About the Power of Genre

Manro

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This post is a heap of disjointed questions and thoughts, feel free to answer anything you'd like about music genres.

How do you feel about music genres ? For example with vaporwave for which I sometimes feel its identity as a "kind of music" is stronger than its identity as genuine expression from the artists and producers.

Recently I thought: "hey I want to make a noise album.", then I found it made very little sense. You don't have to express anything deep to make music, philosophy, critique, and deep personal experiences aren't the only subjects; but you still have to say something right ?
"I want to make a noise album"... and ? so ? I realized the genre's gimmick attracted me more than actually having something to say.
I believe music can be trivial, simple, primal whatever, but never mindless you know ?

Now that I'm writing this, I see that I forgot the importance of experimentation, and doing your best to make the sounds in your head real (and hopefully having them sound good).
Also the meaning of your music can sometimes come to you after you've recorded a whole bunch of stuff.

I heard Olivia Rodrigo say something in an interview along the lines of : "pop music is becoming increasingly genre-less, it's great because it gives us a lot more freedom."
I tend to disagree, general genrelessness in music makes it all sound like grey soup to me. The limits of genre are the reason interesting music can be made, when they are crossed, redrawn, ignored, jumped over, even rigorously respected... wouldn't you agree ?

If you're an artist, share your genre exercises !! I would be very interested to hear it all.
I personally have a few projects under the name Namoratron with which I think I got through the whole gimmick problem.
K-BUGGÉ would be French hyperpop, although I like hyperpop, I really just felt like adding insult to injury.
Holydays was me figuring out oldies and modern producing, traditions and plagiarism; now that Lady Gaga has an album out with Tony Bennett, it all feels a little silly.

:Zorak:
 
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ZinRicky

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The best use case of music genres is discovery: if I know the term "everybody" uses to identify the songs that sound like this one, I can find them more easily. This is especially true in EDM and metal; if I get into that brand new Tik-Tokish song, I can search an other million ones with a simple Slap House.
On the artist's side, you can never avoid genres completely: if you listen to any music, that music will have some kind of influence on you. However, I think you as an artist cannot just base your entire work on genre standards someone else made: you are the artist, so I as a listener expect you to put something unique! Give me a sort of twist, something I can "this is Anon's song!" to, not "this is another XYZ-genre song".

I heard Olivia Rodrigo say something in an interview along the lines of : "pop music is becoming increasingly genre-less, it's great because it gives us a lot more freedom."
Considering that most of recent pop meta had two or three geners for inspiration, I think we should read this quote as "pop doesn't mean having a genre on the spotlight at a time". It's good to me, as we can listen to more variety if we manage not to focus on a single trend at a time.
 
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Manro

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The best use case of music genres is discovery: if I know the term "everybody" uses to identify the songs that sound like this one, I can find them more easily. This is especially true in EDM and metal; if I get into that brand new Tik-Tokish song, I can search an other million ones with a simple Slap House.
On the artist's side, you can never avoid genres completely: if you listen to any music, that music will have some kind of influence on you. However, I think you as an artist cannot just base your entire work on genre standards someone else made: you are the artist, so I as a listener expect you to put something unique! Give me a sort of twist, something I can "this is Anon's song!" to, not "this is another XYZ-genre song".


Considering that most of recent pop meta had two or three geners for inspiration, I think we should read this quote as "pop doesn't mean having a genre on the spotlight at a time". It's good to me, as we can listen to more variety if we manage not to focus on a single trend at a time.
Yes ! yes ! yes I agree ! Discovery is such a wonderful thing, and the spotlight is meant to be shared !
 
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