Even with the advent and popularization of pop, soul, R&B, rap and hip-hop in the MTV era, rock is a genre of music that has retained a wide fan base with hordes of enthusiasts since the late 1960s. Read on to learn of the origins of rock music and its proponents...
What is Rock?
Essentially "Rock" is an eclectic mix of a prominent vocal melody accompanied
by guitar, drums, and bass. Several bands use an innovative mix of piano,
synthesizers, saxophone, flute, mandolin and sitar to heady effect. The
earliest known roots of rock music as a unique genre of music branching out
from rock n roll date back to the early-to-mid 1960s. Over the next 5
decades since then, rock has been propelled into being one of the most popular
and best-selling branches of commercial music by now legendary artists.
With the wave of popularity of rock n roll, made immensely popular by the
Beatles, two British bands Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath, in completely
contrasting styles, founded the sub-genres of progressive rock and heavy
metal. Pink Floyd explored a more psychedelic sound combining electric guitars
and keyboards to create amazing sound variations while Black Sabbath delved
into a darker, heavier sound emphasizing a slow tempo and tuned down guitars.
The next few years saw an explosion in the rock genres in general giving rise
to varied genres discussed in this article along with other less known genres.
As you will be able to tell many genres are very hard to define and others
overlap with each other making clear lines between genres impossible to draw.
Rock Classifications
Numerous branches of rock have been born rock n roll, soft rock, hard
rock, progressive rock, metal, alternative, grunge... each of which have
several subtle variations. e.g heavy metal has branched off into progressive,
death, acid, dark ambient, power, symphonic, Goth
the list goes on.
Progressive Rock is a very open and intertwined genre of music
which got its start in the late 60s, and continues to this day. Prog Rock
artists try to take the roots of rock and apply them to a more classically
influenced structure. The music is often very elaborate and generally requires
very exceptional musicians with a great deal of talent. It is not unusual for
Prog Rock pieces to be very lengthy Echoes by Pink Floyd is an early example
of this phenomenon and the tradition continues to this day in other pieces
like First Light by Shadow Gallery.
Heavy Metal or Metal as it is currently called started back in
the late 60s and is often credited to Black Sabbath. Heavy metal found its
roots in the blues and psychedelic music genres, and got its inspiration in
the misery of daily life in industrialized cities combined with a fascination
for mysticism. The stereotypical metal song combines heavy thudding drums
sounds (often with a double bass) with thickly distorted guitar riffs,
screaming vocals and powerful rhythm.
Progressive Metal or Prog Metal
as some call it is a combination
of progressive rock and heavy metal which came into popularity during the late
80s with Queensryche and Dream Theater. Progressive metal has a small but
very loyal and devoted group of fans who are enthralled by the combination of
many unusual elements inherited from the progressive rock tradition such as
incorporation of Jazz, Orchestration and other varied influences. Like in
Progressive Rock, it is common for pieces to be in excess of 10-15 minutes and
sometimes more like the 24-minute Octavarium by Dream Theater.
Hard Rock is a form of rock & roll that finds its roots in the
early 1960s garage rock and draws from jazz, blues, rock and roll, and other
influences like folk in the case of famed hard rock artist Led Zeppelin who's
main writer and composer Jimmy Page was a famous studio musician and expert
guitar player who was interested in Celtic and folk influences. These diverse
influences can be clearly heard in one of the most influential albums of this
style Led Zeppelin 4. AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and Iron Maiden are
classic examples of early hard rock.
Over the last 50 years, Rock has become one of the most popular genres of
music producing numerous iconic artists who have written the history of rock
with their own unique contributions to the memories of many generations.
Amazingly, several of the above remain as popular as ever with Pink Floyd
drawing record crowds at the Live 8 concert and several other bands formed in
the 70s releasing albums recently.