Final American Popular Music (MUS 103)

New Wave Music

A more self-consciously artistic and experimental side of punk rock music, developed by groups like the Talking Heads during the mid-1970s.

Breakbeat

A repeated sample of a drumbeat, usually forming a fast syncopated rhythm, used as a basis for dance music.

Monterey Pop Festival

1967, free, 1st major festival of the '60s.

Disco

Derived from the word "discotheque," first used in Europe in the 1960s to refer to nightclubs devoted to the playing of recorded music for dancing. By the mid-1970s, clubs featuring an uninterrupted stream of dance music were common in the United States, particularly in urban black and Latino communities. The 1977 film Saturday Night Fever launched the music into the mainstream. Disco is characterized by the heavy use of synthesizers and a regular, heavily accented beat.

MTV (Music Television)

A cable television channel founded in 1981 that featured videos of popular musical performers. It became the major means of promoting new acts during the 1980s and 1990s.

Soul Music

A combination of the intensity of African American gospel with popular R&B styles, exemplified in the late 1960s recordings of Aretha Franklin and James Brown.

Overdubbing

A method used in sound recording that allows for several different parts to be recorded separately and then layered over one another in playback.

Punk Rock

A mid- to late-1970s movement rebelling against disco ad the popular rock acts of the day. It was a stripped-down and often purposefully "nonmusical" version of rock music, with lyrics that stressed the ironic or dark dimensions of the human experience.

Rap

A musical style born out of hip-hop culture. Originally led by the DJ who mixed the records during live performances, rap has come to center on the MC, or rapper, who originally created spontaneous rhymes. Rap has developed various substyles, including gangsta rap (focusing on the ills of inner-city life). It remains one of the most dominant popular music styles well into the 21st century.

Funk Music

A musical style derived from R&B and soul music characterized by repeated rhythmic figures and a strong bass line; these bass lines tend to be HIGHLY syncopated, use a great deal of 16th notes, are often quite melodic and virtuosic, and facilitate dance (usually at a relatively moderate tempo).

Glam Rock

A musical subgenre orinating in the 1970s in the UK—epitomized by the works of performers/groups such as David Bowie, Roxy Music, and T. Rex—that is characterized by theatrical musical performances, costumes, constructed personae, and portrayals of androgyny, homosexuality, or bisexuality.

Garage Rock

A neighborhood group made up of young musicians who play mainly for themselves, their friends, and the occasional high school dance. Their music usually consisted of fairly simple melodies and lyrics accompanied by two or three chords and simple beat. The rough-and-ready, do-it-yourself attitude of the garage bands paved the way for punk rock.

Andy Warhol/The Factory/Exploding Plastic Inevitable

A series of multimedia events organized by Andy Warhol between 1966 and 1967, featuring musical performances by The Velvet Underground and Nico, screenings of Warhol's films, and dancing and performances by regulars of Warhol's.

Analog Recording

A system of sound recording in which the energy of sound waves is transformed 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.

Digital Recording

A system of sound recording that transforms sound waves into a stream of numbers (0s and 1s), which is converted back to an analog wave by a digital-to-analog converter in order to be heard.

Soft Rock

A term invented in the early 1970s to describe acoustic folk-rock as well as tuneful, soothing types of popular music that use electric instruments. The work of Carole King and Barry White is representative. The term is now applied broadly to quieter popular music of all sorts that uses mild rock rhythms and some electric instruments.

MP3

A variant of the MPEG compression system that allows sound files to be compressed to as little as one-twelfth of their original size.

Death Row Records

An American record company founded in 1991 by Suge Knight, The D.O.C and Dr. Dre, record label almost instantly became a sensation by releasing a succession of multi-platinum hip-hop albums from West Coast-based artists such as Dr. Dre.

Def Jam Records

An American record label focused predominantly on hip hop and urban music, owned by Universal Music Group (UMG).

Jimi Hendrix Experience

An American-English rock band that formed in Westminster, London, in September 1966. Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist Noel Redding, and drummer Mitch Mitchell comprised the group, which was active until June 1969.

Hustlers Convention

An album recorded by Jalal Mansur Nuriddin under the pseudonym Lightnin' Rod. The album was a major influence on hip hop music and combined poetry, funk, jazz, and toasting. Hustlers Convention helped add a sociopolitical element to black music.

Grunge

An alternative rock movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s centering in Seattle, Washington, featuring a DIY, anti-mainstream rock attitude, intense vocals, and loud, unremitting accompaniments. The band Nirvana and particularly its leader singer/songwriter Kurt Cobain exemplified the movement.

Alternative Rock

An early 1980s genre that arose in the wake of punk rock's decline and in opposition to mainstream rock music. Bands such as Sonic Youth and R.E.M. were associated with the movement, which emphasized local, anticommercial, guitar-based music blending the abrasive, DIY sensibility of punk with the thick, heavy sonic textures of heavy metal.

Synthesizer

An electronic instrument, usually incorporating a keyboard, capable of producing complex sounds through the manipulation of wave shapes.

Hip-Hop Culture

Hip-hop culture—forged by African American, Puerto Rican, and Caribbean American youth in New York City in the late 1970s—includes distinctive styles of visual art (graffiti), dance, dress, and speech. Rap music grew out of the movement, at first spread by pioneering DJs like Afrika Bambaataa and Kool Herc, who spun and mixed different source recordings. DJs formed their own groups featuring dancers and MCs, who rapped or rhymed to the musical accompaniment.

DJ vs. MC

Mc stands for Master of Ceremonies and therefore to use the jungle as an example (we call dnb jungle over this way) these really sick MCs would speak up either up-tempo; or alongside by a rap style or whatever seemed to suit the tempo or the music best. A DISC JOCKEY plays his recorded set and (if your lucky these days you'll find vinyl rather yah CDs or bloody pre-recorded' press play'stuff) which in turn everyone grooves too

Turntable Techniques

Scratching and Beat Juggling

The Funk Brothers

Studio musicians working at Motown Records who typically received little recognition for their contributions on many records produced there (essentially, the "house band" at Motown).

Feedback

Technically, an out-of-control sound oscillation that occurs when the output of a loudspeaker finds its way back into a microphone or electric instrument pickup and is reamplified, creating a sound loop that grows in intensity and continues until deliberately broken. Although feedback can be difficult to manage, it can become a powerful expressive device in the hands of skilled blues and rock musicians, most notably the guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Feedback can be recognized as a "screaming" or "crying" sound.

Slap Bass Technique/Slap-pop playing

Technique of bass playing pioneered by Larry Graham in which the slap of the thumb is used to emulate a bass drum and the pop of the index or middle finger as a snare drum. This type of playing couples a percussive thumb-slapping technique of the lower strings with an aggressive finger-snap of the higher strings, often in rhythmic alternation.