Ok this is no joke. I am looking for someone willing to sing or flow over a track that is in the works. There is a preview of what I have done so far and it is called Don't Harsh My Buzz. If anyone is interested then send a comment here or send a pm. If you are serious I will check out any song you feel is your best work. That way there is no surprise on either end.

Will be working on my new tracks when I am able to. There is no guarantee that this will be fast either, but it will be done.

I finally arrived in CO. Ft. Carson is a nice place. Too bad I haven't gotten too much of a chance to see much of it. But in due time I will.

Mashup (music)
A mashup, bootleg or blend (also mash up and mash-up) is a song or composition created by blending two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another.

In full swing at the end of the 20th century, mashups have been described positively as "ultimate post-modern pop song[s]" or "'culture jamming in its purest form'"[3] They have also been described negatively as "the logical extension of the sampling fever of the '80s taken to its dumbest extreme". Due to the questionable legal status of mash ups and little chance of profits "there's a real punk rock attitude attached to the movement".

Cultural critic and legal commentator Siva Vaidhyanathan has commented that "The most interesting and entertaining phenomenon of the MP3 libraries on peer-to-peer systems is the availability of "mashes" - new compositions created by combining the rhythm tracks of one song and the vocal tracks of another." Noting that mashups have a rich history he observes that "It is merely the latest incarnation of a widely shared, deeply embedded cultural habit of cultural recombination across time and space."

Batá-rumba
Batá-rumba is a form of Rumba music popular mainly in Cuba. Only very recently developed as a sub-genre, it incorporates Caribbean Batá drum styles with more traditional African Rumba music. Its popularity is largely attributed to the group Afro-Cuba De Matanzas.

Batcave (club)
The Batcave was a nightclub in London, England at Meard Street, Soho. It is considered to be the birthplace of the English goth subculture. As one of the most famous meeting points for early goths, it lent its name to the term Batcaver, used to describe fans of the original gothic rock music. The term Batcave is also still used by Europeans to refer to Gothic music with a prominent Post-Punk sound and spooky atmospheres.

The club opened in July 1982. Originally specialising in New Wave and Glam rock, it later focused on Gothic rock. Ollie Wisdom, the lead singer in the house band, Specimen, ran the club with the assistance of production manager Hugh Jones. Famous regulars at the Batcave included legends such as Robert Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin, Foetus, Marc Almond and Nick Cave.

A diverse array of bands would play at the club, backed up by their resident DJs Hamish 'the paranoid' McDonald and Annie Hogan ( Marc Almond band member). The bands involved electronic leading act Alien Sex Fiend, led by Alice Cooper-influenced vocalist Nik Fiend. The host's band Specimen, who took ample influence from 1970s glam rock and Sex Gang Children, is a group that would go on to prove influential in the gothic rock, dark cabaret and deathrock movements. The club also showed black and white movies in the old theatre and occasionally featured unusual cabaret. Much of the image and fashion used by the subculture can be traced back to the bands who played at the Batcave.

In recent times, newer bands from the deathrock subgenre of Goth have begun to once more describe their music as "Batcave". It must be noted that these bands are generally from non-English speaking countries, though the original bands who played at the club have had their style dubbed as "Batcave". Because of this, in some sense the term is accurate.

Batucada
Batucada is a substyle of samba and refers to an African influenced Brazilian percussive style, usually performed by an ensemble. It is considered by some to be the epitome of the percussive ensemble. Batucada is characterized by its repetitive style and fast pace.

Batuco
Batuco is a locality of Chile, situated in the commune of Lampa, in the Santiago Metropolitan Region.

Beach music
Beach music, also known as Carolina beach music, is a regional genre which developed from various musical styles of the forties, fifties and sixties. These styles ranged from big band swing instrumentals to the more raucous sounds of blues/jump blues, jazz, doo-wop, boogie, rhythm and blues, reggae, rockabilly and old-time rock and roll. Beach music is closely associated with the style of swing dance known as the shag, or the Carolina shag, which is also the official state dance of both North Carolina and South Carolina. Recordings with a 4/4 "blues shuffle" rhythmic structure and moderate-to-fast tempo are the most popular music for the shag, and the vast majority of the music in this genre fits that description.
Beat music
Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat (for bands from Liverpool beside the River Mersey), is a pop music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll, doo wop, skiffle, R&B and soul. The beat movement provided most of the bands responsible for the British invasion of the American pop charts in the period after 1964, and provided the model for many important developments in pop and rock music.

Beat groups characteristically had simple guitar-dominated line-ups, with vocal harmonies and catchy tunes. The most common instrumentation of beat groups featured lead, rhythm and bass guitars plus drums, as popularized by The Beatles, The Searchers, Gerry & The Pacemakers and others. Beat groups - even those with a separate lead singer - often sang both verses and choruses in close harmony. The vocal harmony style often resembled doo wop, with nonsense syllables in the backing vocals. Unlike in doo-wop, falsetto and bass harmonies were rare.

Beatboxing
Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion which primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and more. It may also involve singing, vocal imitation of turntablism, the simulation of horns, strings, and other musical instruments. Beatboxing is connected with hip hop culture although it is not limited to hip hop music.

Bebop
Bebop or bop is a form of jazz characterized by fast tempo and improvisation based on the combination of harmonic structure and melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. It first surfaced in musicians' argot some time during the first two years of the Second World War.

Beiguan
Beiguan (%u5317%u7BA1; pinyin: B%u011Bigu%u01CEn; Taiwanese: Pakkóan) is a type of traditional music, melody and theatrical performance between the 17th and mid-20th centuries. It was widespread in Zhangzhou (the southern part of China's Fujian province) and Taiwan. By the early 21st century its popularity had declined precipitously.

Beiguan usually uses the following instruments: two suona (oboes), bangzi (woodblock), daluo (large bossed gong), xiaoluo (small gong), bangu (high-pitched drum), tonggu (small drum), xiaobo (small cymbals), and dabo (large cymbals). It may also use dagu (large drum), various huqin, and plucked instruments.

Bel canto
Bel canto (Bel-Canto) (Italian, "beautiful singing"), along with a number of similar constructions ('bellezze del canto', 'bell'arte del canto'), is an Italian opera term with several possible different meanings that is subject to a wide array of interpretations.

The earliest usage of the term bel canto emerged in late 17th-century Italy to refer to the Italian model of singing that was developing there. However, the phrase did not become widely used until the mid 18th century and the term did not take on a more specified meaning until the mid-19th century. In fact "neither musical nor general dictionaries saw fit to attempt definition until after 1900." Even so, the term bel canto remains ambiguous and is often used nostalgically in its application to a lost singing tradition.

Bend-skin
Bend-skin (bend skin) is a kind of urban Cameroonian popular music. Kouchoum Mbada is the most well-known group associated with the genre. Several other artists have over the years contrubuted to the growth and popularity of bend skin. It is related to manganbeu, and is played using only drums and maracas (often made from soda cans), with a vocalist who both sings and raps. Bend-skin developed in 1993 in the New-Bell Banganté, amid a time of economic depression. Although gaining grounds in most urban settings in Cameroon, Bend-skin is closely associated with the Western Province of Cameroon (the Bamileke people), who have been responsible for developing and promoting this genre of music.

Benga music
Benga is a genre of Kenyan popular music. It evolved between the late 1940s and late 1960s, in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi. In the 1940s, the African Broadcasting Service in Nairobi aired a steady stream of soukous, South African kwela, Zairean finger-style guitar and various kinds of Cuban dance music. There were also popular folk songs of Kenya's Luo and Kikuyu peoples.

The Luo of Kenya have long played an eight-string lyre called nyatiti, and guitarists from the area sought to imitate the instrument's syncopated melodies. In benga, the electric bass guitar is played in a style reminiscent of the nyatiti. As late as the turn of the twentieth century, this bass in nyatiti supported the rhythm essential in transmitting knowledge about the society through music. Opondo Owenga of Gem Yala, the grandfather of Odhiambo Siangla, was known in employing music as a means of teaching history of the Luo.

In 1967, the first major benga band, Shirati Jazz, was formed by Daniel Owino Misiani. The group launched a string of hits that were East Africa's biggest songs throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Shirati Jazz's biggest rival is Victoria Jazz, formed in 1972 by Ochieng Nelly Mengo and Collela Mazee. Despite many personnel changes, Victoria Jazz remained popular throughout the 1970s, when the Voice of Kenya radio station pushed an onslaught of East African pop. Another famous benga bend Migori Super Stars was formed in the mid 70s and was led by Musa Olwete which later split to form another popular benga band Migori Super Stars C with musicians such as Joseph Ochola (Kasongo Polo Menyo), Onyango Jamba, Ochieng' Denge denge and others.

Modern benga artists include Kapere Jazz Band, the rootsy Ogwang Lelo Okoth, and the American/Kenyan group Extra Golden, and more recently Dola Kabarry.

Bhajan
A Bhajan is any type of Indian devotional song. It has no fixed form: it may be as simple as a mantra or kirtan or as sophisticated as the dhrupad or kriti with music based on classical ragas and talas.[1] It is normally lyrical, expressing love for the Divine. The name, a cognate of bhakti, meaning religious devotion, suggests its importance to the bhakti movement that spread from the south of India throughout the entire subcontinent in the Moghul era.

Anecdotes and episodes from scriptures, the teachings of saints and descriptions of gods have all been the subject of bhajans. The Dhrupad style, Sufi qawwali[2] and the kirtan or song in the Haridas tradition are related to bhajan. Nanak, Kabir, Meera, Narottama Dasa, Surdas and Tulsidas are notable composers. Traditions of bhajan such as Nirguni, Gorakhanathi, Vallabhapanthi, Ashtachhap, Madhura-bhakti and the traditional South Indian form Sampradya Bhajan each have their own repertoire and methods of singing.

Bhangra
Bha%u1E45g%u1E5B%u0101 Punjabi: %u0A2D%u0A70%u0A17%u0A5C%u0A3E,(Hindi: %u092D%u093E%u0902%u0917%u0921%u093C%u 093E; %u0628%u06BE%u0646%u06AF%u0691%u0627, pronounced [p%u0259%u0300%u014B%u0261%u027Da%u02D 0]) is a form of music and dance that originated in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. Bhangra began as a folk dance conducted by Punjabi Sikhs to celebrate the coming of Spring, or Vaisakhi. This musical art further became synthesized after the partition of India, in which refugees from different parts of the Punjab shared their folk dances with individuals who resided in the regions they settled in. This hybrid dance became Bhangra. It is become popularized by the Indian Sikh Community. Today, bhangra survives in different forms and styles all over the globe - including pop music, film soundtracks, and even collegiate competitions.

Bhangragga
Bhangragga is a slang term for the style of music incorporating elements of Bhangra and dancehall (or Ragga, short for the word Raggamuffin) created by British Asian producers alex and lennart on the debut album by Apache Indian No Reservations (1993). The sound is very percussion-heavy - a distinct holdover from Bhangra - with a propulsive beat clearly designed for dancing. The Dancehall influence can be felt through the use of pre-programmed music, similar to Dancehall "riddims". Lyrically, the style features a combination of Sub-Continental-accented (usually Indian) vocals delivered in the clipped style associated with Dancehall - and sometimes including the Patois of the latter style. This style is almost exclusively a British phenomenon, as the two cultures involved in its genesis mix reasonably freely there. The most successful exponent, however, is Apache Indian, who had a world-wide hit with "Boom Shack-A-Lak", which was included on the soundtrack to the film Dumb and Dumber, among others.

The style is also known as Bhangramuffin and may also be known as Bhangra-wine.

Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s. Big bands evolved with the times and continue to today. A big band typically consists of approximately 12 to 25 musicians and contains saxophones, trumpets, trombones, singers, and a rhythm section. The terms jazz band, jazz ensemble, stage band, jazz orchestra, society band and dance band may be used to describe a specific type of big band.

In contrast to smaller jazz combos, in which most of the music is improvised, or created spontaneously, music played by big bands is highly "arranged", or prepared in advance and notated on sheet music. The music is traditionally called 'charts'. Improvised solos may be played only when called for by the arranger.

Big beat
Big beat is a term employed since the mid 1990s by the British music press to describe much of the music by artists such as The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, The Crystal Method, Propellerheads and The Prodigy, typically driven by heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns in common with established forms of electronic dance music such as Techno and Acid House.

Big Beat tends to feature distorted, compressed breakbeats at moderate tempos (usually between 90 to 140 beats per minute), acid house style synthesizer lines and heavy loops from 60s and 70s Funk, Jazz, rock and pop songs. They are often punctuated with punk-style vocals and driven by intense, distorted basslines with conventional pop and techno song structures. Big beat tracks have a sound that include: crescendos, builds, drops, dramatic sound effects such as explosions or sirens and extended drum rolls. As with several other dance genres at the time the use of effects such as cut-off, phasing and flanging was commonplace.

Big Beat is also characterized by a strong psychedelic influence comparable to a wide range of artists from Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Jacques Perrey to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin to Funkadelic and the Acid House movement of the late 1980s. Celebrated instigators of the genre such as Fatboy Slim tend to feature heavily compressed loud breakbeats in their tracks which are used to define the music as much as any melodic hooks and sampled sounds. Based on the primary use of loud, heavy breakbeats and basslines, Big Beat shares attributes with Jungle and Drum & Bass but it has a significantly slower tempo.

Biguine
Biguine is a style of music that originated in Martinique in the 19th century.

By combining the traditional bélé music with the polka, the black musicians of Martinique created the biguine, which comprises three distinct styles, the biguine de salon, the biguine de bal and the biguines de rue. Lacking recognition at home, several biguine artists moved to mainland France, where they achieved greater popularity in Paris, especially in the wake of the colonial exhibition in 1931. The popularity of the biguine declined in the 1970s, when it began to be replaced by more commercial music.

The biguine is similar to New Orleans jazz music, and may have influenced its development.

Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It often employs fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, double-kick drumming, and unconventional song structure.

During the 1980s, certain thrash metal bands established a prototype for black metal. This so-called First Wave included bands such as Venom, Bathory, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost.[1] A Second Wave emerged in the early 1990s, which consisted primarily of Norwegian bands such as Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone, Immortal and Emperor. This scene developed the black metal style into a distinct genre.

Black metal has been met with considerable hostility from mainstream culture, mainly due to the misanthropic and anti-Christian ideology of many artists. Additionally, some musicians have been associated with church burnings, murder or National Socialism. For these reasons and others, black metal is often viewed as an underground form of music.

Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and is a sub-genre of country music. It has its own roots in Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of immigrants from the United Kingdom and Ireland (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants in Appalachia), as well as jazz and blues. In bluegrass, as in jazz, each instrument takes its turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others perform accompaniment. This is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Traditional bluegrass is typically based around acoustic stringed instruments, such as mandolin, acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle, and upright bass, with or without vocals.

Blue-eyed soul
Blue-eyed soul (also known as white soul) is rhythm and blues or soul music performed by white artists. The term was first used in the mid-1960s to describe white artists who performed soul and R&B that was similar to the raw, expressive music of the Motown and Stax record labels.

The term continued to be used in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly by the British music press, to describe a new generation of white singers who adopted elements of classic soul music. To a lesser extent, the term has been applied to singers in other music genres that are influenced by soul music, such as urban music and hip-hop soul.

Blues
Blues is a music genre based on the use of the blues chord progressions and the blue notes. Though several blues forms exist, the twelve-bar blues chord progressions are the most frequently encountered. Blue notes are sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Blues emerged at the end of the 19th century as an accessible form of self-expression in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of African influences. The blues influenced later American and Western popular music, as the blues form became a basic pattern of jazz, rhythm and blues, bluegrass and rock and roll. In the 1960s and 1970s, blues evolved into a hybrid form called blues rock. In the 1990s, punk blues appeared as an outgrowth of the blues rock and punk movements.

The term "the blues" refers to the "the blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness; an early use of the term in this sense is found in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). Though the use of the phrase in African American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.

Blues ballad
The blues ballad uses the blues scale and blues style chord progressions with a bridge using a different bluesy chord progression in the conventional 32-bar popular song from Tin Pan Alley.

Among the best known blues ballads are Percy Mayfield's love song in the form of a prayer, "Please Send Me Someone to Love" and Buddy Johnson's "Since I Fell for You", most successfully recorded by Lenny Welch. Lonnie Johnson's "Tomorrow Night" is a pop standard. B.B. King has recorded several blues ballads, "You Know I Love You", his second hit, and "Sneakin' Around". Bobby Blue Bland recorded as many blues ballads as he did straight blues. Clarence Carter's "Slip Away" is another notable example.

Blues ballads are also popular in country music. Hank Williams's "Your Cheating Heart" and Freddy Fender's two classics, "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" and "Before the Next Teardrop Falls", for example.

The blues ballad differs from conventional blues in its structure. Blues ballads have the Thirty-two-bar form of verse-verse-bridge-verse, while blues songs have the 12-bar A-A-B form or its 8-bar A-B variant. Both blues and blues ballads rely on the mainstay three chords and the blues scale. One subtle variation is found in some 8-bar blues, such as "Walkin' by Myself",, where one eight-bar blues melody forms the "A" part and another the "B" bridge.

Conversely, the blues ballad differs from bluesy pop songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night" by simpler harmonies and more direct language. That said, in the hands of a skillful and emotional performer like Dakota Staton, Dinah Washington, or Etta James, songs like "Mean to Me" or Cole Porter's "Love for Sale" can be hard to distinguish from formal blues ballads.

Blues-rock
Blues-rock is a hybrid musical genre combining bluesy improvisations over the 12-bar blues and extended boogie jams with rock and roll styles. The core of the blues rock sound is created by the electric guitar, bass guitar and drum kit, with the electric guitar usually amplified through a tube guitar amplifier, giving it an overdriven character.

The style began to develop in the mid-1960s in England and the United States, as what Piero Scaruffi called, a "genre of rhythm'n'blues played by white European musicians". UK Bands such as The Who, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Animals, Cream and The Rolling Stones experimented with music from the older American bluesmen like Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters. While the early blues-rock bands "attempted to play long, involved improvisations which were commonplace on jazz records", by the 1970s, blues rock got heavier and more riff-based. By the "early '70s, the lines between blues-rock and hard rock were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. In the 1980s and 1990s, blues-rock acts returned to their bluesy roots, and some of these, such as the "Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan, flirted with rock stardom."

Biomusic
Biomusic is a form of experimental music which deals with sounds created or performed by living things. The definition is also sometimes extended to included sounds made by humans in a directly biological way. For instance, music that is created by the brain waves of the composer can also be called biomusic as can music created by the human body without the use of tools or instruments that are not part of the body (singing or vocalizing is usually excluded from this definition).

Biomusic can be divided into two basic categories: music that is created solely by the animal (or in some cases plant), and music which is based upon animal noises but which is arranged by a human composer. Some forms of music use recorded sounds of nature as part of the music, for example New Age music uses the nature sounds as backgrounds for various musical soundscapes, and ambient music sometimes uses nature sounds modified with reverbs and delay units to make spacey versions of the nature sounds as part of the ambience.

Bitpop
Bitpop is a type of electronic music, where at least part of the music is made using old 8-bit computers, game consoles and little toy instruments. Popular choices are the Commodore 64, Game Boy, Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System.

Due to its origins, bitpop is also referred to as 8-bit. The name has also been considered as a pun on britpop and the word bit.

Major publishers of bitpop are 8bitpeoples and Relax Beat & Bleepstreet Records. Examples of bands in the genre are Tobiah, Welle:Erdball, Printed Circuit, Anamanaguchi[1], Chiptots [2] Covox, YMCK, Teamtendo, Slagsmålsklubben, Receptors, Neotericz, 1986, FirestARTer, The Hardliner, capitalSTEPS (now called Square Wail), David Sugar, 8 Bit Weapon, 8 Bit Betty, Firebrand Boy, she, Death By Television, Mesu Kasumai, Turboknapp, Coleco Music, c64 Messiah, Thermostatic, DJ Lo Rez, ComputeHer, MelBot, Machinae Supremacy, Twilight Electric, Electric Dragon, Monster & Maskiner, Mr. Pacman, Pluxus, Shael Riley, Pontonius, Mikron 64, Puss, Nintendude, Yuppster, Crystal Castles, Bondage Fairies, You Love Her Coz She's Dead, 8 Bit Mayhem, Nullsleep, Sabretooth, HEARTSREVOLUTION, Henry Homesweet

Some related genres are chiptune, Gamewave, Picopop, and electropop.

Bocet
Bocet is a form of Romanian folk music.

Bocet is a lament in free rhythm. The bocet is sung by one or more people with their eyes in tears or just expressing a deep grief. Encountered throughout Romania, bocet is a part of the traditional mourning observances.

Boi (music)
Boi is a style of Central Amazonian folk music now moving into the mainstream in Brazil.

Bolero
Bolero is a name given to certain slow, romantic latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms, which are both significant, and which have separate origins. The term is also used for some art music. In all its forms, the bolero has been popular for over a century, and still is today.

Bomba
Bomba is one of the most famous musical styles of Puerto Rico. Although there is some controversy surrounding its origin, most agree that it is a largely African music. The rhythm and beat are played by a set of hand drums and a maraca. Dance is an integral part of the music: the dancers move their bodies to every beat of the drum, making bomba a very wild and rich dance. Bomba is described to be a challenge between the drummer and the dancer. The dancer produces a series of gestures to which the primo drummer provides a synchronized beat. Thus, it is the drummer who attempts to follow the dancer and not the other way around. The dancer must be in great physical shape and the challenge usually continues until either the dancer or drummer discontinues. The main instruments used in bomba style music are any number of low pitched hand drums used to create a base rhythm, and a higher pitch drum which accentuates the beat with improvised patterns. Other instruments used are the palitos or cuas, which are sticks that are struck against any, usually wooden, surface. A single large maraca usually completes the sound of bomba, though a güiro has commonly been used in orchestral arrangements. Both of these last two instruments have origins in the Taino culture of the Caribbean Basin.

The basic music style was brought to Puerto Rico during the colonial slave trade. It originates in [Kongo] and Angola, Central Africa, although the majority of slaves can be traced back to many different areas of West and Central Africa. The dance was mostly practiced at the northern, southern and western coasts of the island where the majority of Africa's descendants lived. It is said by most bomba practitioners around the island that the town of Mayagüez is considered the birth place of bomba in Puerto Rico. The men use a series of hip and hand movements. The women use similar movements, however the movements are often augmented by the use of their skirts. In bomba shows, the typical apparel worn by the dancers is what slaves may have used in social gatherings. Men wear a white outfit and Panama hat and women wear big plantation skirts and a head scarf or bundaloo.

The traditional drums used in bomba are called barriles, since they have long been built from the wood of barrels. The high pitch drum is called "subidor" or "primo", and the low pitch drums are called "buleador" and "segundo". There are several styles of bomba, and the popularity of these styles varies by region. The four most common rhythms are called "sica", "yuba", "cuembé", and "holandes", though there are more than 25.

