Pop Music Essay Example

Pop Music Essay Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of popular) is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple love songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, but as a genre is particularly associated with the rock and roll and later rock style. [citation needed] Contents [hide] 1 Definitions 2 Origin of the term Influences and development 4 Characteristics 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Bibliography 8 External links [edit] Definitions Hatch and Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz and folk musics. [1] Although pop music is often seen as oriented towards the singles charts it is not the sum of all chart music, which has always contained songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs, while pop music as a genre is usually seen as existing and developing separately. 2] Thus pop music may be used to describe a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll. [3] [edit] Origin of the term The term pop song, is first recorded as being used in 1926 in the sense of a piece of music having popular appeal. [4] Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. [5] We will write a custom essay sample on Pop Music specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Pop Music specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Pop Music specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer According to Grove Music Online, the term pop music originated in Britain in the mid-1950s as a description for Rock and roll and the new youth music styles that it influenced . [6] The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience [,] since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the special meaning of non-classical mus[ic], usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, ABBA, etc. [7] Grove Music Online also states that n the early 1960s [the term] ‘pop music’ competed terminologically with Beat music [in England], while in the USA its coverage overlapped (as it still does) with that of ‘rock and roll’. [6] Chambers Dictionary mentions the contemporary usage of the term pop art;[8] Grove Music Online states that the term pop music seems to have been a spin-off from the terms pop art and pop culture, coined slightly earlier, and referring to a whole range of new, often American, media-culture products. [6] From about 1967 the term was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, a division that gave generic significance to both terms. [9] Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of popular music,[9] pop was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible. [10] According to Simon Frith pop music is produced as a matter of enterprise not art, is designed to appeal to everyone and doesnt come from any particular place or mark off any particular taste. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high (by record companies, radio programmers and concert promoters) rather than being made from below Pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. [11] [edit] Influences and development Technological developments played an important role in the dissemination of pop music, particularly the 7-inch 45 rpm record (right) and the Compact Disc (above). The 12-inch 33 rpm record (left) was more associated with rock albums than with pop music. [citation needed]Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from most other genres of popular music. Early pop music drew on the sentimental ballad for its form, gained its use of vocal harmonies from gospel and soul music, instrumentation from jazz, country, and rock music, orchestration from classical music, tempo from dance music, backing from electronic music, rhythmic elements from hip-hop music, and has recently appropriated spoken passages from rap. [3] It has also made use of technological innovation. In the 1940s improved microphone design allowed a more intimate singing style[12] and ten or twenty years later inexpensive and more durable 45 r. p. m. ecords for singles revolutionized the manner in which pop has been disseminated and helped to move pop music to ‘a record/radio/film star system’. [12] Another technological change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s; with televised performances, pop stars had to have a visual presence. [12] In the 1960s, the introduction of inexpensive, portable transistor radios meant that teenagers could l isten to music outside of the home. [12] Multi-track recording (from the 1960s); and digital sampling (from the 1980s) have also been utilized as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music. 3] By the early 1980s, the promotion of pop music had been greatly affected by the rise of Music Television channels like MTV, which favoured those artists such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince who had a strong visual appeal. [12] Pop music has been dominated by the American and (from the mid-1960s) British music industries, whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music, sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local characteristics. 13] Some of these trends (for example Europop) have had a significant impact of the development of the genre. [3] According to Grove Music Online, Western-derived pop styles, whether coexisting with or marginalizing distinctively local genres, have spread throughout th e world and have come to constitute stylistic common denominators in global commercial music cultures. 14] Some non-Western countries, such as Japan, have developed a thriving pop music industry, most of which is devoted to Western-style pop, has for several years has produced a greater quantity of music of everywhere except the USA. [14] The spread of Western-style pop music has been interpreted variously as representing processes of Americanization, homogenization, modernization, creative appropriation, cultural imperialism, and/or a more general process of globalization. [14] [edit] Characteristics Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre: n aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology[3] an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal artistic qualities[3] an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance[10] a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments[10] much pop music is intended to encourage dancing, or it uses dance-oriented beats or rhythms[10] The main medium of pop music is the song, often between two and a half and three and a half minutes in length, generally marked by a consistent and noticeable rhythmic element, a mainstream style and a simple tradi tional structure. [15] Common variants include the verse-chorus form and the thirty-two-bar form, with a focus on melodies and catchy hooks, and a chorus that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and harmonically with the verse. [16] The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment. [17] The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions. [3] Harmony in pop music is often that of classical European tonality, only more simple-minded. [18] Cliches include the barbershop harmony (i. e. moving from a secondary dominant harmony to a dominant harmony, and then to the tonic) and blues scale-influenced harmony. [19] The influence of the circle-of-fifths paradigm has declined since the mid-1950s. The harmonic languages of rock and soul have moved away from the all-encompassing influence of the dominant function. There are other tendencies (perhaps also traceable to the use of a guitar as a composing instrument) – pedal-point harmonies, root motion by diatonic step, modal harmonic and melodic organization – that point away from functional