Bassist
A bassist or bass player, is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments. Since the 1960s, the electric bass has been the standard bass instrument for funk, R&B, soul music and roll, jazz fusion, heavy metal and pop music; the double bass is the standard bass instrument for classical music, bluegrass and most genres of jazz. Low brass instruments such as the tuba or sousaphone are the standard bass instrument in Dixieland and New Orleans-style jazz bands. Despite the associations of different bass instruments with certain genres, there are exceptions; some 1990s and 2000s rock and pop bands use a double bass, such as both Andrew Jackson Jihad, Barenaked Ladies. Some fusion jazz groups use a lightweight, stripped-down electric upright bass rather than a double bass; some composers of modern art music use the electric bass in a chamber music setting.
Some jazz big bands use electric bass. Some funk, R&B and jazz, fusion groups use synth keyboard bass rather than electric bass. Bootsy Collins and Stevie Wonder used synth bass; some Dixieland bands use double bass or electric bass instead of a tuba. In some jazz groups and jam bands, the basslines are played by a Hammond organ player, who uses the bass pedal keyboard or the lower manual for the low notes. Electric bassists play the bass guitar. In most rock, pop and country genres, the bass line outlines the harmony of the music being performed, while indicating the rhythmic pulse. In addition, there are many different standard bass line types for different genres and types of song. Bass lines emphasize the root note, with a secondary role for the third, fifth of each chord being used in a given song. In addition, pedal tones and bass riffs are used as bass lines. While most electric bass players play chords, chords are used in some styles funk, R&B, soul music, jazz and heavy metal music. A short list of notable bassists includes: Mark Adams Jeff Ament Victor Bailey Steve Bailey Ronnie Baker Michael "Flea" Balzary Robert "Kool" Bell Rex Brown Jack Bruce Jean-Jacques Burnel Cliff Burton Geezer Butler Tony Campos Alain Caron Liam Carey Stanley Clarke Adam Clayton Tommy Cogbill Bootsy Collins Melvin Lee Davis John Deacon Steve Di Giorgio Mike Dirnt Donald'Duck' Dunn Jimmy Earl Nathan East Bernard Edwards David Ellefson John Entwistle Andy Fraser (Free Billy Gould Roger Glover Simon Gallup Colin Greenwood Kim Gordon Larry Graham Stuart Hamm Jimmy Haslip Steve Harris Marco Hietala Peter Hook Anthony Jackson James Jamerson Jerry Jemmott Darryl Jones John Paul Jones Mick Karn Carol Kaye Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister Mark King Abraham Laboriel Geddy Lee Ryan Martinie Paul McCartney Marcus Miller Monk Montgomery John Myung Jason Newsted Pino Palladino Jaco Pastorius John Patitucci Wayne Pedzwater Guy Pratt Pino Presti Chuck Rainey Mel Schacher Steven Severin Billy Sheehan Ben Shepherd Paul Simonon Chris Squire Sting Jeroen Paul Thesseling Robert Trujillo Sid Vicious Roger Waters Tina Weymouth Nicky Wire Justin Chancellor Christopher Wolstenholme Victor Wooten Bill Wyman Joseph Karnes For a long list, see the List of contemporary classical double bass players.
A shortlist of notable double bass players includes: Johannes Matthias Sperger bassist, composer Domenico Dragonetti bassist, conductor Giovanni Bottesini bassist, conductor Franz Simandl bassist, pedagogue Edouard Nanny bassist, pedagogue Serge Koussevitzky bassist, composer Gary Karr
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer. He gained worldwide fame as the bass guitarist and singer for the rock band the Beatles considered the most popular and influential group in the history of popular music, his songwriting partnership with John Lennon remains the most successful in history. After the group disbanded in 1970, he pursued a solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife and Denny Laine. McCartney is one of performers of all time. More than 2,200 artists have covered his Beatles song "Yesterday", making it one of the most covered songs in popular music history. Wings' 1977 release "Mull of Kintyre" is one of the all-time best-selling singles in the UK. A two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an 18-time Grammy Award winner, McCartney has written, or co-written, 32 songs that have reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, as of 2009 he had 25.5 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr all received appointment as Members of the Order of the British Empire in 1965 and, in 1997, McCartney was knighted for services to music.
McCartney is one of the wealthiest musicians in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$1.2 billion. McCartney has released an extensive catalogue of songs as a solo artist and has composed classical and electronic music, he has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as animal rights, seal hunting, land mines, vegetarianism and music education. He is the father of five children. James Paul McCartney was born on 18 June 1942 in Walton Hospital, England, where his mother, Mary Patricia, had qualified to practise as a nurse, his father, James McCartney, was absent from his son's birth due to his work as a volunteer firefighter during World War II. McCartney has one younger brother named a stepsister, Ruth; the children were baptised in their mother's Catholic faith though their father was a former Protestant, who had turned agnostic. Religion was not emphasised in the household. McCartney attended Stockton Wood Road Primary School in Speke from 1947 until 1949, when he transferred to Joseph Williams Junior School in Belle Vale because of overcrowding at Stockton.
