL classical fan unless you wear the wig and classical attire
MidtownSkyport
If that’s not a thing, then I’m inventing it.
I mean if you have one, do wear it. It's cool.
The biggest genre police I've met are in electronic music. They'll let you know aggressively when you mistake dark psy with prog psy or minimal tech with tech house.
I actually found this a big barrier to entry into electronic music. I feel like spending three hours on wikipedia reading about subgenres of your music should leave me with a pretty good overview of the basic genre conventions and their range, not like waaaay more confused than I was going in.
@@GelidGanef Me too. I used to work a lot with artists of electronic but I couldn't ever take genres seriously enough for them.
I'm not into electronic music because the genres seem pretty useless to me.
"Oh, this track is a different genre because they used gear from another time period? Sure.
But then why does synthwave contain happy summer music, nostalgic electronic pop, dark reverby music and straight up metal played on synths without any clear division people actually use between them?"
I feel like electronic music fans care more about the process of creation than the actual music...
I produce music electronically (see my channel). I just don''t choose to confine myself to limited parameters of narrow genres.
On behalf of people who like electronic music, I don't think we're all like that. I think part of the reason for the strict division of genres in the culture might be due to the fact that this music draws from so many other different genres of music. For example, someone who likes jazz may like electrojazz, and they might hate dubstepesque music and strongly express that hate. Not to say that these distinctions are that important, but perhaps the reason for divisiveness among electronic music fans may be due to actual large divisions between the genres that the subgenres originated from.
**IN THE NEAR FUTURE**
Genres have developed too far and Screamo Jazz, EDM(Electronic Death Music), and Math Country are constantly topping the charts.
I think those you listed already are there since the 90s
I'd listen to Math Country, that sounds hysterical
blalo'u I need math country in my life now
@@FirstRoyceMusic If anyone can make it it's you
Sounds like a future I can’t wait to listen to
A point about genres: artworks don't *belog to* genres; they *work with* genres, and can easily work with several at once.
WhyCan'tIRemainAnonymous?! I agree this is how everyone should think, but so many people box themselves into a genre, or their fan base pushes them into a box...lol just remember when Metallica came out with Load...The bulk of their hardcore fan base lost their ever loving minds!
I don’t think Through the Fire and the Flames would be taken seriously as a hipster ukulele track
"Is it Jazz?" If theres wrong notes its jazz
Well I think playing the first degree of the chord is pretty wrong...
My HS music teacher told me "Jazz is putting the wrong notes, in the right place."
Or was is the RIGHT notes in the WRONG place? Whatever...my music teacher told me something, and I'm pretty sure it involved jazz.
@@bcubed72 "Putting the wrong notes in the right place" is what makes Hardstyle EDM my favorite music genre. I think there's real talent in making dissonance palatable.
If it's awesome it's jazz!
"If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." - Louis Armstrong
When it comes to defining music by genres, I subscribe to what Louis Armstrong said, which is, "There are only two types of music: good and bad. I prefer to listen to good music."
Love that!
Hear Hear!!!
Louis Armstrong has a legend
Great video! thanks for the shoutout!
That last bit about learning about EDM is actually really interesting because it's also a lot like metal regarding this topic, at its worst it's an endless fight over what subgenre an electronic song belongs to because "EDM" is apparently a bad umbrella term. Not to mention that genre switchups in breakdowns/second drops are really common in EDM, so fans just keep trying to classify these songs into as many EDM subgenres as they think it needs, even if all the producer was thinking about was just finding new ways to get people dancing without worrying about sticking to a genre.
Personally, I'm glad we have a broad umbrella term like EDM now. 10-15 years ago, it was pretty common to call all electronic music "techno", which I felt was a total disservice to techno as its own genre.
It is that way because people from the outside only see it as "electronic music" and it's a garbageeee term. If I saw everything from prog metal to moombahton as the same thing "non electronic music" and didn't recognize how vastly different the music, cultures and origins are, wouldn't that make you mad?
Genres are reflective of what the goal of the music is
This is why Seven Nation Army is a folk song
A lot of people try to define genres in a hierarchy as well, like "Death Metal is a subtype of Metal which is a subtype of Rock", and I think that misses a lot of nuance as well. Is Punk a type of Rock? if all punk songs are Rock, then does that make folk punk like Flogging Molly "Rock music"? Is Chumbawamba's Tubthumping is listed on wikipedia as "dance-rock", how does that fit with the fact that they're a punk band by most measures?
Me, I'm just going to continue calling new metal bands "Fusion" and watch as the fans argue over what genres they're supposed to be blending while the Jazz fans cry over the wholesale misuse of the term fusion.
I feel like Punk is not a form of Rock music. Punk is an approach to an art form. Anything can have a punk aspect.