So far, Rafael Cortijo has been the only artist successful in taking bomba to the mainstream with his Combo in the 1950s and 1960's. Celia Cruz recorded bomba occasionally, her most successful recording being a bomba version of Mon Rivera's plena "A Papá Cuando Venga". Ricky Martin mixes a bit of authentic bomba rhythm with other Latino influences in his aptly-named song La Bomba. The song Mi Tierra by Gloria Estefan starts with a bomba rhythm as well.

Bongo drum
Bongo drums or bongos are a Latin-American percussion instrument consisting of a pair of single-headed, open-ended drums attached to each other. The drums are of different size: the larger drum is called in Spanish the hembra (female) and the smaller the macho (male). It is most often played by hand and is especially associated in Cuban music with a steady patter or ostinato of eighth-notes known as the martillo or "hammer".

Boogie-woogie
Boogie woogie is a style of piano-based blues that became very popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but originated much earlier, and was extended from piano, to three pianos at once, guitar, big band, and country and western music, and even gospel. Whilst the blues traditionally depicts a variety of emotions, boogie-woogie is mainly associated with dancing. The lyrics of one of the very earliest, "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie", consist entirely of instructions to dancers:

Now, when I tell you to hold it, I don't want you to move a thing.
And when I tell you to get it, I want you to Boogie Woogie!

It is characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato and the most familiar example of shifts of level, in the left hand which elaborates on each chord, and trills and decorations from the right hand.

It is not strictly a solo piano style, but is also used to accompany singers and as a solo part in bands and small combos. It is sometimes called "eight to the bar", as much of it is written in common time (4/4) time using eighth notes (quavers) (see time signature). The chord progressions are typically based on I - IV - V - I (with many formal variations of it, such as I/i - IV/iv - v/I, as well as chords that lead into these ones.

For the most part, boogie-woogie tunes are twelve-bar blues, although the style has been applied to popular songs like "Swanee River" and hymns like "(Just a) Closer Walk with Thee."

Boogaloo
Boogaloo or Bugalú (shing-a-ling) is a genre of Latin music and dance that was popular in the United States in the 1960s. Boogaloo originated in New York City among teenage Cubans, Puerto Ricans and other groups. The style was a fusion of popular African American R&B and soul with mambo and son montuno. It included the use of English lyrics as well as Spanish. Boogaloo entered the mainstream through the American Bandstand television program.

Bossa nova
Bossa nova (Br-BossaNova.ogg pronunciation (help·info)) is a style of Brazilian music popularized by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes and João Gilberto. Bossa nova (which is Portuguese for "new trend") acquired a large following, initially by young musicians and college students. Although the bossa nova movement only lasted six years (1958-63), it contributed a number of songs to the standard jazz repertoire.

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Ashik
An Ashik (Turkish: a%u015F%u0131k, Azerbaijani: a%u015F%u0131q, %u0639%u0627%u0634%u06CC%u0642, Armenian: %u0531%u0577%u0578%u0582%u0572, ashugh, Georgian: %u10D0%u10E8%u10E3%u10E6%u10D8, ashughi) is a mystic troubadour or traveling bard, in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Iran who sings and plays the saz, a form of lute. Ashiks' songs are semi-improvised around common bases.

The Ashik tradition in Turkic cultures of Anatolia, Azerbaijan and Central Asia has its origin in the Shamanistic beliefs of ancient Turkic peoples.

The ancient ashiks were called by various names such as bakhshi (Bax%u015F%u0131), dede (d%u0259d%u0259), and uzan or ozan. Among their various roles, they played a major part in perpetuation of oral tradition, promotion of communal value system and traditional culture of their people.

These wandering bards or troubadours are part of current rural and folk culture of Azerbaijan, and Iranian Azerbaijan , they also can be found in Turkey, the Turkmen Sahra (Iran) and Turkmenistan, where they are called bakshy.

Australian country music
Australian country music is a vibrant part of the music of Australia. There is a broad range of styles, from bluegrass, to yodelling to folk to the more popular.

Australia has a long tradition of country music, which has developed a style quite distinct from its U.S. counterpart. Waltzing Matilda, often regarded as Australia's unofficial National anthem, is a quintessential Australian country song, influenced more by Celtic folk ballads than by American Country and Western music. This strain of Australian country music, with lyrics focusing on strictly Australian subjects, is generally known as "bush music" or "bush band music".

Another, more Americanised form of Australian country music was pioneered in the 1930s by such recording artists as Tex Morton. Strictly Australian country music and bush ballads were popularized by Slim Dusty, best remembered for his 1957 song "A Pub With No Beer". In recent years local contemporary country music, featuring much crossover with popular music, has enjoyed considerable popularity in Australia.

Country music has also been a particularly popular form of musical expression among the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
Pub rock (Australia)
Pub rock is a style of Australian rock and roll popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and still influencing contemporary Australian music today.

The term came from the venues where most of these bands originally played - inner-city and suburban pubs (short for public house, which is rarely used in Australia in its full form). These often noisy, hot, and crowded establishments are largely frequented by men and women in their late teenage years and 20s. "Pubs" originally come from England and the concept spread due to British settlers in colonies such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Australian hip hop
Australian hip hop music began in the early 1980s; originally it was primarily influenced by hip hop music and culture imported via radio and television from the United States of America. However, since the 1990s, a distinctive local style has developed. Australian hip hop is a part of the underground music scene with only a few successful commercial hits in the last decade. Albums and singles are released by mostly independent record labels, often owned and run by the artists themselves.

Australian humour music
Australian humour music (often quite similar in style to Australian country music) is based on irreverent, rude, but harmless humour. Its lyrics often include a lot of swearing and are rarely about controversial or meaningful issues.

Australian (perhaps inherited from the British) humour uses deadpan, in which an outrageous or ridiculous statement without explicit signs of joking, such as tales of kangaroos hopping across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and drop bears exemplify the propensity for this style of leg-pulling.

Although you can buy the CDs at most music shops, this genre is generally not very commercial and spread mostly by word of mouth and small country town concerts. However it is very popular especially in rural areas of Australia.

Avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which improvisation may take place. This structure may be composed note for note in advance, partially or even completely.

Avant-garde metal
Avant-garde metal, experimental metal, or art metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music characterised by the use of innovative, avant-garde elements, large-scale experimentation, and the use of non-standard sounds, instruments, and song structures. The earliest avant-garde metal bands include Celtic Frost and Master's Hammer.

Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres.

Historically speaking, musicologists primarily use the term "avant-garde music" for the radical, post-1945 tendencies of a modernist style in several genres of art music after the death of Anton Webern in 1945. In the 1950s the term avant-garde music was mostly associated with serial music.

Today the term may be used to refer to any other post-1945 tendency of modernist music not definable as experimental music, though sometimes including a type of experimental music characterized by the rejection of tonality.

Avant-punk
Avant-punk is a corruption of "avant-garde," indicating the forefront of innovation. Sonic Youth may be thought of as the trailblazers of avant-punk, having pioneered the integration of jazz and punk in the 1980s. The no wave movement anticipated their innovations. Other bands described by commentators as avant-punk include Fugazi, The Ex, Dog Faced Hermans, and Goes Cube. Others may consider even earlier bands Avant Punk, such as San Francisco's experimental noise punk band, Flipper.

Axé music
Axé music is a popular music genre originating in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil approximately in 1986, fusing different Afro-Caribbean genres, such as Marcha, Reggae, and Calypso. It also includes influences of Afro-Brasilian music such as Frevo, Forró and Carixada. The most important creator of this music style was Alfredo Moura, conducting Carlinhos Brown, Luiz Caldas, Sarajane and others. The word "axé" comes from a religious greeting used in the Candomblé and Umbanda religions that means "good vibration".

Bachata (music)
Bachata is a genre of music that originated in the countryside and the rural neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic. Its subjects are often romantical; especially prevalent are tales of heartbreak and sadness. In fact, the original term used to name the genre was amargue ("bitterness," or "bitter music"), until the rather ambiguous (and mood-neutral) term bachata became popular. The form of dance, Bachata, also developed with the music.

Baggy
Baggy was a British dance-oriented music genre popular in the early 1990s.

The scene was extremely influenced by Madchester, although the scene was not geographically confined to Manchester. Many Madchester bands could also be described as Baggy, and vice versa. Baggy was characterised by psychedelia- and acid house-influenced guitar music, often with a funky drummer beat, similar to the work of the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses. The scene was named after the loose-fitting clothing worn by the bands and fans.

Some bands, such as the The Mock Turtles and The Soup Dragons, reinvented their sound and image to fit in with the new scene. This led some critics to accuse baggy bands of bandwagon-jumping and derivative songwriting. There was also a crossover between dance and indie, and vice versa.

Bands in the indie-dance era of pop music can be divided into two camps; the acts who could be described as baggy (usually the 'Madchester' acts and a few others such as Flowered Up from London) - and those who can be described as indie-dance (i.e. Jesus Jones, who were more techno inspired).

Baião (music)
The baião is a Northeast Brazilian rhythmic formula that became the basis of a wide range of music. Forró, côco, and embolada are clear examples. The main baião instrument is the zabumba, a flat, double-headed bass drum played with a mallet in one hand and stick in the other, each striking the opposite head of the drum.

The baião originated with the native peoples in the Northeast but now incorporates elements of indigenous, mestizo, African, and European musics. Grossly, the indigenous elements are flutes and wooden shakers; African-influenced baiãos are accompanied with atabaque drums and include overlapping call and response singing; and European influences include dance music such as the polka, mazurka, schottische, and quadrille, as well as Portuguese contest singing and accompaniment with one or two pandeiros playing the baião rhythm.

The baião is most associated with the State of Pernambuco, just north of Bahia. Despite the relatively small area that confines its popularity, a great variety of music is associated with baião. One only need listen to Gilberto Gil from Bahia, Luiz Gonzaga and Selma do Côco of Pernambuco, and any "repentista" singer from the region such as Perdal Lins and Verde Lins. Although samba and bossa nova are largely considered Brazil's national musics, no complete understanding of Brazil's music and culture can be had without taking into account the baião and its influences as far south as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The baião is very much a rural music and for a long time was eschewed by the urban upper classes.

Bakersfield sound
The Bakersfield sound was a genre of country music developed in the mid- to late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield country was a reaction against the slickly-produced, string orchestra-laden Nashville Sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s. Buck Owens and the Buckaroos and Merle Haggard and the Strangers are the most successful artists of the original Bakersfield sound era.

Bakshy
The bakshy are traditional Turkmen musicians. Historically they have been traveling singers and shamans, acting as healers and spiritual figures, and also providing the music for celebrations of weddings, births and other important life events. They sing either a cappella or to the accompaniment of traditional instruments (primarily the two-stringed lute called the dutar.) The Turkmen bakshy tradition is closely related to the larger Turkic Ashik tradition.

Baila
Baila is the term used to describe a form of dance music popular on the island of Sri Lanka. The genre originated centuries ago among the 'kaffir'or Afro-Sinhalese communities (mixed communities consisting of Portuguese, African and native Sinhalese people), and was later amalgamated with European instruments and eastern and western rhythms, especially rhythms found in Spain and northern European folk music.

Baila music, though popular as a folk art for centuries in the country, was introduced to Sri Lanka's mainstream during the early years of the 1960s when singer Wally Bastian (who was also a police officer), began adapting the 6/8 'kaffirhina' rhythms to accommodate Sinhala lyrics. By the 1970s, owing largely to the contributions of musicians MS Fernando and Maxwell Mendis; baila had grown to become a recognized (and respected) style of Sri Lankan popular music.