In 1953, with only three others out of ninety examinees, he passed the 11-Plus exam, meaning he could attend the Liverpool Institute, a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school. In 1954, he met schoolmate George Harrison on the bus from his suburban home in Speke; the two became friends. McCartney's mother, was a midwife and the family's primary wage earner, she rode a bicycle to her patients. On 31 October 1956, when McCartney was 14, his mother died of an embolism. McCartney's loss became a point of connection with John Lennon, whose mother, had died when he was 17. McCartney's father was a trumpet pianist, who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s, he kept an upright piano in the front room, encouraged his sons to be musical and advised McCartney to take piano lessons. However, McCartney preferred to learn by ear; when McCartney was 11, his father encouraged him to audition for the Liverpool Cathedral choir, but he was not accepted. McCartney joined the choir at St Barnabas' Church, Mossley Hill.
McCartney received a nickel-plated trumpet from his father for his fourteenth birthday, but when rock and roll became popular on Radio Luxembourg, McCartney traded it for a £15 Framus Zenith acoustic guitar, since he wanted to be able to sing while playing. He found it difficult to play guitar right-handed, but after noticing a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert and realising that Whitman played left-handed, he reversed the order of the strings. McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", on the Zenith, composed another early tune that would become "When I'm Sixty-Four" on the piano. American rhythm and blues influenced him, Little Richard was his schoolboy idol. At the age of fifteen on 6 July 1957, McCartney met John Lennon and his band, the Quarrymen, at the St Peter's Church Hall fête in Woolton; the Quarrymen played a mix of rock and roll and skiffle, a type of popular music with jazz and folk influences. Soon afterwards, the members of the band invited McCartney to join as a rhythm guitarist, he formed a close working relationship with Lennon.
Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon's art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, in 1960. By May 1960 the band had tried several names, including Johnny and the Moondogs and the Silver Beetles, they adopted the name the Beatles in August 1960 and recruited drummer Pete Best shortly before a five-engagement residency in Hamburg. The Beatles were informally represented by Allan Williams. In 1961, Sutcliffe left McCartney reluctantly became their bass player. While in Hamburg, they recorded professionally for the first time and were credited as the Beat Brothers, who were the backing band for English singer Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie"; this resulted in attention from Brian Epstein, w
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau is an American essayist and music journalist. One of the earliest professional rock critics, he spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop poll, he has covered popular music for Esquire, Newsday, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, MSN Music, was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. Christgau is known for his terse, letter-graded capsule album reviews, first published in his "Consumer Guide" columns during his tenure at The Village Voice from 1969 to 2006, he has authored three books based on those columns, including Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies and Christgau's Record Guide: The'80s, along with two collections of essays. He continued writing reviews in this format for MSN Music and Noisey—Vice's music section—where they are published in his "Expert Witness" column. Christgau was born in Greenwich Village and grew up in Queens, the son of a fireman.
He has said he became a rock and roll fan when disc jockey Alan Freed moved to the city in 1954. After attending a public school in New York City, he left New York for four years to attend Dartmouth College, graduating in 1962 with a B. A. in English. While at college his musical interests turned to jazz, but he returned to rock after moving back to New York. Christgau has said that Miles Davis' 1960 album Sketches of Spain initiated in him "one phase of the disillusionment with jazz that resulted in my return to rock and roll", he was influenced by New Journalism writers such as Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe. "My ambitions when I went into journalism were always, to an extent, literary", Christgau said. Christgau wrote short stories, before giving up fiction in 1964 to become a sportswriter, a police reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, he became a freelance writer after a story he wrote about the death of a woman in New Jersey was published by New York magazine. Christgau was among the first dedicated rock critics.
He was asked to take over the dormant music column at Esquire, which he began writing in June 1967. After Esquire discontinued the column, Christgau moved to The Village Voice in 1969, he worked as a college professor. From early on in his emergence as a critic, Christgau was conscious of his lack of formal knowledge of music. In a 1968 piece he commented: I don't know anything about music, which ought to be a damaging admission but isn't... The fact is that pop writers in general shy away from such arcana as key signature and beats to the measure... I used to confide my worries about this to friends in the record industry, they didn't know anything about music either. The technical stuff didn't matter, I was told. You just gotta dig it. In early 1972, he accepted a full-time job as music critic for Newsday. Christgau returned to the Village Voice in 1974 as music editor, he remained there until August 2006, when he was fired shortly after the paper's acquisition by New Times Media. Two months Christgau became a contributing editor at Rolling Stone.
