What genre(s) of music is this song?

glennmagusharvey · 2011-09-17 18:19:37

glennmagusharvey · 2011-09-17 21:51:22

Really? No music people around here?

AHR · 2011-09-17 21:51:53

IT'S JAPANESE!

glennmagusharvey · 2011-09-17 22:10:38

That's a nationality, not a genre.

DYRE · 2011-09-17 22:11:29

Really generic rock music?

(yes I know that is not much of a genre or descriptive at all)

glennmagusharvey · 2011-09-17 22:12:43

I want to know whether it counts as a rock ballad, and any other genre and subgenre categories it might have.

delta534 · 2011-09-17 22:13:06

I'm going to call it either J-Power Ballad or J-Rock

DYRE · 2011-09-17 22:13:38

But yeah, pretty much what delta534 said. It's pretty much just a power ballad. At least, that's probably what I'd have said it was if I remembered the term "power ballad."

MadassAlex · 2011-09-17 22:30:20

Not sure I'd associate it with rock, apart from the instrumentation. Doesn't really have rock phrasing. It's really just a pop ballad.

glennmagusharvey · 2011-09-18 09:53:56

(open question) What defines rock or metal apart from the instrumentation?

FYI I had it pegged as rock because of the "heavy" use of electric guitars in the refrain and bridge sections, as well as the fast guitar notes in the coda (would that be called shredding?).

MadassAlex · 2011-09-18 10:07:54

Shredding is an undefined term. It really just means "fast playing" and nothing else. On the other hand "fast" is subjective. So shredding is a colloquialism.

As for differentiating between rock and metal? Obviously, there's a lot of grey areas going on here. I can't exactly teach the difference, but my personal definition of rock includes some elements of blues phrasing. Rock came from the blues, and when you're no longer playing with that phrasing in mind, I'd say you're playing a different genre. Just with electric guitars.

With that in mind, metal could loosely be defined as a sort of quasi-classical, quasi-folk answer to that. It's essentially rock that has taken on those extra influences and deepened its sound. One great genre for very dark classical phrasing is death metal, although you sort of need to know what you're after. Decapitated are a great example of an extreme metal band that use classical phrasing, in case you're interested. "Blessed" is a good song to begin with. See if you can find the demo version.

But there's no hard-and-fast rules either way. Some bands or songs are definitely rock, or definitely metal, but many others fall somewhere in-between. I'd say that classic rock contains the most grey areas, given bands like Deep Purple and AC/DC that tend to get defined as both.

GLORIOUSLeader · 2011-09-18 10:14:12

That's j-rock. I think; the voices were too grating for me, and this is coming from someone who loves M83.

glennmagusharvey · 2011-09-18 10:22:31

So basically you take rock to mean, vaguely, a successor to rock-n-roll.

The electric guitar seems to be one of those genre-defining instruments, though. Well I guess there's genres like "piano rock" or something, but does the wail of the guitar put it into one or more categories that it would otherwise be?

I'm asking partly because I really like this song and two other similar songs by Melocure--they contrast very lyrical sections (usually verses) with much heavier (or what's the right adjective), metal-ish sections (usually refrains). (FYI the two other songs are "So Far, So Near" and "Agapé".) So I'm just wondering what the term might be for finding other similar music.

MadassAlex · 2011-09-18 10:24:47

Colloquially, I've heard everything from metal to pop to jazz called "rock". Rock is a really nondescript term most of the time.

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What genre(s) of music is this song?

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