Funk carioca
Funk Carioca (English: Rio Funk ), favela funk and, elsewhere in the world, baile funk, is a type of dance music from Rio de Janeiro, derived from Miami bass. In Rio de Janeiro it is most often simply known as funk, although it is very different musically from what funk means in most other places. "Baile funk", in Rio, refers not to the music, but to the actual parties in which the music is played.

Baisha xiyue
Baisha xiyue (Chinese: %u767D%u6C99%u7EC6%u4E50, literally "Baisha fine music") is one of the two surviving forms of traditional music of the Naxi (also spelled Nakhi or Nahi) people of Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China, known as "Naxi ancient music". Baisha is a town located ten kilometres north of Lijiang, and was the capital of the independent Naxi kingdom before it was annexed by the Yuan Empire in 1271.

Baisha xiyue is a classical orchestral musical form, with 24 qupai (tunes), played on antique Chinese musical instruments, such as flute, shawm, Chinese lute, and zither. It is derived from the ritual music of Taoist and Confucian ceremonies from the 14th century. Since Lijiang is relatively remote, the music form has survived relatively unchanged since that period. The music is characterised by the "three olds" - old melodies, old instruments and old musicians.

The other surviving form of Naxi ancient music is the Han derived dongjing yinyue ("cave scripture music"), which has its roots in Taoist and Buddhist ritual music. A third form of Naxi ancient music, huangjing yinyue, has not survived. Traditional Naxi music has been described as the living fossil of Chinese music. The city of Lijiang is itself a World Heritage Site.

Bajourou
Bajourou (meaning 'big strings' or 'big tune') is the name given to a strain of Malian (Mali) pop music usually played at weddings and social gatherings. Though now predominantly electric, its roots were in 60's acoustic music that borrowed patterns from the kora and the donsongoni (a hunting harp/guitar) and transferred them to acoustic guitars. Lyrics moved away from the usual Manding praise songs to more secular, romantic concerns, mainly sung by women like Fanta Sacko who did much to develop and spread the music.

Baku
Baku (Azerbaijani: Bak%u0131), sometimes known as Baqy, Baky, Baki or Bakü, is the capital, the largest city, and the largest port of Azerbaijan and all Caucasus. Located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, the city consists of two principal parts: the downtown and the old Inner City (21,5 ha). Baku is one of the oldest and biggest cities in East for antiquity, territory and population. As of 1 January 2005 the population was 2,036,000, of which 153,400 were internally displaced persons and 93,400 refugees.

Baku is a member of Organization of World Heritage Cities and Sister Cities International. The city was also bidding for the 2016 Summer Olympics, but was eliminated on 4 June 2008. In 2007 Culture Ministers of the member-states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference declared Baku to be the capital of Islamic Culture for 2009.

Baku is divided into eleven administrative raions (Azizbayov, Binagadi, Garadagh, Narimanov, Nasimi, Nizami, Sabail, Sabunchu, Khatai, Surakhany and Yasamal) and 48 townships. Among these are the townships on islands in the Baku Bay and the town of Oil Rocks built on stilts in the Caspian Sea, 60 km (37 mi) away from Baku.

Bal-musette
Bal-musette is a style of French music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1880s.

Auvergnats settled in large numbers in the 5th, 11th, and 12th districts (arondissements) of Paris during the 19th century, opening cafés and bars where patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of musette de cour (a bellows-powered bagpipe) and grelottière (sleigh bells attached to a narrow, hand-held loop of leather).

Parisian and Italian musicians who played the accordion adopted the style and established themselves in Auvergnat bars especially in the 19th district.

When Italians began introducing new rhythms like the waltz and polka into the traditional musical form and began playing it on recently introduced hybrid accordion, conflicts arose, and the Italian and Auvergnat styles split. By the end of 19th century, there were three kinds of bals-musette establishments:

* bal des familles - Auvergnat
* bal musette populaire - Italian
* guinche ou bal de barrière - seedy hangouts frequented by low-lifes

These places often were frequented by members of the French upper-class looking for excitement among the poor and downtrodden. Some establishments even staged mock police raids for their patrons' benefit. Performers of this era include Antoine Bouscatel, Émile Vacher, Martin Cayla, Charles Péguri, and Gus Viseur.

Musette dance forms arose from people looking for easier, faster and more sensual dance steps, as well as forms that did not require a large halls. "Musette-forms" that established themselves as variations to popular dances of the day include:

* tango-musette
* pasodoble-musette
* waltz-musette, with a special variation called la toupie ("the top"), where dancers are very close and turn around themselves very regularly.

An original musette dance also appeared, known as java.

Admission to most bals were free, but dancers bought dance tokens at the cash-desk. These tokens were made of metal in various shapes with the name of the hall stamped on one side. In the middle of the dance, the ball director walked between the couples with a bag and the dancers gave a token.

By 1945, the bal-musette became the most popular style of dance in France and its biggest stars were widely known across the country. Its popularity declined drastically in about 1960, however, a revival of balls has begun, especially in larger cities, and a modern form of the musette is establishing itself.

Balakadri
Balakadri (called balkadri or kadri) is a traditional quadrille music that was performed for balls on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative and set to music. Ballads were characteristic of particularly British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later North America, Australia and North Africa. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 20th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song.

Ballata
The ballata (plural: ballate) is an Italian poetic and musical form, which was in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musical structure AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the French musical 'forme fixe' virelai (and not the ballade as the name might otherwise suggest). The first and last "A" is called a ripresa, the "b" lines are piedi (feet), while the fourth line is called a "volta". Longer ballate may be found in the form AbbaAbbaA, etc. Unlike the virelai, the two "b" lines usually have exactly the same music and only in later ballate pick up the (formerly distinctly French) first and second (open and close) endings. The term comes from the verb ballare, to dance, and the form certainly began as dance music.

The ballata was one of the most prominent secular musical forms during the trecento, the period often known as the Italian ars nova. Ballate are sung at the end of each day of Boccaccio's Decameron (only one musical setting of these poems, by Lorenzo da Firenze, survives). Early ballate, such as those found in the Rossi Codex are monophonic. Later, ballate are found for two or three voices. The most notable composer of ballate is Francesco Landini, who composed in the second half of the 14th century. Other composers of ballata include Andrea da Firenze, a contemporary of Landini, as well as Bartolino da Padova, Johannes Ciconia, and Zacara da Teramo. In the 15th century both Arnold de Lantins and Guillaume Dufay wrote ballate; they were among the last to do so.

Ballet (music)
Ballet as a musical form is a musical composition intended for ballet performance. The same music can be used for several different ballet choreographies.

Bamboo (band)
Bamboo is a Filipino alternative rock band founded in 2003 by the former vocalist of Rivermaya, Bamboo Mañalac.

Bambuco
Bambuco is sometimes said to be the unofficial music of Colombia. It has a beat structure similar to the European waltz or polska (not polka). Typically a bambuco piece is a folk music song accompanied by a stylized group dance in either a 6/8 or 3/4 meter.

The music, sometimes called el bambuco, is thought to be of African origin, but took a cultural foothold in the Andean region of Colombia and has spread in popularity throughout Latin America.

Banda music
Banda is a brass-based form of traditional Mexican music. Bandas play a wide variety of songs, including rancheras, corridos, cumbias, baladas, and boleros. Bandas are most widely known for their rancheras, but they also play modern Mexican pop, rock, and cumbias.

La Banda el Recodo, Banda Sinaloense MS, Banda Machos, Banda Maguey, Banda Cuisillos, La Arrolladora Banda El Limón, El Chapo de Sinaloa, Banda Jerez, El Coyote, Sergio Vega and Julio Preciado are some of the most famous banda artists. Banda is primarily a male-dominated genre; however, there are also a few all-female bandas such as Banda Las Tapatías and Banda Soñadoras, as well as a few prominent female singers such as Yolanda Pérez, and Graciela Beltrán.

Bangsawan
Bangsawan is a type of traditional Malay opera. It was known to have developed from a sort of Indian theatre performance during the 19th century by visiting Indian travellers.

Bangsawan is similar in western opera where certain characters are played during performance, the stories drawn from diverse sources, such as Indian, Western, Islamic, Chinese, Indonesian and Malay. Music, dance and costumes are used depending on the story told.

Nowadays, it is difficult, if not impossible to find any bangsawan troupes in Malaysia.

Bantowbol
Bantowbol or bantubol is a style of music from Cameroon. The genre is derived from Cameroonian folk music. The name bantowbol is partially derived from bal, a term for accordion playing. The principal musicians of bantowbol are Gibraltar Drakus and Nkondo Si Tony.

Barbershop music
Barbershop vocal harmony, as codified during the barbershop revival era (1940s - present), is a style of a cappella, or unaccompanied vocal music characterized by consonant four-part chords for every melody note in a predominantly homophonic texture. Each of the four parts has its own role: generally, the lead sings the melody, the tenor harmonizes above the melody, the bass sings the lowest harmonizing notes, and the baritone completes the chord, usually below the lead. The melody is not usually sung by the tenor or bass, except for an infrequent note or two to avoid awkward voice leading, in tags or codas, or when some appropriate embellishment can be created. Occasional traveling may be sung by fewer than four voice parts.

According to the Barbershop Harmony Society:

Barbershop music features songs with understandable lyrics and easily singable melodies, whose tones clearly define a tonal center and imply major and minor chords and barbershop (dominant and secondary dominant) seventh chords that resolve primarily around the circle of fifths, while making frequent use of other resolutions. Barbershop music also features a balanced and symmetrical form, and a standard meter. The basic song and its harmonization are embellished by the arranger to provide appropriate support of the song's theme and to close the song effectively.

Barbershop singers adjust pitches to achieve perfectly tuned chords in just intonation while remaining true to the established tonal center. Artistic singing in the barbershop style exhibits a fullness or expansion of sound, precise intonation, a high degree of vocal skill, and a high level of unity and consistency within the ensemble. Ideally, these elements are natural, unmanufactured, and free from apparent effort.

The presentation of barbershop music uses appropriate musical and visual methods to convey the theme of the song and provide the audience with an emotionally satisfying and entertaining experience. The musical and visual delivery is from the heart, believable, and sensitive to the song and its arrangement throughout. The most stylistic presentation artistically melds together the musical and visual aspects to create and sustain the illusions suggested by the music.

Slower barbershop songs, especially ballads, often eschew a continuous beat, and notes are often held (or speeded up) ad libitum.

The voice parts in men's barbershop singing do not correspond closely to the correspondingly named voice parts in classical music. Barbershop singing is performed both by men's and women's groups; the elements of the barbershop style and the names of the voice parts are the same for both.

Barn dance
A barn dance is any kind of dance held in a barn, but usually involves traditional or folk music with traditional dancing. Folk dancing events are often also referred to as "barn dances", despite being held in locations other than barns. People also say that there was a song called dancing in the barn and that's where the term comes from.

The term "barn dance" is usually associated with family-oriented, community-oriented events, but can refer to a rave, a kegger, or any other event than might be held in a barn or other rural building.

A barn dance can be a Ceilidh, with traditional Irish or Scottish dancing, and people unfamiliar with either format often confuse the two terms. However, a barn dance can also feature square dancing, Morris dancing, Contra dancing, English Country Dance, dancing to Country and Western music, or any other kind of dancing, often with a live band and a Caller.

The Chicago Barn Dance Company and the similarly-named but unrelated London Barn Dance Company for instance, both offer contra and square dancing events.

