Trashy Pearls | My Music Blog

Archive for March, 2009

Rock is an exciting and highly admired genre of popular music which mainly appeals to the young generation. This extremely famous form has attained great recognition and adulation amongst the music lovers for several decades. The most admirable aspect of this genre is its variety and unique style. This form uses several high tech instruments which give an attractive and interesting appeal to it. The instruments like synthesizers, mouth organ and piano etc are used while playing the melodies. Rock is the modern and advanced form of music that is comparatively faster and louder than the conventional genres like classic and folk. It gives the artists a liberty to experiment with variety of styles and express themselves with freedom. The soul of rock is the rock band or the group of musicians and singers who collectively play the songs.

The youth is simply crazy for this form of music; they are ardent fans of the various rock stars. The rock albums take you through the various aspects and emotions of life. The words of the songs simply enthrall the senses and thrill the listeners. In this kind of music the prominent vocal melody is accompanied with hard instruments like drums, brass and guitar etc, along with the mellotrans and other keyboard instruments.

Some rock bands also use the conventional instruments like harmonica, melodica, banjo etc. Some highly creative artists have experimented a lot with the less known instruments like sitar and mandolin. This gave their songs a completely different appeal.

Rock music evolved around 1940’s and 1950’s. This genre is highly influenced by the country music and blues which were very popular around that time. This style was basically a blue-based song with fast and peppy dance tracks. One can find the classic albums on various online music stores. You can search top rock music albums on the internet.

The rock reached great heights with several amazing rock stars that awed the audiences with amazing performances. Elvis Presley is the most admired and popular artist in the world of rock; his astounding style, classic dance movements and incredible songs entertained the music lovers. The Beetles is the most famous and highly applauded rock band. They had the most numbers of the chart topping hits.

Eventually by the late 1960’s the various rock bands emerged which were famous amongst the music lovers at that time. The bands from United States and Britain gained immense popularity. Some of the most famous bands were Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Queen and Judas Priest.

By the 1980 the glam metal genre made waves in the rock music world. Bon Jovi, New York Dolls, Sweet, Guns and Roses, Twisted Sister and Kiss were the several most popular artistes of the 1980’s. In the 1990’s Rock soared new heights with emergence of some highly commendable forms like Grunge. This popular genre was associated with the fusion of various elements like hardcore punk and heavy metal sound to give amazingly enthralling melodies. The lyrics of the songs focused on the themes of social concern like entrapment and alienation. The Grudge had heavy and loud tunes with extensive use of guitar and fuzz. Several famous bands like Alice in Chains, Candlebox and Soundgarden, gained a wide audience applause and appreciation.

The Britpop and Indie Pop were few forms that gained immense adulation in the 1990’s. In the 2000 several new styles of pop gained recognition and flourished with great adulation. Garage rock, Emo and Metal core are the most admired sub genres of rock. Various rock bands like the White Stripes, The Vines and The Strokes came with some thrilling and happening albums. These are very famous CD rock music hits.

With the emergence of MTV rock gained immense hype and recognition. Internet further enhanced the growth of this unique genre. The highly popular rock music CDs are available on the internet, you can easily find your favourite DVD for rock music on various websites.

Everyone of us has music inside. And it is not an abstract statement, but scientifically proved fact. Molecules of DNA “sound” inside us and it is very important if music from outside is in keeping with music inside us.

Scientists pay great attention to researches concerning music’s influence on human beings. Attention to such researches has increased recently and their results are interesting and convincing. For example, after listening classical music cows have increased their yield of milk and mimosa and petunias have grown faster and burst into bloom 2 weeks earlier. 120 breast-feed mothers took part in experiment in Japan. Some women listened classical music, other women listened pop and rock music. In first group the amount of milk increased in 20 per cent, and in second group – reduced twice.

Such researches are the attempt to synthesise science and art (music). But in ancient India science and art were considered to be the parts of single creative power. All knowledge of ancient India one can find in the Vedas (Holy Indian Scripture) and one of four main Vedas Sama-Veda is entirely dedicated to music. According to the Vedas the creating of the world started from the primordial sound “OM”, which appeared while division of the Almighty (Sadashiva) and his creative energy (Adi Shakti). “OM” was the foundation of the universe and the first musical sound.