Punk is definitely rock, and folk Punk is also definitely still rock. Folk Punk guitars aren't electric, but they are definitely intentionally distorted by the way they are played, and often the way they are recorded.
@@lobsterbark "Punk is an attitude," etc. I heard that all the time before Green Day, Offspring, NOFX, etc. became popular and that put a strict cage around what was punk and what wasn't.
What's being fused together? Since that community keeps dividing into smaller cliques, you should call them "Fission."
Punk was called Punk Rock, and Fusion was called Jazz Fusion. Metal was called Heavy Metal. The whole musical community, the writers, the musicians, and the fanatical devotees are too lazy(or too "cool") to say the full names.
I gave up on genres recently. I got tired of describing my music as "ex-blues bands that later went on to do metal or prog rock, but before they got into metal/prog rock and were still doing bluesier things, but also sometimes the prog rock stuff too, especially if there are folk influences, but it's not full-on folk music, or if it's theatrical stuff but not just musical stuff".
It's so much easier to say "Early Zeppelin, Sabbath, Tull, Alice Cooper, Doors, stuff like that".
Oh but also I sometimes like completely different stuff, like 80s Queen songs, or ELO
i personally just say i like music, and specify bands i dislike. i like some "rap-rock" music but i hate limp bizkit. i love soft acoustic guitar, i love energetic piano lines like Elton John does, and i love the industrial noise of most NIN work. but you can hardly compare NIN to some other industrial bands because trent reznor takes a very orchestral and calculated approach to the madness he makes. one of my favorite bands is red hot chili peppers. they do "rap-funk" but then theres songs like Porcelain, with a mellow love-adjacent sound, and Cabron, with flashy acoustic guitar, and Venice Queen, with two distinctly different sections, none of which
feel like funk.
tl;dr, just enjoy music. if you wanna share it compare it to similar bands rather than genres because i got a friend into RHCP after playing porcelain when he didn't like "rap-funk."
7:13 Isn’t that the first chord from the main riff in “Everlong”? Well played.
Its close. The first chord in everlong is D major 7 without its 5th (D, F#, C#). The chord in the video has all the same notes, But with more notes and extensions (A 5th, E 9th, G# #11, B 13th).
TLDR: Take everlong chord, add notes, and yeah its about the same
\[T]/ I’m thinking of the part where they add the 5th and 9th with the A major triad on the second guitar. And then the first note of the vocal melody comes in on the 13. But still, you’re right that they’re not precisely the same.
That reminds me of trying to explain the difference between black metal and death metal.
Like we know there's a difference but if you just try to pick attributes of the songs you'll find only exceptions and crossover.
Came here to comment that!
Black metal is comprised of “musicians” who intentionally ruin their own music vs death metal which is hyper technical in the guitar department (almost rivaling power metal) uses a lot of edgy (but seldom satanic these days) subject matter in the lyrics, and actually allows you to know what notes and chords they hit
@@notproductiveproductions3504 Black metal includes a lot of technical work too. Have you not listened to the vocalists lmao? Also what does satanism have to do with genre?
@@notproductiveproductions3504 you don't really listen to much black metal, do you?
Just how many music sheets do you happen to go through in a month doing all of these videos? Keep up the great work though!
Speaking of rock vs proto-metal, an analysis video on (Don't Fear) The Reaper would be amazing!
I played some Iron Maiden for a guy who was unfamiliar with them and he said they sounded like Blue Oyster Cult. And after a minute, I realized he had a point. The vocal styles are obviously very different, but musically? There's a lot of overlap.
I think it was polyphonic that did a video on it
All I know is that it needs more cowbell
Musical genres and the people they represent is a lot like languages and the cultures therein; they ultimately can’t (and shouldn’t) be separated because they shape each other and a lot of the time they’re stigmatised based on archaic stereotypes. Great vid, dude! I could watch you doodle forever.
I can't believe you went THERE. Braver than the US marines.
When, in film school, my favorite film teacher taught us that the adjective form of “genre” is “generic”, my whole mindset shifted completely. It’s a great revelation to have. Cracks the boxes wide open.
Best ending... "It's ridiculous. Just stop. Stop it. Stop. Stop!"
Jazz? Just 3 6 2 5 1 it. That's all ya need. Mention Frank Zappa in your lyrics and bam.
Literally the next giant steps.
Literally
6:30 -- This is a yes and no. I feel like overprecising also encourages the stylistic evolution of music. It also makes it so, as you said, listeners can find more of that specific subgenre, which, per the last sentence, encourages exploration of the more popular regions.
"Marginalized groups who may not be able to effectively capitalize on their own work due to societal prejudice. In those cases, swooping in from the outside to take their innovations, repackage them with a more advertiser-friendly face, and sell them to a mainstream audience without permission and without crediting or without paying back the community..."
