MUS 109 final...maybe
The best selling single of the twentieth century is:
"Candle in the Wind" (1997) by Elton John/Bernie Taupin
Which punk single rose to the top of the English charts despite being officially censored?
"God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols
Ottis Redding
(1941-1967) A soul singer and a songwriter. Despite spending many years playing in smaller venues, his intense style was acclaimed by those fortunate to have heard him in person. His performance at the Monterey Pop Festival would have likely been the beginnings of his national stardom, but his life ended tragically in a plane crash a few months later.
Jimi Hendrix
(1942-1970) An influential rock guitarist and songwriter. Hendrix became an iconic star in the late 1960s and many of his recordings reflect countercultural values or can be understood as psychedelic rock.
Michael Jackson
(1958-2009) A pop star whose career began as a member of the family group, the Jackson 5. Jackson emerged as a solo artist in the 1970s, and he was among the most successful and well-known pop stars during the 1980s. Jackson was particularly known for his dancing and his compelling music videos.
Stax Records
(1960-1976) A Memphis-based independent record company that was known for its soul records and its house band. Stax was the company of Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes, and Booker T. and the MGs.
Tom Wolfe
(b. 1931) Journalist and author. He traveled with Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters in order to report on their acid test events. Later he published his account as a book entitled The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, which provides insight into the use of drugs in the Counterculture.
Carole King
(b. 1942) King's career began as a professional songwriter during the Brill Building era, writing for several of the girl groups. In the 1970s, she was one of the most acclaimed and best-selling pop stars.
Aretha Franklin
(b. 1942) One of the most influential soul singers of the 1960s and the 1970s. Her career began as a child singing in her father's church services before becoming a pop star at Columbia Records. She moved to Atlantic Records where she was given the freedom to make soul recordings influenced by the gospel music she grew up singing.
Stevie Wonder
(b. 1950) A blind multi-instrumentalist known mostly as a pianist and a singer. He was so talented as a performer that he signed with Motown Records when he was eleven years old. His first hits were recorded before he became a teenager. By the 1970s, he was among the most famous African American artists, and he remains among the best-selling black artists of all time.
Urban
(b. 1950) A blind multi-instrumentalist known mostly as a pianist and a singer. He was so talented as a performer that he signed with Motown Records when he was eleven years old. His first hits were recorded before he became a teenager. By the 1970s, he was among the most famous African American artists, and he remains among the best-selling black artists of all time.
Madonna
(b. 1958) One of the most famous and successful pop stars in the world. Madonna is known for her calculated use of controversy, particularly in the 1980s and the early 1990s when she used her image, her sexuality, and her willingness to cross society's racial and religious barriers to promote her music.
Why was James Brown the "hardest working man in show business"?
- The care he gave his costume changes during live shows - Because of how he acted out his songs onstage - The elaborate and energetic energy of his dancing - All of the above (correct)
The lyrics of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" reflect a Gen X sensibility through:
- defying the mainstream - seemingly contradictory ideas - dismissiveness; "whatever" - all of the above (correct)
The grunge scene that congealed around Seattle in the late 1980s featured:
- fiercely loyal fans - opposed to mainstream rock - a punk/underground sensibility - all of the above (correct)
The word soul would suggest
- sacred roots of the popular genre in gospel music - the intense expressive feelings that singers bring to their performances - a sense of black identity in the 1960s and 1970s - All of the Above (correct)
During which decade did synthesizers become affordable for an average person?
1980s
In hip hop, a DJ is a person who can simultaneously queue and play at least ________ turntables using a mixer to cut back and forth between them to blend the sounds of the records on each.
2
The internet begins to influence the music industry around which year?
2000s
How big is a 45 rpm?
7-inch disc, 45 rpm
The Who
A British Invasion group that was affiliated with mod culture in the 1960s. The group has had a changing roster, but it is mostly affiliated with Pete Townshend on guitar, Roger Daltrey as a singer, and, before he died, Keith Moon on drums.
Radiohead
A British band that added elements of electronica, classical music, and more to alternative rock to create a unique and immediately identifiable sound. Karma Police and Creep were among their successful singles.
