Genre Olympics - Games - Forums : Best Ever Albums

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

PurpleHazel wrote:

I guess I don't care for the RYM macro-genres list, because there are at least three rock subgenres on there: punk, metal and psychedelica. All three of these get a lot more attention on this site than real macro genres like jazz, classical, folk, country and blues. The Wikipedia list seems more macro to me -- maybe we could just add the handful of true macro genres on the RYM list not on the Wikipedia one -- like new age -- to the Wiki one.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't singer-songwriter albums fall under either rock, folk or pop? Also ambient seems more like a subgenre -- though I'm no expert -- of electronic. Isn't ska just rock combined with Caribbean? Odd RYM lists Ska and not Reggae -- questionable.

Fair point on punk and metal, but I think the idea is that those two have taken divergent courses from the rest of rock to the point where they are distinct genres.

As for psychedelia, it's not just a subgenre of rock. It combines with rock to create psychedelic rock, with pop to create psychedelic pop, with soul to create psychedelic soul, and with folk to create psychedelic folk.

Ambient is not just a subgenre of electronic, as you can make music that has ambient qualities without electronic instruments. It can also combine with other types of music - ambient pop for instance.

Rate Your Music separates music that has been more local and less a part of a global artistic dialogue into the regional music category, which contains all kinds of genres from around the world, including reggae. I guess ska is seen as being sufficiently part of such a dialogue to not fit cleanly into the regional music category, and instead has its own genre. Whereas Wikipedia excludes regional music from the genre list Seth linked, unless it is sufficiently "popular."

Singer/songwriter is debatable as a genre to be sure. Not sure what to think.

I have a couple other issues with the Wikipedia genre page. Easy listening is not a macro-genre, but rather a sub-genre of pop. And Brazilian music isn't exactly a subset of Latin music.

But yes, categorization is hard and debatable, and there needs to be some standard we use, or we're going to get bogged down in debates over what's what. Two things that would make it easier to use a Rate Your Music standard are that you can create custom charts for any genre to browse the albums in it, and genre assignment is based on a collective of users voting. In contrast, with Wikipedia you'd have to search for each album by name to find its genre, and the genre could have been edited by any individual acting alone at any time.
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Age: 38

I like the idea of focused genre discussion, but with the whole top 3 thing combined with macro genres, won't that just lead to the standard configurations, Beatles/Ok Computer/DSOTM, Black Saint/A Love Supreme/Kind Of Blue, MBDTF/TPAB/Illmatic, and then what is it for electronic, SAW 85-92/Daft Punk/Kraftwerk? I dunno, the generalness makes me hesitant to claim expertise anywhere for voting and I don't know if I'd be that invested in the champion part but if it goes on I'll interested in the conversation happening.

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

Tap wrote:

I like the idea of focused genre discussion, but with the whole top 3 thing combined with macro genres, won't that just lead to the standard configurations, Beatles/Ok Computer/DSOTM, Black Saint/A Love Supreme/Kind Of Blue, MBDTF/TPAB/Illmatic, and then what is it for electronic, SAW 85-92/Daft Punk/Kraftwerk? I dunno, the generalness makes me hesitant to claim expertise anywhere for voting and I don't know if I'd be that invested in the champion part but if it goes on I'll interested in the conversation happening.

That's a good point. It would be a lot more interesting if we did subgenres. Maybe we could vote on which genre system to use - Wikipedia or RYM. I think it's important for everyone to be on the same page with that, and not have ten people using ten different working definitions of what's in a genre. After we get that finalized, people could name a given number of subgenres from either site that they want to explore (10?) and we could tally up the votes to see which one goes first. As a side note, I'd much rather just vote for subgenres that I don't already have much knowledge of, instead of reserving half my votes for what I already know.
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Last edited by baystateoftheart on 04/16/2018 02:36; edited 1 time in total

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Tap wrote:

I like the idea of focused genre discussion, but with the whole top 3 thing combined with macro genres, won't that just lead to the standard configurations, Beatles/Ok Computer/DSOTM, Black Saint/A Love Supreme/Kind Of Blue, MBDTF/TPAB/Illmatic, and then what is it for electronic, SAW 85-92/Daft Punk/Kraftwerk? I dunno, the generalness makes me hesitant to claim expertise anywhere for voting and I don't know if I'd be that invested in the champion part but if it goes on I'll interested in the conversation happening.

