Rock is an umbrella term for a number of styles of popular music. The word «rock» shows characteristic rhythmic sensations by analogy with «roll», «twist», «swing», «shake», etc. Tokens of rock music as the usage of electric instruments, creative approach (self-created compositions) are considered as secondary, that`s why some styles of music can be mistakenly attributed to rock.

Birth: 1958 Bloom: 1972

Rock music has a number of subgenres: from quite light ones like dance rock`n`roll, pop rock, Brit pop, to brutal and aggressive like death metal and grindcore. Lyrics also focus on different things from light to dark, deep and philosophical.

Rock music has its roots in blues, whence first rock genres like rock`n`roll and rockabilly appeared. First subgenres emerged closely related to traditional and pop music like folk, country, sciffle, music hall. There were always attempts to combine rock music with other types of music – with academic music (art-rock emerged in the late 60s, and symphonic metal), with jazz (jazz rock emerged in the late 60s – early 70s), Latin music (Latin rock emerged in the late 60s), with Indian music (raga rock emerged in the mid-60s). By the 60-70s almost all big subgenres of rock music had appeared, the most important of which (except aforementioned) were hard rock, punk rock, and avant-garde rock. In the late 70s – early 80s the style was enriched by lots of other rock music genres - post punk, new wave, alternative rock, hardcore, death metal, and black metal. In the 90s genres such as grange (emerged in the mid-80s), Brit pop (emerged in the mid-60s), alternative metal (emerged in the late 80s) became extremely popular.

The main centres of rock music are situated in the USA and Western Europe (esp. Great Britain). Lyrics are mostly English. However, after some time national rock music appeared almost in all countries. Russian rock music appeared in the USSR in the 1960-1970s and reached its peak in the 1980s.

Rock music is usually played by rock bands that consist of a vocalist, a guitarist, a bass guitarist, a drummer, and sometimes a keyboardist. Bass guitar, drums and rhythm guitar are basic elements of rhythm section.

The characteristic feature of rock music is invariable rhythms supported by rhythm section. However, since the 60s rock music artists began to use complex structures and rhythms. The solo instrument is the electro guitar. In the very beginning rock music mostly was played in the blues harmony scopes, but now some of rock genres have nothing in common with blues.

Also read: Pop Rock

Deriative styles: Alternative Rock, Art Rock, Blues, Britpop, Glam Rock, Gothic Rock, Grunge, Hard Rock, Heavy metal, Indie rock, Krautrock, Nu metal, Post-punk, Post-rock, Progressive rock, Psychedelic rock, Punk rock, Rock'n'roll, Rockabilly, Shoegazing, Stoner rock, Surf

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Rock mixes

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Rock tracks and remixes

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Rock, Pop Rock
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