The Rolling Stones
A British rock band formed by Brian Jones that always consisted of at least Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The band was first known as a blues band and eventually became the most popular British Invasion act after the Beatles.
The Smashing Pumpkins
A Chicago-based band that created a powerful, almost symphonic, version of alternative rock. Their most important album was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
MTV
A cable music television station that first aired in 1981. Originally, the network's format was set up like a radio station, with VJs or video jockeys filmed talking between videos of popular music.
Sampler/sequencer
A device that captures and manipulates sounds. Sampler/sequencers could be stand-alone devices or a feature found on a synthesizer or keyboard. Sounds captured in a sequencer could be repeated or looped so that the same musical passage would be repeated throughout the song.
Radio formats
A format is a descriptive title of a group of songs meant to appeal to a specific type of listener. Radio uses formats to target their audience in hopes of increasing advertising revenues. For example, if the afternoon show of a radio station is thought to target teenagers, then a store hoping to advertise to those teenagers may be more inclined to place commercials on that station.
Soul
A genre of African American popular music that emerges in the 1950s and becomes prominent in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. The genre is rooted in an expressive style of singing that comes from the black gospel tradition. The word also had other cultural meanings at that time related to African American identity.
Disco
A genre of dance music that flourished in the late 1970s. Disco started as an underground music played in clubs that tended to have a minority clientele. It became particularly popular after the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever. While disco music is always intended to be danceable, the sounds of 1970s disco vary widely.
Metal
A genre of hard rock that contains many subgenres (death, speed, and thrash). Metal musicians often display instrumental/vocal virtuosity amidst dense textures of heavily distorted music. Most metal acts are known for their ability to play together as a band, more so than as individual stars.
Compact Disk
A medium for holding digital information, launched as a device to hold music in 1983. By the 1990s, CDs were the dominant means of distributing recorded music. CDs were more durable than records or cassettes and held slightly more music than an LP album. Also known as a CD.
Weezer
A more mainstream alt-punk band led by the Harvard-educated Rivers Cuomo. Their music videos were cinematic and inluded "Undone (The Sweater Song)," "Buddy Holly," and "Say It Ain't So."
Grateful Dead
A psychedelic rock band that emerged from San Francisco's countercultural scene to become one of the most famous jam bands. They were associated with the Merry Prankster's acid tests, and they were famous for their live shows. The Grateful Dead formed in the 1960s but continued to play over the next fifty years with different personnel.
The Offspring
A punk-inspired band from California with representative songs including "No Self-Esteem" and "Pretty Fly For a White Guy."
Album-oriented rock (AOR)
A radio format that grew out of some DJs focusing on rock bands known for making albums instead of releasing singles. The format became commonplace during the 1970s and evolved into the classic rock format in the 1980s.
Adult contemporary (AC)
A radio format that targeted an adult audience. The format first appears in the 1960s but has evolved consistently to include music that adults (twenty-five to forty-year-olds) were listening to. Adult contemporary songs tend to be softer in timbre, more quiet in volume, and slower in tempo. AC lyrics embrace a wider spectrum of topics than many other genres.
Bubblegum pop
A radio format that targets a young teenage audience.
Atlantic Records
A record company formed in 1947, originally with an intention of featuring rhythm and blues and jazz musicians. Ray Charles' success helped the company grow and expand throughout the 1950s, and the work of producer Jerry Wexler established the label as one of the more prominent soul labels during the 1960s and the 1970s. In later years, the label grew and continued its success by adding a long roster of artists in many different genres
Riff
A short, often rhythmically catchy section of melody. A riff can become an organizing feature of a song, such as the guitar riff in "Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones, or it can be combined with other riffs to create a groove, such as the interconnected instrumental parts of most funk recordings; for example, "Get on the Good Foot" by James Brown.
Sony Walkman
A small portable cassette player that used headphones and ran on batteries. The Walkman was first sold in 1979 and was extremely popular throughout the 1980s.