Baroque music
Baroque music describes a period or style of European classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1750. This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance and was followed by the Classical music era. The word "baroque" came from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning "misshapen pearl", a strikingly fitting characterization of the architecture of this period; later, the name came to be applied also to its music. Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to. It is associated with composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, Arcangelo Corelli, Claudio Monteverdi, and Tomaso Albinoni. The baroque period saw the development of functional tonality. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation; made changes in musical notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera as a musical genre. Many musical terms and concepts from this era are still in use today.

Miami bass
Miami bass (also known as booty music or booty bass, a term that may also include other genres, such as dirty rap), is a type of hip hop music that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. The use of the Roland TR-808 sustained kick drum, raised dance tempos, and occasional sexually explicit lyrical content differentiate it from other hip hop subgenres. Music author Richie Unterberger has characterized Miami bass as using rhythms with a "stop start flavor" and "hissy" cymbals with lyrics that "reflected the language of the streets, particularly Miami's black ghettos such as Liberty City and Overtown". Miami bass has never found consistent mainstream acceptance, though it has had a profound impact on the development of drum and bass, Baltimore Club, Southern rap, Funk carioca, and other genres.

During the 1980s, the focus of Miami bass tended to be on DJs and record producers, rather than individual performers. Record labels such as Pandisc released much material of the genre. Unterberger has referred to James (Maggotron) McCauley (also known as DXJ, Maggozulu 2, Planet Detroit and Bass Master Khan) as the "father of Miami bass," a distinction McCauley himself denies, choosing rather to confer that status on producer Amos Larkins.[citation needed] "Bass Rock Express" by MC ADE (with music and beats produced by Amos Larkins) is often credited as being the first Miami bass record to gain underground popularity on an international scale.The single "Throw The Dick" by 2 Live Crew (Produced by David "Treach DJ Mr. Mixx" Hobbs) in January 1986 gave a permanent blueprint to how future Miami Bass songs were songwritten and produced.

Luther 'Luke Skyywalker' Campbell along with David "Treach DJ Mr. Mixx" Hobbs of 2 Live Crew played a key role in popularizing Miami bass in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The group's 1986 release, The 2 Live Crew Is What We Are, became controversial for its sexually explicit lyrics. 1989's As Nasty As They Wanna Be, along with its hit single "Me So Horny", proved more controversial still, leading to legal troubles for both 2 Live Crew and retailers selling the album (all charges were eventually overturned on appeal).

The popularity of Miami bass was in part due to its successful promotion in the South Florida area by local DJs, radio stations, and clubs.[citation needed] For the better part of the mid-80s and early 90s, DJs such as Luke Skyywalker's Ghetto Style DJs, Norberto Morales' Triple M DJs, Space Funk DJs, Mohamed Moretta, DJ Nice & Nasty, Felix Sama, Ramon Hernandez, Bass Master DJ's, Lazaro Mendez (DJ Laz), Earl "The Pearl" Little, Uncle Al, DJ Slice, K-Bass, Jam Pony Express and others were heavily involved in playing Miami bass at local outdoor events to large audiences at area beaches, parks, and fairs. Clubs in South Florida, including Pac-Jam, Superstars Rollertheque, Bass Station, Studio 183, Randolphs, Nepenthe, Video Powerhouse, Skylight Express, Beat Club and Club Boca, were hosting bass nights on a regular basis. Radio airplay and programming support was strong in the now defunct Rhythm 98, as well as WEDR, and WPOW (Power 96).

By the mid 1990s the influence of Miami Bass had spread outside South Florida to all areas of Florida and the Southern United States. In the mid 1990s it saw a commercial and mainstream resurgence with Miami Bass influenced artists like 95 South, Tag Team, 69 Boyz, Quad City DJ's, and Freak Nasty all scoring big Miami Bass hits. Examples of these songs are "Whoomp! (There It Is)" by Tag Team in 1993, "Tootsee Roll" by 69 Boyz in 1994, and "C'mon N' Ride It (The Train)" by the Quad City DJ's in 1996. These songs all reached the top 10 in the pop charts and gave Miami Bass a new commercial success. These artists generally used a Miami Bass sound and production but did it in a far less explicit and far more accessible way than had been previously done by Campbell and the 2 Live Crew.

Another sub-genre of Miami bass is car audio bass, which features an even more stripped down and bass heavy sound, tending to focus on either extremely hard 909 kicks combined with sine waves or the classic 808 kick, or sometimes simply the sine wave by itself.

Miami bass is closely related to the electronic dance music genres of Ghettotech and Booty House, genres which combine Detroit techno and Chicago house with the Miami bass sound. Ghettotech follows the same sexually oriented lyrics, hip-hop bass lines and streetwise attitude, but with harder, up-tempo Roland TR-909 techno-style kick beats. In 2007, contemporary hip-hop and R&B songs became more dance oriented, showing influences of Miami bass and techno.

....continued on pt3

2-step garage
Characteristics
One of the primary characteristics of the 2-step sound - the term being coined to describe "a general rubric for all kinds of jittery, irregular rhythms that don't conform to garage's traditional 4-to-the-floor pulse" - is that the rhythm lacks the kick drum pattern found in many other styles of electronic music with a regular four-to-the-floor beat. A typical 2-step drum pattern features a kick on the first and third beat, with a shuffled rhythm or the use of triplets applied to other elements of the percussion, creating a "lurching, falter-funk feel", and resulting in a beat distinctly different from that present in other house or techno. Although tracks with only two kick drum beats to a bar are perceived as being slower than the traditional four-to-the-floor beat, the listener's interest is maintained by the introduction of unusual snare placements and accents in the drum patterns, or scattered rim shots and woodblocks, as well as syncopated bass lines and the percussive use of other instruments such as pads and strings.

Instrumentation usually includes keyboards, synthesizers, and drum machines. Other instruments added to expand the musical palette include guitar, piano and horns; these additions are almost always sampled. The primarily synth-based bass lines used in 2-step are similar to those in the style's progenitors such as UK garage and before that, drum and bass and jungle, but influences from funk and soul music can also be heard. Vocals in 2-step garage are usually female, and similar to the style prevalent in house music or contemporary R&B. Some 2-step producers also process and cut up elements of an acappella vocal and use it as an element of the track. Much like other genres derived from UK garage, MCs are often featured, particularly in a live context, with a vocal style reminiscent of old school jungle.

Influence from hip hop and drum and bass, particularly the hardstep and techstep sub genres have also been noted by critics. The fact that the scene had a significantly different atmosphere to those that surrounded precursors with less aggression at live events was also noted by some critics.

2 Tone
2 Tone (or Two Tone) is a music genre created in England in the late 1970s by fusing elements of ska, punk rock, rock steady, reggae and pop. Within the history of ska music, it is classified as its second wave.

4-beat
Characteristics
Individual nicknames of DJs rather than recording under a band name would be common. These same artists would be widely found DJing on the English rave circuit. These individual artists would also collaborate with other individuals under joint releases with & or versus designations.

Much like its hardcore predecessor, there was a number of uncredited white labels released, created by unknown producers.

Typical characteristics for 4-beat are for compositions to be around a tempo of 150 to 170 BPM (beats per minute). At the core of these compositions would be a fast looped, sometimes complex rolling sampled breakbeat, along with a combined bass drum every four beats to the bar - hence the name of 4-beat.

These rolling chopped breakbeats were not too dissimilar to those found in jungle music. A deep sub bassline could also be found to work with the breakbeats, though not as prominent as found in jungle. Both 4-beat and jungle styles would be common under one roof at raves during the early-to-mid-1990s.

Tracks would have a somewhat basic keyed happy sounding chord before bursting into an Italo house inspired catchy piano melody. This would be the hook of the record, where rave crowds would respond by making noise by blowing whistles or air horns. This could be accompanied by weeping and uplifting strings.

If any vocals were used, they would certainly be female and likely be just short several second parts sampled from other records. In most cases these would not be performed by a vocalist paid to perform many lyrics.

High pitched samples due to the fast tempo of tracks could be found in this music but not in every release. It's deemed more of a stereotype associated to this style.

Due to other influences - largely to the bouncy techno style - its inherent breakbeats and sub basslines would later become surplus to requirements by 1996.

Bassline (dance music)
Characteristics
Like dubstep and grime, bassline generally places a strong emphasis on bass, with intricate basslines (often multiple and interweaving) being characteristic of the genre. Bassline tracks use a four-to-the-floor beat. The music is often purely instrumental, but vocal techniques common in other styles of garage can also be present, such as female R&B vocals sped up to match the faster tempo, and also samples of vocals from grime tracks. Most songs are around 135 to 142 bpm, faster than most UK garage and around the same tempo as most grime and dubstep.

Bassline is gaining popularity on the pop charts and allegedly one reason for this is it appeals to both genders, while grime and dubstep gathered a predominantly male following. The increased appeal of bassline may be in part due to the vocal contributions of female artists such as Jodie Aysha. The lyrics of bassline are often focused on love and other issues that may be considered more feminine. In a blog posting, Simon Reynolds described the bassline genre as "the drastic pendulum swing from yang to yin, testosterone to oestrogen, that I had always imagined would happen in reaction to grime, except it took so long to happen I gave up on it and just forgot." It has been argued that grime and dubstep originated in turn from "an over-reaction - to the 'feminine pressure' of late-'90s 2-step."

Together with its return to feminine-style music, bassline is said to embrace pop music aesthetics, and to have a euphoric, exuberant quality similar to that of earlier British rave music - both also in contrast to grime and dubstep.

Bassline has been described as largely similar, and in some cases synonymous, with its precursor 2-step garage, a description denied by proponents of the scene. The 4x4 beat of bassline has been noted as a difference between the two. Producer T2 maintains the genres share a common origin in house music but are different sounds, while major bassline distributor and DJ Mystic Matt describes bassline as having a similar rhythm to UK garage, but that the strong emphasis on bass renders it a separate genre.

8-bit (music)
8-bit refers to a style of electronic music inspired (and performed) by the sound of old computer consoles from the 8 bit era of video games. This music will often reflect sounds from technology that is seen as primitive or "outdated" such as the Game Boy and home made synthesizers.

A cappella
A cappella (Italian for From the chapel/choir) music is vocal music or singing without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato style. In the 19th century a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. In modern usage, a cappella often refers to an all-vocal performance of any style, including barbershop, doo wop, and modern pop/rock. Today, a cappella also includes sample/loop "vocal only" productions by producers like Jimmy Spice Curry, Teddy Riley, Wyclef, and others.

Acid jazzAcid jazz (also known as groove jazz in USA) is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, funk and hip-hop, particularly looped beats. It developed in the UK over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance/pop music: jazz-funk musicians such as Roy Ayers and Donald Byrd are often credited as forerunners of acid jazz. Acid jazz has also experienced minor influences from soul music, house music and disco.

While acid jazz often contains various types of electronic composition (sometimes including sampling or live DJ cutting and scratching), it is just as likely to be played live by musicians, who often showcase jazz interpretation as part of their performance. The compositions of groups such as Jamiroquai, The Brand New Heavies and Incognito often feature chord structures usually associated with jazz music. The Heavies in particular were known in their early years for beginning their songs as catchy pop and rapidly steering them into jazz territory before "resolving" the composition and thus not losing any pop listeners but successfully "exposing" them to jazz elements in "baby steps".

The acid jazz "movement" is also seen as a "revival" of jazz-funk or jazz fusion or soul jazz by leading DJs such as Norman Jay or Gilles Peterson or Patrick Forge, also known as "rare groove crate diggers" or "Cataroos".

