Rock Music spring 2011

I began my second semester as a teaching assistant today!  Instead of moving chronologically like we did the first semester, we were asked to hold a discussion with our students about how we label music -- specifically, a rock label vs. a pop label.  Because we were not given any specific music to play, this allowed me to have free reign and play only music made by friends, which was awesome.

Here was my class rundown:

10 mins small group discussion over the Grove article on rock music (the reading they were supposed to have done before class).

Discuss with entire class what the article has to say, and what we think of the article.  (10 mins)

Then, music listening!  The first three are all from various OverClocked ReMix projects, and the last is an original composition.

1) Thieves of Fate (from Radical Dreamers) -- standard rock setup + a percussion solo.  Everyone agreed that this was rock (which was the point, I wanted to establish a baseline for discussion).  One student asserted that the existence of an instrumental solo is more common to rock than to pop, a point which I was glad to concede.

2) The Unholy Wars (from the Tales series) -- in your face guitar-thrashing rock, with no vocal.  Is vocal music an essential part of rock music, and does instrumental rock qualify as "rock"?  (My classes thought yes, but made the point that vocals are nontheless an integral part of rock music).

3) Morning, Thinker (from the Armored Core project) -- The counterpart to #2, in-your-face obviously pop as opposed to in-your-face obviously rock above.  For what reasons?  Most of this piece is produced with a certain amount of studio magic -- does mastering and post-production factor into our consideration of a piece?

4) The Real Thing, by Flickerfall -- Someone suggested to me that sociologically and ideologically, rock is about rebelling against commercialism, and pop is about commercialization.  While I agree with that in theory, I chose this example because it runs counter to that point (which I anticipated someone making).  We don't think of "indie pop" groups as often as we think of "indie rock" -- usually "indie band" means a rock group, at least in our collective minds.  What does it mean to be an indie pop group?  Does the ideology of the band help us determine how to classify them, despite the fact that the subject matter of this track is primarily pop-focused?

All in all, a great hour of class.  It's really great to be able to teach music that you know -- it's even better to teach the music of people you know.