>>Elvis Presley has entered the chat.
Elivis did gave back to the community and he got signed by big labels cause he was white, but he wasn't rich or even middle class, he was marginalized too (not as much as blacks but still, what I am trying to sayt is that he wasn't a white boy rubbing his hands together seeing how to get rich stealing black music, he was a guy that really loved that music and just did his thing).
"We are Motörhead and we play Rock and Roll"
Enough said
We do this a lot in historical education as well. Many of us have this misconception from grade school history classes that centuries old cultures/literature/music were these static, unchanging things when actually they were fluid and have their own individual histories.
The easiest example to think of is defining "classical" music. While big C Classical refers to a specific style from the 18th century, with it's own pantheon of composers and performers, we often just lump everything from Renaissance to post-tonality together with the term.
I was a metalhead but I got into the house/techno subculture when I moved to the city. It's so very different. Nobody cares about genres, it was a relief tbh. There's a handful of genre names, and a ton of adjectives, but they can be mixed however you feel like and nobody will blame you for being imprecise. There's too much experimentation going on for strict genres to have place anyways.
I just (finally!) noticed you write (or draw) your expository comments from right to left. As a lefty myself, I can really appreciate your "backwards" (but not backward) approach to writing.
"nuh uh, he goes left to right. I definitely would've noticed before if he...."
*scrolls up and looks at the video*
WHAT! HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN THIS BEFORE
He does it so that you can see what he's writing
4:20
I have the same problem with language. It evolves all the time and has done so for thousands of years, and then one day the people that codify the language decide that it’s not allowed to change anymore and suddenly certain aspects become objectively right or objectively wrong (although, since there’s not one authority on language it still depends who you ask, despite the purpose supposedly being consistency)
Why can’t sentences end with a preposition? Why can’t fragment sentences be acceptable if the context allows them to be totally understood? Why does every sentence have to have a subject and verb? (Of course, apart from the rules that are already codified for when they don’t, but even the exceptions have established rules)
In both language and music, I think the problem comes down to prescriptive vs descriptive views of what the things _are_ on a fundamental level. The moment hard and fast rules are affixed to the structures (or in other words, they become frozen in time) the moment they become increasingly obsolete over time to describe the current iteration of its evolution. Even if the rules slow that evolution down or change its course, it simply cannot be stopped. No matter how firmly anyone insists that it mustn’t.
But on the topic of the video, I think people do that to genres because they develop a very personal relationship to genres and as was stated they are connected to culture and therefore identity. When a genre is being “misrepresented”, _we_ are being misrepresented too. It reminds me of a quote, “The opposite of love isn’t hate. The opposite of love is indifference.” That’s because we can’t hate something unless we care about it, even if it’s in a negative way
Okay, good distinction. "Genre" subsumes "style" but they're not synonymous. I guess style refers more to the musical elements themselves, while genre also includes the historical and social details of music community and practice.
As a fan/creator of black metal music, I understand full well the frustrations of people being inextricably bound to rigid and exclusionary labeling practices for metal subgenres. It was cool to hear you mention Amon Amarth, Children of Bodom, and Behemoth too. I just listened to three of your videos, and loved every second of each one. Can’t wait to hungrily consume more of your content! It’s all been intellectually stimulating, and very well-delivered so far. Awesome work, my friend
12tone, your comments about Def Leppard are right on. I was in high school when On Through The Night was released. I thought it rocked as hard as anything I was listening to at the time, and I was (still am) a big Judas Priest fan. In fact, my rock band in 1981 played Wasted, and we were hired for several school dances that year. So it WAS considered metal and it WAS poppy enough to go over well at a hi school dance. I think it just points out the flexibility of genre categorization.
Parenthetically, when I heard Iron Maiden's first album in 1980, with songs like Sanctuary and Iron Maiden, it completely blew my mind. I had never heard anything like it, but I still considered Def Leppard's OTTN to be metal. (But on the other hand, everything else by Def Leppard, while mostly enjoyable, was, imho, NOT metal but rather "MTV music" LOL.) Thanks for another great video.
9:17 is the platinum level of summation skills I aspire to reach with most topics in life, especially music. You are truly so smart playa. Thank you for doing what you do and hitting these in depth topics with your fresh perspective. I feel blessed to have found your channel. Cheers!
As a progressive metal fan, I totally get where you're coming from
Same here, I gave up years ago trying to name genres, and just realized I liked some bands and not others and not because of genres, but because of subjective taste.
