Mainstream Genres

The music industry holds a number of mainstream genres ranging from Hip Hop to Classical and Garage to Gospel. The creation, performance, and definition of music differ according to its culture and social context. I have researched into the mainstream genres of Pop, Rock, RnB and Hip Hop.

Pop

Pop music is a music genre that developed from the mid-1950s as a softer alternative to rock 'n' roll and later to rock music. It has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs. While these basic elements of the genre have remained fairly constant, pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, particularly borrowing from the development of rock music, and utilizing key technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.

Characteristics

Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre:

• a focus on the individual song or singles, rather than on extended works or albums
• an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology.
• an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities
• an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance
• a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments

object>

Rock

Rock music is a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1960s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music.
The sound of rock often revolves around the guitar back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or, since the 1970s, synthesizers. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are sometimes used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form", it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, rock music developed different subgenres. When it was blended with folk music it created folk rock, with blues to create blues-rock and with jazz, to create jazz-rock fusion. 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, glam rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, and punk rock. Rock subgenres that emerged in the 1980s included new wave, hardcore punk and alternative rock. In the 1990s, rock subgenres included grunge, Britpop, indie rock, and nu metal.

Characteristics

• Rock Music is commonly identified by its strong rhythms, singable melodies, and fast tempo.
• A typical band consists of three guitars (lead, rhythm and bass), vocals, keyboard and drum kit.
• A typical rock song would follow the following pattern:
  Introduction
  Verse 1
  Chorus
  Verse 2
  Chorus
  Solo Instrumental Section (middle 8/bridge)
  Verse 3
  Chorus
  
  Coda (outro)

R&B

Rhythm and blues (also known as R&B, R'n'B or RnB) is the name given to a wide-ranging genre of popular music created by African Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The term was originally used by record companies to refer to 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. Starting in the 1960s, after this style of music contributed to the development of "rock and roll", the term "R&B" became used - particularly by white groups — to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, the term "rhythm and blues" was being used as a blanket term to describe soul and funk. Since the 1990s, the term "Contemporary R&B" is now mainly used to refer to a modern version of soul and funk-influenced pop music.

Characteristics

• Rhythm and blues bands usually consisted of piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, and sax.
• However, contemporary R’n’B does not not use as many instruments due to modern technology.
• Simple repetitive verses are common to help create mellow, individual sounds.
  Singers are emotionally engaged with the lyrics, often intensely so, they remain cool, relaxed, and in control.
• Lyrics are usually relaxed.

Hip Hop

Hip hop music is a musical genre which developed alongside hip hop culture, and is commnoly based on concepts of loop, rapping, DJing, scratching and beatboxing. The music is used to express concerns of political, social, and personal issues. Hip hop began in the Bronx in New York City in the 1970s, primarily among African Americans, with some Jamaican immigrant influence. The term rap is often used synonymously with hip hop, however, the latter denotes the practices of an entire subculture.
Rapping, also referred to as MCing or emceeing, is a vocal style in which the artist speaks lyrically, in rhyme and verse, generally to an instrumental or synthesized beat. Beats, almost always in 4/4 time signature, can be created by looping portions of other songs, usually by a DJ, or sampled from portions of other songs by a producer. Modern beats incorporate synthesizers, drum machines, and live bands. Rappers may write, memorize, or improvise their lyrics and perform their works a cappella or to a beat.