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93 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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A&R (artists and repertoire)
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The record company department responsible for discovering and cultivating new musical talent, and finding material for artists to perform.
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arranger
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Person who adapts (or arranges) the melody and chords of a song to exploit the capabilities of the instrumental resources of a particular musical ensemble
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big band
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Popular dance ensemble during the swing era, consisting of brass, reeds, and rhythm sections.
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boogie woogie
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Blues piano tradition which sprang up during the early twentieth century in the “southwest territory” states of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. In boogie-woogie performances, the pianist typically plays a repeated pattern with his left hand, down in the low range of the piano, while improvising polyrhythmic patterns with his right hand.
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brass
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In a big band, the section that includes the trumpet and trombones.
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call-and-response
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A musical statement by a singer or instrumentalist that is answered by other singers or instrumentalists
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head chart
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Arrangements that evolved during jam sessions and were written down only later, almost as an afterthought.
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jam session or cutting session
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An informal gathering that provides musicians the opportunity to improvise and compete with one another.
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reeds
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The woodwind section of a big band (saxophones and clarinets).
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riff
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A simple, repeating melodic idea or pattern that generated rhythmic momentum
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soli scoring
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A musical passage in which a group of instruments play a melody together, often in harmony.
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swing
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Derives from African American English. First used as a verb for the fluid, rocking rhythmic momentum created by well-played music, the term was used by extension to refer to an emotional state characterized by a sense of freedom, vitality, and enjoyment. Swing is a term used to describe a rhythmic feel used in jazz and blues based music. The term is also used to describe a specific period of jazz history from the early 1930s through 1945.
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territory bands
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Bands that traveled and performed throughout the United States during the swing era. The most famous territory bands came from the Southwest, especially Kansas City
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western swing
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A concatenation of country fiddle music, blues, boogie woogie, and swing music. The genre developed in Texas and accordingly reflected that state’s diverse musical traditions.
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45 rpm
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Introduced by the RCA Victor Corporation in 1949, the seven-inch 45 rpm single (called the “45”) became the favored medium for distributing hit singles. The disc spun at 45 revolutions per minute (rpm).
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bel canto
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A technique used by opera singers that emphasizes breath control, a fluid and relaxed voice, and the use of subtle variations in pitch and rhythmic phrasing for dramatic effect.
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boogie woogie
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A blues piano tradition that sprang up during the early twentieth century in the “southwest territory” states of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. In boogie-woogie performances, the pianist typically plays a repeated pattern with his left hand, down in the low range of the piano, while improvising polyrhythmic patterns with his right hand.
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crooning
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A style of singing made possible by the invention of the microphone. It involves an intimate approach to vocal timbre
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bluegrass
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A style rooted in the venerable southern string band tradition. It combines the banjo, fiddle, mandolin, dobro, guitar, and acoustic bass with a vocal style often dubbed the “high, lonesome sound.” The pioneer of bluegrass music was Bill Monroe.
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blues crooning
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A cool style of rhythm and blues; a blend of blues and pop singing.
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Chicago electric blues
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A style of postwar urban blues that was derived directly from the Mississippi Delta tradition of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. It featured the amplified sound of instruments such as the electric guitar and harmonica and reflected the musical tastes of black Chicagoans, many of them recent immigrants from the Deep South. The music tended toward rougher, grittier styles, closely linked to African American folk traditions but also reflective of an urban orientation.
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honky-tonk
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A style of postwar country and western music sometimes called “hard country” or “beer-drinking music.” Born in the oil boomtowns of Texas and Oklahoma, it conveyed the sound and ethos of the roadside bar or juke joint.
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jump blues
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The first commercially successful category of rhythm & blues, flourished during and just after World War II. Ensembles were smaller than the big bands of the swing era and specialized in hard-swinging, boogie-woogie–based party music, spiced with humorous lyrics and wild stage performances.
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a cappella
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Vocal singing without instrumental accompaniment.
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blue notes
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“Bent” or “flattened” tones lying outside traditional European-based scale structures; tones that reflect particular African American melodic characteristics.
