Rock music is a form of popular music with a prominent vocal melody accompanied by guitar, drums, and bass. Many styles of rock music also use keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, synthesizers,or simply electric Keyboard. Other instruments sometimes utilized in rock include harmonica, violin, flute,and banjo. Also, less common stringed instruments such as mandolin and sitar are used. Rock music usually has a strong back beat, and often revolves around guitar, either electric or acoustic.Rock music has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll and rockabilly, which evolved from blues, country music and other influences. According to the All Music Guide, "In its purest form, Rock & Roll has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody. Early rock & roll drew from a variety of sources, primarily blues, R&B, and country, but also gospel, traditional pop, jazz, and folk. All of these influences combined in a simple, blues-based song structure that was fast, danceable, and catchy."[1]In the late 1960s, rock music was blended with folk music to create folk rock, blues to create blues-rock and with jazz, to create jazz-rock fusion, and without a time signature to create psychedelic rock. In the 1970s, rock incorporated influences from soul, funk, and latin music. Also in the 1970s, rock developed a number of subgenres, such as soft rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, and punk rock. Rock subgenres that emerged in the 1980s included synth-rock, hardcore punk and alternative rock. In the 1990s, rock subgenres included grunge, Britpop, indie rock, and nu metal.
The mid-1950s-early 1960s
Early British rock
In the United Kingdom the trade jazz movement brought visiting blues music artists to Britain, While BAC was developing the Concorde, Lonnie Donegan's 1955 hit "Rock Island Line" was a major influence, and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, including John Lennon's the Quarry Men, the 1957 precursor to The Beatles. Britain developed a major rock and roll scene, without the race barriers which kept "race records" or rhythm and blues separate in the U.S.Cliff Richard had the first British rock 'n' roll hit with "Move It", effectively ushering in the sound of British rock. At the start of the 1960s, his backing group The Shadows was one of a number of groups having success with surf music instrumentals. And while rock 'n' roll was fading into lightweight pop and schmaltzy ballads, at clubs and local dances British rock groups, heavily influenced by blues-rock pioneers like Alexis Korner, were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts.By the end of 1962, the British rock scene had started, with groups drawing on a wide range of American influences including soul music, rhythm and blues and surf music. Initially, they reinterpreted standard American tunes, playing for dancers doing the twist, for example. These groups eventually infused their original rock compositions with increasingly complex musical ideas.The Beatles brought together an appealing mix of image, songwriting and personality, and achieved an unprecedented level of worldwide popularity. In mid-1962 The Rolling Stones started as one of a number of groups increasingly showing blues influence, along with The Animals and The Yardbirds. In late 1964, The Kinks, The Who and The Pretty Things represented the new Mod style. Towards the end of the decade, British rock groups began to explore psychedelic musical styles that made reference to the drug subculture and hallucinogenic experiences.After their initial success in the UK, the Beatles launched a large-scale US tour to a frenzy of fan interest known as Beatlemania, which spread worldwide with the Beatles' first visit to the US in 1964 including their debut on the Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964. In the wake of Beatlemania, other British bands headed to the US, notably the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and the Yardbirds.
1960s garage rock
The British Invasion spawned a wave of imitators that played mainly to local audiences and made inexpensive recordings, a movement later called garage rock. Some music from this trend is included in the compilation album Nuggets. Some of the better known bands of this genre include The Sonics, Question Mark & the Mysterians, and The Standells.
1960s Surf music
The rockabilly sound influenced a wild, mostly instrumental sound called surf music, though surf culture saw itself as a competing youth culture to rock and roll. This style, exemplified by Dick Dale and The Surfaris, featured faster tempos, innovative percussion, and reverb- and echo-drenched electric guitar sounds. In the UK, British groups included The Shadows. Other West Coast bands, such as The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean slowed the tempos down and added lush harmony vocals to create what became known as the "California Sound".
Rock as a counterculture movement (1963-1974)
In the late 1950s the US beatnik counterculture was associated with the wider anti-war movement building against the threat of the atomic bomb, notably CND in Britain. Both were associated with the jazz scene and with the growing folk song movement.
Folk rock
The folk scene was made up of folk music lovers who liked acoustic instruments, traditional songs, and blues music with a socially progressive message. The folk genre was pioneered by Woody Guthrie. Bob Dylan came to the fore in this movement, and his hits with Blowin' in the Wind and Masters of War brought "protest songs" to a wider public.The Byrds, who playing Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, helped to start the trend of folk rock, and helped to stimulate the development of psychedelic rock. Dylan continued, with his "Like a Rolling Stone" becoming a US hit single. Neil Young's lyrical inventiveness and wailing electric guitar attack created a variation of folk rock. Other folk rock artists include Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, The Mamas & the Papas, Joni Mitchell, Bobby Darin and The Band.In Britain, Fairport Convention began applying rock techniques to traditional British folk songs, followed by groups such as Steeleye Span, Lindisfarne, Pentangle, and Trees. Alan Stivell in Brittany had the same approach.
