Square pegs, round holes and a mighty big hammer – genre defining

When I started this project I was determined to filter the dozens and dozens of sub genres of music onto a few (fewer than 10) master genres. I knew this would be difficult, but I was convinced that – with some hard work, tough decisions and an emotional detachment I would get there in the end.

Why so few master genres?

My eventual aim is to create an all encompassing visualisation of the entire time scale of my project – 40 years) and any more genres than that would make the visualisation cluttered and useless. Plus many of smaller genres would simply disappear in the larger image.

However, am I removing vital elements of the visualisation if I put them in a master category?

It’s a tough one – I developed, fairly early on, a definitive list of genres – although I knew these would bend and shift.

• pop
• rock
• classical / orchestral / performance / theatre
• easy listening
• entertainment (incl. spoken word, comedy, childrens, fitness album etc)
• soundtrack
• dance
• electronic

I know this poses a ton of questions

• Should Dance and Electronic be merged? they have a similar sound and use of instruments
• Do I have a soundtracks category out of pure laziness? Should I not go through each of them and assign a proper genre? And if not, should there be a COMPILATION soundtrack (a category I have now merged into pop)
• Where does Jazz go? and Reggae? What about SOUL?
• Am I removing a key category by putting RnB into pop?
• Easy listening – I developed this for the POPULAR music that does not belong in POP – Val Doonican etc. However, am I simply moving it out of POP because it is “old”? Also, am I just putting what I consider to be the “dull stuff” in there?

However, the biggest question is – do I need a pop category at all?

The focus of my project is ROCK – so there has to be a rock category – but does POP = ROCK in terms of a category size?

I wanted my final categories to be as equal as possible – not in size but in classification terms. If I was going to put FOLK under ROCK, then should I put RnB under POP?

Any help, advice or thoughts much appreciated …

2011

08/02

CATEGORY

research

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