Funk
A style of dance music characterized by syncopated bass riffs interlocked with other instrumental and vocal riffs to form grooves. Funk grooves often brought an emphasis to the sixteenth-note division of a beat. The funk style began with James Brown during the 1960s, but it is most popular in the recordings made in the 1970s.
Hair Band
A subgenre of 1980s hard rock that focused on the image of the artists as much as the sound. Hair bands had musicians with big hair, which required a lot of hairspray. While hair bands, like most hard rock, used distorted guitars, hair bands often were known for their emotionally overwrought slow songs or power ballads as well as their more typical rock songs.
New Wave
A term given originally to groups affiliated with punk scenes that had the most mainstream and least punk sound, such as Blondie, Talking Heads, and Elvis Costello. New wave music was more melodic and electronic than punk, and it often maintained an experimental attitude and ironic lyrics.
Singer-songwriters
A term originally used to describe the musicians during the folk revival who were known for performing their own songs in addition to traditional folk songs. By the 1970s, the term was associated with a handful of artists who formed a subcategory of the adult contemporary format, including Carole King, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Van Morrison, John Denver, and others.
Protest Song
A topical song, which objects to some aspect of society; that is, song about an event whose lyrics protest something. The many protest songs of the 1960s stemmed from the folk revival movement but were associated with all styles and genres.
AM Radio
A type of radio broadcasting technology. Amplitude modulation radio was the dominant mode of radio broadcasts of popular music from the 1920s through the 1960s. Thereafter, AM radio continued but mostly carried news, sports, and talk radio broadcasts, which were less effected by its lower fidelity or sound quality as compared to FM radio.
AABA
A way of building a melody using four phrases. A phrase is a section of a melody that sounds as if it could stand on its own and is often relatively short at four to eight measures or bars long. In an AABA song, the first phrase (A) repeats before a contrasting phrase (B) sounds, and then the opening phrase returns. AABA refers to the order of the phrases.
The best way to describe Public Enemy is fearlessly:
Afrocentric
Drum Machine
An electronic device that can be programmed to replicate drum sounds. Early drum machines used synthetic drum sounds, but eventually, sampled drum sounds (recordings of drums) were used, enabling nondrummers to create complicated drum sounds.
Synthesizer
An electronic musical device that creates synthetic sounds. Most often a synthesizer is played with a piano keyboard, and the word synthesizer is generally understood within popular music to be an electric keyboard instrument. In the 1980s, synthesizers became affordable and widely popular, making new, electric sounds a big part of the sound of the songs of that era.
Philadelphia International Records
An independent record label in Philadelphia known for its soul recordings in the 1970s and for its ability to place recordings in heavy rotation on urban radio stations across the country. Philadelphia International recordings often used a string orchestra as a part of the instrumental accompaniment.
A competitive hip hop dance is held between two:
B-boys
Which artist became huge disco stars after their singles appeared in the movie Saturday Night Fever?
Bee Gees
Muggle
Before this term was associated with nonmagical people in the Harry Potter novels, it was a colloquial term used by jazz musicians to describe someone who smoked marijuana.
Which of the following radio formats targets young teenagers?
Bubble Gum Pop
San Francisco
City in California that became the most well-known scene for the U.S. Counterculture during the 1960s. Many of the decade's psychedelic rock groups began in San Francisco or regularly played there.
Which of the following gospel singers knew Aretha Franklin when she was a child, because they regularly performed at Rev. Franklin's church?
Clara Ward
When a lawyer receives permission to use a piece of an existing recording in a new context, she has _____________ the sample.
Cleared
Why did Aretha Franklin owe Columbia Records $80,000 when she was working for Columbia Records?
Columbia lent her more money than she made in sales
Compact Discs were the first medium to hold:
Digital Recording
Compact Discs were the first medium to hold:
Digital Recordings
The first nationally distributed, major label release of the band Green Day was:
Dookie
Which of the following artists is not affiliated with Public Enemy?
Eazy E
"Rapper's Delight" was radio friendly, meaning it was relatively a short song without adult language. `
False
A hook is always music, and is never associated with lyrics.
