In a few weeks, I’m going to be doing some guest blogging on NewMusicBox. I’m very excited, but also a bit nervous, because I’m an outspoken anti-fan of avant-garde modernism. I don’t want to antagonize NMB’s readership, so I’m trying to figure out how to write about this stuff without being a jerk. I’m using …
Tag Archives: genres
How to tell funk from disco
Funk and disco overlap broadly, but they are not the same thing. Funk lovers like me instinctively know what the difference is. But how do we know? One thing we could do is point to the beat. Disco uses that iconic four-to-the-floor pattern, and funk doesn’t, so case closed, right? Well, it’s not so simple. …
What are all the genres of Western music and their typical characteristics?
To answer your immediate question, the best thing to do is to go through a well-established music database and listen to representative tracks from each genre: Amazon, the iTunes store, Pandora, Last.fm, Spotify if you’re in Europe, SoundCloud, take your pick. Figure out who the ten or twenty most popular and influential artists are in …
Continue reading “What are all the genres of Western music and their typical characteristics?”