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This is in response to a blog post that a friend wrote, where he asked "what is music," and what prototypes we had for different types of music:


I watched a special on whale song yesterday, and the definition they used to define whale song was loose: some sort of sound where pattern can be derived. Apparently, the scientists thought the man who tagged whale sounds as music was an idiot, but the mathematicians so got it.

Recently, I went to a composer's recital that a friend of mine was participating in. There was one piece where three people were reading from three different books in alternating quiet, loud, fast and slow voices - the composer's note said that he'd written the piece because he wanted something that anyone could perform without having a high level of musical skill. It was a very, very cheeky thing that I had no appreciation for, but may begrudgingly tag this as music from the same definition used for whale song, above.

We often hear the complaint that a new generation's music is just "noise," from the parents. I'm not sure that such complaints, or mine, really touch on the "what is music" issue at all. They're more of a statement on what's aesthetic and what's not. That is, not necesarilly pleasing based off one's personal taste, but the ability to recognize creative value in the piece at all.

But the difference between a mathematic and an aesthetic definition are not so great that they cannot be used together. How can anyone know, without living in the artist's head as the work springs forth, that it's a creative work? I'm sure that just as with art (or really, as a form of art), if even one person finds creative value in the piece, and even if the artist did not intend for it to be such, it becomes art. Such as the sound of raindrops hitting your window, which I've often hear people describe as "earth's music." Well the definition is just my opinion, but it's the closest I've come to having a satisfactory conclusion to the "what is art" debate with people, and generally a definition that they agree with.

Organizing your music is a completely different story. I was shocked beyond belief when my beloved Led Zeppelin was added to the oldies station. It seems that oldies are defined as "anything more than 30 years old," with an ever-widening gap and possibly some drop-offs for earlier music that's grown unfamiliar over time. But I have problems with using time definitions for music in all cases. What happens if a composer is born before a cutoff date, and writes music during both musical periods? Or, what happens when a new composer writes something that is heavilly inspired by some by-gone era?

Through this site, I've found that people will assign some very interesting tags to their music. For instance, did you know that most people categorize Apocalyptica, a cello quartet famous for their covers of Metallica, as classical? I'm sure that it has something to do with the instruments. Now I think it's wrong, but who am I to argue with the masses? ...

I see a lot of categorization based off lyrical content, as well. If the song contains a cheating partner, a dog, a truck, even if it sounds for all the world like a similar pop or rock song - people will classify it as country. If the song is about your youthful angst, it's likely to be classified as emo.

I also see a lot of classification based off whether or not something is modern and obscure - if it is, it's tagged indie, though that used to be exclusive to only artists who weren't signed by major record labels (and some narrowed this even further by requiring rock instrumentation), but that definition no longer applies, and is the second most popular genre tag at Last.fm, after Rock.

But those are not all clear-shot methods of classifying music - An interesting artist I'm listening to lately is Emilie Simon, who sings about snow and flowers in a 5-year-olds voice, with electronic clips of music sampled in for flavor, but for some reason is classified by many as goth - likely because of her music video for Flowers. It makes me wonder how many other artists have been somewhat misclassified due to being opening acts for an entirely non-similar band, or other such interesting incongruities.

Obviously, not everyone uses one classification system exclusively. And since you've asked for examples, and I've gone on long enough, here is my admitedly imperfect hierarchy for genre classification for my MP3s:

- Musical period
Examples: This is an easy one, so it's always first. I.e. Bach = baroque.

- Instrumentation
Examples: opera and choral - Vivaldi is classified as Baroque in all instances, except for vocal pieces. I split my electronic collection into dance (i.e. Daft Punk) and chill (i.e. Thievery Corporation), losely based off the song's "energy," which will sometimes, but not always, will be uniform for all the artist's works.

- Country of Origin
Examples: Songs that don't fit into the "major" genres derived from those two methods are typically filtered as World music: The Chieftains for celtic, Buena Vista Social Club for latin, and everyone's favorite dancer Daler Mehndi for near east.

- Everything Else
Examples: I don't feel comfortable putting John Williams and my anime soundtrack scores in with the rest of my classical music, so it's got a new category: classical - media. Anything between 1960-1980 that I don't have a lot of other songs for the dominant genre (Aretha Franklin), or sounds like it could be part of that music era more than our "modern" popular music (White Stripes), is generally dumped into a retro genre. Ridiculous songs that I find on the internet (Richard Cheese), which may parody a specific genre but are clearly made to be funny, go into a humor genre.