Late in 2007, Christgau was fired by Rolling Stone, although he continued to work for the magazine for another three months. Starting with the March 2008 issue, he joined Blender, where he was listed as "senior critic" for three issues and "contributing editor". Christgau had been a regular contributor to Blender, he continued to write for Blender until the magazine ceased publication in March 2009. In 1987, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of "Folklore and Popular Culture" to study the history of popular music. Christgau has written for Playboy and Creem, he appears about the Replacements. He taught during the formative years of the California Institute of the Arts; as of 2007, he was an adjunct professor in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at New York University. In August 2013, Christgau revealed in an article written for Barnes & Noble's website that he is writing a memoir. On July 15, 2014, Christgau debuted a monthly column on Billboard's website. Christgau is best known for his "Consumer Guide" columns, which have been published more-or-less monthly since July 10, 1969, in the Village Voice, as well as a brief period in Creem.
In its original format, the "Consumer Guide" consisted of 18 to 20 single-paragraph album reviews, each of, given a letter grade ranging from A+ to E−. These reviews were collected and extensively revised in a three-volume book series, the first of, published in 1981 as Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. In his original grading system from 1969 to 1990, albums were given a grade ranging from A+ to E-. Under this system, Christgau considered a B+ or higher to be a personal recommendation, he noted. In 1990, Christgau changed the format of the "Consumer Guide" to focus more on the albums. B+ records that Christgau deemed "unworthy of a full review" were given brief comments and star marks ranging from three down to one, denoting an honorable mention", records which Christgau believed may be of interest to their own target audience. Lesser albums were filed under categories such as "Neither" and "Duds" (which indicated bad records and were listed without fur
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a diverse style of rock music inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, centred around perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music is intended to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs, most notably LSD. Many psychedelic groups differ in style, the label is applied spuriously. Originating in the mid-1960s among British and American musicians, the sounds of psychedelic rock invokes three core effects of LSD: depersonalization and dynamization. Musically, the effects may be represented via novelty studio tricks, electronic or non-Western instrumentation, disjunctive song structures, extended instrumental segments; some of the earlier 1960s psychedelic rock musicians were based in folk and the blues, while others showcased an explicit Indian classical influence called "raga rock". In the 1960s, there existed two main variants of the genre: the whimsical British pop-psychedelia and the harder American West Coast acid rock.
While "acid rock" is sometimes deployed interchangeably with the term "psychedelic rock", it refers more to the heavier and more extreme ends of the genre. The peak years of psychedelic rock were between 1966 and 1969, with milestone events including the 1967 Summer of Love and the 1969 Woodstock Rock Festival, becoming an international musical movement associated with a widespread counterculture before beginning a decline as changing attitudes, the loss of some key individuals and a back-to-basics movement, led surviving performers to move into new musical areas; the genre bridged the transition from early blues and folk-based rock to progressive rock and hard rock, as a result contributed to the development of sub-genres such as heavy metal. Since the late 1970s it has been revived in various forms of neo-psychedelia; as a musical style, psychedelic rock attempted to replicate the effects of and enhance the mind-altering experiences of hallucinogenic drugs, incorporating new electronic sound effects and recording effects, extended solos, improvisation.
Common features include: electric guitars used with feedback, wah wah and fuzzbox effects units. The term "psychedelic" was coined in 1956 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond first as an alternative descriptor for hallucinogenic drugs in the context of psychedelic psychotherapy; as the countercultural scene developed in San Francisco, the terms acid rock and psychedelic rock were used in 1966 to describe the new drug-influenced music and were being used by 1967. The terms psychedelic rock and acid rock are used interchangeably, but acid rock may be distinguished as a more extreme variation, heavier, relied on long jams, focused more directly on LSD, made greater use of distortion. In the popular music of the early 1960s, it was common for producers and engineers to experiment with musical form, unnatural reverb, other sound effects; some of the best known examples are Phil Spector's Wall of Sound production formula and Joe Meek's use of homemade electronics for acts like the Tornados. XTC's Andy Partridge interprets the music of psychedelic groups as a "grown-up" version of children's novelty records, believing that many acts were trying to emulate those records that they grew up with.
There was no transition to be made. You go from things like'Flying Purple People Eater' to'I Am the Walrus', they go hand-in-hand." Music critic Richie Unterberger says that attempts to "pin down" the first psychedelic record are therefore "nearly as elusive as trying to name the first rock & roll record". Some of the "far-fetched claims" include the instrumental "Telstar" and the Dave Clark Five's "massively reverb-laden" "Any Way You Want It"; the first mention of LSD on a rock record was the Gamblers' 1960 surf instrumental "LSD 25". A 1962 single by The Ventures, "The 2000 Pound Bee", issued forth the buzz of a distorted, "fuzztone" guitar, the quest into "the possibilities of heavy, transistorised distortion" and other effects, like improved reverb and echo began in earnest on London's fertile rock'n' roll scene. By 1964 fuzztone could be heard on singles by P. J. Proby, the Beatles had employed feedback in "I Feel Fine", their 6th consecutive No. 1 hit in the UK. American folk singer Bob Dylan was a massive influence on mid 1960s rock music.