False
All of the baby-boomers in the Counterculture felt strongly about rejecting mainstream sensibilities
False
Altamont was relatively less organized than Monterrey, but planned much better than Woodstock
False
Artists make the same amount of money from an iTunes album download than they do for the sale of a CD.
False
By the end of the 1970s, radio DJs were encouraged to play whatever record they wanted, whenever they wanted.
False
MTV embraced Michael Jackson and helped him become a successful solo act.
False
Mtv was only available in cities for the first few years.
False
Music videos first appear in the United States in the 1980s.
False
Napster was embraced by the music industry and artists as a new means to reach fans.
False
Nirvana's Nevermind was their first album.
False
Soft and hard rock were exclusive categories, and hard rock artists never made soft rock.
False
The Smashing Pumpkins are known for never veering away from a heavy distorted guitar, bass and drums in their songs.
False
The Woodstock Music and Arts Festival of 1982 was the most famous music festival of the Counterculture
False
The punk rock lyrics of the 1970s were known for their apathy and boredom with societal status quo.
False
When Hip Hop began to be sold within the music industry, the first people to get signed to make records were DJs .
False
FAME Records
Florence Alabama Music Enterprises (FAME) is the name of the more prominent of the Muscle Shoals record studios in northern Alabama. Although the label recorded many hits, the studio and the town were known for its house band, The Swampers. The FAME sound can be heard in many genres, but it is particularly associated with both soul music in the 1960s and what became known as Southern rock in the 1970s.
Hair bands earn their name because of how they use:
Hairspray
A short melody that quickly grabs a listener's attention in a pop song is called a:
Hook
Chorus
In a song's form, the chorus has the same lyrics, melody, harmony, and basic rhythm. Sometimes the word "hook" is used to describe the chorus.
While not limited to this musical genre, New Wave songs are often known for their:
Ironic Lyrics
Rock of the 1990s embraced female singers much more than in previous decades. Which of the following female rock stars DID NOT gain national attention in the 1990s?
Joan Jett
Known for their record promotion as well as their songwriting and producing skills, these two men formed Philadelphia International records.
Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff
Which of these DJs credited with beginning hip hop was from Jamaica?
Kool Dj Herc
How big is a 33 rpm?
LP [LongPalaying] 12-inch disc, 33 1⁄3 rpm
Gangsta Rap begins in:
Los Angeles
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, also known as acid. This hallucinogenic drug was popular in the counterculture, largely because of the lectures and the writings of Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary.
Which 1980s pop star made videos that consistently played with gender stereotypes?
Madonna
Smashing Pumpkin's third studio album, ________________, helped establish the band as an entity in it's own right, and not just another Nirvana/Alt Rock imitator.
Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
A hip hop DJ performs with two turntables, a microphone and a:
Mixer
Bob Dylan created a controversy when he decided to play electric rock at _________, seemingly abandoning his earliest fans.
Newport Folk Festival
Which of the following artists had a career, which had parallels with the story of Animal House?
Otis Redding
Green Day
Perhaps the most successful neo-punk band of the 1990s. Their mid-decade release Dookie summed up both the angst and apathy of Generation X.
Which of the following is not typically considered a part of hip hop culture?
Producing
New Wave music tends to be more melodic and uses more electronic instruments than __________ music, the genre from which it began.
Punk
Which artist's assertive rap in "Ladies First" confronted male hip hop's misogyny?
Queen Latifah
Which 1990s Alt Rock band gave away an album for free in 2007 as a means to experiment with alternative means of music distribution?
Radiohead
A typical metal song uses ________ to organize songs more so than verses and choruses.
Riffs
In the 1950s and 1960s, Ray Charles recorded songs that could be considered as all of the following genres, except:
Rock
Psychedelic rock
Rock music of the 1960s that was inspired by LSD and other psychedelic drugs. The sound of the music and the lyrics of the songs often reflect the experience of hallucinogenic drugs.
How big is a 78 rpm?
SP [single], 10-inch disc, 78 rpm
Gospel
Sacred Protestant music. In the twentieth century, the term most often refers to African American Christian traditions of music making. Black gospel was a successful and widespread genre of recordings from the 1940s through the 1960s. The singing is characterized by virtuosity, improvisation, and call and response.
