Music Corner

Jazz and rock, both are popular musical art forms which are created significantly by guitars along with other instruments. Different sub-genres of the traditional jazz and rock music like jazz-rock fusion; or blues-rock happen to be innovated by various guitarists. Following are a few of the greatest jazz and rocks guitarists:

Jimi Hendrix
Johnny Allen Hendrix, popularly known as Jimi Hendrix, born in 1942, would be a famous guitarist, song writer and singer. He gained fame initially in Europe. The year 1967 would be a milestone in the career when he won the hearts of Americans within the Monterey Pop Festival and again in 1969 at the Woodstock Festival. Jimi Hendrix created their own band known as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose Are You Experienced and Axis:Bold as Love are the most well-known albums. Jimi Hendrix would be a left handed guitarist and played his Fender Stratocaster upside down. He died at an early age of 28. He would be a person receiving many prestigious awards. He has been included in the Rock ‘n roll Hall of Fame as well as the UK Music Hall of Fame. Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitarist ever, having influenced a number of other famous guitarists.

Eric Clapton
Born in 1945, Eric Clapton is a famous guitarist, composer, song writer and singer. Young Eric’s life changed when his grandparents gave him his first guitar. He joined this guitar rock band Yardbirds, and was together for 18 months before he formed a band group called Cream. Also called Slowhand, Clapton is definitely an award-winning rock guitarist, associated with a variety of genres like rock, hard rock, blues-rock, etc. Eric Clapton is the only person to become inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thrice; first as a person in Yardbirds, then as a member of Cream and later as a solo performer.

Jimmy Page
Born in 1944, James Page is a famous guitarist and composer. He was the member of the band Yardbirds for just two years, from 1966 to 1968. Later, he was one of the founder members of the famous English band, Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page is the most talented and versatile musician with hard rock, blues-rock and high metal being his genres. Besides the guitar, the musical instruments played by Jimmy Page include dulcimer, harmonica, mandolin, banjo, bass, etc. His famous solo Stairway to Heaven, is among the most greatest guitar solo. He has been contained in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, as member of Yardbirds in addition to a member of the Led Zeppelin band respectively.

Jeff Beck
A famous rock guitarist and songwriter, Geoffrey (Jeff) Beck, was created in the mid 1940s. He was the member of the band Yardbirds, along with Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. Later he formed their own band called the Jeff Beck Group. His genres of music include heavy metal and rock, hard rock, instrumental rock, and jazz fusion. He has won 4 Grammy Awards for the Best Rock Instrumental Performance, and it is inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Joe Satriani
Famous American instrumental rock guitarist, Joseph (Joe) Satriani, was created in 1956. Known for creating a variety of music like instrumental rock, heavy metal, jazz fusion, etc., Satriani has a record of maximum number of Grammy Award nominations. Satriani was chosen as a lead singer for a band tour by Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stone. His famous solo albums include Surfing using the Alien, Flying inside a Blue Dream and The Extremist. Joe Satriani is influenced by all the previously discussed famous guitarists.

Another famous rock and jazz guitarists are Yngwie Malmsteen, Duane Allman, Carlos Santana, Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Angus Young, Keith Richards, Steve Vai, Ritchie Blackmore, Kirk Hammett, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Music is a craze among people of all age ranges, and guitarists occupy an significant position among all musicians, no matter which part of the world they come from.

What’s Rock?
Essentially “Rock” is definitely an eclectic mixture of a prominent vocal melody accompanied by guitar, drums, and bass. Several bands make use of an innovative mixture of piano, synthesizers, saxophone, flute, mandolin and sitar to heady effect. The earliest known roots of rock music as a unique genre of music branching out from rock ‘n’ roll date back towards the early-to-mid 1960s. Over the next 5 decades since then, rock continues to be propelled into being probably the most popular and best-selling branches of commercial music right now legendary artists.

With the wave of popularity of rock ‘n’ roll, made immensely popular by the Beatles, two British bands – Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath, in completely contrasting styles, founded the sub-genres of progressive rock and heavy metal. Pink Floyd explored a more psychedelic sound combining various guitars and keyboards to produce amazing sound variations while Black Sabbath delved right into a darker, heavier sound emphasizing a slow tempo and tuned down guitars.

The next few years saw an explosion in the rock genres generally giving rise to varied genres discussed in the following paragraphs along with other less known genres. As you will be able to tell many genres are extremely tough to define and others overlap with one another making clear lines between genres impossible to attract.

Rock Classifications
Numerous branches of rock have been born – rock ‘n’ roll, soft rock, hard rock, progressive rock, metal, alternative, grunge… because both versions have several subtle variations. e.g heavy metal has branched off into progressive, death, acid, dark ambient, power, symphonic, Goth…the list goes on.

Progressive Rock is a very open and intertwined genre of music which got its begin in the late 60s, and is constantly on the this day. Prog Rock artists try to take the roots of rock and apply them to a far more classically influenced structure. The music is often very elaborate and usually requires very exceptional musicians having a great deal of talent. It’s not unusual for Prog Rock pieces to be very lengthy – Echoes by Pink Floyd is definitely an early illustration of this phenomenon and also the tradition continues to this day in other pieces like First Light by Shadow Gallery.

Heavy metal and rock or Metal because it is currently called started during the late ’60s and it is often credited to Black Sabbath. Heavy metal found its roots within the blues and psychedelic music genres, and also got its inspiration in the misery of daily life in industrialized cities coupled with a fascination for mysticism. The stereotypical metal song combines heavy thudding drums sounds (often having a double bass) with thickly distorted guitar riffs, screaming vocals and powerful rhythm.