He led directly to the creation of folk rock and the psychedelic rock musicians that followed, his lyrics were a touchstone for the psychedelic songwriters of the late 1960s. Virtuoso sitarist Ravi Shankar had begun in 1956 a mission to bring Indian classical music to the West, inspiring jazz and folk musicians.
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, developed from roots in blues and ragtime. Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music". Since the 1920s Jazz Age, jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression, it emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage with a performance orientation. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes and response vocals and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as "one of America's original art forms"; as jazz spread around the world, it drew on national and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation.
In the 1930s arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, a hard-swinging, improvisational style and Gypsy jazz were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music", played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines; the 1950s saw the emergence of free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter and formal structures, in the mid-1950s, hard bop emerged, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues and blues in the saxophone and piano playing. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay.
Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Afro-Cuban jazz. The origin of the word "jazz" has resulted in considerable research, its history is well documented, it is believed to be related to "jasm", a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning "pep, energy". The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch which he called a "jazz ball" "because it wobbles and you can't do anything with it"; the use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916 Times-Picayune article about "jas bands". In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, "When Broadway picked it up, they called it'J-A-Z-Z', it wasn't called that. It was spelled'J-A-S-S'; that was dirty, if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies."
The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to the rock-infused fusion. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music, but critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as a "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has a "special relationship to time defined as'swing'". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician". In the opinion of Robert Christgau, "most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz".
A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, group interaction, developing an'individual voice', being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition". In contrast to commentators who have argued for excluding types of jazz, musicians are sometimes reluctant to define the music they play. Duke Ellington, one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music." Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues, a form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations; these work songs were structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was improvisational.
Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score, with less attention given to interpretation and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal is to play the composition. In contrast, jazz is characterized by the product of i
Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings, Shaun Frater, with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig. They started out influenced by American folk rock and singer-songwriter material, with a setlist dominated by covers of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname “the British Jefferson Airplane.” Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968. Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song A Sailor's Life, which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. However, shortly before the album's release, a crash on the M1 killed Lamble and Thompson's then-girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn.
For this album Swarb joined full-time alongside Dave Mattacks on drums. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year's end; the 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarb and Pegg, with Nicol absent for the middle of the decade, declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-orientated Rising for the Moon in 1975 in a final bid to crack America, they played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, where they’d held small concerts since 1976, this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendance of 20,000. The band was reformed by Nicol and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock and Ric Sanders and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, Gerry Conway replaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group's history.
Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, they continue to headline Cropredy each year. Despite little mainstream success – with their only top 40 single being Si Tu Dois Partir, a French-language cover of the Dylan song If You Gotta Go, Go Now from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, Pegg's playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, the Albion Band. Hers ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as Britain's finest female singer-songwriter, her song Who Knows Where the Time Goes? – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature for herself and the band.
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – the same street on which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up; the house name lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him, they soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period. Fairport Convention were soon playing at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden, which became the Middle Earth club.
After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews joined the band and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to North American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Byrds for material and inspiration; the name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played alongside Jefferson Airplane at the First Isle of Wight Festival, 1968. After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble was replaced by the band with Sandy Denny, a
Rock music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the early 1950s, developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and particularly in the United Kingdom and in the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style which drew on the genres of blues and blues, from country music. Rock music drew on a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. Musically, rock has centered on the electric guitar as part of a rock group with electric bass and one or more singers. Rock is song-based music with a 4/4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become diverse. Like pop music, lyrics stress romantic love but address a wide variety of other themes that are social or political. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, jazz-rock, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene.
New genres that emerged included progressive rock. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and alternative rock. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop punk, electronic rock, rap rock, rap metal, as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk and techno-pop revivals at the beginning of the 2000s. Rock music has embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the hippie counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. 1970s punk culture spawned the goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race and drug use, is seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.
The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists; the sound of an electric guitar in rock music is supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered in jazz music in the same era, percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ, the synthesizer; the basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed as a rock group. Furthermore, it consists of between three and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboard player or other instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four.
Melodies originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian, as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s and from the mid 1960s onwards, rock music used the verse-chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock; because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition." Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, rebellion against "The Establishment", social concerns, life styles. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music, rhythm and blues.
Music journalist Robert Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more noise." The predominance of white and middle class musicians in rock music has been noted, rock has been seen as an appropriation of black musical forms for a young and male audience. As a result, it has been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from wh