Progressive Rock and Metal are good contendants for the argument against genre: Opeth and Dream Theater are both "Prog Metal", they sound nothing alike, even to a deeply compositional level
Same with prog rock; Jethro Tull and Magma, Pink Floyd and King Crimson, four extremes in the spectrum of music, none sound nothing alike, all prog rock
@@ivyssauro123 Dream Theater hasn’t been all that experimental lately
Amen
I'd also say how the historical and cultural aspect gave the compositional practice a certain meaning or emotional response. You hear rap and think "ghetto" because the history and culture of that movement is deeply connected to it. Therefore, sometimes knowing what something means is necessary to listen to it giving attention to the right element and predispose yourself to the right mood. For example you will never enjoy shoegaze listening to it like it was rock. Remember this anytime you don't like a particular genre, listening to it differently might not only open up a lot of new possibilities but also make you grow as a person, discovering new emotions and point of view on reality
But what subgenre of Educational does this video belong to?!
Clearly the document-camera doodle style pioneered by Vihart
@@columbus8myhw The doodles are on sheet music though, which makes this it's own unique genre that we should fight over. :)
My bandmate and I had a lengthy conversation about this when we first started writing songs together. Obviously we've both built our sonic palettes from the artists and the genres we enjoy (her from metal and classical compositions, me from classic rock, funk and blues), but genre is always secondary to artistic intent; there's something thrilling about the fusion of our musical ideologies, and even more so when we take inspiration from things that are outside of our comfort zones as musicians and interpret concepts that are new to us but still work within the constructs of what we do.
Also doesn't help that certain genres are too broad. Take Industrial Metal for example. While there's some fantastic heavy albums and songs, some people have basically redefined it as "harder electropop"
Which is why I think the new direction for it is in fact, the Doom Soundtrack.
Check out "Author & Punisher". He's a one-man band version of the Doom soundtrack.
@@Vulume oooh. I like it. That said from the two songs I heard (Nihil Strength and Terrorbird) he's definitely got the industrial sound down perfectly, but it really lacks the Heavy, Djenty guitar that makes the Doom Soundtrack brutal
That soundtrack slaps, my dude.
UA-cam has already named the DooM soundtrack “Argent metal”
Right on point. You explained so eloquently and thoroughly! I’ve wanting to get these various points across for many years but unable to find the best way. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and creating this video!
I've been hearing a lot of people going in the other direction lately, talking about how "the idea of genre is dead" because a lot of cool musicians are bending the rules and mixing and matching different genre elements (Rina Sawayama comes to mind). I do like a lot of music like that, but, like you said, that talk also ignores the histories of the genres and artists involved. It's also ignoring the fact that this is precisely how new genres are formed. Today's "unclassifiable" or "post-genre" sound will be tomorrow's glam metal or skiffle or dark wave.
I saw your thread about this video on twitter this morning. It made me a little apprehensive to watch because I could feel your angst. But, dude, this was really, really thoughtful and remarkable well communicated. I've had these thoughts about genres, but never had I been able to identify what my actual hangups were. Pointing out the importance of the culture and the history made the light bulb turn on. Thanks. Like, really, thank you.
All fans of music should have to watch this video. FWIW, I was on your side in the Def Leppard debate. Hysteria and Pyromania are really important records on many fronts, but I'll take High 'N Dry and On Through The Night as a matter of personal preference all day long.
Gosh, that Metalhead elephant is probably my favorite drawing I've ever seen.
In any case-- thanks for the thoughtful video! I must admit I've always found genres a little silly, but the idea of them representing historical and cultural context is something I hadn't though about or heard before, and helps me see their value. Curious to apply this idea to other genre'd things, like books
For me, genres are important because I'll hear a one-off song I really like, and being able to place it in a genre allows me to explore more music I will most likely enjoy.
What you said about codifying genres is pretty dang accurate.
In the hardstyle scene, the fanbase starting to label their own sub-genres even though over all it's all hardstyle.
Like first they started calling hardstyle songs with darker atmospheres, harder hitting distorted kickdrums, and flowing melodies "rawphoric"
Awesome look at a topic that I struggle with. Defining genres. I am an in-between. Cultural and historical influences have influence but the fan base seem to enjoy things being clearly defined and that definition makes music more marketable. The sub genres becoming so vast to describe music is an interesting thing to watch happening. I think it may have evolved for music that falls between the cracks and to keep purists happy. Thanks for another thought provoking clip.
Recently I was asked what genres do I like. Suddenly I realized that was a really hard question. I can't say more broad genres (Rock, Pop etc), because they contains some things which I like and some things which I don't. Also I can't say to specific genres (Synthwave, Post-metal etc) because they not so recognizable and I don't listen them every day.
In my opinion, there is much less problems with genres/subgenres/sub-subgenres right now. Reason - music streaming and music recommendational platforms. You pretty much forget about genre. You just listen to some music, you might like it or you might dislike it and that's it. Not all platforms are great, but some are.
