Classical influences in modern genres...
 

although im not the biggest fan of classical music itself, i love hearing its influence and use in other genres.

post-rock, by nature, lends itself to be combined perfectly with classical music. Esmerine, Rachel's and Anoice are my favourites..

Doom is another genre where the influence is often present.. more so in structure than in musicianship, though Kayo Dot (and Toby Driver) are worth checking out on this front. bands like ASVA, Nadja, Everlovely Lightningheart..

anyone have any other recommendations for me?

:D

Mono did a colaboration with Worlds End Girlfriend that is mostly strings. It's fuggin amazing.

i do have that... an awesome peice of work. picked it up on the Mono/World's End Girlfriend tour.. hadnt heard of WEG before then but he's now one of my favourite post-rock artists.

I don't have any of WEG's stuff. :(

i'll upload you an album if you like?

That would be awesome. :)

sorry this is taking so long.. moved in to my house and havent unpacked the hard drive yet!

its still coming though..

one word prog

Power Metal and Prog Metal/Rock have alot of classical influence.

Yeah, Symphony X are very influenced by classical music.

*Insert symphonic prog band here*

trans siberian orchestra, even if they are know more for their christmas music then they other, they combine classical and rock as well, i love thier beethoven's last night album

You'll hear classical background music in many of the songs produced by Berry Gordy's Motown Records in the 60's and 70's, which included songs by artists such as the Supremes.

Quite a few black singers and groups who didn't record for Motown also frequently used classical background music in a good number of their songs back then.

Metallica used to base their writing on classical themes, or ideas. Kirk Hammet, their lead guitarist, was schooled in Bach.

Classical music has had powerful impact on some pop stars.
 

I'll name just two of many popular music stars in particular: Elton John and Barry Manilow. Yes, I know these guys are a bit dated for the "now" generation but here's some info that you may or may not already know about these two. Elton John was classically trained and possesses a potent piano technique. Has a sound mastery of classical elements and utilizes them quite a bit in his music.

Barry Manilow's song "Could it be Magic?" actually takes Chopin's Prelude in C minor and uses it as.....drumroll....a prelude! In fact, the entire song is based more or less on Chopin's melody.

Chopin himself called a series of disconnected musical shorts "Preludes" but they are not true Preludes as Bach's are, but instead little musical gems. Of the preludes of Chopin the F# minor is my favorite.

Of course, the older song "A Fifth of Beethoven" needs no mention, although I'm not sure what the composer would have thought of this hip/hop disco rendition, but then imitation is a form of flattery, is it not?

A few other mentions before I leave for the day.

Neil Diamond was a Jewish Cantor before he made it into popular music. He has an extensive background in the classic traditions and the metal group KISS released an DVD video of some of their music backed up by a full symphony orchestra in one of music's strangest combos. The rock-DVD is called "KISS Symphony"

I don't even need bother with the huge influence classical music has had on television, film scores, children's cartoons (especially Loony Tunes) and musical genres where you might not expect it like country, rap and what not.

Oy!

There's quite obvious classical influences with bands like Therion and the stuff some would label 'avant-garde' like Vintersorg.

I once came across this boy online who listened to nothing but classical and refused to believe that metal had anything to do with it... apparently it was 'all shouting and screaming'.

Metal in general is strongly influenced by Classical.

I think that Jazz for some theoric ideas start from classical music

and vice versa.

Sigur Ros (especially the earlier albums) has a lot of classical influence. The Polyphonic Spree too. Of course the Beatles (influenced somewhat by their classical-oboe trained producer) adding string quartet to Yesterday, baroque trumpet to Penny Lane, French horn in For No One, full orchestra to A Day In The Life, harpsichord (sound--it was really piano processed to sound like harpsichord) in All My Life, and music concrete' in Revolution #9 and Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, have to be the originators of classically influenced rock.

Classical may be my personal favorite form of music. Most the music I like is classically influenced, and there's probably a laundry list I could make of bands that have been influenced by classical in both Jazz, and Rock:

If you really want to look into it. Look into chamber prog, and zuehl music. It's quite possibly the most classical inspired around.(Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Present, Magma. My personal favorite genre to pimp).

Black Metal also is a fantastic choice if you pick the later more progressive black metal bands. Black Metal artists tend to want to explore their heritage, so they include a lot of folk music in their repetoire.

Any metal I would say uses a lot of the same structural techniques of classical. I'd say if you transpose a thrash album into strings, and rewrite it to have more subtle percussion it'd be very convincingly classical. Even bands like Slayer I think are very classical-like(Hell Awaits).

Frank Zappa is a man who greatly bridged classical, and rock. Absolutely Free, Lumpy Gravy, and 200 motels are flat out rock-classical fusion albums. He also does 100% classical albums like "Yellow shark". Possibly one of the earliest influences of prog, and the introduction of classical to rock. Little known fact, Zappa actually wanted to be a classical composer before he was a rock star. He wrote full chamber compositions before he ever picked up a guitar, just couldn't get anybody to pick them up.

Paul McCartney claims to be amazingly influenced by classical music. Albeit, I sense very little in structure, and melody. John Lennon, and McCartney utilize a wide variety of classical textures.

Jazz artists mentioned before. Ornette Coleman did a chamber piece known as Forms and Sounds (Both Zappa, and Ornette have transposed pieces of Rite of Spring into their work). Sun Ra has covered Rachmaninov, and done many albums bridging on classical(Strange Strings, for example). I think if I remember right Thelonious Monk also claimed a ton of classical influence. Then again, as mentioned above, I don't think modern avant-garde classical would be possibly without Jazz's time signature shifting experimental forms.

Many rock bands, Metallica, Deep Purple, etc. played with classical. Prog of course as King Crimson fuses a lot of symphonic pieces. Yes also popularly does. A ton of 80s rock bands from Extreme to Dio utilize some classical influence.

Really, Classical imo is a genre that can't be ignored. It's the only genre that by definition has centuries, and centuries of development pretty much absorbing worldwide influence from every ethnic group, culture, and location. It's scope is infinitely broad, and anybody who avoids it is really sort of hurting themselves by not getting the fullest out of the music world.

I don't really have anything to say, but I can show you something:



He was raised to play classical music. I don't think you could call this classical music. But without a doubt it is heavily influenced by classical music. And this is from an album released in 2010. It's not exactly a mainstream sound, but it counts as modern.

Sometimes I like to theorize that classical music has greatly influenced all genres coming after it, some more apparent than others. :P

If we are talking apparent enough that its actually used in modern music I love Jedi Mind Tricks- Animal Rap

Rapping over classical music is all win.

Well, seeing as classical is a vague envelope genre for literally thousands of types of music from all over the world, than it's not too hard to imagine.

Albeit, Persian, Indian, Arabian, African, etc. has equal influence on modern music as Classical which is usually a blanket term for something developed by Russian, or European means.

Western style popular music (and by extension perhaps classical too) has had the biggest influence around the world I would say. Not that that means there hasn't been some very good music from elsewhere in other styles just that it hasn't had the political / economic power behind it that maybe western music has had.

This is so true. It really annoys me sometimes when people would group composers like Bach and Stravinksy in the same genre of "classical music".

Yes, but pure Western music gets boring as all **** when not fused with elements of other origins.

I wouldn't go that far, but I do like to see music crossing boundaries as well.

I would go that far. Using traditional compositional techniques makes for stale compositions. There's no reason to not cross boundaries, and define your own.

john adams, if "classical," is now all over commercials, etc.

e.g., nixon in china