Music Technology

Styles and Genres

N4

Ragtime
1895-1918

Ragtime
Ragtime Music started off as a type of dance music but
became really popular as music specifically for piano.
Scott Joplin is the most famous Ragtime composer, and his
music is recognisable, even today.

Ragtime
Listen to the original recording again.
Listen to the LEFT HAND of the piano part. (The lower
notes playing chords and a bass part.)
The Left Hand part is KEEPING THE BEAT by playing a
VAMP.
Listen to the OOM CHA, OOM CHA sound. This is a typical
VAMP sound. Can you hear it? It LEAPS up and down the
piano throughout the entire song.
Now listen to the RIGHT HAND. It is playing the melody.
The melody line is not KEEPING THE BEAT. It is OFF THE
BEAT (SYNCOPATED).
The melody has a mixture of STEPWISE and LEAP
movement.
It also has a lot of REPETITION.

Player Pianos
A PLAYER PIANO is a piano that plays music on its own! It
reads perforated paper or metal, a bit like brail, which is
printed with pre-programmed music.
The piano has a mechanism that can then translate these
holes and perforations and plays the keys in the right
order at the right time!
You can now get modern day versions of the original
player pianos which use computers to send the
information rather than the paper or metal rolls.
(If you go to Braehead, check out the player piano outside
Next!)

Styles and Genres

Ragtime Definition
A style of early jazz piano music which
became popular at the end of the 19th
century and which helped to influence
jazz. It is recognisable by on-the-beat
bass and chords (vamp)and syncopated
melody. A key composer in this style was
Scott Joplin.

Styles and Genres

Ragtime
To show your understanding of Ragtime
Music, you can use the following concepts:
Early Piano Jazz, Syncopated melody
with vamp in bass.

Swing

Swing
In the 1930s, a new form of jazz had arrived
called Swing.
Swing bands were much bigger than jazz
bands. Bandleaders would organise
arrangements for each section of the band
Sax Section, Trumpet and Trombone Section &
Rhythm Section. A solo instrument would
perform and improvise in a solo section.
The music is characterised by its dotted swing
rhythm and was played for people to dance
along to.

Swing
Swing music characterised the popular
culture of the 1930s and 40s. The music
played constantly on records and radio and
reached virtually every city in America.
The Swing Era was seen, not just as
music, but as a movement with its own
dances and clothing styles.
The music in this clip is Sing, Sing, Sing
by Benny Goodman, a clarinetist known as
the King of Swing.

Swing
Swing music could also include a vocalist.
This made the music even more
mainstream and singers like Bing Crosby
and Frank Sinatra still inspire singers
today.

Swing Revival
The Summer of 1998 was known as the
Summer of Swing.
New Big Bands came out with a more
modern, yet very recognisable, version of
the traditional swing band style.
This brought back a surge of swing
dancing and the music gained in popularity
once more.

Styles and Genres

Swing Definition
A jazz style of dance music which
started in the 1930s and was
performed by a big band. This
generated a style of dancing called
Swing dancing which is still popular
today.

Styles and Genres

Swing
To show your understanding of Swing
Music, you can use the following concepts:
Big Band sound/ swing band rhythms,

Skiffle

Skiffle
Skiffle is a type of popular music with Jazz,
Blues, Folk and Roots influences, usually
using homemade or improvised instruments.
Skiffle was very popular in the UK in the
1950s, where it was mainly associated with
Lonnie Donegan.
It was born of the harsh economic realities of
postwar Britain where playing an instrument
was a luxury not many could afford.
The lyrics in Skiffle music are usually
humorous and tell a story.

Skiffle
Skiffle was so popular because it was
simple, often with only 3 chords, and
used homemade or improvised
instruments to make up the band:
Washboard
Tea Chest Bass
Kazoo
As well as more traditional instruments
like the banjo and acoustic guitar.

Skiffle
The Skiffle craze was huge but very short lived.
It began in Britain around 1954, and by 1957
there were an estimated 30 50,000 skiffle
groups in the UK alone.
However, by 1958 Skiffle had been pronounced
dead.
Many believe Skiffle never truly died though as it
is seen as being responsible for the Rock and
Roll craze in Britain that followed.
It is important to mention that members of The
Beatles, Led Zepplin, The Kinks and The Rolling
Stones all started out in Skiffle groups.

Styles and Genres

Skiffle Definition
A style of music popular in Britain
throughout the 1950s combining folk,
blues and country music.

Styles and Genres

Skiffle
To show your understanding of Skiffle, you
can use the following concepts:
Acoustic instruments,
guitars/bass/drum kit. Sounds like jazz
but with basic
instruments, could have been recorded
in
the 1950s, etc.

Synth Pop

Synth Pop
Synth Pop, as the name suggests, was
pop music, most renowned from 80s
Britain, where the synthesiser was
key to the sound of the music.
However, the German band Kraftwerk
were always seen as early pioneers of
this style, who had international hits
in the mid-70s with their songs based
entirely on drum machine and
synthesiser.

Synthesisers
Synthesisers (Synths) are electronic
instruments (usually in keyboard
form) which create electronic sounds
and beats used in a variety of music.
In fact, the development of electronic
music can be traced in parallel to the
development of synths.

