Rock and roll....over?

One trend I notice is that, one-by-one, physical skills are being replaced by technological skills. Vocals are surely next in line for technological approximation. Pop vocal lines are becoming simpler and more repetitive, just as drum patterns did before the drum machine revolution.

We are already there. look at the extensive use of vocoder and pitch correcting gimmicks in modern music. Its being used almost as a special effect, and any one of us can do a vocal if its going to be doctored like that.

To somebody who grows up with those sounds, they are completely normal. To anybody raised on Aretha, Marvin or Ian Paice, they sound processed and awful.

Regarding the original article I posted, its clear why hip hop would be most popular, but not *influential*. Hip hop seems less message-laden than the rock, country or folk genres.
 
Well articulated. That's how I see it. Personally, I'm just fascinated to see what comes up next - whether it will be something new or a revival. I'm out of touch these days (being stuck somewhere between psychedelic rock and the Canterbury Scene). Are you seeing any trends in modern music that suggest hip hop's replacement?

IMO Hip hop is already dead. It's gone the way of Rock and Jazz before it.

The future of music instrumentation will be on tablets, most likely some form of Electronica. You don't even need to speak to do that, just be able to move your finger on a screen. Once all these kids raised with iPads come of age, you'll see it really hit stride mainstream.
 
10 fingers on a touch pad can do 10 dif sounds at the same time.
remember in the olden days. they would use hands and feet? and sticks? wow remember those days?
 
IMO Hip hop is already dead. It's gone the way of Rock and Jazz before it.

The future of music instrumentation will be on tablets, most likely some form of Electronica. You don't even need to speak to do that, just be able to move your finger on a screen. Once all these kids raised with iPads come of age, you'll see it really hit stride mainstream.

The limiting factor here is the ability to either amplify and/or broadcast to your audience.
 
In the 20th century, new rebellious musical forms arrived because the existing forms had evolved to a point where they were unattainable for teenagers wanting to express themselves musically

I think that's part of it. I think we also can't discount the political and social effects of Black music being experienced, then appropriated, by White culture. There was a deep well of rhythmic inspiration there that re-energised Western European/Celtic popular music. There was also a liberating view of dance, sensuality and sexuality that came along with it that White kids found pretty appealing when compared to the stiff moral codes of the Victorian era and American Christianity of various strains.


One trend I notice is that, one-by-one, physical skills are being replaced by technological skills. Vocals are surely next in line for technological approximation. Pop vocal lines are becoming simpler and more repetitive, just as drum patterns did before the drum machine revolution.

Yup, this seems to be the way things are going. In the 90s I spent a fair amount of time in the rave scene and it's interesting to see how the DJs and producers in EDM have embraced technological change and no longer cart crates full of vinyl around to their gigs. Meanwhile, I'm still schlepping hundreds of pounds of drum gear in and out of clubs like a chump.
 
The beauty of 'dead' music is that it comes back again in new forms.
The other day my 12-year old was telling me about a song he liked. I played him the Stevie Wonder song ('I Wish') that it sampled. Now he is interested in where it came from and he thinks Stevie Wonder is cool.

He also likes ACDC because he heard them in the Ironman movies. I take the opportunities that present themselves to educate (!) him about music he notices, and where it came from - so he can see that our tastes are not as far apart as he might think!
 
Hip-hop went through its artistic phase. Weirdly, it got to its commercial/crap phase much more quickly than rock.

I don't know how you came to that conclusion. Hip hop started int he mid 1970s and really didn't become a viable pop genre until the late 1980s.

Rock started in the early 1950s, and by the mid 1960s was pop music.


After all, hip-hop is basically making collages, and there aren't a lot of collage artists in the Smithsonian.

You can say the same about rock: most rock music was just lifted from jazz and blues and then simplified and given a strong backbeat to appeal to a wider audience (especially teens). It doesn't mean the music is bad, or that it should be discounted as an art form, it's just a different way of looking at music.

Like I said earlier, there are primary source documents from the Roman Empire where adults were complaining about how the youth are listening to crazy music and using vulgar slang. Can you imagine if music stopped evolving just because people were closed minded and didn't see the value in new types of music... or any art form for that matter.
 
Rock n' roll isn't over. Indie rock and psych rock are huge right now, and both are just rock n' roll with a different genre label... Still the same instrumentation, still the same rock n' roll attitude.

