Can You Guess the Musical Genre Based on the Instruments?
It's All in the Tone
I have long been intensely curious about choices of instrumentation in songs. Why did the songwriter, composer, or musicians recording the song choose to play the intro on piano rather than guitar, or vice versa? Why is a saxophone used for the solo rather than a guitar or clarinet or kazoo, or what have you? What was Del Shannon (no relation; his real name was Charles Westover) thinking with the instrument used in the solo in his mega-hit Runaway?
Actually, it was a Musitron, similar to a Moog synthesizer, but sounded like a kazoo or something similar.Anyway, I’m usually highly impressed by the choices made by the decision makers as to which instruments to use and feature, and the interplay of them: the song wouldn’t be the same, or nearly as good, if they had opted for different instrumentation, or not introduced a certain thing to add color or atmosphere or just another layer of sound that the song doesn’t necessarily absolutely need, but enhances the song, sometimes tremendously (“More cowbell!”).
On a related note (no pun intended), certain types of instruments are usually used with specific styles, or genres, of music. See if you can figure out which genre of music is being portrayed in the following three mosaics.
Rock, Jazz, or Country?
Rock, Jazz, or Country?
Rock, Jazz, or Country?
You probably scored a perfect 100% on this pop quiz (actually a rock/jazz/country quiz). But all of these genres have guitar, bass, and drums in common (although not always in older styles of country), but the other instruments are commonly associated with the genre being depicted. This is not to say that saxophones aren’t used in rock (they are, but not as much as they were in the 50s), or that keyboards are not used in rock and country, or that the harmonica is only used in country music, but for the most part, the instruments shown are the foundational sonic bits for each musical style or genre.
