In eartifacts articles, the concept of musical\ngenre is occasionally used,\nsometimes to organize artifacts and sometimes as a convenient way to make\ncertain comments. Naturally, genre is a slippery concept at best; it is taken\nas given that only broad generalizations can be made, and therefore any attempt\nto precisely define genre(s) is guaranteed to fail. The use of genre is\npredicated entirely on how useful it is in very particular situations, that is,\nit is considered to be completely non-normative. This article attempts to\nclarify how the genre concept is used by eartifacts.
\n\nWhen the genre concept is used by eartifacts, the concrete (that is,\nmore-or-less well-defined rather than totally subjective) aspects of the music\nitself, as heard by a listener, are considered relevant. Little attention is\npaid to the “scene” that a piece of music comes from, and to\nrelated works by the same artist or related artists. In addition, no attention\nis paid to textual content (even within the music itself, i.e. lyrics) like\ntitles, band names, album names, &c. Little attention is paid to the era\nthat a piece of music comes from; a piece of music that comes out a decade\nafter a scene dies that sounds like it was from that scene will likely get some\nof the same genre labels.
\nLargely subjective dimensions of music like e.g. “intelligence”,\n“sadness”, “abrasion”, &c. are not considered\nrelevant. Rather, the actual musical/sonic qualities (instrumentation, tonal\ncontent, vocal delivery, loudness, tempo, &c.) are considered relevant\ninstead, and should be enough that subjective dimensions mostly act as proxies\nfor combinations of sonic ones.
\neartifacts tries to stay limited to conventional (i.e. often used) genre terms.
\neartifacts’s artifacts are taxonomized based on assigning a list of one\nor more genres to each artifact. This is for the purpose of organization and\nease of use, because it allows readers to get a vague sense of what kind of\nmusic is represented by a particular artifact, and allows browsing by genre:\nsee here for all genres represented by eartifacts.
\nSometimes genres are useful when making a comment on a piece of music, to say\nthat an element of the music is typical (or atypical) for its style, or is\npossibly borrowed from “somewhere else”.
\nThe term “pop” is not used on its own as a genre term by\neartifacts. This term generally refers to either of two things:
\neartifacts does not use the term “emo”, as the term refers to too\nmany separate genres to be worth anything (likewise with\n“screamo”). Instead, some terms that are used by eartifacts that\nare sometimes referred to as “emo” are listed below:
\n| term | Wikipedia | as historically defined by |
|---|---|---|
| skramz | screamo | Heroin, Antioch Arrow, Portraits Of Past, Saetia, Orchid, Jeromes Dream, pg.99 |
| midwest emo | midwest emo | Cap'n Jazz, Sunny Day Real Estate, Braid, American Football, TTNG |
| pop-punk | pop punk | Sunny Day Real Estate, Jimmy Eat World, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy |
It’s not worth listing genres that are used by eartifacts that are\nsometimes referred to as “screamo”, since this would include any\ngenre that makes use of screamed vocals at least somewhat frequently.
\nThe terms “post-hardcore” and “post-punk” are used by eartifacts as super-genres.
\nIn particular, post-hardcore is used to broadly mean\n“hardcore punk derivatives that are not almost entirely defined by\nhardcore punk, all of which come historically after the first wave of hardcore\npunk”. The mention of era here is not actually that relevant except that\nit emphasizes that post-hardcore music is the kind of music\nthat could only have arrived after the first wave of hardcore punk. As a strict\nbroadening of hardcore punk, it is exclusive with “hardcore” proper, and is also not restricted to just\nthat music that is said to have the “post-hardcore” sound as exemplified by bands like At the Drive-In and Saosin.
\nThe term “post-punk” is used analogously to\n“post-hardcore” (and is thus exclusive with punk) by eartifacts.
\n\nThe term “hip-hop” is often taken to mean that\nthe music has an emphasis on rapped vocals. However, there exists plenty of hip-hop that does not have an emphasis on vocals at all or may\nbe entirely instrumental. For this reason, hip-hop that\ndoes have an emphasis on rapped vocals is labeled as hip-hop by eartifacts, and instrumental (or nearly instrumental) hip-hop is labeled as both hip-hop and\ninstrumental hip-hop by eartifacts.
\nThe term “rap” is not used as a genre term by eartifacts because\nhaving a distinguishing term for “hip-hop-with-rapped-vocals” is\nnot useful in this context.
\n\nThe term “IDM” (short for “intelligent dance music”) is\nnot used by eartifacts. The term does not identify anything beyond a very vague\nsense of the instrumentation (one may as well just use the term “electronic” instead), and is also a loaded term that\nrelies on the music being perceived as “intelligent” to qualify,\nrather than relying on musical/sonic properties.
\nThe term “electronica” is also not used, for the similar reason\nthat the term “electronic” is used instead.
\n", "permalink": "https://eartifacts.gitlab.io/philosophy/on-genre/", "slug": "on-genre", "ancestors": [ "_index.md", "philosophy/_index.md" ], "title": "on genre", "description": null, "date": null, "year": null, "month": null, "day": null, "taxonomies": { "tags": [ "genre" ] }, "extra": {}, "path": "philosophy/on-genre/", "components": [ "philosophy", "on-genre" ], "summary": "In eartifacts articles, the concept of musical\ngenre is occasionally used,\nsometimes to organize artifacts and sometimes as a convenient way to make\ncertain comments. Naturally, genre is a slippery concept at best; it is taken\nas given that only broad generalizations can be made, and therefore any attempt\nto precisely define genre(s) is guaranteed to fail. The use of genre is\npredicated entirely on how useful it is in very particular situations, that is,\nit is considered to be completely non-normative. This article attempts to\nclarify how the genre concept is used by eartifacts.
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