Afrobeat
Afrobeat is a combination of Yoruba music, jazz, highlife, and funk rhythms, fused with percussion and vocal styles, popularized in Africa in the 1970s. Its main creator was the Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Fela Kuti who used it to revolutionise musical structure as well as the political context in his native Nigeria. It was Kuti who coined the term "afrobeat" upon his return from a U.S. tour with his group Nigeria 70 (formerly Koola Lobitos).

The new sound hailed from a club that he established called the Afro-Shrine. Upon arriving in Nigeria, Kuti also changed the name of his group to Fela Ransome-Kuti & Africa 70. The band maintained a five-year residency in the Afro-Shrine from 1970 to 1975 while afrobeat thrived among Nigerian youth. Afrobeat is now one of the most recognisable music genres in the world and has influenced as many Western musicians as it has African ones with its exuberant style and polyrhythms.

Aleatoric music
Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities.

The term became known to European composers through lectures by acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler at Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music in the beginning of the 1950s. According to his definition, "a process is said to be aleatoric ... if its course is determined in general but depends on chance in detail" (Meyer-Eppler 1957, 55).

Alpine New Wave
Bavaria has been part of the Alpine New Wave of folk music alongside Switzerland and Austria. Drawing on pioneers like Biermösl Blosn, musicians from Munich and other cities have fused Bavarian folk with foreign genres and instruments, especially BavaRio's Brazilian samba fusion. Drawing on stubenmusik, native string bands with hammered dulcimers, zithers, guitars and harps. Other bands, like Die Interpreten, have fused jazz and saxophone music. Biermösl Blosn, however, is the most well-known band of the alternative boom; they are famous for their humorous lyrics poking fun at right-wing politicians and controversial satires, such as replacing the Bavarian national anthem's lyrics with words attacking Bavaria's Minister President Franz Josef Strauß in 1980, leading to a long-time ban from state TV.

The 1990s saw the rise of Neue Volksmusik, or Alpine New Wave. Inspired by traditionalists like Sepp Eibl, a new group of bands brought a modern sound to traditional music. Artists included most famously Hundsbuam, who formed in 1994.

Alternative country
Alternative country is a term used to describe a number of country music subgenres that tend to differ from mainstream or pop country music. The term is sometimes known as Alt. country and has included country music bands that have incorporated influences ranging from american roots music, bluegrass, rock & roll, rockabilly, acoustic music, americana, honky-tonk and punk rock.

Alternative dance
Alternative dance is a term used for the genre of music combining elements of dance-pop (or other forms of electronic house or techno) and alternative rock genres such as indie rock. Alternative dance music is typically predominantly electronic, with programmed beats from drum machines or sampled drum loops and sequenced synthesizer melodies, and thus musically very similar to commercial dance-pop. The indie element is most prevalent in the songwriting; unlike much dance music, alternative dance typically contains lyrics, and, as in indie pop or indie rock, these are often more thematically complex and/or less polished than those of commercial pop.

Alternative dance was certainly influenced by the Second Summer of Love, when the sounds of Acid House music had filtered through to and influenced the sounds of chart pop. Various people from an indie background soon adapted the equipment and techniques of dance-pop, combining it with a more astute and less populistic songwriting sensibility. Well-known examples of this movement include Saint Etienne and Dubstar. This blend of indie-rock and late-1980s dance music was apparent in the Baggy or indie-dance movement of the time, which included bands such as The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Jesus Jones. Modern bands inspired by the Second Summer of Love scene include The Rapture, Tom Vek, Radio 4 and Polaroid Kiss.

As both the financial costs and levels of musical virtuosity required to make passable-sounding electronic music drop under the influence of technological improvements, and people who grew up listening to electronic pop take up music, the electronic style epitomised by alternative dance is increasingly becoming the mainstream of independent music, with the once dominant guitar-based form of pop that dominated low-budget independent recordings now becoming just another subgenre.

Alternative hip hop
Alternative hip hop (also known as alternative rap) is a form of hip hop music that is defined in greatly varying ways. Allmusic defines it as follows:

Alternative Rap refers to Hip-Hop groups that refuse to conform to any of the traditional stereotypes of rap, such as gangsta, bass, hardcore, and party rap. Instead, they blur genres - drawing from funk and pop/rock, as well as jazz, soul and reggae.

Originating in the late-80s and peaking in the early-90s, alternative rap was headed primarily by East Coast groups such as The Roots, De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, and A Tribe Called Quest in subsidiary conjunction by certain West Coast acts such as The Pharcyde and Jurassic 5. However, the artists often found themselves competing and struggling to co-exist with the then also newly emerging and rising West Coast gangsta rap. The situation broke way around the mid-90s with the emergence and mainstream popularity of East Coast hardcore rap artists such as Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, and The Notorious B.I.G. Following this development, many alternative rap acts eventually either disbanded or faded into obscurity. However, a resurgence came about in the late 1990s-early 2000s. Today, due in part to the increasing use of music distribution through the internet, many alternative rap artists are able to find acceptance by far-reaching audiences.

Stephen Rodrick cites Arrested Development, Basehead, and The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy as examples of such "alternative" hip-hop. Arrested Development, along with The Fugees, stand as the some of the first few alternative rap groups to be recognized by mainstream audiences. Since the mid 90's, labels such as Rawkus Records, Rhymesayers, anticon. and Definitive Jux have experienced similar mainstream success with alternative rap acts such as Atmosphere, Black Star, Pharoahe Monch, Mos Def, and Aesop Rock.

Most alternative rap groups tend to be embraced primarily by alternative rock fans, rather than hip-hop or pop audiences. Rodrick writes that alternative hip-hop has "drawn little more than barely concealed yawns from other rappers and urban audiences." Heywood and Drake counter that "making rap music that appeals to mass audiences isn't simply about selling out," stating that alternative hip-hop is an attempt to counter the association that much of the mass market has between hip-hop music and violence, giving as an example the "Smokin' Grooves Tour" of 1996, featuring Cypress Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, Ziggy Marley, and Busta Rhymes-most of whom are hip-hop performers who "don't fit the mold of gangsta rap."

Alternative metal
Alternative metal is a genre of heavy metal that gained popularity in the early 1990s alongside and intersecting with grunge music. Most notably, alternative metal bands are characterized by heavy guitar riffs; typically, these riffs have a pronounced experimental edge, including unconventional lyrics, odd time signatures, more syncopation than typical metal, unusual technique, a resistance to conventional approaches to heavy music and an incorporation of a wide range of influences outside of the metal music scene.
Alternative rock
Alternative rock (also called alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative; known primarily in the UK as indie) is a genre of rock music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. Alternative rock consists of various subgenres that have emerged from the independent music scene since the 1980s, such as grunge, Britpop, gothic rock, and indie pop. These genres are unified by their collective debt to the style and/or ethos of punk rock, which laid the groundwork for alternative music in the 1970s. At times alternative rock has been used as a catch-all phrase for rock music from underground artists in the 1980s, and all music descended from punk rock (including punk itself, New Wave, and post-punk).

While a few artists like R.E.M. and The Cure achieved commercial success and mainstream critical recognition, many alternative rock artists during the 1980s were cult acts that recorded on independent labels and received their exposure through college radio airplay and word-of-mouth. With the breakthrough of Nirvana and the popularity of the grunge and Britpop movements in the 1990s, alternative rock entered the musical mainstream and many alternative bands became commercially successful.

Anarchist folk rock
Anarchist folk rock is a music genre where anarchist is in reference to the compositional style of the band as opposed to political influence. Compositions start in the realm of folk or rock with solid story telling and melody but venture deep into the realm of experimentation. Bands that consider themselves anarchist folk rock delve into different genres from song to song and even within a song. Further specifics include songs that descend into chaos and compositions that use bizarre or strange instruments not usually found in folk or rock music (e.g. custom-made instrument). Some examples of anarchist folk rock are Syd Barrett and Ours to Destroy

Anti-folk
The music sub-genre known as anti-folk (or antifolk) takes the earnestness of politically charged 1960s music and subverts it. The defining characteristics of this sub-genre are hard to pin down, as they vary from one artist to the next. Nonetheless, most would accept that the music tends to sound raw or experimental; it also generally mocks the seriousness and pretension of the established mainstream music scene in addition to mocking itself.

The New York anti-folk movement began in 1984 at The Speakeasy, a club in Greenwich Village, New York City. It was conceived by artist Darryl Cherney as an alternative venue to the popular Folk City club, which generally booked more established artists. Roger Manning printed Anti-Folk T-Shirts. Musicians involved included Axe Masterson (AKA Axman Horowitz & The Blind Rev. Axeman), Billy Nova, and Steve "Wheels" Cottrell (Wykked Trip), were collectively known as The Big Bang. -->

Singer-songwriter Lach started the Fort, an after-hours club, on the Lower East Side, after a booker at Folk City told him his music was "too punk". The Fort's opening coincided with the New York Folk Festival, so Lach dubbed his own event the New York Antifolk Festival. The Big Bang became The Fort house band when needed.

The original Fort shut down in 1985 and moved from location to location, including East Village bars Sophie's and Chameleon, before winding up in the back room of the Sidewalk Café in 1993 where it remains. The Antifolk Festival continues to be held semi-annually in the East Village (outlasting the original Folk Festival). Events have also taken place in the band shells in Tompkins Square Park and Central Park.

A number of music artists spent time in the New York anti-folk scene.

Apala
Apala is a musical genre, originally derived from the Yoruba people of Nigeria. It is a percussion-based style that developed in the late 1930s, when it was used to wake worshippers after fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The rhythms of apala grew more complex over time, influenced by Cuban music and eventually became quite popular in Nigeria.

Instruments include a rattle (sekere), thumb piano (agidigbo) and a bell (agogô), as well as two or three talking drums.

Haruna Ishola is undoubtedly the most well-known performer of apala in Nigerian history. He played an integral role in the popularization of the genre, and incorporating it into fuji music. Another popular Apala musician was the Late Ayinla Omowura whose short-lived career was remarkable for the genre.

Although Fuji music remains the most important form of traditional music amongst Yorubas in Nigeria, apala is still very popular amongst Muslims of the Yoruba tribe. Special mention must be given to Haruna Ishola's son, Musiliu Haruna Ishola, who is often credited with revitalizing the apala genre and spear-heading the apala-resurgence of the 2000s.

With his 2004 album (entitled Soyoyo), Musiliu has succeeded in bringing apala music to a wider, younger audience, thus breathing new life to the genre and keeping the tradition (and his father's legacy) alive. He is credited with re-popularizing a genre that was fast becoming the preserve of older Muslims of the Yoruba tribe. The success of his Soyoyo album meant that a younger (often Christian or Animist) generation of Yorubas have now demonstrated a renewed interest in apala music. His songs can often be heard on popular radio stations across Yorubaland.

Arabesque
The arabesque is an elaborative application of repeating geometric forms that often echo the forms of plants and animals. Arabesques are an element of Islamic art usually found decorating the walls of mosques. The choice of which geometric forms are to be used and how they are to be formatted is based upon the Islamic view of the world. To Muslims, these forms, taken together, constitute an infinite pattern that extends beyond the visible material world. To many in the Islamic world, they in fact symbolize the infinite, and therefore uncentralized, nature of the creation of the one God (Allah). Furthermore, the Islamic Arabesque artist conveys a definite spirituality without the iconography of Christian art.