Only one minor problem with that - I actually don't know what genre are songs from my playlist.
You forgot to draw the Thagomizer on the stegosaurus. Unsubbed.
i've seen a lot of your videos, this one is my fav :) thank youuuu
As someone who just doesn't really grok EDM, I am really hoping we get some videos based on your research into it, be it song analysis or an explanation of something cool you find out about the genre.
Fantastic video, great food for thought. I really like how you're into the history of metal music and all its sub-genres and developments. I study classical guitar and plan on writing my Bachelors somewhere around the topic, do you have any recommendations of well-written literature on the topic? It'd be greatly appreciated.
One of the few Amazing videos out there, thank you!
Hey I just wanted to let you know that, as a fan of both music and comedy, you've really started to up your game at the latter recently. I don't often find much in my music education channels that I actually find funny, but that bit about punk and jazz was great.
One of your best videos!
As always, thank you for a great video. This is actually a subject that I've been thinking about lately. Wouldn't you agree that some genres, as part of their cultural component, are partially defined by the way they get to their audience? What I mean by that is, some genres are (or were originally) defined by being underground, played in certain clubs, recorded with small labels. Some fans of either Punk, Grunge or alternative/indie Rock would always argue that the genre was "spoiled" or even "died" the minute it became successful. I admit that I sometimes struggle to tell apart some genres, and the differentiation seems to me only justified along cultural and narrative lines. This is all with much love and respect to all these genres of course.
Great video as usual. I think the important thing is to embrace the fact that genres and cultural factors shouldn't really influence what sounds good to you. All really innovative artists have taken a huge variety of influences from everything they could listen to. If Paul McCartney had only listened to the rock music of the time he would never have been able to write the songs he did.
I think you're spot on, on all of it. I thought all the sub genres were stupid but you opened my eyes in that they're useful for categorizing related stuff people may be interested in finding that's like stuff they love. Especially with platforms like UA-cam probably using complex algorithms to feed us just that. (That falls apart completely if you like pretty much all types of music though. My suggested videos are a mess of wtf? LOL!)
Anyway, I think the entry code aspect is important to some people growing up. It was to me personally in jr high and high school! I totally grew out of that, I figured everyone did eventually. Basically I think I'm disagreeing with a minor wording in the beginning. I'm probably wrong in disagreeing though since I ignored all these sub divisions and personally don't care about them. If I love it, I'll listen to it. (In retrospect you're right. Normal people probably don't want to listen to Ana Vidovic playing Asturias followed by Excision X-Rated followed by Aberdeen and Kansas then some Nat King Cole, Janes Addiction and some Wumpscut but it makes me happy lol. BTW Imagine Dragons Radioactive VEVO show with those badass drums is amazing!)
So, my solution to this, not that anyone asked, is to try to get granular with putting genres on things. I don't put Def Leppard as a whole into NWOBHM since the sound changed, I put the first couple of albums when they had the NWOBHM sound as NWOBHM and later stuff into Glam Metal or Hard Rock, depending on the song.
I love The1Janitor! First Adam Neely gives a shoutout to ContraPoints, and now this! It's often cool to see cross-UA-cam-genre acknowledgements :)
Neely gave a shoutout to Contra?? I know he watches and used to comment on her videos, but this is like next level
@@desia.brimou Yeah! It was in his most recent live Q+A, I think 14 or 15 minutes in. Apparently they went to the same school, too!
I never got why you drew a snowman for Harmony and the gag at 7:13 made me finally understand.
I like John Frow's view on the matter. It's not that a piece falls under one genre, it's that several genres shape how we listen a piece. A genre is more of a contract of framework between the listener and piece, that is signals what things to listen for to enjoy it. And most art pieces evoke several different compositional practices for the listener to recognize and listen to. Ofc Frow goes beyond that into complication, but this simple function is why putting pieces in boxes like you're in a music store is not reflective of how art actually works.
Proliferation and over-specification of genres is also going on in novels. It seems to be driven by an approach to marketing that depends on exactly matching "product" to a subgenere that has an already identified audience.
Great video - not sure if this is within the scope of your discussion (though implied) but different perceptions of “authenticity” are also important to address here. Our perception of authenticity can be informed by both culture and history, but generally subscribing to only one of these modes of understanding leads to further divide
Good timing with this video given the controversy going on with the old town road song going onto and off of the country charts. All you need for a song to be country is billy ray cirus voice on it
Great video. Witty and informative. A winning combination!