Progressive Metal or Prog Metal as some call it is a combination of progressive rock and heavy metal which came into popularity during the late ’80s with Queensryche and Dream Theater. Progressive metal includes a small but very loyal and devoted group of fans who’re enthralled by the mixture of many unusual elements inherited in the progressive rock tradition such as incorporation of Jazz, Orchestration along with other varied influences. Like in Progressive Rock, it’s quite common for pieces to be in excess of 10-15 minutes and often more like the 24-minute Octavarium by Dream Theater.

Hard Rock is a form of rock & roll that finds its roots in early 1960s garage rock and draws from jazz, blues, rock ‘n roll, along with other influences like folk in the case of famed hard rock artist Led Zeppelin who’s main writer and composer Jimmy Page would be a famous studio musician and expert guitar player who had been thinking about Celtic and folk influences. These diverse influences can be clearly heard in one of the most influential albums of this style Led Zeppelin 4. AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and Iron Maiden are classic types of early hard rock.

During the last Half a century, Rock became one of the very popular genres of music producing numerous iconic artists who have written a brief history of rock using their own unique contributions towards the memories of numerous generations.

Amazingly, a number of the above mentioned remain extremely popular with Pink Floyd drawing record crowds at the Live 8 concert and several other bands formed in the 70s releasing albums recently.

To comprehend the genre of music that’s psychedelic rock, it might be important to see where this type of music originated, because the roots from the movement that inspired the artists that made history, is part of the reason for its evolution. Within the era from the flower child, there was restlessness and strong undercurrents one of the youth across the united states and Europe, which was looking for freedom from existing societal expectations and norms. It was being the ‘hippie culture’ that took the world by storm within the late 1950′s and 60′s. Among the many ways in which hippies were to make history, with their commune living and fascination for eastern mysticism, religion and sexual liberation, was the background music that characterized the decades from the flower child.

This was also time when hallucinogenic drugs were just entering public consciousness, and LSD, mescaline and ‘magic mushrooms’, were popular, their effects compounded using the combination of alcohol and marijuana. Artistes and musicians with such psychedelic drug cocktails were said to experience an out-of-body, mind altering state of awareness, disconnected from reality, and the music that they composed within the shadowy realm of hallucinogenic drugs, came to be referred to as psychedelic music, or psychedelic rock, in homage towards the psychedelic drugs that gave rise towards the compositions. In the middle of such widespread domination, it was hardly likely the arts were to be left out, posters and album covers were just a few of the expressions of 60′s psychedelic art, characterized by their kaleidoscopic colors, diffraction patterns and entropic motifs.

Psychedelic Rock History

Many of the musicians from the era, such as the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan were the main hippie culture, and their music and songs underwent the metamorphosis that accompanied the shift in thinking and the changes which were beginning to be felt worldwide. Actually, it had been The Beatles that are credited using what many believe is the best psychedelic rock album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The influences of hitherto unused musical instruments started to make themselves known within the most famous compositions, and religious beliefs now use the eastern and oriental with lots of converting to Hinduism, Buddhism and the like. Prior to their iconic Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, their songs began mirroring the musical experimentation the drugs gave free reign to. Norwegian Wood, used the sitar and also the tabla, and several songs like Day Tripper made clear references towards the drugs that were now ruling the planet; their controversial track Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, was in fact a euphemism for LSD.

Psychedelic rock bands like the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Jefferson’s Airplanes, the Charlatans and The Beach Boys began popularizing the genre, with their offerings of Somebody to like, White Rabbit, Pet Sounds, and Shapes of Things hitting high in charts and staying there. In Europe, the genre was less aggressive than the ‘acid psychedelia’ that was fast-becoming the American version, with bands like Pink Floyd, Soft machine, the Nice and Tomorrow pioneering their own psychedelic rock style which was more whimsically surreal with clear influences of Beat poetry and Jazz musicians shining through. Probably the most famous psychedelic rock songs were released at the moment, the entire year was 1967, and the psychedelic movement was at its height.

As was the only likely outcome, drugs and their overuse brought about the decline and subsequent end of the psychedelic rock movement. Many musical icons lost their lives to drug abuse, and also the world mourned losing such legends as Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, amongst many, a lot more. Many groups disbanded, LSD was made illegal in the UK and also the US and the music began its inevitable shift towards the progressive rock sounds of the 70′s. Modern psychedelic rock bands are available though their music that is an amalgamation of many other genres. Many mainstream artists dabbled in neo-psychedelia and alternative rock like Prince, and Lenny Kravitz, and acts like The Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel and the Purple Avengers. Although the pioneers of psychedelic rock may no longer be around, their music is the stuff that legends are constructed with and can live on, similar to their memories, forever.

People all over the world enjoy different genre of music. One genre of music that people like to groove on rock ‘n roll. Rock music emerged in the 1950s within the Southern Usa and quickly gained popularity in the rest of the world. It was a compilation of gospel music, blues and country music. The term rock ‘n roll (also rock n roll or rock & roll) was coined with a disc jockey from Ohio called Alan Freed. The music he broadcasted was usually described as rock n roll. After the 1950s, many rock bands bloomed from coast to coast. The parameters of deciding a rock-band since the right one depends on the recognition from the band, its record sales, touring history and the number of times the songs by that particular rock-band are aired. In the following paragraphs, you will find a summary of the very best rock bands of all time.