The first hip hop female group to sell millions of records was:
Salt 'n Pepa
A device that can capture and manipulate sounds is?
Sampler
A machine that can capture the sounds from an existing recording and play those back in a loop.
Sampler
Which of the following instruments is Stevie Wonder not known for playing?
Saxophone
The __________________ was a small, portable device that played cassette tapes using headphones.
Sony Walkman
Where did Hip Hop begin?
South Bronx, New York
Booker T. Jones was a studio musician at which label?
Stax Records
The Eagles formed after the group worked together as:
Studio Musicians
A machine that can create synthetic sounds is called:
Synthesizer
The musicians associated with the Merry Prankster's Acid Tests eventually became known as:
The Grateful Dead
Hook
The first thing that grabs a listener's attention in a popular song. It is often a short melody that is prominent, such as a riff, that a listener can quickly hum or sing back. The hook is sometimes associated with a song lyric.
Generation "X"
The generation of people born between the 1960s and the early 1980s; the first demographic identity after the generation known as the "Baby Boomers."
Kurt Cobain
The gifted but troubled lead signer and guitarist for Nirvana who ultimately took his own life at age 27.
Napster
The initially illegal online music trading service that ended up being shut down by the federal government. It went through many versions before ultimately being incorporated into Rhapsody in 2014.
Seattle, WA
The largest city in the state of Washington, and also the home of some of the 1990s most important musical trends. Geographically isolated from the rest of the country.
Nirvana
The seminal grunge band that came of age in Seattle and introduced the world to alternative rock.
Garth Brooks
The top-selling male artist of the 1990s. He incorporated elements of arena rock into both his music and his enormous concert productions.
1990s Alternative Rock was known for a particular kind of sound in its guitars, drums and vocals, but a few of the bands diverted from the norm through elaborate arrangements and experiments in the recording studio. Among the most well known for this practice is songwriter/vocalists:
Thom Yorke
Which author/journalist described the Merry Prankster's Acid Tests in a book?
Tom Wolfe
A recording of a psychedelic rock song often lasted longer when a band played it in a live performance, because extended improvisatory sections were added.
True
A syncopated melody is one that emphasizes upbeats instead of downbeats.
True
After Mtv, video versions of popular singles (the most popular song from an album) became common.
True
Aretha Franklin began to be a consistently successful recording artist after she signed with Atlantic Records.
True
Garth Brook's stage shows added the theatrics of rock and pop in order to consistently sell out enormous arenas and attract a younger audience to his country concerts.
True
George Clinton's songs and live shows during the 1970s blended psychedelic imagery, science fiction stories, and elaborate funk grooves to help an audience get up and dance.
True
Hip hop is both a noun and a verb.
True
Jimi Hendrix, an American, became popular in England before he became well known in the United States
True
Kurt Cobain's wealth and fame appeared to have exacerbated his clinical depression.
True
Madonna was known for presenting conflicting images within her videos (e.g., sacred and secular; chastity and promiscuity).
True
The Sony Walkman allowed music fans to carry cassettes of their favorite music with them, and to listen to it privately on headphones.
True
The basic premise of Mtv was radio with pictures.
True
The death of Tupac and Biggie are often understood as part of a larger feud between fans of East Coast and West Coast hip hop.
True
The planners of the Monterey Pop Festival intended to demonstrate and prove the quality and diversity of pop and rock music to people who commonly dismissed these genres as ephemeral (or, here today, gone tomorrow).
True
The song "You're So Vain" is about Carly Simon's relationships.
True
The video for "Thriller" was the most expensive video of the early 1980s.
True
Traditional rock bands in the 1990s occasionally dabbled in the sounds associated with alternative rock, but tended to have more universal lyrics about love, relationships.
True
When a music critic labeled a band as middle-of-the-road, they were often dismissing the band as being too generic.
