style

A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.

Below you will find a deep dive of my findings. According to the popular music streaming service Spotify, there are over 1,300 music genres in the world. Some of the peculiar ones include Norwegian Hip Hop, Swedish Reggae and Spanish Punk. There's also Black Sludge, Math Rock, Vaporwave and No Wave.

Music form definition is simply how the various parts of a song or piece are organized. A typical pop song, for example, has a very clear form: verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, bridge, chorus. In classical music, form can be a little bit more nuanced, but it can still be broken down in a very similar way.

A dance style, or a dance genre, is simply a certain type of dance. Different kinds of dance styles include ballet, modern dance, hip-hop – and diverse folk dances from around the world, such as flamenco, bhangra and samba.

Deserving of its name, pop music is in fact the most popular music genre in the world.

Oral singing is likely the earliest form of music, followed by organized sound like clapping or foot stomping. Various musical instruments could have been developed at a later stage. For example, the musical bow is regarded as one of the early musical instruments of the Khoisan in southern Africa.

A "genre" is the word for a categorization, so rock music, progressive rock, etc are all genres. Think of a genre as a label. A "style" is what you call a specific element of the music. For instance, David Gilmour's guitar playing style is melodic with lots of string bends.

So genre should refer to the literal subject of the work, it's content, and style should refer to the manner in which a work is produced, it's form. Style: the manner in which something is expressed or performed, considered as separate from its intrinsic content, meaning etc.

Common forms include bar form, 32-bar form, verse–chorus form, ternary form, strophic form, and the 12-bar blues. Popular music songs traditionally use the same music for each verse or stanza of lyrics (as opposed to songs that are "through-composed" - an approach used in classical music art songs).

How do you know which song form is being used?

1. Lyrics are a good guide to the overall structure of a song. Look for: The placement of repeated phrases. Changes in meter. Changes in the rhyme scheme.
2. Listen for: 4-bar phrases, 8-bar phrases, 16-bar phrases. The feeling of closure or resolution(Cadence) Melodic repeats.

The OED defines genre as "A particular style or category of works of art; esp. a type of literary work characterized by a particular form, style, or purpose." Style is defined as "the particular way in which something is done."

Genre focuses more on the communicative values, whereas style pays more attention to linguistic form, although both of them are crucial to one's understanding of variation in language use.