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How would you describe eras of music in musical terms?


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We've all heard a band and said, "that's a fresh sound" or, conversely, "that's a dated sound". I've got the task of trying to define that difference to people, musical and non-musical alike.

 

Specifically, I need to define the technical differences of pop/rock music from the 70's compared to the pop/rock music of the 90's compared to the pop/rock music of today and it's been very difficult. And frustrating. :facepalm:

 

I find myself using terms like "feel" and "tone" and describing specific effects and instruments. But it's not sinking in with my audience- so my question is this:

 

- What musical techniques are distinct to pop/rock music preferred by people in their 50's (CCR, Journey)?

 

- What musical techniques are distinct to pop/rock music preferred by people in their 20s-30's (Pearl Jam, Blink 182)?

 

- What musical techniques are distinct to pop/rock music preferred by people in their teens? (Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus)

 

I need tangible, definable differences. E.g., Kick on the 1, snare on the 3... 1/4 note kick drums. :blah:

 

TIA!

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That IS very very difficult. Poker99 is right - autotune is a 2000ish sort of thing that is all over pop and country music. Actually it's all over everything. Even when you can't hear it, it's probably there (or a similar technology.)

 

But I will give it a try.

 

70's - Real strings and horns arrangements, at least until the Arp Pro Soloist and the Arp String Ensemble came along, then it was cheesy strings. Dull sounding drums - all signs of life had to be removed from all drums in pop music. Meanwhile Led Zep had huge ringy drums which made them stick out. Distorted guitars were barely distorted by today's standards. Vocalists were clean in their pronunciation - you could pretty much understand the words to all the pop songs. (There are exceptions to everything I'm saying.) Lyrics varied between stories, being serious and making a point, and just being stupid. Music about sex used not so clever ways of talking about it (Afternoon Delight, etc.) Singer/Songwriters were pretty big. In some ways, some of the best singer/songwriter folk stuff came from the 70's. Most songs in the 70's were very structured and the words rhymed. Following all the rules. Oh, and disco. I'd almost forgot about that. I wish I had.

 

80's - The Computer Strikes Back. Once sampling hit, it was everywhere. Cheesy synth and drum sounds dominated the pop charts, competing for time on MTV with big hair metal, which was when guys forgot what Black Sabbath had meant and dressed up like girls. This would eventually be killed in the 90's by Nirvana. Gated kick drums (thanks, Phil Collins), and a guitar solo in every freaking song. Real horns and strings were rare. Genesis, The Cars, The Romantics, Huey Lewis and the News, Michael Jackson's Thriller. Musical techniques? Sequencer programming!

 

90's - Grunge. Nirvana hit the scene and suddenly the long hair and makeup looked pretty silly. The fact that people worshiped them showed just how far hard rock had fallen. Between them and Perl Jam we were doomed for a decade of gloomy brooding whoa is me slog rock. Record companies by the 90's were taking far fewer chances and the music became more copy cat than ever before. Distorted guitars became even more distorted to the point of pure mush and white noise, where they seem to have stayed ever since. Musical techiques? Play distorted and scream, then play clean and mumble, then distorted and clean again.

 

00's - The Dark Days. Record companies were desperate as sales began to tank. Dianne Warren single handedly wrote 80% of every hit song in the past 10 years. I'm joking of course, but not by much. We are now just as formula as we were in the 70's. Musical techniques? Write songs by rules based on committees who do market research. And put autotune on it. And compress the living f*ck out of it. And then compress it again.

 

As the record companies collapse and more artists go Indie or DIY, we're going to see some really interesting acts. Most of my fave artists right now are Indie. There are a whole lot of people who are taking chances with their music and are not designing songs based on market studies. So therefore we are now entering...

 

10's - The treasure hunt. Good music is out there, waiting for you to find it. Just don't bother looking on the radio or TV for it.

 

Sorry. None of that is probably very helpful. But I feel better for it. Like visiting a shrink or something.

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Yeah, we didn't even talk about the 50's and 60's. The 50's pop music absolutely stank, with a few exceptions. Talk about copycat. The 60's was about ripping the stuffing out of the 50's music and injecting new life. Huge strides were made in the 60's, and IMHO some of that stuff was improved on in the 70's. Black Sabbath, Led Zep, The Who, The Stones, early Genesis, early Rush, early KISS, a whole lot of bands did their absolute best work in the 70's. Prog rock was at its best, folk/pop was at its best, and some would argue that hard rock was at its best, too. On the other hand, some of the worst pop music every written (Barry Manilow, etc) was written in the 70's. If you left a tooth on top of a Barry Manilow record, it would be rotten by the next day.

 

But I did like Judas Priest better than Led Zep, to be honest. And Van Halen came out at the end of the 70's, if I'm not mistaken. I think the 80's was really hurt by technology. We got some nice toys and went a little too crazy with them.

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Richard, do you just hate pop music, because I was really liking your descriptions of the decades, but you really went out of your way to trash Manilow, and 'etc'-

 

I find a strong and noticible difference between pop of the 70's and 80's vs. the pop of today. You may not like manilow, but his music is pretty damn good. Pop is just "catchy-er" than other more thought out styles like prog and jazz.. I like it ALL, so nothing wrong with some Madonna, or blondie, or thompson twins, or even go-go's.. You say the 80's was hurt by technology, but I beg to differ - the explosion of new wave, and so many other styles all at once gave everyone a very tasteful buffet of great music to gorge on.

