| There are several answers to this:
1.
As I grow older, a few things come to my attention, this being one of them: it's all music. Genres have little to do with anything other than classification systems so we can all understand what to expect from a certain piece of music. We won't, for example, expect a string section and huge brass section on a Rush album...just 3 guys. We expect certain sounds, certain types of playing. If I say fusion, you have this expectation. Buy tickets to hear the Minnesota Symphony, you expect certain types of playing. You may even expect to play a certain way when you go to concert band, jazz band, pep band, or marching band or orchestra. But the lines blur more frequently. Music is an art which plays on our expectations...that's how it works. Improvisation, flutter tonguing, swinging...what am I talking about? Well, it could be Wynton. But it could also be a Gershwin piece, or a show book. Or it could be a Blood Sweat and Tears tune. Or it could be some eastern group. Or it could be a Tichelli piece for wind ensemble. Genres help us lump different sound styles together into nice, neat little categories, based on what we expect. One problem, though: music is not nice, neat little categories. Where would you put the San Francisco Symphony doing Metallica? (The trash can is not an option, sorry!) (I came to this realization as a big slap in the face when I was teaching classroom music and had the kids do a record-store type project where they had to classify different types of music. I never did the project again, because it seemed to be wrecking music for the kids).
2. Classical music.
3. Orchestral music.
4. Great music.
Sorry if I got a bit esoteric...
5. 20th century orchestral music.
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-Glenn
"Roses have thorns; shining waters mud. Clouds and eclipses stain the moon and the sun; and history reeks of the wrongs we have done. After today, after today, consider me gone."- Sting |