How Many Music Genres Are There in the World?

Musical genres are becoming less and less important. Genres can be misleading and are often a reason why people avoid certain artists.

Country Music Also known as American country, this genre developed in the United States. Its origin is rooted in folk, blues and western music.

The website Musicgenrelist presents a list of 1,505 genres. It is a democratically constructed list of categories sent in by music lovers and verified by Sam Hughes.

Rock

Rock music originated from a variety of other genres but quickly established itself as an entirely unique and forceful style. It is characterized by powerful rhythms and amplified instruments and has a range of sub-genres.

Blues rock is a subgenre that blends elements of blues and rock music. It became popular in the 1960s in the UK and US. This genre features a heavy beat, aggressive texture and blues-scale guitar sounds.

Rhythm and blues, also known as R&B, is a musical genre that originated from African-American communities in the 1940s. It incorporates a wide range of styles including jazz, doo-wop and funk. It has a deep and recognizable sound, often featuring soulful vocals.

Country

Music genres have been around for millennia and can vary widely depending on culture and location. Music lovers often create their own genres, often by fusing styles together and new technology has made it easier than ever for musicians to produce music and share it with the world.

2. Country

Originally created as a combination of different fold styles country is characterized by its themes like going through hard times, love and storytelling. Famous artists include Shania Twain and Johnny Cash. In the early 2010s, bro-country a more lighthearted and contemporary style became popular.

Rap is centered around rhythm and rhyme with some sub-genres including gangsta rap, trap, and mumble rap. Artists include Eminem and Kendrick Lamar.

Hip-Hop

Music genres are often associated with particular social trends. Whether it’s the civil rights movement in the 60s and 70s or grunge culture in the 90s, music genres have always evolved with changing times.

Hip-hop is a music genre characterized by a beat and rapping vocals. Its style has evolved over time, with artists like Jurassic Five and A Tribe Called Quest adding a more complex rhyme scheme to the genre.

Besides being an art form, hip-hop is also a cultural movement that includes DJing, breakdancing and graffiti. It was started by black Americans in the 1970s and continues to bring awareness and social change today.

Reggae

A musical genre that emerged from Jamaican roots with a focus on Rastafari ideology. Its lyrics speak of love, spirituality, and social justice.

Ska is a rhythm style that is faster than rock steady and fuses Caribbean music with jazz, blues and American rhythm and blues. It also has a distinctive vocal style known as toasting.

Drum and bass is a dance genre that evolved from reggae. It has a deep beat and is based on the bass line which plays a central role. The bass is accompanied by other instruments and usually the vocals. It has influenced other genres such as electro and techno.

Soul

There are some music genres that are difficult to categorize. For example, Mod music, a style that originated in the 1960s in Britain, blends modern jazz with Northern Soul. It is also influenced by rock and pop music.

Other genres that defy easy classification include trance music, which uses heavily synthesized lead beats to induce a trance-like state in dancers. Some musicians are hard to pin down as well, like Lady Gaga, who has dabbled in several genres throughout her career. Her latest single with K-Pop star Rose shows that she can successfully make the jump from pop to classical.

Electronic

Music genres evolve as musicians take elements from different styles and combine them to create new sounds. This makes it hard to classify certain songs because they defy genre definitions.

A subgenre of rock, grunge emerged in the 1980s and is characterized by its distorted guitar riffs. It has influenced many bands, including Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

Another popular music genre is electronic dance music (EDM). It has a wide range of sub-genres, including house, trap, and trance. It also features a fast-paced rhythm and beat. These beats are augmented by synthesized vocals and samples. It is an ideal genre for dancing. It also has a diverse crowd of fans.

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The 7 Musical Notes

The first seven musical notes are: a, b, c, d, e, f, and g. Each of these music notes lasts one beat. The next longest note is the semi-breve, which has a dot and lasts two beats.

This is followed by the half note, which has a vertical line on the right side of the note head, which halves the duration (two beats).

A

A note has a pitch and a duration. It can also have an accidental, which changes the sound of the note.

The most common accidentals are sharps, which raise the pitch by a semitone or half-step, and flats, which lower the pitch by a semitone or half-step. A note can also have a natural, which cancels the previous accidental.

B

B is the second note of the musical alphabet and the seventh degree of the natural scale starting from C. It can be either sharp or flat.

A sharp sign looks like a pound or hash symbol and means to go up one note. A flat sign looks like a lower case letter b and means to go down one note.

C

The letter C is one of the seven musical notes. It is important to learn its pattern because it can make reading music easier.

A whole note (or semibreve) lasts four beats. It has a hollow head and no stem and can be dotted to increase its length. A half note has a stem and lasts two beats. It is often shortened to a quarter note.

D

The note D sits a fifth above the tonic in this scale. Its technical name reflects this and its relationship to the tonic – ‘dominant’.

Each musical note has a duration or time value. This is the amount of beats it lasts for. It also has a pitch or frequency, which is determined by its octave. This is important for musicians to know.

E

There are seven musical notes in total. However, the exact sequence depends on which clef you are using.

The first note, called a minim, lasts for 1/2 beat. The next, a crotchet, lasts for 1/4 beat. The third, a semiquaver, lasts for 1/16 beat. And the last, a demisemiquaver, lasts for 1/32 beat.

Each of these musical notes has a different name based on their value and appearance.

F

A note that is sounded twice as long as the same sound at the next higher octave. A group of notes whose duration exceeds that of a single note is called a chord.

A symbol that indicates a sound that is lowered in pitch by one semitone or half-step. It is written with a sharp sign, as shown above, or a flat symbol.

G

G is the fifth note of the scale of C major. It also gives its name to the treble clef.

G chords are often one of the first chords people learn to play on lute based instruments like ukulele or guitar. This is because they require only a few fingers to play.

G is also a trademark for a movie rating indicating that it is suitable for all ages.

H

Guido d’Arezzo’s system made it possible to write music, as well as memorize and reproduce it.

Musical scales use a set of notes that sound harmonic when played one after another.

Symbols like sharp and flat change the frequency of a note, raising it or lowering it by half-step. The letter names are also modified by accidentals. For example, Bb becomes H in German speaking countries.

I

Musicians use the letters of the alphabet to name notes. There are also symbols called sharps and flats that can change a note’s frequency by one or two semitones.

A sharp looks like a pound sign (hash) and raises the pitch by a half step, while a flat lowers it by the same amount. Learn how to identify these important musical symbols.

J

A musical note that lasts for two beats. It is the same note as a whole note, only half its length.

Also called breve.

A notation system for string instruments that uses ledger lines to represent pitches above or below the regular lines and spaces of the treble and bass clefs. Middle C, one of the first notes beginning musicians learn to read, is found on a ledger line between the bass and treble clefs.

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