 

It's funny, at the time, I was a hard rocker, only liked zep, deep purple, 70's heavy and prog rock, and went into the 80's only liking the next coming like priest, metallica, etc.. I ragged on anything else, but now I listen back to bands like the fixx, duran duran, countless other pop, new wave, hair metal, you name it.. even WHAM. sure there's some real turds out there, and while I can agree it's getting worse, my argument would be that they've consistently marketed to a younger audience over the generations, so the genrational pop music has become more juvenile as a result

 

just my opinion..

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I love some pop. I love The Cars. I liked The Romantics. I liked The Fixx a lot, but I'm not sure they were pop. Here's my take on Barry Manilow and pop music. Most pop songs feature a catchy melody. So do most children's songs, and so do most jingles. A good pop song ("Just What I Needed" by The Cars) can have a catchy melody that does not sound like a jingle or a children's song. Barry started writing catchy jingles for places like McDonalds. He never left that realm, he just wrote different words. As a test, take any one of his hits and write your own lyrics singing about a car or a restaurant, or Coke. It's really really easy to do. And this is a real skill that can make someone a lot of money. But it's nothing that I personally want to listen to. Ever. It's all just personal opinions.

 

And new wave - where did it go again? A whole lot of music was written in the 80's featuring synth blips and synth bloops and synth bass lines and other such nonsense and thankfully modern music has moved on since then. You don't hear a whole lot of DX7 piano or brass synth stabs any more for a reason - they were gimmicky and stupid. And they worked because they were new, and faded because they were stupid. Add to that list the orchestra hit, too.

 

I did like what Depeche Mode was doing, though. But it does sound a little flat to modern ears, because the synths and samplers were so primitive back in the day.

 

You are right about the pop audience getting younger, though. The Disney channel is a big player now. And with the younger audiences come the pop melodies are are more sing song, like nursery songs. But there's tons of good relatively unknown acts out there making their own brand of music. The problem, as we know, is that for every one great unknown band there are a hundred mediocre ones, and a thousand bad ones. So the good stuff is hard to find.

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Wow. Thanks for a fantastic and thoughtful response.

 

I find, as a musician, the broad stroke generality of music to be:

70's - the "and" of 1 seems to be the accent a la' the Allman Bros.

80's - the piano seems to drive the music with the "1" being heavy a la Madonna.

90's - the guitar seems to drive the music with the "2" being heavy a la' DMB.

post-2000 - dominated by a 1/4 note (downstroke) accents a la' Cold Play.

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That IS very very difficult. Poker99 is right - autotune is a 2000ish sort of thing that is all over pop and country music. Actually it's all over everything. Even when you can't hear it, it's probably there (or a similar technology.)


But I will give it a try.


70's - Real strings and horns arrangements, at least until the Arp Pro Soloist and the Arp String Ensemble came along, then it was cheesy strings. Dull sounding drums - all signs of life had to be removed from all drums in pop music. Meanwhile Led Zep had huge ringy drums which made them stick out. Distorted guitars were barely distorted by today's standards. Vocalists were clean in their pronunciation - you could pretty much understand the words to all the pop songs. (There are exceptions to everything I'm saying.) Lyrics varied between stories, being serious and making a point, and just being stupid. Music about sex used not so clever ways of talking about it (Afternoon Delight, etc.) Singer/Songwriters were pretty big. In some ways, some of the best singer/songwriter folk stuff came from the 70's. Most songs in the 70's were very structured and the words rhymed. Following all the rules. Oh, and disco. I'd almost forgot about that. I wish I had.


80's - The Computer Strikes Back. Once sampling hit, it was everywhere. Cheesy synth and drum sounds dominated the pop charts, competing for time on MTV with big hair metal, which was when guys forgot what Black Sabbath had meant and dressed up like girls. This would eventually be killed in the 90's by Nirvana. Gated kick drums (thanks, Phil Collins), and a guitar solo in every freaking song. Real horns and strings were rare. Genesis, The Cars, The Romantics, Huey Lewis and the News, Michael Jackson's Thriller. Musical techniques? Sequencer programming!


90's - Grunge. Nirvana hit the scene and suddenly the long hair and makeup looked pretty silly. The fact that people worshiped them showed just how far hard rock had fallen. Between them and Perl Jam we were doomed for a decade of gloomy brooding whoa is me slog rock. Record companies by the 90's were taking far fewer chances and the music became more copy cat than ever before. Distorted guitars became even more distorted to the point of pure mush and white noise, where they seem to have stayed ever since. Musical techiques? Play distorted and scream, then play clean and mumble, then distorted and clean again.


00's - The Dark Days. Record companies were desperate as sales began to tank. Dianne Warren single handedly wrote 80% of every hit song in the past 10 years. I'm joking of course, but not by much. We are now just as formula as we were in the 70's. Musical techniques? Write songs by rules based on committees who do market research. And put autotune on it. And compress the living f*ck out of it. And then compress it again.


As the record companies collapse and more artists go Indie or DIY, we're going to see some really interesting acts. Most of my fave artists right now are Indie. There are a whole lot of people who are taking chances with their music and are not designing songs based on market studies. So therefore we are now entering...


10's - The treasure hunt. Good music is out there, waiting for you to find it. Just don't bother looking on the radio or TV for it.


Sorry. None of that is probably very helpful. But I feel better for it. Like visiting a shrink or something.

 

 

 

Great post:thu:

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