One minor frustration on the journey of making music is trying to find a shared language to describe your music to the average person. It’s surprisingly difficult to elucidate the music that comes out of my head to people who haven’t heard it. Most people describe music in terms of other music, as in “it sounds like X.”
I can’t really say what’s right, but I know what doesn’t work. Most genres are loaded with baggage, public expectations that music in a genre will sound something like the top artists also working in that genre. This is not unreasonable, but it makes the average genre fairly useless as a descriptor for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not standing on some pillar going “my music defies categorization.” Hardly. I’m just saying that my music has a bit of dissociative personality disorder.
I’ve been browsing a list of music “genes” from the Music Genome Project trying to build a list of things that apply to my music overall. This is what I have so far.
Structures
- Basic Rock Song Structures
- Interesting Song Structure
Roots
- Electronica Roots
- Trance Roots
- Rock Roots
Instrumentation
- Electric Instrumentation
- Emphasis on Varied Instrumentation
- Mixed Acoustic and Electric Instrumentation
Musical qualities
- Film Music Qualities
- Progressive Rock Qualities
Influences
- Classical Music Influences
- Downtempo Influences
- Electronica Influences
- Folk Influences
- New Age Influences
- Rock Influences
- World Music Influences
If I try to distill that list down into a single word or two, it becomes too easy to lose what it is.
So…frustration!
I once had a music professor who, when I asked about the definition of a music style, responded by playing on a piano. No matter how I asked, the professor couldn’t articulate it in words. I was very frustrated by not being able to get an adequate verbal description that I could wrap my brain around. Do you think this is a global problem in music?
Just tell people you make music with an interesting, basic rock song structure with electronica, trance, rock roots, including electric, with mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation (emphasis on varied instrumentation) containing musical, film music, & progressive rock qualities, influenced by classical, downtempo, electronica, folk, new age, rock & world music. It just flows off the tongue.
@Josh – lol.
@Pennie – I think music style/genre is a lot like food flavor. Describe what chocolate tastes like? How exactly is the flavor of a peanut different than a hazelnut?
It’s probably not a coincidence that music styles are sometimes called “flavors” and description of foods and wines often use music terms like “hints of grassy notes.” (Said through clenched Thurston Howle teeth.)