Argentine rock
The moment when 'Argentine' rock began as a distinct musical style can be traced to the middle 1960s, when several garage groups and aspiring musicians began composing songs and lyrics that related to local social and musical themes. Rock & Roll itself however began in Argentina almost a decade before with the arrival of classic American rockabilly; the major impulse to the music was the British Invasion. During that time until the rise of Argentine rock, local groups recycled the hits of English-language rock & roll. Since then, Argentine rock started a continued and uninterrupted evolution through the 1970s and into the 1980s, when it turned into an international genre. Today it is widely considered the most prolific and successful form of Rock en Español, and one of the most important non-English language forms of rock music in the world. In Argentina and even in Uruguay it is known as "Rock Nacional" /rok.nasjo'nal/, literally National Rock (not in a political way at all but as a local movement).

An almost unique trait of Argentine rock is its uncompromising stance to sing rock only in the Spanish language. Rock music is made in many languages around the world, but in most cases it shares the lyrical creative pen with English. The Argentine rock movement was truly one of the first non-English forms of rock to be commercially successful outside its own nation. To this day it is exceedingly rare that Argentine rock bands will sing in a language other than Spanish, specially in order to gain popularity, as it happens in other nations and languages, and even within Latin America and Spain.

Ars antiqua
Ars antiqua, also called ars veterum or ars vetus, refers to the music of Europe of the late Middle Ages between approximately 1170 and 1310, covering the period of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the subsequent years which saw the early development of the motet. Usually the term is restricted to sacred music, excluding the secular song of the troubadours and trouvères; however sometimes the term is used more loosely to mean all European music of the thirteenth century and slightly before. The term ars antiqua is used in opposition to ars nova, which refers to the period of musical activity between approximately 1310 and 1375.

Almost all composers of the ars antiqua are anonymous. Léonin (fl. late 12th century) and Pérotin (fl. c.1180 - c.1220) were the two composers known by name from the Notre Dame school; in the subsequent period, Petrus de Cruce, a composer of motets, is one of the few whose name has been preserved.

In music theory the ars antiqua period saw several advances over previous practice, most of them in conception and notation of rhythm. The most famous music theorist of the first half of the 13th century, Johannes de Garlandia, was the author of the De mensurabili musica (about 1240), the treatise which defined and most completely elucidated the rhythmic modes. A German theorist of a slightly later period, Franco of Cologne, was the first to describe a system of notation in which differently shaped notes have entirely different rhythmic values (in the Ars Cantus Mensurabilis of approximately 1260), an innovation which had a massive impact on the subsequent history of European music. Most of the surviving notated music of the 13th century uses the rhythmic modes as defined by Garlandia.

The ars antiqua is sometimes divided into two rough periods, known as the early Gothic and the high Gothic. The early Gothic includes the French music composed in the Notre Dame school up until about 1260, and the high Gothic all the music between then and about 1310 or 1320, the conventional beginning of the ars nova. The forms of organum and conductus reached their peak development in the early Gothic, and began to decline in the high Gothic, being replaced by the motet.

Though the style of the ars antiqua went out of fashion rather suddenly in the first two decades of the fourteenth century, it had a late defender in Jacques of Liège (alternatively Jacob of Liège), who wrote a violent attack on the "irreverent and corrupt" ars nova in his Speculum Musicae (c.1320), vigorously defending the old style in a manner suggestive of any number of music critics from the Middle Ages to the present day. To Jacques, the ars antiqua was the musica modesta, and the ars nova was a musica lasciva-a kind of music which he considered to be indulgent, capricious, immodest, and sensual (Anderson and Roesner, 2001).

Ars nova
Ars nova was a stylistic period in music of the Late Middle Ages, centered in France, which encompassed the period roughly from the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel (1310 and 1314) until the death of Machaut (1377). Sometimes the term is used more generally and refers to all European polyphonic music of the 14th century, thereby including such figures as Francesco Landini, who was working in Italy. Occasionally the term "Italian ars nova" is used to denote the music of Landini and his compatriots (see Music of the Trecento for the concurrent musical movement in Italy). The term ars nova means "new art" or "new technique", and was first used in a publication of the same name by Philippe de Vitry (c. 1322).

Ars nova is generally used in conjunction with another term, ars antiqua, which refers to the music of the immediately preceding age, usually extending back to take in the period of Notre Dame polyphony (therefore covering the period from about 1170 to 1320). Roughly, then, the ars antiqua is the music of the thirteenth century, and the ars nova the music of the fourteenth; many music histories use the terms in this more general sense.

Controversial in the Roman Catholic Church, the music was starkly rejected by Pope John XXII, but embraced by Pope Clement VI. The monophonic chant, already harmonized with simple organum, was becoming altered, fragmented, and hidden beneath secular tunes. The lyrics of love poems might be sung above sacred texts, or the sacred text might be placed within a familiar secular melody. It was not merely polyphony that offended the medieval ears, but the notion of secular music merging with the sacred and making its way into the liturgy.

Stylistically, the music of the ars nova differed from the preceding era in several ways. Developments in notation allowed notes to be written with greater independence of rhythm, shunning the straitjacket of the rhythmic modes, which prevailed in the thirteenth century; secular music acquired much of the polyphonic sophistication previously found only in sacred music; and new techniques and forms, such as isorhythm and the isorhythmic motet, became prevalent. The overall aesthetic effect of these changes was to create music of greater expressiveness and variety than had been the case in the thirteenth century. Indeed the sudden historical change which occurred, with its startling new degree of musical expressiveness, can be likened to the introduction of perspective in painting, and it is useful to consider that the changes to the musical art in the period of the ars nova were contemporary with the great early Renaissance revolutions in painting and literature.

The greatest practitioner of the new musical style was undoubtedly Guillaume de Machaut, who also had an equally distinguished career as a canon at Reims Cathedral and as a poet. The ars nova style is nowhere more perfectly displayed than in his considerable body of motets, lais, virelais, rondeaux, and ballades.

Towards the end of the fourteenth century a new stylistic school of composers and poets centered on Avignon in southern France developed; the highly mannered style of this period is often called the ars subtilior, though some scholars choose to consider it a late development of the ars nova rather than breaking it out as a separate school. This strange but interesting repertory of music, limited in geographical distribution (southern France, Aragon and later Cyprus), and clearly intended for performance by specialists for an audience of connoisseurs, is like an endnote to the entire Middle Ages.

Art rock
Art rock is a term describing a subgenre of rock music that tends to have "experimental or avant-garde influences" and emphasizes "novel sonic texture."

....continued on pt2

The next few posts will be about various music genres and their characteristics. They will be meant as educational type of material with some possible fun. As you will be learning I will be too. I feel like doing this because to me learning something is a good thing and over time that knowledge can lead to some form of power [Knowledge is power, etc...]

What is Ambient?
Ambient music evolved from the experimental electronic music of '70s synth-based artists like Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, and the trance-like techno dance music of the '80s. Ambient is a spacious, electronic music that is concerned with sonic texture, not songwriting or composing. It's frequently repetitive and it all sounds the same to the casual listener, even though there are quite significant differences between the artists. Ambient became a popular cult music in the early '90s, thanks to ambient-techno artists like the Orb and Aphex Twin.

What is Breakbeat?
Breakbeat refers to a narrow subgenre of electronic acts with less energy than the trip-hop or funky breaks, but with a pronounced hip-hop influence to their music. Some of the more downtempo works on British labels like Mo' Wax and Ninja Tune paved the way for New York's DJ Wally (of the Liquid Sky Records brigade) and British artists such as Req, each good examples of the style.

What is Breakcore?
Breakcore combines elements of industrial techno, gabber, drum 'n bass, and noise. It relies on breakbeats which are then chopped up and distorted to extremes. Notable examples included DJ Scud, Slepcy, Rotator, Somatic Responses and Venetian Snares.

What is Deep House?
A more relaxed, stripped-down offshoot of house, deep house lays on the warm 4/4 bass lines, moody atmospheric textures and slithering, subtle funk and grooves, incorporating elements of jazz, light-hearted funk and R&B.

What is Detroit Techno?
Early Detroit Techno is characterized by, alternately, a dark, detached, mechanistic vibe and a smooth, bright, soulful feel (the latter deriving in part from the Motown legacy and the stock-in-trade between early techno and the Chicago-style house developing simultaneously to the southwest). While essentially designed as dance music meant to uplift, the stark, melancholy edge of early tracks by Cybotron, Model 500, Rhythm Is Rhythm, and Reese also spoke to Detroit's economic collapse in the late '70s following the city's prosperous heyday as the focal point of the American automobile industry.

The music's oft-copied ruddy production and stripped-down aesthetic were largely a function of the limited technology available to the early innovators (records were often mastered from two-track onto cassette). The increasingly sophisticated arrangements of contemporary techno (on through to hardcore and jungle), conversely, has much to do with the growth and increasing affordability of MIDI-encoded equipment and desktop digital audio. Second- and third-wave Detroit techno, too, has gained considerably in production, although artists such as Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Kenny Larkin have sought to combine the peerless sheen of the digital arena with the compositional minimalism of their Detroit origins.

No longer simply contained within the 313 area code, Detroit techno has become a global phenomenon (partly as a result of the more widespread acclaim many of the original Detroit artists have found in other countries), buoyed by the fact that many of the classic early tracks remain in print (available through Submerge). Today, Detroit's third wave is re-exploring the aesthetic commitment of the music's early period, with hard-hitting beats (Underground Resistance, Jeff Mills), soulful grooves (Kenny Larkin, Stacey Pullen), and a renewed interest in techno's breakbeat roots (Aux 88, Drexciya, "Mad" Mike, Dopplereffekt).

What is Downtempo?
Geared toward the late-night armchair listener, downtempo is characterized by languid hip-hop beats that sort of skip along rather than jump and dance, a hazy stripped-down vibe, and warm chords often sampled from smoky jazz and '70s sun-kissed R&B and soul. Some people may associate downtempo with coffeehouses, and unfortunately, downtempo has become somewhat of a dirty word among longtime listeners mainly because it's been appropriated by so many advertisers. But it's still a viable term for essentially mellow, musky electronic music.

What is Drum N Bass?
In stark contrast to the more conventional beat arrangements of techno and house, drum-n-bass emphasizes deep, sometimes growling bass tones, offset by frenetic, high-end rolling snare beats and multiple layers of widely ranging textures, depending on the mood and vibe of the music. Ambient drum-n-bass leans more toward a jazzy, atmospheric sound.

What is Dub?
An offshoot of reggae, dub is characterized by stretched-out, low-end bass tones and reverb, dull, slothful beats, repetitious song snippets, horns, ragga vocals and sparse arrangements.

What is Electro?
Blending '70s funk with the emerging hip-hop culture and synthesizer technology of the early '80s produced the style known alternately as Electro. But what seemed to be a brief fad for the public %uFFFD no more than two or three hits, including Afrikaa Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" and Grandmaster Flash's "The Message," neither of which made the pop Top 40 %uFFFD was in fact a fertile testing ground for innovators who later diverged into radically different territory, including Dr. Dre (who worked with the World Class Wreckin' Cru) and techno godfather Juan Atkins (with Cybotron). Electro also provided an intriguing new direction for one of the style's prime influences: Herbie Hancock, whose 1973 Headhunters album proved a large fusion hit, came storming back in 1983 with the electro single "Rockit." Despite its successes (documented in full on Rhino's four-disc Electric Funk set), the style was quickly eclipsed by the mid-'80s rise of hip-hop music built around samples (often from rock records) rather than musical synthesizers. Nevertheless, many techno and dance artists continued harking back

List of Key Artists
Afrika Bambaataa
Arthur Baker
Cybotron
Dynamix II
Freestyle
Grandmaster Flash
Herbie Hancock
I-F
Liquid Liquid
Man Parrish
Mantronix
Newcleus
Planet Patrol
Pretty Tony
The Egyptian Lover
The Jonzun Crew
Uncle Jamm's Army
Wreckin' Cru

What is Garage House?
The UK version of garage is more aligned with 2-step these days, but in the United States, garage was essentially the bridge between disco and house music in the late 1970s and early 1980s, pushed mainly by the legendary DJ Larry Levan at New York's Paradise Garage club. The sound originally incorporated elements of Motown and Philly soul, with bits of Afro-Cuban rhythms mixed with new wave and no wave punk. Today the sound is more closely aligned with high-energy house party music containing a slew of different musical styles. It's usually identified by the spirited, high-pitched vocals at the forefront of the mix.