Human subtle system consists of 7 main chakras (energetic centres) and 3 channels, which rule mental, emotional and physical life activity of person. 7 chakras of our subtle body revolve with certain frequency and form an octave, which consists of 7 tones of proper altitude. Intervals between them should reflect intervals between chakras. These tones were called musical sounds – notes (’svars’ in Indian music). They sound – sa, re, ga, ma, pa, da, ni and they are in keeping with chakras – from first till seventh. 5 notes can change (fall and rise), creating 5 additional sounds (left and right aspects of chakras). Thus, these notes are built-in subtle body and represent the ideal “repository” of information, the repository of those feelings, emotions, wishes and thoughts, which composer or performer has.

While listening music a person receives some influence on subtle level, which later appears on physical body. Same notes can bring destruction or good, it depends on the inner condition of person. For example, anger, aggression, drug intoxication and so on, which have power over the mind of composer or musician, will find the reflection in his music. There are some styles and forms in music which reflect only such bad qualities. Such music may do harm not only the musician, but also a person who listen to it. Clear, inspired people, who have lucid mind will never create such music. They created only folk music with great variety and classical music which has its roots in folk music.

Let’s listen to music, which is in keeping with music inside us.

The evolution of music has brought forth hundreds of music variations in so many forms to the basic music categories. This diversity in music forms have categorized in alternative music those ish style music that come as slight style alterations to most popular music forms (i.e. alternative rock or rock-ish music for rock music that does not really fit into the mainstream genres of a particular time period).

Alternative music is a category coined as a sort of catch-all for those sub-genres that are unclassified but can be traced with similarities to popular genres. These alternative music are usually those that were not released commercially and are recorded on independent labels. Some music from this category, from word of mouth, would soon find its way into the mainstream and become commercially successful.

Off-Country

Country music that does not conform to the prevailing country style is generally classified as alternative music. Musicians playing alternative country music are generally those who do not subscribe to high production values and popularity concerns. Their music are of lo-fi sound quality and often incorporated strong punk and rock and roll qualities and contained lyrics that are bleak, gothic or socially aware. The range of their music spans American folk tune to rockabilly and honky-tonk to a fusion of rock and country music. Alternative country music has developed several namesakes like Americana, neotraditional, progressive country, lo-fi country, and twang core.

Not-so-hip Hip-Hop

The alternative version of hip hop has not been very popular. Artists claiming to play alternative rap or alternative hip hop are non-conformists who wish to turn from the common drug and violence-directed mainstream rap. Alternative hip-hop fuses influences from funk, rock, jazz, soul and reggae. Some of these alternative hip-hop groups have somehow found themselves in mainstream success like Black Star, Mos Def, De La Soul, M.I.A., Kidz in the Hall, Consequence, Jurassic 5 and Brand Nubian.

Electric Rock

Alternative music is most often used to refer to alternative rock. It used to be that the word alternative was used in the 1980s to refer to punk rock-inspired bands that do not belong to major record labels and have no clear genre association. There are a lot of influences in alternative rock namely, grunge, Britpop, gothic rock and indie pop. Most of these alternative rock artists were considered cult acts and recorded their albums on independent labels. Their popularity was largely due to the exposure their alternative music got in college radios and word-of-month. The band Nirvana entry in the alternative music scene has propelled the popularity of several other bands playing alternative rock music. Metallica is another group who made it big in the mainstream music world playing alternative rock.

Perhaps an offshoot of alternative rock is alternative dance music. This kind of music combined elements of dance-pop which includes forms of electronic house or techno, and alternative rock genres. Alternative dance music can be characterized as mostly electronic, pre-programmed beats and sequenced synthesizer melodies.

As there will always be popular music, there will always be a spot for alternative music. After all, there will always be music that falls somewhere in-between, music that is somewhat like but not entirely the same as what is predominantly popular at a certain period in time.