If you could classify music into ten or fewer genres... Options

[thedodgymonkey]

I am trying to classify all my music into quite broad genres. If you could only have ten or less categories for your music what would they be?
Okay, I don't have any completely bazaar music like a Panda playing The Bamboo Flute or my own rendition of Mozart's 5th using bottles and spoons!!!

This post has been edited by thedodgymonkey: Jun 4 2009, 00:03

[Porcus]

I am trying to classify all my music into quite broad genres. If you could only have ten or less categories for your music what would they be?

For what purpose? I split my catalogue into two -- classical music and the rest. The reason is not that Merzbow has more in common with Malmsteen than with Mahler, but that classical music is largely released on a "by composer" basis, and everything else in my collection largely by performer. (Adaptations: Tribute albums -- "all these amateurs cover your favourite band in order to cash-in on their name" -- are treated as if the original were the performer, though. Contemporary composers ... let's say I don't have much doubts on neither Ligeti nor Zappa.)

And foobar2k admits multiple installs, each with its own library. If I had audio books, I would keep them in a third library.

Then I also split the "everything else" catalogue into "various artist" and "everything else" in my directory structure, but not in my foobar music library.

This post has been edited by Porcus: Oct 8 2009, 11:54

[Porcus]

I split my catalogue into two -- classical music and the rest. The reason is not that Merzbow has more in common with Malmsteen than with Mahler, but that classical music is largely released on a "by composer" basis, and everything else in my collection largely by performer. (Adaptations: Tribute albums -- "all these amateurs cover your favourite band in order to cash-in on their name" -- are treated as if the original were the performer, though. Contemporary composers ... let's say I don't have much doubts on neither Ligeti nor Zappa.)

Well again I would have to ask myself what is the purpose of the taxonomy. If it were for my purposes, then I wouldn't really need to distinguish between Chopin's marche funèbre and Mitchell's military marches. (I would probably have more objections against joining Arnold Schoenberg's later works with his earliest ones.)

If I were to split so-called classical music (Western, and including 'modern classical') into two broad buckets, then one would have to cover the renaissance through the common practice period plus anything composed in those traditions. Medieval music without harmonies and time signatures would be out, and, insane as it may seem, classified together with 20th century atonal music, John Cage and Ligeti's Volumina. Most composer-oriented (Western) music would fall into these two categories.

At the risk of being too eurocentric, I'd put “ethnic” music including non-classical European folk music, into one bucket. Here goes your grandpa's accordion, at least. And so do all the hymns based on old folk tones. The trouble here is the elites' non-folk music, which is maybe just as adequately joined in with whatever the Pope commissioned twelve hundred years ago.

The troublesome part is the last hundred years. Which, I guess – does anyone have a number? – contributes the vast majority of the known compositions, and styles. Problem is to differentiate everything that originates from proto-blues/jazz, which is ... well, the most. And while progrock isn't jazz, it marks a very crucial break away from blues/rock/pop's verse/chorus way of organizing music.


So, here's my attempt:

(1) Western classical from renaissance and up through the 19th century, including modern compositions in the same genre,
(2) Western “classical” pre and post this broad genre (1), e.g. without (or deviating significantly from) the typical organized means of time signature, scale, harmony, counterpoint, whatnot, and possibly including e.g. related sacred music, like Jewish?
(3) “folk” and “ethnic” excluding blues and country
(4) jazz.
(5) blues, rythm'n'blues (not the modern 'r&b' term) ... and soul?
(6) blues/jazz-derived music which is largely rythm-based: Hip-hop. And ... funk? Problem: a “dance” mix of anything else?
(7) pop/rock: predominantly based on blues/country (well, country could go in here). Include also that jazzrock which isn't jazz, progrock even if it isn't blues-based, punk and hard rock/metal. This bucket could need to be split, and I'm tempted to split away “pop which I don't find interesting”
(8) electronic/industrial, starting from whatever is a bit too far out to go in the modern classical genre and all the way to japanoise. Ambient may go here or in (7).
(9) other modern music which doesn't fit into (10)
(10) “non-music” – well, rather than discussung what music is: this would be “sound that isn't supposed to be listened to the way you listen to music”: test signals, recognize-these-animals, audiobooks (one with fairytales for children should go here even if there is a tune every now and then), spoken word and related (a CD from a WWII documentary shouldn't be counted as classical music just because this CD documenting that moustached Chaplin-lookalike, contains no other “music” than Wagner),



Now ... where to put ragtime?

This post has been edited by Porcus: Jul 23 2012, 19:30

[GeSomeone]

Now ... where to put ragtime?

Jazz would be possible.
It is just a matter to how many genres you want to limit yourself.
The simple solution is what WonderSlug brought forward. Pick (about) 9 genres and have an extra one called Other.

BTW In the album list of foobar2000 you can view by genre and see how much (albums) of each you have.