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reverb
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Short for “reverberation”—a prolongation of sound by virtue of an ambient acoustical space created by reflective surfaces. Reverb can occur naturally or be simulated either electronically or by digital sound processors.
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payola
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Illegal practice, common throughout the music industry, of paying bribes to radio disc jockeys to get certain artists’ records played more frequently.
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producer
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Behind-the-scenes role at a record company. Can be responsible for booking time in the recording studio, hiring backup singers and instrumentalists, assisting with the engineering process, and imprinting the characteristic sound of the finished record.
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R&B (rhythm and blues)
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African American musical genre that emerged after World War II. Consisted of a loose cluster of styles derived from black musical traditions, characterized by energetic and hard-swinging rhythms. At first performed exclusively by black musicians for black audiences, R&B came to replace the older category of “race records.”
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rock ’n’ roll
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Introduced as a commercial and marketing term in the mid-1950s for the purpose of identifying a new target audience for musical products. Encompassed a variety of styles and artists from R&B, country, and pop music.
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rockabilly
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Vigorous form of country and western music informed by the rhythms of black R&B and electric blues. Exemplified by artists such as Carl Perkins and the young Elvis Presley.
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scat singing
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Technique that involves the use of nonsense syllables as a vehicle for wordless vocal improvisation.
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strophic
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Song form that employs the same music for each poetic unit in the lyrics.
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Brill Building
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Rock ’n’ roll’s vertical Tin Pan Alley. It was home to many pop-rock songwriting teams during the early 1960s.
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concept album
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Album conceived as an integrated whole, with interrelated songs arranged in a deliberate sequence
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Hitsville, USA
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Nickname of Motown Records.
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Motown
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Record company founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit.
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“The Twist
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Teen-oriented rock ’n’ roll song using a twelve-bar blues structure; it celebrated a simple, hip-swiveling dance step.
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“wall of sound”
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Term used to describe the studio production techniques of Phil Spector. The sound was achieved by having multiple instruments—pianos, guitars, and so forth—doubling each individual part in the arrangement, and by using a huge amount of echo, while carefully controlling the overall balance of the record so that the vocals were pushed clearly to the front.
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countrypolitan
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Sophisticated approach to the vocal presentation and instrumental arrangement of country music; a fusion of “country” and “cosmopolitan.”
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Nashville sound
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Country music style involving polished arrangements and a sophisticated approach to vocal presentation. The recordings of Patsy Cline were among the most important manifestations of the Nashville sound.
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psychedelic rock
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Music played by San Francisco bands that encompassed a variety of styles and musical influences, including folk rock, blues, “hard rock,” Latin music, and Indian classical music.
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soul music
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African American musical style rooted in R&B and gospel that became popular during the 1960s.
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urban folk
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Style of folk music that grew in popularity in the burgeoning New York folk scene during the 1960s. It included artists such as Bob Dylan.
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adult contemporary
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Extension of the old crooner tradition, with varying degrees of rock influence: Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Roberta Flack, the Carpenters.
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AOR (album-oriented rock)
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aimed at young white males aged thirteen to twenty-five. The AOR format featured hard rock bands, such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, and art rock bands, such as King Crimson; Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; and Pink Floyd. AOR generally excluded black artists.
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art rock
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Form of rock music that blended elements of rock and European classical music. It included bands such as King Crimson; Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; and Pink Floyd.
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Bakersfield sound
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Stood in direct opposition to the slick sound of much Nashville country music. Popularized by musicians like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, this was one of the most influential country genres of the late 1960s. It revived the spirit of postwar honky-tonk and set the stage for subsequent movements such as country rock and outlaw country.
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bubble gum
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Cheerful songs aimed mainly at a preteen audience: the Jackson Five, the Osmonds.
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country pop
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A style of soft rock, lightly tinged with country music influences: John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, Kenny Rogers
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disco
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Form of dance music popular in the late 1970s, characterized by elaborate studio production and an insistent beat: Donna Summer, Chic, the Village People, the Bee Gees.
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glam rock
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Short for “glamour rock”; emphasized elaborate, showy personal appearance and costuming: David Bowie.
