HOME



picture info

1980s In Music
: ''For music from a year in the 1980s, go to 1980 in music, 80 , 1981 in music, 81 , 1982 in music, 82 , 1983 in music, 83 , 1984 in music, 84 , 1985 in music, 85 , 1986 in music, 86 , 1987 in music, 87 , 1988 in music, 88 , 1989 in music, 89'' This article includes an overview of popular music in the 1980s. The 1980s saw the emergence of electronic dance music and indie pop. As disco and new wave music, new wave fell out of fashion in the decade's early years, genres such as post-disco, Italo disco, Euro disco, and dance-pop became more popular. Rock music continued to enjoy a wide audience. Soft rock, glam metal, thrash metal, shred guitar characterized by heavy distortion, pinch harmonics, and whammy bar abuse became very popular. Adult contemporary music, Adult contemporary, quiet storm, and smooth jazz gained popularity. In the late 1980s, glam metal became the largest, most commercially successful brand of music worldwide. The 1980s are commonly remembered for a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

1980 In Music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1980. Specific locations *1980 in British music *1980 in Japanese music *1980 in Norwegian music Specific genres *1980 in country music *1980 in heavy metal music *1980 in hip-hop, 1980 in hip hop music *1980 in jazz Events January–March *January 1 **Cliff Richard is appointed an Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom, MBE by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. *January 5 – Donna Summer's third double album in a 14-month period, ''On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II'', released on 15 October 1979, reaches the top spot on the Billboard Albums charts. *January 7 – At the age of 44, songwriter Larry Williams is found dead in his Los Angeles, California, home of a gunshot wound to the head. Investigators are never able to determine whether his death was a murder or suicide. *January 13 – The Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Starship perform at a benefit concert at Oa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Post-disco
Post-disco is a term and genre to describe an aftermath in popular music history circa 1979–1986, imprecisely beginning with the backlash against disco music in the United States, leading to civil unrest and a riot in Chicago known as the Disco Demolition Night on July 12, 1979, and indistinctly ending with the mainstream appearance of new wave in 1980. Reynolds, Simon (2009) Grunge's Long Shadow' - In praise of "in-between" periods in pop history (Slate, MUSIC BOX). Retrieved on 2-2-2009" During its dying stage, disco displayed an increasingly electronic character that soon served as a stepping stone to new wave, old-school hip-hop, Euro disco, and was succeeded by an underground club music called hi-NRG, which was its direct continuation. An underground movement of disco music, which was simultaneously "stripped-down" and featured "radically different sounds," took place on the East Coast that "was neither disco and neither R&B."Kellman, Andy"Unlimited Touch"artist biog ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Synthesizer
A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI. Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II, which was controlled with punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, developed by Robert Moog and first so ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Digital Recording
In digital recording, an audio signal, audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or Color, chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is saved to a storage device. To play back a digital recording, the numbers are retrieved and converted back into their original analog signal, analog audio or video forms so that they can be heard or seen. In a properly matched analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) pair, the analog signal is accurately reconstructed, within the constraints of the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, which dictates the sampling rate and quantization error dependent on the Audio bit depth, audio or Bit depth (computer graphics), video bit depth. Because the signal is stored digitally, assuming proper error detection and correction, the recording is not degraded by copying, storage or interference. Timeline *October 3, 1938: ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Smooth Jazz
Smooth jazz is commercially oriented crossover jazz music. Although often described as a "genre", it is a debatable and highly controversial subject in jazz music circles. As a radio format, however, smooth jazz radio became the successor to easy listening music on radio station programming from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s. History Smooth jazz may be thought of as commercially-oriented, crossover jazz which came to prominence in the 1980s, displacing the more venturesome jazz fusion from which it emerged. It avoids the improvisational "risk-taking" of jazz fusion, emphasizing melodic form, and much of the music was initially "a combination of jazz with easy-listening pop music and lightweight R&B." During the mid-1970s in the United States, it was known as "smooth radio"; the genre was not termed "smooth jazz" until the 1980s. The term itself seems to have been birthed directly out of radio marketing efforts. In an industry focus group in the late 1980s, one pa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Quiet Storm
Quiet storm is a radio format and genre of R&B, performed in a smooth, romantic, jazz-influenced style. It was named after the title song on Smokey Robinson's 1975 album '' A Quiet Storm''. The radio format was pioneered in 1976 by Melvin Lindsey, while he was an intern at the Washington, D.C. radio station WHUR-FM. It eventually became regarded as an identifiable subgenre of R&B. Quiet storm was marketed to primarily upscale mature African-American audiences. It peaked in popularity during the 1980s, but fell out of favor with young listeners in the golden age of hip hop. History Origins Melvin Lindsey, a student at Howard University, with his classmate Jack Shuler, began as disc jockeys for WHUR in June 1976, performing as stand-ins for an absentee employee. Lindsey's on-air voice was silky smooth, and the music selections were initially old, slow romantic songs from black artists of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, a form of easy listening which Lindsey called "beautiful ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Adult Contemporary Music
