Music Styles – A Comparison of Pop and Jazz Music
Music is the practice of arranging various sounds in sequence to create a particular composition in time to create a melody or rhythm through the interplay of pitch, tone, harmony, and rhythm. It’s one of the oldest artistic forms of human civilizations dating back to pre-historic times. Musical styles across cultures differ because of regional music, religious beliefs, geographical areas, and time periods. However, it can be said that all musical forms ultimately come from the same compositional elements – melody, rhythm, pitch, harmony and texture.
There are four basic types of musical notation: staff notation, stave notation, opera notation, and fugue notation. Staff notation is most commonly used in Western classical music. Staffs show melodic or rhythmic lines and beats in staves. F Fugue notation is a broad style that applies to a wide variety of music, with its main purpose being to indicate the relationships among different instruments and singers. The major key signatures of fugue notation are G, C, D, A, E, and F.
Throughout the romantic period, music scholars have noted the development of two major artistic trends. The first tendency was the ascendancy of “classical music” in European society. Classical music was characterized by the use of complex polyphonic compositions and the complex structuring of melodic patterns. In contrast, Romantic music was characterized by the use of simple, tonally consistent instruments and an abundance of non-harmonics.
The second trend was the rise of pop music. Pop music was defined by the fragmentation of musical styles into distinct components. Many of these components were popular, such as soul, funky, rap, jazz, and hip-hop. At the same time, pop music tended toward simplicity, a popularity that continues to this day. The major benefit of writing music in pop format is that the use of multiple polyphonic scales allows for greater creative freedom than can be achieved with more traditional forms of composition.
Rhythm is an essential part of music. As such many composers attempt to express this aspect of music in a non-traditional manner. Ringtones, such as snares and strumming, have long been used to express the rhythmic characteristics of a musical instrument. More recently, new forms of percussionist such as Latin drums and wood blocks have been used to express the rhythmic aspects of music often through polyphonic playing.
Jazz music shares many of the same characteristics as pop music and is often written in the same fashion. Similar to pop music, it tends to express itself through a multiplicity of instruments and voices. However, unlike pop music which typically features one dominant instrument, jazz music frequently features a number of instruments that play various parts of the composition. One of the most prominent instruments in jazz is the guitar, which usually serves a dual role as a melodic instrument as well as a rhythmic instrument. Many famous jazz musicians include the guitar in their musical creations. Although some argue that the invention of jazz music was made possible by African slaves who were forced to perform ragtime music, historians believe that this particular genre of music actually emerged from the evolution of American slave music during the end of the nineteenth century.
