What is Rock Music?

In parte potrebbe venirti in aiuto Wikipedia.

"Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define."....

Ma come la metteresti con brani tipo "Concerto Grosso" dei New Troll, "Bouree" dei Jethro Tull o "A whiter Shade of Pale" dei Procol Harum??

... aspettiamo qualche musicologo per una definizione più qualificata

I am not a musicologist but, like all pop genres (of which rock is always a part, even in its most complex variations), it cannot be defined solely by strictly musical parameters, but also by sociocultural ones. I mean that many elements intervene to determine the context, which is what truly matters; so much so that the timbral aspect, which also characterizes the modes of consumption, is even more relevant than any musical component found "on paper."

In practice, if you take, for example, a Paganini capriccio and have Van Halen play it, you have a rock piece and no longer "classical music," even if the notes are identical to those written for violin by the composer.

Therefore, in my opinion, one could even say that rock is a style (because it can also be defined solely through performance practice), even before being a genre.

And I will add that many "pop" artists have a perception of themselves that is different from the purely technical one. This leads dance, blues, pop and other artists and musicians to feel like "rockers". And in reality some of them are, even if only to a small extent. The fact that pop-rock, punk-rock, post-rock, rockabilly exist tells us how rock is also a kind of foundational genre, a world that everyone wants to be part of and of which they feel like children, from Elvis Presley to Radiohead, passing through Britney Spears and Kate Bush

Mmm....

In my opinion, genres by their very definition cannot describe music, whatever it may be. Words serve to contextualize music and describe its main characteristics, period.

Turning back to "rock" music. Usually, as mentioned above, it is music typically in 4/4 for guitar, bass, vocals, drums: but I don't know for what reason the connection between blues and rock is always forgotten: Chuck Berry is a glaring example of this connection.

Rock has blues as its main matrix and its melodic/harmonic/rhythmic evolutions.

One thing I also don't understand is why pop music, which means nothing other than "popular music," is confused with rock.

I disagree with Thallo when they say that Britney Spears or Kate Bush have anything to do with rock: rock is something else entirely.

I spoke of a world that everyone wants to be part of, and there are elements taken from rock icons in Britney Spears (first of all, the raspy use of her voice). This doesn't make her a rock artist, but it clarifies the concept (I believe) for which many artists feel rock.

With Kate Bush, it is different. She has made a thousand songs in a thousand different styles, but I don't see any reason why she cannot be considered a rock artist. "The Dreaming" has always seemed like a rock album to me. Experimental, with world music influences, but songs like "Get out of my house" are certainly not pop...

Speaking of Kate Bush, one of her tracks, "This Woman's Work," was reinterpreted by Maxwell, a soul singer; it is a masterpiece (for me, if I could write a piece like that, I would be very happy). The same track sung by Bush doesn't quite work for me in certain parts, whereas from Maxwell, on the contrary, it works very well. Thus, the same piece in different hands, with the proper adjustments, can cross over into another genre, or draw from a genre due to its characteristics while at the same time remaining "confined" to the original genre, which in this case I cannot even assign to a precise genre anyway.

Lucas wrote:

But how would you categorize pieces like "Concerto Grosso" by New Troll, "Bourree" by Jethro Tull or "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum??

... let's wait for some musicologist for a more qualified definition

I am not a musicologist, but I was a rock guitarist for 20 years and a classical, jazz, and rock pianist for a few years, and over time I have realized quite a few things, so, without false modesty, I feel more than qualified ;)

The question to be asked would be: how was rock born? Here I gave some answers http://www.pianoconcerto.it/forum/index.php?/topic/1822-scusate-ma-i-pink-floyd-sono-un-gruppo-rock-o-cosa-cosa-significa-musica-rock/#entry17369