One of my favorites so far! Well said, and important to have said.
also, i'm super interested in this because i often find that when i'm in the mood for a particular kind of music, it tends to only vaguely relate to the genre(s) that music is commonly categorized under. like one common mood i find myself in is centered around Cake, The Fratellis, and Bitter:Sweet. which is very different from my Arctic Monkeys, Kent, The Kooks mood. which, needless to say, is miles away from my Natalie Imbruglia, Lilly Allen, No Doubt mood. additionally, my current favourite band, Gacharic Spin, i feel is well described as a revival or reimagining of glam rock, even though the sound is quite different. the band feels more related to the likes of David Bowie, Kiss, and The Runaways than to its contemporaries. like i kinda feel like if glam rock had survived and kept evolving past the 80s, it would look and sound very similar to Gacharic Spin.
“Granfathered” great verb dude! Thanks for the video
As a part of the electronic community I think that the way that we've created literally hundreds of subgenres is incredibly funny, my personal favorite branch goes from electronic>EDM>Hardcore>speedcore if the song is around or over 300 bpm and is characterized by strong kicks forming the melody, speedcore then branches into two main subgenres, melodic speedcore (which replaces the harsh kicks of speedcore melodies with more traditional edm sounds while still keeping the distinctive kicks), and splittercore which is the same genre as speedcore but in the 600-1000 bpm range, splittercore then leads into extratone which is the same except with a bpm range of 1000+
I've started listening to speedcore&co lately, do you have some suggestions?
@@legrandliseurtri7495 of course! Kobaryo and T+pazolite are the main contenders for melodic speedcore (as well as Camellia but he makes such a wide variety of genres I can't really call him a speedcore creator) if you want something a bit harsher Roughsketch and especially Diabarha are my personal favorites
@@vox_5747 Thanks! I added some of them to my watch later list. Which is getting quite long, but I'll get to these ones someday lol.
though id absolutely love a video about the history of jazz chords thatd be amazing:D awesome show man!!!
I stopped thinking about Genres long ago when composing new songs or comparing songs.
I just go "It's like this song but...".
Thanks very much for planting this seed when I first watched this video years ago.
I have nothing but respect for your choice of image to reflect the phrase "don't matter" at 2:20
Your drawing is becoming more subtle and clever; I really like it. Great topic. Damn the purists.
Such an interesting video, especially in the context over the current discussion around Old Town Road and it's hypothetical place on the country charts.
In the late 90s early aughts, a lot of EDM genres (house, techno, tech house, progressive, etc) were very close technically and different mostly through their feel. Their similarities allowed a lot of crossover in DJ sets, and this resulted in a lot of people rabidly qualifying a song into a certain genre based on the classification of the DJ. "Pumpin'" by Novy & Eniac was House if a house DJ played it and techno if they first heard a techno DJ play it. It obviously contains elements of both and this observation cemented in my mind the futility of arguing over them and just accepting that genres are about quickly communicating the elements that exist in a piece.
Lol. My genre is idk. Technical prog pop punk with some heavy elements? It’s really based upon my influences tho. Usually verses with 4 bar repeating power chords like let’s say (using references from my influences here) blink 182 and taking back Sunday with added lead guitar and more fluent bass like RHCP and adding a bit of prog from Rush, and also having some metal bits inspired from a mix of The Fall of Troy and Between the Buried and Me, not necessarily from the melodic complexities and musical prowess, but more so having a cool time sig and decent harmonization. Also some boy band-ish vocal harmonies, randomly jazzy chords and lack of direction for what I would call my demo album of songs I have written over at this point 2 decades and we get a bunch of songs that don’t really fit together but have a flow like they do. A lot of my early stuff was basically 4/4 pop punk and I still plan on re-recording even though my original guitarist has since passed, intertwined with my newer more proggy shit and trying to come up with lyrics to at least hold it all together like a Floyd album.
Anyway like I am trying to say that we focus too much on genre and not enough of the music itself. If ur saying people aren’t being happy with a way Def Leppard is classified it seems to me they people decide not to listen to it or other music in general just cuz it’s not the same feel of the genre they think it is.
That’s prolly why nobody cares to listen to my music :X
I think the most complex exercise of genre fusion/ identity is the Japanese 90s Shibuya-Kei scene.
It’s quite literally a hodgepodge of western genres (Bossa Nova, House, lounge and hip hop to name a few) and many of those artists incorporate a number of them into weird unique styles but they only fit into an umbrella term.
If vastly different artists like that can be incorporated but labeled under one genre then is there a distinguishing difference in the long run?
And those labels/ fusions can serve an example for this video that name alone isn’t necessarily an indication of your own type of music but an association with it and making a good song under it
I think you nailed the reason people object to describing Def Leppard as NWOBHM. That first album totally is though, and you are right about that. You yourself say that part of a genre is its history and stories. And like you said, Def Leppard is part of the glam story rather than NWOBHM. I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, but I did just wanted to add that thought. I think there's sense to be made of why people objected to that, and that they're not all bad reasons. Ultimately, I'd probably describe the album as NWOBHM, rather than the band because that communicates their story much better.