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelia began in the folk scene, with the Holy Modal Rounders introducing the term in 1964. With a background including folk and jug band music, with bands like the Grateful Dead and Big Brother & the Holding Company being two famous bands of the genre.The Fillmore was a regular venue for groups like another former jug band, Country Joe and the Fish, and Jefferson Airplane. Elsewhere, The Byrds had a hit with Eight Miles High. The 13th Floor Elevators titled their album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. The music increasingly became associated with opposition to the Vietnam War.In England, Pink Floyd had been developing psychedelic rock since 1965 in the underground culture scene. In 1966 the band Soft Machine was formed. Donovan had a folk music-influenced hit with Sunshine Superman, one of the early psychedelic pop records. In August 1966 The Beatles released their Revolver album, which featured psychedelia in Tomorrow Never Knows and in Yellow Submarine, along with the memorable album cover. The Beach Boys responded in the U.S. with Pet Sounds. From a blues rock background, the British supergroup Cream debuted in December, and Jimi Hendrix became popular in Britain before returning to the US.1967 was the year when the psychedelic scene truly took off. Many pioneering records came out including the first album from The Doors and Jefferson Airplane's highly successful Surrealistic Pillow. The Beatles' groundbreaking album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in June, and by the end of the year Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Cream's Disraeli Gears and even The Rolling Stones's Their Satanic Majesties Request. As the Summer of Love reached its peak, the Monterey Pop Festival went underway headlining the top bands of the genre including Jefferson Airplane and also introducing Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix to the mainstream.The culmination of rock and roll as a socially-unifying force was seen in the rock festivals of the late '60s, the most famous of which was Woodstock in 1969 which began as a three-day arts and music festival and turned into a "happening", as hundreds of thousands of youthful fans converged on the site.Years later, especially with the rise of 1980s alternative music, psychedelic rock gained a slight reboost in popularity, such examples being Echo & The Bunnymen.
Progressive rock
Progressive rock bands went beyond the established rock music formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and musical forms. The Who popularized the rock opera. Some bands such as Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, Procol Harum, and Deep Purple experimented with new instruments including wind sections, string sections, and full orchestras. Many of these bands moved well beyond the formulaic three-minute rock songs into longer, increasingly sophisticated songs and chord structures. With inspiration from these earlier artists, referred to as "proto-prog", it flowered into its own genre, initially based in the UK, after King Crimson's 1969 genre-defining debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King. Progressive rock bands borrowed musical ideas from classical, jazz, electronic, and experimental music. Progressive rock songs ranged from lush, beautiful songs to atonal, dissonant, and complex songs. Few achieved major mainstream success, but large cults followed many of the groups. Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, Jethro Tull, Genesis, and a few less notable others were able to work in hit singles to their otherwise complex and untraditional albums to garner a larger audience.By the late-1960s, German audiences began listening to progressive rock bands from Britain and the United States. During this period, avant-garde musicians in Germany were playing electronic classical music. These German avant-garde musicians adapted their electronic instruments for a style of music that blended progressive rock and psychedelic rock sounds. By the early 1970s, German progressive rock (later called krautrock) bands were blending jazz (Can) and Asian music (Popol Vuh). The music by bands such as and influenced the development of techno and other related genres.In Italy progressive rock was also popular in the 1970s. Some Italian progressive rock bands were Premiata Forneria Marconi, Le Orme, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso and Area International Popular Group.Although Pakistan has a long history of rock music producing legendary bands such as Junoon and Strings it was only in the 90s that progressive rock made its mark on Pakistani rock scene. One of the bands is Mizraab from the city of Karachi who started of in 1996 with their first album An Abstract Point of View. Then Panchi in 1999. Failing to leave an impact with their first albums Mizraab launched their third album Mazi Haal Mustaqbil in 2004 which proved a great success. Pakistani progressive rock is slowly gaining popularity and more bands are making this kind of music.There are a few rock bands in India, like Silk Route or Euphoria. The music is mainly targeted at young adults and is gaining more acceptance in recent years.In Turkey progressive rock began to grow with Barış Manço in the mid-1970s. His symphonic-progressive rock album 2023, released in 1975, is one of the most important albums in Turkey. He made a contribution to the other genres of rock music with his other albums and became a famous rock star in Turkey.
