genres/styles

Alternative Pop/Rock
The terms alternative rock and alternative music were coined in the early 1980s to describe punk rock-inspired music genres which didn't fit into the mainstream genres of the time. At times it was used as catch-all phrase for rock music from underground artists in the 1980s and rock music in general in the 1990s. More specifically, it is made up mostly of genres that appeared in the 1980s and became popular or well known by the 1990s, such as indie rock, grunge, post-punk, gothic rock, and college rock...

Ambient
Ambient music is a loosely defined musical genre that incorporates elements of a number of different styles - including jazz, electronic music, new age, rock and roll, modern classical music, reggae, traditional, world and even noise. It is chiefly identifiable as having an overarching atmospheric context...

Break Beat
Breakbeat (sometimes breakbeats or breaks) is a term used to describe a collection of sub-genres of electronic music, usually characterized by the use of a non-straighted 4/4 drum pattern....

Downtempo / Chillout
Downtempo (or DownTempo) is a laid-back electronic music style often intended more for listening and socializing than dancing, though some releases are unmistakably produced for the dance floor. Often the names lounge music or chill out are used to refer to songs demonstrative of the genre, but those names also refer to other styles of music, and downtempo encompasses a wider variety of styles than those terms alone would indicate...

Experimental
Experimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. There is an overlap with avant-garde music. John Cage was a pioneer in experimental music and defined and gave credibility to the form. As with other edge forms that push the limits of a particular form of expression, there is little agreement as to the boundaries of experimental music, even amongst its practitioners. On the one hand, some experimental music is an extension of traditional music, adding unconventional instruments, modifications to instruments, noises, and other novelties to orchestral compositions. At the other extreme, there are performances that most listeners would not characterize as music at all...

Hip-Hop
Hip hop music is a style of popular music. It is composed of two main components: rapping (MC'ing) and DJing; along with breakdancing and graffiti, these are the four elements of hip hop, a cultural movement which began among African Americans and Puerto Ricans in New York City in the early 1970s. The terms rap and rap music are often used to describe hip hop music; the terms rap music and hip hop music are generally synonymous, although rap music is usually not used to describe hip hop songs without vocals...

House
The common element of most house music is a 4/4 beat generated by a drum machine or other electronic means (such as a sampler), together with a solid (usually also electronically generated) bassline. Upon this foundation are added electronically generated sounds and samples of music such as jazz, blues and synth pop. House music has been sub-divided into a number of sub-categories, some of which are described below....

IDM
Intelligent dance music (IDM) refers to a style of experimental electronic music with an emphasis on unconventional sequencing and processing which sets it apart from traditional dancefloor techno and house...

Indie
In popular music, indie music (from independent) is any of a number of genres, scenes, subcultures and stylistic and cultural attributes, characterised by (real or perceived) independence from commercial pop music and mainstream culture and an autonomous, do-it-yourself (DIY) approach...

Instrumental Rock
Instrumental rock is a type of rock and roll which features only musical instruments, and no singing. From its earliest days, rock and roll emphasized catchy melodies, which were usually presented with easily remembered lyrics. That wasn't always the case, however, and if the melodies were strong enough, instrumentals could catch on and become hits. That happened most frequently during rock's early years, which constituted a sort of golden age for Instrumental rock before the British Invasion. One notable early instrumental was "Honky Tonk" by the Bill Doggett Combo, with its slinky beat and sinuous saxophone-organ lead. And bluesman Jimmy Reed charted with "Boogie in the Dark" and "Roll and Rhumba"...

Jazz
Jazz is a musical art form originally developed by African Americans from around the turn of the 20th century. It is characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation sometimes in jam sessions. As the first original art form to emerge from the United States of America, jazz has been described as "America's Classical Music"...

Lo-Fi
Lo-fi music is a musical genre which uses lo-fi recording practices. The aim is to sound authentic, rather than over-produced. Many lo-fi artists use inexpensive cassette tape recorders for their music.
Lo-fi music arguably dates back to the Beatles or Buddy Holly (Holly recorded some songs in a converted garage). As a genre, lo-fi is mainly associated with recordings from the 1980s onwards, when cassette technology such as Tascam's four-track Portastudio became widely available. Prime early exponents included Daniel Johnston, Beat Happening and the label K Records, and the New Zealand music scene around the Tall Dwarfs and Flying Nun Records. Lo-fi found a wider audience with the success of Sebadoh, Pavement, and Elliott Smith.
Often lo-fi artists will record on old or poor recording equipment, sometimes out of financial necessity but mainly due to the unique aural qualities available from the technologies. Many artists associated with the lo-fi movement, such as Bill Callahan or Bob Log III, have frequently rejected the use of finer recording equipment, trying to keep their sound raw instead, whereas others such as Guided By Voices and The Mountain Goats slowly moved to using professional studios.
Lo-fi techniques are espoused by some genres outside the indie rock rock world, particularly by Black metal artists, where the very low-quality of the recording has become almost a desirable quality, said by fans to convey a rawness and depth of feeling otherwise unattainable. Some fans deliberately seek out extremely lo-fi concert bootlegs, such as the infamous Dawn of the Black Hearts, which are of such low quality as to defy normal conceptions of music.
DIY Punk is also well noted for its trend toward lo-fi sound, produced for the most part on inexpensive four-track machines such as the Tascam, and copied from tape to tape on home recording equipment, degrading the quality still further. In DIY Punk lo-fi is prized mainly because it indicates a rejection of the values of commercialism

Trance
Trance music is a subgenre of electronic dance music (EDM) that developed in the 1990s. Perhaps the most ambiguous genre in the realm of EDM, trance could be described as a melodic, more-or-less freeform style of music derived from a combination of techno and house. Regardless of its precise origins, to many club-goers, party-throwers, and EDM adherents, trance is held as a significant development within the greater sphere of (post-)modern dance music. By some, it is even regarded as a personal rediscovery of the origins of music and the effect that rhythm and melody has on our introspective and extrospective selves...