Music in the Rock Era Exam 1: What You Need to Know

This blog post will give you a rundown of everything you need to know for Music in the Rock Era Exam 1. We’ll go over the main topics and key concepts you’ll need to be familiar with, as well as some tips and strategies for acing the exam.

Music in the Rock Era: Exam 1- What You Need to Know

This exam will cover material from the beginning of the rock era to approximately 1964. Below is a list of topics and concepts that will be covered on the exam. It is by no means exhaustive, but it should give you a good idea of what to expect.

Topics:
-The origins of rock and roll
-The British Invasion
-Folk rock
-The Beatles
-The Beach Boys
-Bob Dylan
-The Motown Sound
-Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound
-Early soul music
-Girl groups
-Surf music

Concepts:
-Genres and subgenres of rock music
-Musical elements (e.g., Harmony, rhythm, melody, etc.)
Instrumentation
Form (e.g., Verse/chorus/bridge) Lyrics Harmonic progressions Rhythmic patterns Melodic motifs

The Origins of Rock Music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated in the United States in the 1950s. The terms “rock and roll” and “rock” each have a long history, dating back to respectively the early 1900s and the 1700s. For the purposes of this exam, rock music is defined as a style of popular music that typically incorporates electric guitars, drums, and bass, as well as sometimes keyboards and other instruments. Rock music often has a strong backbeat and is often characterized by certain musical elements such as repetition, instrumentation, and distortion.

The origins of rock music are diverse and complex, but can be trace to a number of factors. One important factor was the development of electric guitars, which allowed for louder and more distorted sound. Another important factor was the increasing popularity of rhythm and blues (R&B) music among African American audiences in the 1950s. This popularity would lead to what is sometimes called the “crossing over” of R&B into the mainstream pop culture. Another key factor was the influence of country music on early rock musicians such as Elvis Presley. Country music often featured a backbeat similar to that found in R&B, as well as elements such as twangy guitars and pedal steel guitars.

Rock music would come to be defined by a number of different styles in the 1960s and 1970s, including British Invasion bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, psychedelic rock bands such as The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, hard rock bands such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, glam rock bands such as David Bowie and T. Rex, proto-punk bands such as The Stooges and New York Dolls, and punk rock bands such as The Ramonesand Sex Pistols. In subsequent decades, rock music would give rise to myriad subgenres including new wave, heavy metal, alternative rock, grunge, indie rock, punk rock revivalist movements ,and more.

The Beatles and the British Invasion

In the early 1960s, Britain was unknown in the music world. But that all changed with the arrival of The Beatles. The group’s infectious sense of fun and catchy tunes won them a huge following, both in Britain and the United States. The Beatles’ popularity sparked what came to be known as the British Invasion, a wave of British bands that swept through America in the mid-1960s. The Invasion had a profound effect on American music, helping to create a new style that would come to be known as rock.

The Rise of Folk Rock

In the early 1960s, young American singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan popularized a new kind of folk music that was infused with the energy and attitude of rock & roll. This sound became known as “folk rock,” and it quickly took root in the mainstream pop culture of America and Britain. Folk rock bands like The Byrds and Simon & Garfunkel scored huge hits with their modernized versions of traditional folk songs, while groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones began infusing their own original songs with a strong folk influence. By the end of the decade, folk rock had become one of the most popular musical styles in the world.

The Birth of Psychedelic Rock

Psychedelic rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the 1960s. It is characterized by distorted guitars, lyrics with drug references, and extended improvised sections. Psychedelic rock emerged during the height of the hippie counterculture and anti-war movement and its popularity peaked in the late 1960s.

The Beatles were the first psychedelic rock band and their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) is often considered to be the genre’s defining work. Other important psychedelic bands include The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Pink Floyd, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Psychedelic rock declined in popularity in the early 1970s as bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath began to dominate the rock music scene.

Glam Rock and Art Rock

The first wave of British rock was led by the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Animals in the early 1960s. By the end of the decade, however, a new wave of British bands had emerged, including Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. These bands brought a new level of creativity and experimentalism to rock music, influenced in part by the hippie counterculture of the time. This new wave of British rock became known as “glam rock” for its flamboyant stage showmanship, and “art rock” for its more cerebral approach to songwriting.

Whereas glam rockers like Marc Bolan and David Bowie emphasized style over substance, art rockers like Pink Floyd and YES focused on creating complex, emotionally charged music with an emphasis on extended instrumental passages and sonic experimentation. Art rock would go on to be a major influence on subsequent genres like prog rock, new wave and punk.

Hard Rock and Heavy Metal

Hard rock is a form of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hard rock was initially influenced by blues rock, psychedelic rock, and acid rock, and played a major role in creating heavy metal music.

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. The genre’s lyrics and performance styles are sometimes associated with aggression and machismo.

Punk Rock

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed in the mid-1970s in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s disco, hippie, and mainstream rock. They typically produced short, fast-paced songs with hard-edged melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY ethic; many bands self-produce recordings and distribute them through independent record labels.

The first wave of punk rock was “1977 punk”, when groups such as the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and the Damned started playing fast-paced hard rock. By late 1977 punk had spread to Britain; By 1978 it was starting to make an impact on Australia; and in 1979 it finally appeared in America—in New York City with bands such as Television and in Los Angeles with X, Black Flag, and the Germs.

New Wave

New Wave is a subgenre of rock music popular in the late 1970s and the 1980s with ties to punk rock. New Wave moved away from traditional blues and rock and roll sounds to create pop music that incorporated electronic and experimental music, disco, and existed in contrast to dominant styles of the time.

Indie Rock

Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. Originally used to describe indie record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock. As grunge and punk revival bands in the US and Britpop bands in the UK broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and a growing importance of the Internet, some indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.

Despite its original meaning, indie rock is now used to describe a wide range of musical styles from various parts of the world. In addition to alternative rock, it has been associated with independent music scenes in various cities such as Manchester, Seattle, Athens, Louisville, Dublin, Austin, Boston, Toronto and Vancouver.