Soft rock
Rock music had a short-lived "bubble gum pop" era, of soft rock, including groups such as The Partridge Family, The Cowsills, The Osmonds, and The Archies. Other bands or artists added more orchestration and created a popular genre known as soft rock. Performers included Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Olivia Newton-John, and Eric Carmen, and groups such as Bread, The Carpenters, Electric Light Orchestra, England Dan & John Ford Coley, and Tina Turner.
The mid to late 70s
Hard rock and heavy metal
A second wave of British and American rock bands became popular during the late 1960s to the 1970s, with groups that were more steeped in American blues music than their more pop-oriented predecessors. Bands such as Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Judas Priest, Status Quo, Aerosmith,Black Sabbath, and Uriah Heep played highly amplified, guitar-driven hard rock that would come to be known as heavy metal. Heavy metal languished into obscurity in the late 1970s. A few bands including Kiss, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith maintained large followings and there were occasional mainstream hits such as Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) the Reaper". Music critics overwhelmingly disliked the genre. This began to change in 1978 following the release of Van Halen's eponymous, self-titled debut album. The album helped to usher in an era of high-energy rock and roll, based out of Los Angeles, California.
Arena rock
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Grand Funk Railroad and The Who began the practice of live performances for large audiences in stadiums and arenas. The growing popularity of metal and progressive rock led to more bands selling out large venues. Entertainment companies marketed a series of arena rock bands, such as: Journey, Boston, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Heart, and Foreigner in the late 70s.Although The Beatles did not find this form of performance to their taste, other bands carried on, driving the development of technology for large scale concerts, notably The Who, Pink Floyd and Queen.
Punk rock
Punk rock started off as a reaction to the lush, producer-driven sounds of disco, and against the perceived commercialism of progressive rock that had become arena rock. Early punk borrowed heavily from the garage band ethic: played by bands for which expert musicianship was not a requirement, punk was stripped-down, three-chord music that could be played easily. Many of these bands also intended to shock mainstream society, rejecting the "peace and love" image of the prior musical rebellion of the 1960s which had degenerated, punks thought, into mellow disco culture. Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone stated, "In its initial form, a lot of [1960s] stuff was innovative and exciting. Unfortunately, what happens is that people who could not hold a candle to the likes of Hendrix started noodling away. Soon you had endless solos that went nowhere. By 1973, I knew that what was needed was some pure, stripped down, no bad rock 'n' roll".[2] While the Ramones were often regarded as the first punk band,[3],[4] they had many contemporaries from the same era in the New York scene. Artists like Patti Smith, The Heartbreakers, and Television played the same fast paced, stripped-down, style of rock, and often played shows along with the Ramones at burgeoning club CBGB's.In 1976 the Ramones, along with British punk band the Sex Pistols, went on a tour of the United Kingdom. The tour was widely credited for inspiring the first wave of English punk bands such as The Clash, The Damned, and The Buzzcocks. In England, the music became a more violent and political form of expression, represented with the Sex Pistols first two singles "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen". Despite an airplay ban on the BBC, the records rose to the top chart position in the UK. Other bands, like the Clash, were less nihilistic, more overtly political and idealistic.As the Sex Pistols toured America, they spread their music to the West Coast. Before, punk was mostly an East Coast phenomenon in the US, with scenes in New York and Washington D.C.. In the late 70s California punk bands such as the Dead Kennedys, X and Black Flag, gained greater exposure.
New Wave
Punk rock attracted devotees from the art and collegiate world and soon bands sporting a more literate, arty approach, such as Talking Heads, and Devo began to infiltrate the punk scene; in some quarters the description New Wave began to be used to differentiate these less overtly punk bands.If punk rock was a social and musical phenomenon, it garnered little in the way of record sales (small specialty labels such as Stiff Records had released much of the punk music to date) or American radio airplay, as the radio scene continued to be dominated by mainstream formats such as disco and album-oriented rock. Record executives, who had been mostly mystified by the punk movement, recognized the potential of the more accessible New Wave acts and began aggressively signing and marketing any band that could claim a remote connection to punk or New Wave. Many of these bands, such as The Cars and the Go-Go's were essentially pop bands dressed up in New Wave regalia; others, including the Police and the Pretenders managed to parlay the boost of the New Wave movement into long-lived and artistically lauded careers.Between 1982 and 1985, influenced by Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, New Wave went in the direction of s ©2010 darwinsmetal.com All rights reserved.