Electronic producers are huge right now, and rightfully so. While my generation of musicians was busy learning the drum and guitar parts to Zeppelin, The Who, and a ton of other bands from 40 years ago, there were a bunch of nerds on their computers diving down the rabbit hole that is electronic music production. That scene has finally exploded in the last few years. I look forward to the point when that style of music is utilized into rock n' roll and we get a bunch of new stylistic ventures (it's already happening).
 
Also, Hip-hop and rap isn't going anywhere. To discredit it is to completely discredit an entire culture of artists. Like the article said, the genre has 40 years of prominent musicians and producers to back that up, all the way from the rebellious Notorious BIG to our most recent superstars, (Macklemore, Kendrick Lamar, Aesop Rock, etc).

Some of the most mind blowingly talented individuals in the last few decades have come out of the hip-hop inner circles. Questlove, Chris Daddy Dave, and Tony Royster are as good as most (if not all) prominent rock n' roll drummers.

On a side not, check out Aesop Rock if any of you have a hard time getting into hip-hop. A lot of his stuff has a very George Orwell 1984 meaning to it and is some of the smartest rap that there is now. The instrumentals are killer as well.
 
It's a shame people are slowly giving up on the idea of honestly expressing their own humanity through music. This electronic sound is a fitting soundtrack for the world of appearances and escapism through self-interest and self-promotion, but learning an instrument and writing music is about building and expressing your own values. As Danny Carey says, "Your playing is like another mirror, it'll never lie to you." Great musicians are expressing great dedication.

Computer based composition CAN be so adventurous that it begins to show signs that a curious and dedicated human brought the goods to the situation, but this recent bend in the music road is mostly about human laziness, instant praise and gratification, and the near religion that technology represents at this point.
 
We really were due for a nice "get off my lawn" thread. At this rate we should be due for DW's annual temperance thread followed by a round of Chinese spammers. The circle of life.
 
It's the product of cutting the arts and music programs in schools so we have a race to the bottom.

This is unrelated to the death of rock, but I agree with you, but..there's still hope. My 9 year old daughter hears me banging on the drums and playing guitar most every day, but she and little sis (and my wife) listen to pop. I occasionally will start playing one of their pop songs on guitar while they listen to it to elicit some kind of response, even if it's negative. I just want them to listen to SOMETHING else. The only pop I'l support is taylor swift because she's sickeningly nice and genuine and writes her own songs. If I drive them to school they're required to listen to rock for the 5 minutes it takes to get to the interstate before I switch to kids bop radio.

I was playing guitar on the couch last night and the 9 year old ran to the computer and wanted to show me something on youtube. It was a cartoon video to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth called Beethoven's Wig. It was kinda funny, but the best part is she told me they watched it in music class. They get music ONE day a week and art once a week. Even gym class is only once a week. How depressing. But, the fact that she brought something positive home from music class was huge. There is still hope..lol
 
...Jazz started in the late 1800s as a raw type of music that toook little sophistication to play, and was looked down upon as inferior music...

In came Rock, which appealed to the younger crowd, required little sophistication or technical ability to play, and was looked down upon as inferior music...

In came both pop (disco) and hip hop, you can guess where the story goes from there...
I totally dig this post!

I gotta say that I'm really not worried about the state of things at all.

Not to be construed as me necessarily liking my music snapped to the grid, or vocals snapped to the note, but on the other hand, studio trickery is nothing new. The "trouble" with AutoTune isn't the people using it for an extreme effect where it's totally noticeable; it's the one's using it where you can't tell it's there. But again, fixing things in the studio is nothing new as we've been punching in and stitching together the perfect take since before the digital revolution.

And to expand on tcspears' excellent insight, back in the '80s there was a huge fear of electronic instruments' dethroning our beloved acoustics, but that never happened. I seriously doubt that any manner of electronic media will ever replace the visceral experience of playing an actual instrument.

As long as music stores are still selling loads of guitars and drums to kids (of all ages) itching to get home to play and play and play, I think we're all going to be just fine.

Lastly, nothing new about Justin Bieber and other Industry creations that
 
Rock has a weird combination of non-virtuosity and elitism, and is more about other social pressures unrelated to music, for example whether you have a car or not.

I think hip hop artists can not really be accused of disregarding other forms of music, like punk or other hard rock. They listen to and integrate them continuously, sometimes even re recording, or re performing them, if they can find the talent.
 
