Rock: In reality, just a generic term. Discuss.
 

I've been thinking more and more about this lately:

Taking into consideration the ENTIRE proliferation of styles and sub-genres that ultimately fall under the umbrella term "rock music", when all's said and done, there really is nothing at all that qualifies a popular music form as being "rock", other than that it doesn't fall under either Jazz, Urban, Country, Blues, Electronica, Avant-Garde, Folk, Gospel, Reggae, or any other type of well-defined World music.

To state the case a little clearer; while those other aforementioned, widely recognized popular music genres are pretty well-defined in terms of musical characteristics, it's much harder, impossible even, to define "rock" music based on purely musical grounds.

Ultimately I see rock as just a generic term.

Discuss.

If this were true, then how would we recognize the fact that new sub-genres fall under the rock umbrella? Obviously there have to be some stylistic elements which define rock music.

Well fair enough...but if they are, then what *are* they? The answer should really contain something pervasive throughout rock. If it's missing somewhere or other, then that doesn't account for that genre also being seen as rock.

I've tried to answer this. I can't do it. Who can?

Guitar-driven music usually encompassing a bass, keys, or drum set somewhere within there. I win.

That's exactly my point. It needn't necessarily be guitar-driven at all,if you look at the full range of types of music that fall under the term "rock" (piano rock for one!). In fact, there sometimes isn't even a guitar involved at all. And even if it "usually" has a bass guitar, keyboards and a drum set, what if it does not? Often these days, with many experimental rock bands, the entire set of sounds may be synthesized. Ok then, let's say instead "a bass sound and a drum sound somewhere within there". Well, that could describe jazz, hip-hop, and country. In fact, isn't country music typically guitar-driven, usually with a bass, keys and a drum set somewhere within? I guess then you could say that country music is a subset of rock. But hang on, it isn't. Country precedes "rock music". Maybe then, rock is a subset of country. I'm sure nobody's gunna go for that.

All "guitar driven with bass, keys and drums" describes, ultimately, is a classical rock set-up (and the set-ups of some other popular music genres outside of rock, too). But things moved on ages ago. There are now (and have for a while been) many, MANY exceptions to the rule within rock and its widely recognized subgenres.

Is rock as it is today then to be defined on purely musical and stylistic grounds, or on something else entirely?

the foo fighters pretty much define the term rock music

No The Beatles do.

The Foo Fighters perfectly define the term "crap."

I think, rather, that the Beatles, at least as far as goes their early material, perfectly define "rock'n'roll".

The Foo Fighters are pretty much the embodiment of post-grunge/alternative hard rock music. That's not to say they're good. But they give a good idea of what everything else in the genre sounds like :-/.

beatles define pop
rolling stones are rock
chuck berry is rock n roll
deal

All genres are generic terms.

and someone could argue that a band is a generic term, and then they could argue that a era of a band is generic, and so on.

I heartily disagree. Well, at least in the sense of "generic" that I had set out in the opening post. I think that with virtually all other broad musical super-genres, the music defined under those labels is, at least broadly speaking, significantly more stylistically predictable than the range of music classified as rock. For example - music classified under "rap" will without a doubt have some form of rapping in it. Reggae music will have its regular chops on the back beats. Contemporary R'n'B will invariably use hip-hop inspired beats and be mellow. What I'm getting at is that something in the sound is generally predictable from the broad super-genre label given to a type of music.

But what is predictable from the label "rock"? Very little, in fact probably nothing at all. Rock music needn't necessarily have drums. It needn't have a guitar. It needn't have a bass line. It needn't have a keyboard. Hell, it needn't even have any singing. Of course, it'll have to have ONE of the above, but what sort of a definition is that? "Rock: music that has at least one instrument playing."

I suppose a better question to pose might be: is there anything in music quite so unpredictable from the label alone as "rock"?

Rainard you always post awesome thoughts, it's great!

Lets think about the word 'Rock' for a minute. What does it mean? What does it mean when people yell out "rock and roll"? How about "Rock on"? Or "This rocks!"? It's not defining an instrument is it, it's defining something else, something much less tangible.

Having thought about the origins of the word I think the best way to define rock is about the vibe and feeling of the music. It's about the rhythms and the layout of the piece. When you hear a rock song you aren't listening for a certain instrument, you're listening for that defining sound. Honestly it's a very cheesy definition from me, it's as controversial as when you try to judge the better band based on how much passion they put in, but it's right, no?

Define a "nice day"?

You can't strictly define that using real characteristics such as the sun is shining, it's just something as a person you come to understand the meaning of.

Rock is a Virus
 

Rock music, by its very nature, is in a state of constant flux. It constantly evolves by the combination of various content and musical influences, the constant being the traditional drum, bass, guitar, vocal configuration. Early on, it was the combination of blues, gospel and rockabilly. Lyrical content was sexually based, representing subject matter that was taboo to conservative society of the 50's, creating the rebellious nature of rock n roll. In the early 90's it was Death Metal, suicide, self-mutilation, etc., followed by Nu-Metal which incorporated some of the rap culture. Obviously, there's a commercial appeal to this and record companies quickly figured out how to market the good acts, creating a bunch of imitators, flooding the market with product, desensitizing society to what made the bands sound so dangerous in the first place, making rock music, as you noted, "generic". So like a lethal virus, the next generation of musicians rebel, label the mega-rich rock stars "sellouts" and take the genre to more extreme territory, evolving into a new "strain". All these sub-genres are new strains, and the best ones look to rock society at its core. That being said, rock music seems to be in a slump. Rap music today has become what rock music used to be.

Rock= what we now consider Classic Rock