Music Genre's

Alternative rock (also called alternative music, alt rock or simply alternative) is a genre of Rock Music that emerged in the 1980s and became popular in the 1990s. Alternative rock consists of various sub genres that have emerged from the independent music scene since the 1980s, such as Grunge, Britpop, Gothic Rock, Indie Pop and Indie Rock. These genres are unified by their collective debt to the style or ethos of punk rock, which laid the groundwork for alternative music in the 1970s. At times, alternative rock has been used as a catch-all phrase for rock music from underground artists and all music descended from punk rock (including punk itself, New Wave and Post-Punk).

Classic Pop music denotes, in general, Western (and particularly American) popular music that either wholly predates the advent of Rock 'N' Roll in the mid-1950s, or to any popular music which exists concurrently to rock and roll but originated in a time before the appearance of rock and roll, and its offshoots, as the dominant commercial music of the United States and Western Culture. The terms pop standards or (where relevant) American standards are used to denote the most popular and enduring songs from this style of music. More generally, the term "standard" can be used to describe any popular song that has become very widely known within mainstream culture.

Classic rock is a radio format which developed from the album-orientated Rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format features music ranging generally from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, primarily focusing on the Hard Rock genre that peaked in popularity in the 1970s. Classic rock stations re-create, in part, the sound of album-oriented rock stations of the 1970s and 1980s (although usually with a much more limited playlist) and appeal mainly to adults, rather than teenagers (despite this, many classic rock acts consistently attract new generations of fans). Some classic rock stations also play a limited number of current releases which are stylistically consistent with the station's sound, or from established classic rock artists that are still producing new albums.

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western Liturgical Secular Music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times common practice period.

European music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular musical staff notation, in use since about the 16th century. Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music. This leaves less room for practices such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music (as in Indian Classical Music and Japanese Traditional Music) and popular music.

The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to "canonize" the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Beethoven as a golden age. The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836.

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humour, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms such as opera, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements of the works. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, "musicals".

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. This music is also referred to as traditional music and, in US, as "roots music".

Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, electric folk and others. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional folk music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two.

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American Southern United States. It was born out of a confluence of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American Popular Music. Its West African pedigree is evident in its use of Blue Notes, Improvisation, Poly rhythm's, Syncopation, and the Swung Note.

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the " Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from Spirituals, Work Songs, Field Hollers, Shouts and Chants, and rhymed simple narrative Ballard's. The blues form, ubiquitous in Jazz, Rhythm & Blue's and Rock 'N' Roll is characterized by specific chord progressions, of which the Twelve-bar Blue's chord progression is the most common. The Blue Notes that, for expressive purposes are sung or played flattened or gradually bent (minor 3rd to major 3rd) in relation to the Pitch of the major scale, are also an important part of the sound.

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American Music -= 1940's. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, Jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular.

The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s and beyond, the term rhythm and blues was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the 1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of Rock 'N' R Roll, the term "R&B" became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric Blues, as well as Gospel/Soul Music. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as contemporary R&B.

Indie rock is a sub-genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi Post-Rock, Math Rock, Indie Pop, Dream Pop, Noise Rock, Space Rock, Sadcore, Riot Grrrl and Emo, among others. Originally used to describe record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock. As grunge and punk revival bands in the US, and then Britpop bands in the UK, broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, a number of indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.

Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, but as a genre is particularly associated with the Rock 'N' Roll and later rock style.

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blue's. According to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, soul is "Music that arose out of the Black experiences in America" through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying. Catchy rhythms, stressed by hand claps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense vocal sound. The genre also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds.

World music in its classic definition is a general categorical term for global music, such as the traditional music or folk music of a culture that is created and played by indigenous musicians and is closely related to the music of the regions of their origin. As a pure genre, world music's original intention is to distinguish a complete array of ethnic specificity, though a more globalized 21st century is fast expanding its categorical scope; evidenced by the necessity for less ethnically sterile, hybrid world music artists to be classified under less standardized sub-genres, such as World Fusion, Global Fusion, Ethnic Fusion and Worldbeat, Though these terms may also be considered sub-genres of pop music, they lend to the perception of what defines the scope of world music today, which arguably extends beyond a sphere of discrete and pure ethnic music traditions, defined in the term roots music. World music is inherently one of the broadest music genres, steadily evolving new branch categories, via the discoverable application in its depth and diversity.