True
Chord
a combination of three or more notes that create a harmony; often chords sound simultaneously. Instruments that can play more than one note at a time (e.g., piano, guitar) can play chords by themselves. Instruments that can only play a single note at a time (e.g., voice, trumpet) must work with other melodic instruments to create chords.
Melody
a distinct and memorable pattern of notes; a tune. The part of a song that carries the lyrics, or that is sung is an example of a melody.
Verse
a part of a song's form; typically a verse's melody, harmony, and basic rhythm remains the same in a popular song, although its instrumentation might change. Songs often have multiple verses, each of which carries a different set of lyrics. Verses help tell the story in songs that have narrative lyrics.
Refrain
a repeated lyric that recurs exactly within each of a song's verses
Chord Progression
a series, or pattern, of chords. Most popular songs use a relatively small combination of chord progressions that repeat.
Note
a sound with a definite pitch.
Popular Music
a term that encompasses all of the styles and types of music discussed in this book. Popular music is broadly accessible to a large group of people, in part, because appreciating and enjoying popular music need not require special training or knowledge. The music is also accessible, though, because technology and the marketplace have allowed it to be widely distributed.
The ____________________ format began in the 1960s, and targeted an older audience. Consequently, the format evolved over time to reflect current hits for an older audience.
adult contemporary
Texture
amount of events happening within musical sound, and how they are related to one another; the depth of music. A song with a sparse texture has less happening in it (e.g., a voice by itself) than something with a thick texture (e.g., a voice accompanied by: a guitar, a keyboard, a drum set, a harmonica, and a gospel choir).
Break/Bridge
an aspect of a popular song's form that varies from the alternation of verse and chorus. A bridge/break can consist of an instrumental solo, a new melody with new lyrics, a catchy instrumental interlude, etc. The words can be synonymous, although a bridge suggests a connection between sections of music whereas a break suggests something that is new and different.
Peter, Paul and Mary would regularly sing and record _______________ on their many gold albums during the 1960s.
folk songs protest songs cover songs all of the above (correct)
Sam Cooke did all but one of the following things in order to help control the business side of his career:
hired a publicity agent to help him shape his image
Harmony
how sounds/notes work together to create chords and chord progressions. In a song, the harmony often supports the principle melody of the song.
Genre
in the context of popular music: a genre is a type, or style; for example, hip hop, pop, country, are all genres of popular music.
The term "hippie" originated from words like "hip" and "hipster" that were used to suggest a person was:
in the know, or aware of something
Why was the Biz Markie versus O'Sullivan court case significant for popular music?
led to all samples on popular recordings being cleared before release
Why are women regularly marketed as R 'n B instead of as Hip Hop artists?
many famous female MCs also sing some of their songs
A protest song is like a topical folk song, in that it:
mentions and argues against something that is actually happening in society
Art Music
music intended to transcend its moment in time
Music
organized sound in culture.
Hair bands are often known for their emotionally overwrought slow songs, called _______________.
power ballads
Grunge music tends to include distorted guitars, unintelligible harsh lyrics and
raucous, loud performances
A typical metal song uses ___________ to organize songs more so than verses and choruses.
riffs
Aretha Franklin's ad lib of "Take Care, TCB" in the song "Respect" stemmed from a sermon of her fathers, and stood for:
take care of your business
Rhythm
the aspect of music that relates to time. Rhythm refers to the durations of notes, the speed of the beat, and how particular notes or beats receive more or less relative emphasis.
Pitch
the highness or lowness of sound. Vibrations cause sound, and the frequency of vibrations causes some sounds to be perceived as relatively higher or lower in pitch. For example, woman's voices have a higher pitch than men's voices, because the vibrations generated by their vocal chords have a higher frequency than those made by men.
Beat
the most basic division of time in a piece of music; a pulse. Musical beats receive different accents or emphasis. Also, while most popular music follows a steady beat, it is possible for music's beat or pulse to change (speed up or slow down).
In the context of Hip Hop, the word beat is often used to refer to:
the musical underpinning of a song, including rhythm, melody and harmony
Form
the structure of music, or how it has been organized. Most popular songs are organized around the alternation of verses and choruses with an occasional bridge/break.