Synthesisers
Synth pop came about when the
progression of synth development in the
80s meant that they were:
More portable
Able to store favourite patches (sounds)
Able to load new sounds into the
instruments as a type of update.
Certain synths would come preprogrammed with sounds specific to hits
so that others could reproduce them at
home.

Synth Pop
Synth Pop used Synths to take the role
of guitars, bass and other harmony parts
from earlier Rock styles.
They also used electric drums or drum
machines instead of acoustic kits.
This meant that, with exception to the
vocals, all the sounds were electric.

Synth Pop
Bands like Duran Duran used a
combination of synths as well as
acoustic drums and electric guitars
etc.
They are still classed as synth pop
due to the large amount of synth
parts layered on top of one another
to form the basis of their tracks.

Synth Pop Artists

Ultravox
The Human League
Gary Numan
Kraftwerk
Tears for Fears
The Buggles
Soft Cell
A-ha
Eurythmics
Duran Duran
Erasure
Yazoo
Pet Shop Boys

Styles and Genres

Synth Pop Definition
The style of music in which the
synthesiser was central to the sound of
the production. The style was
popularised in the 1980s with bands
such as Duran Duran, Ultravox, Erasure
etc.

Styles and Genres

Synth Pop
To show your understanding of Synth Pop
music, you can use the following concepts:
Synthesisers with drum machines,
effects like chorus and reverb, filters
used, sounds like 80s music.

Rap
Rapping is spoken or chanted
rhyming lyrics. The components of
rapping include content, flow,
rhythm and delivery.
Rapping is distinct from spoken
poetry as it is performed in time to
a beat.
Rapping is associated with hip hop
music (N5).

Styles and Genres

Rap Definition
Rhyming lyrics that are spoken and
performed in time to a beat.
Rapping is popular in hip-hop music.

Styles and Genres

Rap
To show your understanding of Rap music,
you can use the following concepts:
Rhyming lyrics, spoken in time, spoken
lyrics to a beat.

Electronica / Dance

Electronica / Dance
Electronica / Dance music is electronic
music primarily produced for dancing,
specifically in clubs. It can also be
known as Club Music.
This music is generally produced for
use by DJs.
DJ producers such as Calvin Harris and
Swedish House Mafia often perform
live sets of their own dance music.

Electronica / Dance
Electronica / Dance music uses
synthesisers, drum machines with a
strong bass beat, and samples /
loops.
Because much of this style of music
is sampled and layered, it is often
created using a Sequencer.

Electronica / Dance
Many producers make specific
Dance Mixes of songs not
originally created with that in mind.
These remixes take elements of the
vocal and any loops but manipulate
them, add effects, change the order
sometimes and add drum machine
beats with a heavy bass.

Styles and Genres

Electronica / Dance Definition
Electronica is a broad term encompassing
a range of music styles, including dance
music, where the production of the music
uses synthesisers, samples and loops.

Styles and Genres

Electronica / Dance Music
To show your understanding of
Electronica, you can use the following
concepts:
Synthesiser sounds, samples used,
effects like reverb, sounds like
rave/club music, drum machine used.

Technological Developments
Sequencer

A sequencer can record, edit and play back music.

Nowadays a sequencer generally refers to software
used to record music. Protools, Cubase etc.

Technological Developments
Synthesiser Definition
An electronic instrument, usually
keyboard-based, that uses electronically
generated waveforms through filters and
processors to emulate (or synthesise)
acoustic sounds.

Technology Concepts
Feedback
This is a sound loop where the signal into an input
device such as a microphone is amplified through
loudspeakers. Feedback is usually characterised
by a high-pitched whine, although a number of
factors affect the sound, for example type of
microphone, acoustic properties of the room,
loudspeaker type, microphone placement etc.

Technology Concepts
Feedback Definition
High pitched squeal when a guitar pick-up goes
too close to an amp or a microphone is placed in
front of speakers.

Technology Concepts
Reverb(eration)
The natural series of very short and dense reflections of a sound
that occur in a confined space such as a room or a hall. In reverb the
echoes happen so fast and are so dense it is impossible for the
listener to hear individual repeats (Delay). Reverb is the essence of
natural sound. Listening to a close micd instrument is like having the
instrument play in your ear in a very small room. The addition of
reverb to a sound makes it appear as if the instrument is being
played in a real acoustic environment, for example a church or
concert hall. Nowadays reverb can be emulated digitally very easily
and nearly all effects processors have a wide range of reverb types
for different applications.

Technology Concepts
Reverb Definition
A natural sounding echo that can occur naturally
in a large hall or tiled room, or can be created
using plug-ins to give a large hall effect to a
close micd sound.

Technology Concepts
Sibilance
A sound with exaggerated s and sh sounds
noticeable on vocal sounds and cymbals. There
are several ways of correcting sibilance involving
microphone choice and placement, or postrecording using a de-esser, which is a
compressor-type processor designed to react to
frequencies rather than sound level.

Technology Concepts
Popping / Blasting
Caused through a blast of air from a plosive sound
such as a b or a p type sound. This sudden rush of
air close to the diaphragm of a microphone causes a
low-frequency thumping sound. This can be
overcome by either moving a little further from the
microphone or using a pop shield.