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I mean, sometimes I'm not completely sure when a song is a "rock song" or when it is from another music genre or even a "something-rock" song, how do you recognize it?? is it some bass rithm? some chord progressions?? some picking in the guitar?? the instruments?? some scale??

I find myself very confused with this, The rock in the 50's doesn't really have much to do with what people say it's rock in this days, and I even confuse some other genres with "rock" or "rock-something"

I liked a lot the music from nirvana for example, and for me and a lot of people that was rock, until I discovered it was grunge wich is a subgenre of a subgenre, inspired by other genres and so on...

Is there a way to recognize it by paying attention to some characteristic of the melody? or is it just the feel of it?

I looked in wikipedia and there are more than two hundred subgenres of rock, a lot of them mixed with other genres and stuff, so how do you know a song is a rock song, or that a group is a rock group?

Is there a simple or at least consistent way to know this???

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3 Answers

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Rock music is defined by rhythm, not melody. Rock is in 4/4 time with the heavy beats being 2 and 4.

Rock and roll in the '50s has exactly this in common with all of your "sub-genres" that you consider to be "rock" today. It's that simple.

I'm constantly amazed at how many people around the world today have essentially only listened to rock music all their lives and don't realize that there are many other kinds of music today and throughout history that don't use 4/4 time with the heavy beats on 2 and 4 at all.

The majority of Western music that is in 4/4 time, throughout history, has a different beat, where the heavy beat is 1, while 2, 3 and 4 are weak beats. (Examples are the whole of European classical music, contemporary Mexican pop music, like banda and norteño, of which there is a lot in my neighborhood, and dances like the foxtrot or tango). There is also a great deal of music in the world that uses time signatures other than 4/4, such as the waltz, in 3/4, or the minuet, in 6/8.

If it is in 4/4 time and you clap along to it on the 2 and the 4, then it's rock music, or one of other related forms with a broader history such as the blues, jazz, country, R&B (rhythm and blues), or gospel. All of these forms come down to us from the rhythm of African-Americans, whose ancestors exported this rhythm from its birthplace in Africa when they were forcibly relocated to the New World.

Genres and sub-genres of "rock" notwithstanding, they all have this in common: the predominant rhythm is 4/4 with the heavy beats on 2 and 4. That is why all these sub-genres are called "rock".

Listen to other kinds of music that have nothing to do with rock, and you'll understand that the world of music is vast, but that rock is a very narrow genre with a very short history that just happens to be really popular in your particular culture in the present.

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Then of course there is progressive rock where 4/4 might not be predominant. ;-P No rule without exception... – Ulf Åkerstedt Sep 19 '12 at 11:37
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Indeed. But even prog rock and progressive metal use 4/4 with a rock beat often enough that it's clearly a defining characteristic. I am a huge lifelong fan of progressive rock! – Wheat Williams Sep 19 '12 at 13:11
Great answer!! I was afraid the question was deemed as subjective or something but I knew there was some theory behind this – Lando Sep 19 '12 at 16:48
Nice answer, although it'd be nice to clarify the difference between rock and jazz, blues, country, etc. I would say that jazz is usually swung, while rock is straight. Jazz also tends to use more piano and brass. Country uses more finger picking than rock (and maybe syncopation?), and banjos :D. I'm not very familiar with R&B and Gospel, but I'd say much slower beats, more focus on voice, vocal harmonies, religiosity, and slower melodies. Blues is more difficult, since it's a lot closer to Rock... um, slide guitar? Can be more swung and syncopated too. – naught101 Sep 20 '12 at 7:02
naught101, that is really an old characterization of Country. I mean, yeah, in some corners there's a lot of that Chet Atkins stuff, but since the 90s Country music has sounded a lot like Rock music. – VarLogRant Sep 20 '12 at 16:52
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up vote 4 down vote

This is really one of the most subjective areas in music, and one that individuals who follow a sub-genre get most militant about.

In my opinion, the only real way to do this is by comparison with other songs/bands in a particular genre. There are exceptions, for example Industrial - which has well defined descriptions based around the use of industrial noises sampled as percussion - but even this has a great deal of debate.

Even sites like rock.about.com have limited information on subgenres, and they use listings of bands in that subgenre as an indicator.

This image from Whitehotmagazine.com shows how complex the subgenre fields are: enter image description here

tl;dr - don't worry about it. If you really need to know what genre a particular song is, find out who played it and try looking on their website, or asking a fan.

(For those who really want to know - Metaltech is Industrimental - bringing together classic rock, techno, industrial, funk and metal... :-)

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Great diagram. Is there a higher res version somewhere? Some of it is pretty hard to read. – naught101 Sep 24 '12 at 0:21
Your link to the whitehotmagazine image just loads their logo for me, I'm guessing they cache it for those who visited the page while those of us who see the hotlink are out of luck :P – Matthew Read♦ Jan 2 at 22:02
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Air Supply and Slayer are both categorized as Rock. Rock, as a term, is meaningless.

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Air Supply and Slayer both perform songs in 4/4 time with the heavy beats being 2 and 4. That's why they are both rock bands. – Wheat Williams Sep 19 '12 at 15:19

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