Types of Music

There are many different ways to classify music. One of the most common ways used to differentiate between types of music is to attempt to define different genres as a way to separate one type of music from another. One drawback of this style of classification is that there is often a great degree of overlap from one genre of music to another. While some types of music can be clearly separated, such as rap from country music, some lines are more difficult to draw. It can be impossible to distinguish between some of the more narrow definitions of music. What one listener may define as acid rock another listener may consider psychedelic rock. Even a band that says they are simply practice one genre of music cannot claim to be immune from the influences of another style because even if they hate a particular style of music they can be seen as trying to consciously or subconsciously attempting to avoid having there music sound like that style. Only the most obscure example of music could possibly attempt to lay claim to creating “pure” music. Even an infants humming and noise making is influenced by the music that the child’s parents enjoy.

Further blurring the lines of different types of music are artists who over the course of their career can be understood to be responsible for the creation of many different types of music. The Beatles are one of the most illustrative examples of this phenomenon. At the band’s inception, and during their early releases Please Please Me, and With the Beatles they could best be described as a popular rock band. Later, they moved on to being a rock and roll band, but even then there were elements of their music that were influenced by other typed of music. Before very long the band included elements of classical music as well as psychedelic rock in their album Revolver. Their album Rubber Soul was influenced by eastern music, as seen by the presence of instruments such as the sitar, as well as early traces of influence from classical music. Some critics also hail Rubber Soul as a classic folk album. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, however represented the culmination of the Beatles attempts to blend different types of music. The more than 700 hours of studio time that went into the creation of the album included the use of a forty piece orchestra, the beginning of what could be known as electronica through the heavy manipulation of natural sounds through mixing machines.

Music since Beatlemania can been defined in relation to them. Bands since have either attempted to emulate some type of music that the Beatles brought to prominence, or attempted to rebel against the pervasive nature on the music that the Beatles created. Even if a band does not acknowledge the influence of the Beatles on their music, any band they cite from nearly any type of music has been influenced by a band that has been affected by the Beatles’ music.