Been watching for a while now. Good metal talk!!
I think it’s important to have genres as a way to categorize a type of music to help people find more like that genre, but I don’t think that their should be hard rules to a genre. Rules should probably be more defined when looking for a more specific genre or sub genre, but rules shouldn’t be absolute
Wow, amazingly well-stated. Thank you for putting into perfect words common thoughts of so many.
I am currently researching music to come up with a comprehensive list of genres that all music can be categorized into. Music CAN be clearly categorized based on sound, vibe, culture, and instrumentation, it just takes a lot of analyzing and nuance. In my research, I am identifying different styles of music based on whether they're a movement, supergenre, genre, subgenre, or microgenre. Movements are the foundational pillers of all music that all music can be fit into in some way. These movements are: Traditional, Sacred, Classical, Blues, Jazz, Rock & Roll, Pop, and Electronic. All supergenres, genres, subgenres, and microgenres can fit into these movements in some way. I'd say Radioactive can fit both into the Rock & Roll and Pop movements because it is a pop rock song. Also quick disclaimer, I am not using "Pop" as a term that means "Popular" I am defining "Pop" as a distinct movement with a unique sound and vibe that is not like Rock or any of the other genres. Just because a song is popular, that doesn't mean it is pop.
In my research, I have noticed that when looking at music made before the renaissance period, you really have to take culture into account due to the fact that music itself was created originally to serve a purpose such as putting your child to sleep, worshiping a god, increasing productivity or increasing morale before a battle. With the invention of society came the invention of music as a recreational thing rather than for utility. Once music became recreational, then all the unique sounds and styles could begin to develop and the first sounds and genres were directly influenced by the cultures they came from due to their values and the instrumentation used. After the renaissance period is when music begins to be used not just recreationally but also artistically. And this is when categorizing music begins to become more about the sound and the vibe it gives off rather than the culture it came from or the instrumentation used.
Since you like metal... any chance of an analysis of The Bee by Amorphis? If you haven’t heard the song before I really suggest giving it a listen, there’s a lot compositionally to chew on.
i agree with genres limiting people, but i feel like specifically with metal, all the different "genres" are more like adjectives. like, because there are so many bands with distinct sounds, we have shorthand to describe the aspects of their music, and its frickin cool when a lot of those adjectives describe a single band
Yeah, like you can hear a lot of differents comparing like metallica (heavy metal/trash metal), dtagonforce ("extreme" power metal) and slipknot (alternative metal/nu metal) songs, you can totally say that those are three different genres, but the thing goes to far
Like wtf techno viking metal, why does that shit exist and why does it sound so freacking cool?!?!
Eh, a lot of it feels like rather desperate attempts to be declarative as something "new", differentiating from that fuddy-duddy music that came before. Even Motorhead wrote power ballads. What now?
Minor blips from the conventions of a genre does not a whole new style of music make. The Beatles covered how many during their tenure, and are they anything more than an innovative rock band?
It seems trying to beat the music historians to the punch of how some sub-genre will be viewed in the context of the times, claiming zydeco whiplash metal as some new undiscovered country, just ignore the footprints already on the shore.
It's still rock and roll to me.
man I thought it was another punk song...
My problem with "genre" is simply the fact that, I'm making my own music now, I'm expected by the internet to know what the genre my music is so I can properly tag it for the right people to find it. But, I don't know what makes genres and I don't even know what genre the wide majority of people would consider my music to be.
I recently wanted to recommend a bunch of metal bands to someone, and along with a song each I wanted to give them a short description of each band's sound... In the very most cases it ended up being something like "They're usually described a thrash metal band, but a lot of their songs boarder with power, with clear influences of pirate and nintendo. They self-label their style as 'happy trainwreck anthem'." Genres a neat to give you a general idea of what to expect, especially if you get very specific. But also, most artists don't fall neatly 100% within just one genre, especially if you get very specific.
Also that metal genres wikipedia article is amazing, and it's not even exhaustive.