What is Ghettotech/booty?
Characterized by a mixture of rough-and-tumble techno, house and hip-hop with hyper-fast beats per minute, raunchy lyrics and various female moans and groans. Politically correct this isn't, and it's probably best suited for a strip joint.

What is Hardcore?
Old school techno and rave with the attitude turned up: heavily effected percussion, aggressive synth lines, and sampled live performance sounds. Hardcore tempos keep rising as the genre develops, with tempos frequently exceeding 200 bpm. Bred in Rotterdam and Scotland, hardcore is notable for its tendency to increase tempo within a given track (and across successive tracks) to match the hardcore dancing body%uFFFDs increasing metabolism rate - you work harder, it gets faster.

What is House?
House music grew out of the post-disco dance club culture of the early '80s. After disco became popular, certain urban DJs %uFFFD particularly those in gay communities %uFFFD altered the music to make it less pop-oriented. The beat became more mechanical and the bass grooves became deeper, while elements of electronic synth pop, Latin soul, dub reggae, rap, and jazz were grafted over the music's insistent, unvarying four-four beat. Frequently, the music was purely instrumental and when there were vocalists, they were faceless female divas that often sang wordless melodies. By the late '80s, house had broken out of underground clubs in cities like Chicago, New York, and London, and had begun making inroads on the pop charts, particularly in England and Europe but later in America under the guise of artists like C+C Music Factory and Madonna. At the same time, house was breaking into the pop charts; it fragmented into a number of subgenres, including hip-house, ambient house, and most significantly, acid house (a subgenre of house with the instantly recognizable squelch of Roland's TB-303 bass-line generator). During the '90s, house ceased to be cutting-edge music, yet it remained popular in clubs throughout Europe and America. At the end of the decade, a new wave of progressive house artists including Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, and House of 909 brought the music back to critical quarters with praised full-length works.

List of Key Artists
2 Unlimited
808 State
A Guy Called Gerald
A Man Called Adam
Adonis
Armand Van Helden
Armando
Ashley Beedle
Basement Jaxx
Black Box
Blaze
Boris Dlugosch
BT
Byron Stingily
C+C Music Factory
Cajmere
Cappella
Carl Cox
Cevin Fisher
Chez Damier
Chris Gray
Club 69
Coldcut
Daft Punk
Danny Rampling
Danny Tenaglia
David Morales
Deee-Lite
Deep Dish
Derrick Carter
Dimitri from Paris
DJ Pierre
DJ Sneak
Faithless
Farley & Heller
Farley Jackmaster Funk
Felix da Housecat
Fluke
François K
François Kevorkian
Frankie Bones
Frankie Knuckles
Funky Green Dogs
Gemini
George Morel
Glenn Underground
Global Communication
Green Velvet
House of 909
Inner City
Jamie Principle
Jellybean
Jephté Guillaume
Jesse Saunders
Joe Claussell
Junior Vasquez
Kerri Chandler
Kevin Aviance
Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Yost
Kid Batchelor
Kristine W.
Larry Heard
Larry Levan
Laurent Garnier
Leftfield
LFO
Lil' Louis
M People
Marshall Jefferson
Masters at Work
Mateo & Matos
Moby
Mood II Swing
Murk
Paperclip People
Paul Oakenfold
Pet Shop Boys
Pete Tong
Phuture
Ralphi Rosario
Reel 2 Real
Roger Sanchez
Romanthony
Ron Hardy
Ron Trent
Roy Davis, Jr.
RuPaul
Sasha + John Digweed
Slam
Soul II Soul
Spooky
Stereo MC's
Steve "Silk" Hurley
Technotronic
Ten City
Terrence Parker
Terry Lee Brown, Jr.
The Drum Club
The KLF
The Real McCoy
Todd Edwards
Todd Terry
Tony de Vit
Tony Humphries
Ultra Naté
Underworld
Walter Gibbons
Wamdue Kids
Wink

What is Industrial?
Popularized by the likes of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, Industrial is hardcore brain hemorrhaging music, lovingly crafted for maximum anxiety and aggression release on the dancefloor. Harshly distorted guitars and illegible vocals combine with hard, driving rhythms to form a front of sonic assault. Industrial is often fiercely political, interweaving media clips, political speeches, and sound effects together with intentionally abrasive music.

What is Jungle?
Jungle originates from London, England. The real roots are from 1989, the genre evolved during 1990-1992 from the breakbeats used in Hardocore Techno to become a serious Electronica genre in 1995 when artist records from 4 Hero, Goldie and A Guy Called Gerald came out. Timeless from Goldie is the innovating track from 1995: 21 minutes of music: . In these years, a distinction between the dance and listening jungle grew, just like in Techno and Breakbeat. The term comes from a James Brown compilation Into the Jungle Groove with the classic breakbeat in Funky Drummer on it.
The genre could be described as speeded-up breakbeats with a slower bassline. The speed of the drums varies from 140-170 beats per minute; the bassline is - sometimes - half of the speed of the drum. The drums have the breakbeat 1 2 33 4, which means that the 2 and 4 are snare or kick drum `on the floor', while the 1 sometimes and the 3 hardly always are syncopated drums (i.e. off the measure). The bassline is flowing smoothly or pumping energously, originating from dub/reggae. Usually Time-stretched vocal sample, often spoken with Jamaican accent.

What is Minimal Techno/Tech-house?
Just like the name implies, minimal techno is a much less dense version of techno that has gained strength in recent years. The productions rely more on intricate percussion and rhythms and seem almost mathematical in structure. Tech-house is characterized by its more digital, crisply clean vibe, but with slower, spaced-out, fat kick-drums similar to house music.

What is Progressive House/Trance?
Not well-liked among techno purists, trance and progressive house are probably the most popular mainstream forms of electronic music, emphasizing sweeping builds and drops, pulsating synths and gurgling, spooky textures with faster beats per minute than most techno and house.

Breaking out of the German techno and hardcore scene of the early '90s, Trance emphasized brief synthesizer lines repeated endlessly throughout tracks, with only the addition of minimal rhythmic changes and occasional synthesizer atmospherics to distinguish them %uFFFD in effect putting listeners into a trance that approached those of religious origin. Despite waning interest in the sound during the mid-'90s, trance made a big comeback later in the decade, even supplanting house as the most popular dance music of choice around the globe.

Inspired by acid house and Detroit techno, trance coalesced with the opening of R&S Records in Ghent, Belgium and Harthouse/Eye Q Records in Frankfurt, Germany. R&S defined the sound early on with singles like "Energy Flash" by Joey Beltram, "The Ravesignal" by CJ Bolland, and others by Robert Leiner, Sun Electric, and Aphex Twin. Harthouse, begun in 1992 by Sven V%uFFFDth with Heinz Roth & Matthias Hoffman, made the most impact on the sound of trance with Hardfloor's minimal epic "Hardtrance Acperience" and V%uFFFDth's own "L'Esperanza," plus releases by Arpeggiators, Spicelab, and Barbarella. Artists like V%uFFFDth, Bolland, Leiner, and many others made the transition to the full-length realm, though without much of an impact on the wider music world.

Despite a long nascent period when it appeared trance had disappeared, replaced by breakbeat dance (trip-hop and jungle), the style's increasing impact on Britain's dance scene finally crested in the late '90s. The classic German sound had changed somewhat though, and the term "progressive" trance gained favor to describe influences from the smoother end of house and Euro dance. By 1998, most of the country's best-known DJs %uFFFD Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong, Tony De Vit, Danny Rampling, Sasha, Judge Jules %uFFFD were playing trance in Britain's superclubs. Even America turned on to the sound (eventually), led by its own cast of excellent DJs, including Christopher Lawrence and Kimball Collins.

What is Techno?
Techno had its roots in the electronic house music made in Detroit in the mid-'80s. Where house still had explicit connection to disco even when it was entirely mechanical, techno was strictly electronic music, designed for a small, specific audience. The first techno producers and DJs %uFFFD Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, and Derrick May, among others %uFFFD emphasized the electronic, synthesized beats of electro-funk artists like Afrika Bambaataa and synth-rock units like Kraftwerk. In the United States, techno was strictly an underground phenomenon, but in England, it broke into the mainstream in the late '80s. In the early '90s, techno began to fragment into a number of subgenres, including hardcore, ambient, and jungle. In hardcore techno, the beats-per-minute on each record were sped up to ridiculous, undanceable levels %uFFFD it was designed to alienate a broad audience. Ambient took the opposite direction, slowing the beats down and relying on watery electronic textures %uFFFD it was used as come-down music, when ravers and club-goers needed a break from acid house and hardcore techno. Jungle was nearly as aggressive as hardcore, combining driving techno beats with breakbeats and dancehall reggae %uFFFD essentially. All subgenres of techno were initially designed to be played in clubs, where they would be mixed by DJs. Consequently, most of the music was available on 12-inch singles or various-artists compilations, where the songs could run for a long time, providing the DJ with a lot of material to mix into his set. In the mid-'90s, a new breed of techno artists %uFFFD most notably ambient acts like the Orb and Aphex Twin, but also harder-edged artists like the Prodigy and Goldie %uFFFD began constructing albums that didn't consist of raw beats intended for mixing. Not surprisingly, these artists %uFFFD particularly the Prodigy %uFFFD became the first recognizable stars in techno.

List of Key Artists
%uFFFD-Ziq
Air Liquide
Alter Ego
Anthony "Shake" Shakir
Aphex Twin
As One
B12
Bandulu
Carl Cox
Carl Craig
CJ Bolland
Claude Young
Cristian Vogel
Cybotron
Dan Curtin
Dave Angel
Dave Clarke
David Holmes
Depth Charge
Derrick May
DJ Hell
DJ Rolando
DJ T-1000
E-Dancer
Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes
Fluke
Frankie Bones
Infiniti
Jam & Spoon
Jay Denham
Jeff Mills
Joey Beltram
Juan Atkins
K Hand
Keith Tucker
Ken Ishii
Kenny Larkin
Kevin Saunderson
Laurent Garnier
LFO
Luke Slater
Mark Broom
Metamatics
Moby
Model 500
Morgan Geist
Neil Landstrumm
Octave One
One Dove
Orbital
Plastikman
Robert Hood
Scanner
Shake
Slam
Speedy J
Steve Stoll
Sun Electric
Surgeon
Sven V%uFFFDth
The Advent
The Aloof
The Black Dog
The Future Sound of London
The Grid
The Sabres of Paradise
The Suburban Knight
Two Lone Swordsmen
Underground Resistance
Underworld
WestBam

Check it out. I got permission from a buddy to upload one of his tracks. It is Paranoid Android [Glitch Mix]. My buddies name is Mist3r_g33. He is a producer of various genres of music, but this is a great mix. Hope you all enjoy.

Right now some friends of mine and I are working on a track based off of Loop_01

When complete I will upload. I just hope those that listen to my music will appreciate this track. Because this will be my first attempt in years to make music with someone else.

I am working on a track currently in the time that the army allows me to. I am going to try and have it out as fast as I can, but I also want to make sure that I get it as best as I can.