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hardcore country
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“Back to basics” spirit of country music that included the straightforward, emotionally direct approach of postwar honky-tonk. It is perhaps best captured in the recordings of Merle Haggard.
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heavy metal
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Genre that developed out of hard rock in the 1970s and achieved mainstream success in the 1980s.
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Philadelphia sound
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One of the most commercially successful forms of soul music during the 1970s. Produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and performed by groups such as the O’Jays and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.
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pop rock
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Upbeat variety of rock music represented by artists such as Elton John, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Chicago, and Peter Frampton.
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singer-songwriters
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Cross between the urban folk music of Peter, Paul, and Mary and Bob Dylan and the commercial pop style of the Brill Building tunesmiths: Paul Simon, Carole King, James Taylor.
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soft soul
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Slick variety of rhythm & blues, often with lush orchestral accompaniment: the O’Jays, the Spinners, Al Green, Barry White.
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breakdancing
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Acrobatic solo dancing improvised by the young “B-boys” who attended hip-hop dances.
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funk music
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Centered on the creation of a strong rhythmic momentum or groove, with the electric bass and bass drum often playing on all four main beats of the measure, the snare drum and other instruments playing equally strongly on the second and fourth beats (the backbeats), and interlocking ostinato patterns distributed among other instruments, including guitar, keyboards, and horns. Funk brought the focus on dancing back into the pop mainstream.
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hip-hop
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Hip-hop culture, forged by African American and Caribbean American youth in New York City, included distinctive styles of visual art (graffiti), dance (an acrobatic solo style called breakdancing and an energetic couple dance called the freak), music, dress, and speech. Hip-hop was at first a local phenomenon, centered in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx, the most economically devastated area of New York City.
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mento
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A style of Jamaican music that led to reggae. It arose in rural Jamaica during the late nineteenth century.
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outlaw country
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A term used by the record industry to capitalize on the overlap between audiences for rock and country music. It included Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
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progressive country
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In progressive country, performers wrote songs that were more intellectual and liberal in outlook than their contemporaries and were more concerned with testing the limits of the country music tradition than with scoring hits. The key artists included Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall, and Townes Van Zandt.
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punk rock
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Rock style that emerged in the late 1970s. It was a “back to basics” rebellion against the perceived artifice and pretension of corporate rock music—a stripped-down and often purposefully “nonmusical” version of rock music.
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rap
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Emerged during the 1970s as one part of the cultural complex of hip-hop. It consisted of rhymed speech accompanied by funk-derived rhythmic grooves.
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reggae
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Born in the impoverished shantytowns of Kingston, Jamaica, reggae first became popular in the United States in 1973, after the release of the Jamaican film The Harder They Come and its soundtrack album. The heart of reggae music consists of “riddims,” interlocking rhythmic patterns played by the guitar, bass, and drums. The guitar often plays short, choppy chords on the second and fourth beats of each measure, giving the music a bouncy, up-and-down feeling. The bass-drum combination is the irreducible core of a reggae band, sometimes called the “riddim pair.” Political messages were central to reggae music.
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rock steady
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A transitional style of Jamaican music between ska and reggae. It is slower in tempo than ska. Some of its leading exponents—notably Alton Ellis, who had the first big rock steady hit in 1966, began to record songs with social and political content.
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sampling
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A digital recording process wherein a sound source is recorded with a microphone, converted to a digital stream of binary numbers, and stored in a computer. The sampled sounds may be retrieved in a number of ways.
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scratching
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The sound produced when a record disc is spun backward and forward on a turntable. The distinctive sound of scratching became an important part of the sonic palette of hip-hop music
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ska
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A style of Jamaican music that led to reggae. It combined elements of Jamaican folk music and American R&B.
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analog recording
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The norm since the introduction of recording in the nineteenth century. Transforms the energy of sound waves into physical imprints (as in pre-1925 acoustic recordings) or into electronic waveforms that closely follow (and can be used to reproduce) the shape of the sound waves themselves.
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digital recording
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Samples the sound waves and breaks them down into a stream of numbers (0s and 1s). A device called an analog-to-digital converter does the conversion. To play back the music, the stream of numbers is converted back to an analog wave by a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The analog wave produced by the DAC is amplified and fed to speakers to produce the sound.