I think this is true for parent genres, however sub-genres tend to keep the culture/history from its parent genre(s) while differentiating the compositional practice. There is also allowance for multiple inheritance. Many genres also have ideals which are important to them, dance music is to dance, classical values elegancy and expression, jazz values theory, rap values lyricality. There are also attributes/vibes/moods which span across genres and subgenres. Examples would be progressive, melodic, ambient, vocal, etc... I largely use the genre tag in combination with attributes to group my music together in a practical manner. For me, it is useful to know if a song is progressive house with deep minimal ambient vocal attributes vs deep progressive trance with vocals. To me, these would typically be brought together in two completely different sets due to the specificity at which I tend to play. It is also important when recommending or describing music. Genre is just a descriptor tool... It would be silly to say I only like songs written in a particular bpm or particular key, etc... Genres let you generalize the ideals you are looking for with the right specificity. For example, if I asked you for recommendations on trance songs, you might recommend differently than if I asked for recommendations for electronic music in general. At live shows, however, the culture and history are typically lumped together under the parent genre for the most part, with some sub-genres having their own ideals and sub-culture. Genres stick around and evolve due to changes in what is important to people. And since people often use genres to describe what is important to them, genres tend to be a touchy subject. By saying Imagine Dragons are a Rock group, you might offend rock fans because Imagine Dragons do not portray any of the things they value. Those that choose to relate their identity with the genre will naturally be disappointed or upset. By saying you love rock music, maybe you value the dark/hard/grimey attributes of rock, and Imagine Dragons are none of those. In that case, I might show you a techno song which you enjoy more than Imagine Dragons, because of the match in ideals. Imagine Dragons could still fit in the rock bucket compositionally speaking, sure, but I would argue that they fall under pop music as the culture of the people that attends their shows would not likely align with the culture of people who attend rock shows. But at the end of the day, genre doesn't really matter because it is a flexible abstract, and what matters to all of us music lovers is the concrete thing. Just some food for thought :)
the problem I have with genres is that in the end, its clasification, and with classification, people may disregarde the whole genere, just becasue they heard like 3 bands, and regarded the whole genre be just like them...
I’ve always felt that genre is something applied in post to a song, not something inherent to it. I think a lot of musical limitations and stagnation are a result of people putting genre first before expression. Make your music and let others decide what genre it is. When I make music I almost always end up making IDM (not particularly good or original idm mind you), but I never sit down with the intention of making IDM, it’s just the end point of the conventions I gravitate towards.
When you drew the history symbol do you is it a historical building or 3 steel I-beams laying side by side?
music cliche it looks like a simplified version of the Supreme Court building
I have said for a long time that before genres there are really only two kinds of music. Good music and bad music. There is good in all genres if you dig deep enough. Even country. What category an artist falls into is the decision of the listener.
Take this chord.
Is it J A Z Z ??
I have a very strong preference for genre hybridization, especially when it is extreme.
I don’t like to play favorites with things, but I do have a favorite band ever: Between the Buried and Me. I have heard them described as “genre hybridists”. I just know I love them (the most), and that that name is apt.
But mixing genres only feels natural to me, and I don’t understand why others feel differently. Even after watching this video, I still feel like genre purism is pretty much just like sports fandom - another norm that makes absolutely no sense to me.
What are your thoughts on bands like Mr. Bungle, Ween, or Death Grips, where they combine genres not just in terms of compositional practices, but also with a complete disregard for the culture and history behind any of the genres, thereby not fitting into any one genre themselves?
This reminds me of Brendan Urie of panic of the Disco, his signing is pretty much the only thing that doesn't change but panic has changed and experimented greatly
Excellent video - bridges music to deeper human analysis on behavioural/cultural ideals and ethnomusicology. Could be the beginning of a very good thesis...
A couple of weeks ago I was in a studio having my song mixed when another songwriter walked in and started chatting with the mixing engineer- which btw was ok because we all knew each other and the engineer was just mixing away while talking. He was using the speakers so we could all hear my song and atone point the other songwriter pauses, listens, and then asks, “what genre is this?” And I said, “I don’t know” and I was telling the truth. I could tell you about all the artists I listen to and they all influence me in some way - but what genre I write? I don’t know. Whenever I upload a song to CD Baby I always put Singer Songwriter as a genre because that’s about the only thing I can say with certainty: I write and sing my own songs. But it doesn’t say anything about how, for instance, I love using jazzy sounding chords but I’m no jazz musician by any stretch of the word.
Hey, you forgot Prog Death :p (tips, listen to Alkaloid - rise of the cephalopods, or Funerals for a continent, you will like it i am sure)
Also i really think that music don't always have to fit in a box. Which is amazing and gives rise to a lot mixture between genre, and it is often what gives rise to a new one.
Also i am more confortable to use genre in a descriptive manner rather than in a prescriptive way. Even though it can be as you said to write a piece to fit in a certain box, style or genre.
This is interesting. Lately I've been listening to different types of 60's music and I've noticed that some of the same groups appear in different playlists for different subgenres. Also within one of those playlists you can hear wildly different kinds of songs, despite them all having something in common. In general I listen to mostly lots of different rock bands, from The Beatles to RHCP, and despite all the different subgenres between them they all are rock bands. It seems we do take genres a bit too seriously.