I think that's part of it. I think we also can't discount the political and social effects of Black music being experienced, then appropriated, by White culture. There was a deep well of rhythmic inspiration there that re-energised Western European/Celtic popular music. There was also a liberating view of dance, sensuality and sexuality that came along with it that White kids found pretty appealing when compared to the stiff moral codes of the Victorian era and American Christianity of various strains.
True, there was that exceptional circumstance with the meeting of cultures. One reason black music might have caught on with whites was a that matter of attainability. It's always easier for and more fun for poor young people to get together with friends to form a combo rather than go through elaborate steps to be involved with the mainstream.

Until now. Today the easiest option is composing on a laptop.

In the 90s I spent a fair amount of time in the rave scene and it's interesting to see how the DJs and producers in EDM have embraced technological change and no longer cart crates full of vinyl around to their gigs. Meanwhile, I'm still schlepping hundreds of pounds of drum gear in and out of clubs like a chump.
Many decry the loss of physical skills, but it's balanced by the fact that there's always still a portion of musicians who are taking physical skills to another level. I see videos of small children today playing at a level akin to that of my old drum heroes. I never imagined it would be possible.

It just goes to show that no styles or genres die out, they just move from majority to minority taste. The internet has done much to revitalise interest in older styles.

Still, as you suggested, there's something to be said for the mental skills that are replacing physical skills. For a start, there's less lugging (depending on the rig) and less bother with neighbours. Secondly, those skills tend to be underappreciated by the rock crowd - put me in front of the rigs that technocrats use to make their music and I wouldn't have a clue. Sometimes I see jock v nerd attitudes when rock musicians talk about laptop musicians.

I'm personally old school and love raw sounding music, but it's interesting to watch music evolve. At some point the human touch is sure to make a comeback.
 
Our info re: popularity of music genres comes from organizations whos primary focus is profit taking.

I don't think we can rely on that info to say what really IS most popular...just profitable...and no, they do not always covariate.
 
Our info re: popularity of music genres comes from organizations whos primary focus is profit taking.

I don't think we can rely on that info to say what really IS most popular...just profitable...and no, they do not always covariate.

You can bet your life that if something is popular the suits will jump on it very quickly. Look at Punk back in the 70s. A youth counter culture in the beginning but the suits noticed its popularity and signed up acts ASAP. If its popular it = money.

Rock, back in the 60s, started as an "Underground" movement, same with Woodstock and Isle of Wight. They were popular with the public, so the music biz takes them over.
 
Our info re: popularity of music genres comes from organizations whos primary focus is profit taking.

I don't think we can rely on that info to say what really IS most popular...just profitable...and no, they do not always covariate.

Actually we can. Look at the other genres that had their time: they all started as counter-culture, became immensely popular, then split into sub-factions only to fall back out of the mainstream. It's not just music, all forms of art follow that cycle.

Music analytics used to be two-fold: radio play and album sales. Now the industry is able to pull billions of data points. The result is that we are able to see exactly what people are listening to accross a multitude of platforms.

If you want to see what people are actually listening to, look at http://www.ultimatechart.com/ it's a real time analytics database that presents a better chart than billboard, by looking at album sales, song sales, downloads, streams, radio plays, social media likes, and video views. I've never heard of anyone on the chart, but you'll notice a few bands that are in some sub-genre of rock and then a mostly hip-hop/electronic crowd.
 
I wouldn't say over, but I'd think stale.

One can look at era's of jazz and hear the difference between the early Dixialand, the big band, and the later bob eras.

Once can listen to rock and hear a difference between the 50, 60's, 70, 80's, and 90's.

But since then?

Any song put out today doesn't sound much different than a song out out 15 years ago.

There have no real new movements or innovations in main stream rock since nu-metal. Sure, there are in sub-sub-genres (like Djent), and we've had a big revival of Folk inspired and retro rock, but we're 15 years into the 2000's and nothing has really defined this era of music. What any one say other than young bands have taken 60's rock and learned to quantize it?

I suppose one could argue after nu-metal and bands like Linkin Park who mixed nearly every form of electronic with rock there is little place to evolve to. But still, it seems odd there have really no new trends in rock.

I suspect rap and hip/hop have similar issues. The backing tracks are loops, machine generated beats, with bits of sound effects. Very little, if anything, distinguishes a song from today from 10 or 15 or even 20 years ago.
 
we're 15 years into the 2000's and nothing has really defined this era of music

Great observation re: rock and roll.

I hear some new young power pop bands but it's the really same as the their parents (or grandparents) were playing in the late 70's/early 80's

I suppose the 00's will be known as the EDM era.
 
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