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drum machines
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Drum machines such as the Roland TR 808 and the Linn LM-1—almost ubiquitous on 1980s dance music and rap recordings—rely on “drum pads,” which performers strike and activate, triggering the production of sampled sounds
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Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)
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Device that standardized digital technologies, enabling devices produced by different manufacturers to “communicate” with one another.
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sequencer
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Device that records musical data rather than musical sound and enables the creation of repeated sound sequences (loops), the manipulation of rhythmic grooves, and the transmission of recorded data from one program or device to another
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synthesizer
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Device that enables musicians to create or “synthesize” musical sounds. Began to appear on rock records during the early 1970s
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alternative music
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The term “alternative”—like the broadly equivalent terms “underground” and “independent”—is used across a wide range of popular genres, including rock, rap, adult contemporary, dance, folk, and country music. It is used to describe music that challenges the status quo; anticommercial, and antimainstream, it is thought by its supporters to be local as opposed to corporate, homemade as opposed to mass-produced, and genuine as opposed to artificial. The music industry’s use of “alternative” is bound up with the need of the music business to identify and exploit new trends, styles, and audiences.
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alternative rock
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Marketing category that emerged around 1990; it is most often used to describe bands like R.E.M., Sonic Youth, the Dead Kennedys, and Nirvana
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bluegrass
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Style modeled on that of the early acoustic string bands; probably the original “alternative country” music.
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gangsta rap
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Variant of hip-hop music; its emergence was heralded nationwide by the release of the album Straight Outta Compton by N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitude). It included artists such as Snoop Doggy Dogg, 2Pac Shakur, and the Notorious B.I.G.
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grunge rock
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Regional style of alternative rock from Seattle that blended heavy metal guitar textures with hardcore punk. Bands from Seattle included Green River, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden.
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hard core
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Extreme variation of punk, pioneered during the early 1980s by bands in San Francisco (the Dead Kennedys) and Los Angeles (the Germs, Black Flag, X, and the Circle Jerks).
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house music
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Named after the Warehouse, a popular gay dance club in Chicago, it was a style of techno dance music. Many house recordings were purely instrumental, with elements of European synth-pop, Latin soul, reggae, rap, and jazz grafted over an insistent dance beat. By the mid-1980s, house music scenes had emerged in New York and London, and in the late 1980s, the genre made its first appearances on the pop charts, under the guise of artists such as M/A/R/R/S and Madonna.
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old school New York hip-hop
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Describes the earliest styles of hip-hop that came out of New York City in the 1970s and 1980s
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qawwali
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Genre of mystical singing practiced by Sufi Muslims in Pakistan and India. In traditional settings, the lead singer (or qawwal) alternates stanzas of traditional poetic texts (sung in unison with a choir) with spectacular and elaborate melodic improvisations, in an attempt to spiritually arouse his listeners and move them into emotional proximity with the Divine.
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rave
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One of the main venues for techno. Semipublic event modeled partly on the be-ins of the 1960s counterculture.
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techno
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Style of electronic dance music that originated in the Detroit area during the 1980s.
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thrash
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Style that blended the fast tempos and rebellious attitude of hardcore with the technical virtuosity of heavy metal guitar playing.
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West Coast rap
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Style of rap that originated in California; it differed from “old school” New York hip-hop in a number of regards. The edgy, rapid-fire delivery of Melle Mel and Run-D.M.C. remained influential but was augmented by a smoother, more laid-back style of rapping. The dialects of southern California rappers also contributed to the distinctive flavor of West Coast rap. And if the verbal delivery of West Coast rap was sometimes cooler, the content of the MCs’ recitations themselves became angrier, darker, and more menacing.
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world music or world beat
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Heterogeneous category that includes artists from Africa, the Near East, and Asia—the ultimate margins of the American music industry
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peer-to-peer
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Computer file sharing networks in which users share files containing audio, video, data or anything in digital format
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MP3
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Variant of MPEG; MP3 enables sound files to be compressed to as little as one-twelfth of their original size
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