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet storm and rock influence. Adult contemporary is generally a continuation of the easy listening and soft rock style that became popular in the 1960s and 1970s with some adjustments that reflect the evolution of pop/rock music. Adult contemporary tends to have lush, soothing and highly polished qualities where emphasis on melody and harmonies is accentuated. It is usually melodic enough to get a listener's attention, abstains from profanity or complex lyricism, and is most commonly used as background music in heavily-frequented family areas such as supermarkets, shopping malls, convention centers, or restaurants. Like most of pop music, its songs tend to be written in a basic format employing a verse–chorus structu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Shred Guitar
Shred guitar is a virtuosic style of electric guitar performance. Categorized by its use of advanced techniques, shredding is a complex art form. Shred guitar includes fast alternate picking, sweep-picking, diminished and harmonic minor scales, tapping, and whammy bar use. Often incorporated in heavy metal, guitarists employ a guitar amplifier and a range of effects such as distortion. This creates a sustained guitar tone and may facilitate guitar feedback. The term is sometimes used in reference to virtuosic playing by instrumentalists other than guitarists as well. The term "shred" is used outside the metal idiom, particularly by bluegrass musicians and jazz-rock fusion electric guitarists. History Many jazz guitarists in the 1950s such as Les Paul, Barney Kessel and Tal Farlow used an improvised technique by raking the pick across the strings to play a rapid succession of notes, today known as sweep picking. Les Paul's performance of " How High the Moon" contained s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Thrash Metal
Thrash metal (or simply thrash) is an Extreme metal, extreme subgenre of heavy metal music characterized by its overall aggression and fast tempo.Kahn-Harris, Keith, ''Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge'', pp. 2–3, 9. Oxford: Berg, 2007, . The songs usually use fast percussive beats and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with Shred guitar, shredding-style lead guitar work. The genre emerged in the early 1980s as musicians began fusing the double bass drumming and complex guitar stylings of the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) with the speed and aggression of hardcore punk and the technicality of progressive rock. Philosophically, thrash metal developed as a backlash against both the conservatism of the Reagan era and the much more moderate, Pop music, pop-influenced, and widely accessible heavy metal subgenre of glam metal which also developed concurrently in the 1980s. Derived genres include crossover thrash, a fusion of thrash metal and hardcore punk. Th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Glam Metal
Glam metal (also known as hair metal or pop metal) is a subgenre of heavy metal music, heavy metal that features pop music, pop-influenced Hook (music), hooks and guitar riffs, upbeat arena rock, rock anthems, and slow Sentimental ballad#Power ballads, power ballads. It borrows heavily from the fashion and image of 1970s glam rock. Early glam metal evolved directly from the glam rock movement of the 1970s, as visual elements taken from acts such as David Bowie, T. Rex (band), T. Rex, and New York Dolls (and to a lesser extent, the Punk rock#New York City, punk and New wave music, new wave movements taking place concurrently in New York City) were fused with the decidedly more heavy metal leaning and theatrical acts such as Alice Cooper and Kiss (band), Kiss. The first examples of this fusion began appearing in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States, particularly on the Los Angeles Sunset Strip music scene. Early glam metal bands include Mötley Crüe, Hanoi Rocks, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Soft Rock
Soft rock (also known as light rock or mellow rock) is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in the United States and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. Soft rock was prevalent on the radio throughout the 1970s and eventually metamorphosed into a form of the synthesized music of adult contemporary music, adult contemporary in the 1980s. History Mid- to late 1960s Softer sounds in rock music could be heard in mid-1960s songs, such as "A Summer Song" by Chad & Jeremy (1964) and "Here, There and Everywhere" by the Beatles and "I Love My Dog" by Cat Stevens, both from 1966. By 1968, hard rock had been established as a mainstream genre. From the end of the 1960s, it became common to divide mainstream rock music into soft and hard rock, with both emerging as major radio formats in the US. The Bee Gees were considered soft rock in the late 1960s. Early 19 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Rock Music
Rock is a Music genre, genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of styles from the mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew from the black musical genres of blues and rhythm and blues, as well as from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk music, folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other styles. Rock is typically centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drum kit, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a Time signature, time signature and using a verse–chorus form; however, the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most p ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]