In the case of the songs you mentioned, what happens is this: popular music (pop, rock, etc.) is always a mix of various styles. Tina Turner's rock is rock with blues and gospel influences; the rock of "A Whiter Shade of Pale", or the music of ELP, etc., has classical music influences, and in these genres some elements of rock born from blues are still present: guitars, rock drum rhythms, etc., but the harmony deviates from that of blues, since blues harmony and classical harmony are culturally opposed (Black slaves obviously were not interested in classical music until the advent of jazz). In the case of "A Whiter Shade of Pale", the harmony is actually even copied from a Bach cantata. The category for this piece is more "pop" than rock. "Pop" means "popular" and rock is also popular music, so it is also "pop".... but in the strict sense of the term, pop is a more melodic and less aggressive version of popular music, while "rock" (which literally means "rock") is the more aggressive and hard popular music, due in large part to the use of distorted guitars. Guitar distortion is obtained using a special amplifier (special because it works with valves/tubes), and turning the volume up to the maximum or nearly so: this causes an overload in the sound, distorting it. A kind of "metamorphosis" is achieved in the guitar sound, lengthening the sustain of the notes.

A very long discussion as well. All of this was also born from African-Americans, guitarists like Freddie King, Albert King, etc.

Returning to the fact of classical influences in rock, if you listen to something like "Far Beyond The Sun" by Yngwie Malmsteen, you hear rock music with strong classical influences, but those blues ones are still there, for example the use of pentatonic scales in some central solos.

pianistamaggiorenneDi38 wrote:

popular music (pop, rock, etc.) is always a mix of various styles.

I would say "holy words"! :-) While the so-called genre system can serve to label much music, "hybrid" pieces and artists are now everywhere (and they have always been)

"Rock" music was born as a peculiar prerogative (along with the way of dressing) of the so-called "youth". Who constitute a social category born at the end of the second world war. Before the conflict, social classes were defined exclusively in economic terms. And even consumption was specifically directed towards certain categories. In the field of music, for example, country was aimed at white peasants, blues and rhythm & blues at African Americans, and pop at the small white bourgeoisie.

The "youth" represent the first social category transversal to all classes. And they also constitute the first case in which industry turns its attention to a subject without any personal economic power. Rock & roll takes its cues from the stylistic elements proper to music of African American derivation, but it also feeds on other genres, including oriental music. It is a form of expression that arises primarily to contain and sterilize the subversive charges that the malaise following the post-war period could have unleashed, especially in the youngest individuals. Their parents, in fact, those who were adolescents at the time of the conflict, were the first in human history to refuse to become adults.

thallo wrote:

I would say "holy words"! :-) As much as the so-called genre system can serve to label a lot of music, "hybrid" pieces and artists are now everywhere (and they have always been there)

indeed, and I recall in an old arrangement book by Don Sebesky, where he had written something interesting: ''in reality, a new style of music is just an older style mixed with a slightly newer style''. Of course, it's a generalization, and I think it only applies to popular music, anyway..... I don't really think that, say, Schoenberg's music has influences from older styles. I have never studied it, but listening to it and taking a look at a score, I find nothing that even remotely reminds me of styles made in an era preceding his; it seems like something completely alien, even to my ears. But obviously Schoenberg and the Rolling Stones are different planets......

Schoenberg was a master of composition, his compositions are full of influences from 'older' composers :-)

yes, I know he was a master of composition ......as a self-taught person I studied his treatise on harmony and from there I solidly learned all the basics of traditional harmony (his treatise taught exactly that). Unfortunately, I didn't understand the last third of the book and had to abandon it, but what I learned was, for me, a true education. I think I bought all his books even though unfortunately I didn't study them, I only read them (which is almost equivalent to nothing, at least on an intellectual level).

Great Schoenberg, his harmonic and compositional explanations have an acuity of a level that I have never encountered in any other book. I am not a fanatic of his music (I have quite traditional tastes) but naturally I respect his vision and for me he is nonetheless a great composer. If one can compose what he composed, I don't see why they couldn't compose in a romantic, or classical, or baroque style, or whatever, which is something he certainly did... he wasn't just an academic who taught and that's it, as you already know.

Well, no rock band will ever be able to incorporate Schoenberg's style, ha ha