Well it's the Olympics, right?. You got your Michael Phelps (rock) and you got your greatest badmitton player in the world nobody knows about (avant-garde). I know that's a terrible analogy, but who is to say the badmitton player isn't cooler than Michael Phelps?

Don't worry, both will equally represented, this is just to find out what goes first and what people want to talk about. Put in your vote so your voice is heard and I very much look forward to what you have to offer.

Furthermore, once the parent genres are complete, we will then vote on sub-genres, and so on. But you are right. If anyone is interested in really doing this, they have the wikipedia article, listing hundreds of genres and sub-genres, go knock yourself out. But I come to these forums to learn from people like yourself.

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

baystateoftheart wrote:

That's a good point. It would be a lot more interesting if we did subgenres. Maybe we could vote on which genre system to use - Wikipedia or RYM. I think it's important for everyone to be on the same page with that, and not have ten people using ten different working definitions of what's in a genre. After we get that finalized, people could name a given number of subgenres from either site that they want to explore (10?) and we could tally up the votes to see which one goes first. As a side note, I'd much rather just vote for subgenres that I don't already have much knowledge of, instead of reserving half my votes for what I already know.

True. You can also change your vote if you want to learn about other genres and do all 6 being genres you want learn about.

You can then vote on sub-genres when we get there.

I don't know if anyone has had a chance to actually look at the wikipedia article listed, but I thought it well organized in how the discussion can go.

I suppose if people just want to focus on sub-genres instead, ditch this thread and go look up the Genre Extravaganza thread and revive it?

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

baystateoftheart wrote:

But yes, categorization is hard and debatable, and there needs to be some standard we use, or we're going to get bogged down in debates over what's what. Two things that would make it easier to use a Rate Your Music standard are that you can create custom charts for any genre to browse the albums in it, and genre assignment is based on a collective of users voting. In contrast, with Wikipedia you'd have to search for each album by name to find its genre, and the genre could have been edited by any individual acting alone at any time.

I'm actually just fine with the duality of Wikepedia and RYM. Of course there's overlap and we won't find perfection with something like a genre, which isn't a hard science. But if there's consensus on one over the other, I'm cool with that too.

I'm perfectly fine for someone voting for Psychedelic music, whether the roots are in hip-hop or rock.

The point is that it's a voting system, so if 50 people vote for Psychedelic music, well then 50 people just said it is a genre they want to talk about.

The key is that this thread is doing genre's first (if enough people vote), and then sub-genre's. If you can prove a sub-genre really is a genre, knock yourself out by voting for it.

And really, it's easy to quash arguments of an album being part of a genre because there's 50 websites that can verify if it is or isn't part of that genre, so as long as the person claiming it or arguing against it can use said tools, discussion over. Now if one out of 50 websites says it, the person claiming that one website has to use their brain and realize that the 49 don't claim it as such.

This really should be easy and fun. No need to complicate it.

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

sethmadsen wrote:

baystateoftheart wrote:

But yes, categorization is hard and debatable, and there needs to be some standard we use, or we're going to get bogged down in debates over what's what. Two things that would make it easier to use a Rate Your Music standard are that you can create custom charts for any genre to browse the albums in it, and genre assignment is based on a collective of users voting. In contrast, with Wikipedia you'd have to search for each album by name to find its genre, and the genre could have been edited by any individual acting alone at any time.

I'm actually just fine with the duality of Wikepedia and RYM. Of course there's overlap and we won't find perfection with something like a genre, which isn't a hard science. But if there's consensus on one over the other, I'm cool with that too.

I'm perfectly fine for someone voting for Psychedelic music, whether the roots are in hip-hop or rock.

The point is that it's a voting system, so if 50 people vote for Psychedelic music, well then 50 people just said it is a genre they want to talk about.

The key is that this thread is doing genre's first (if enough people vote), and then sub-genre's. If you can prove a sub-genre really is a genre, knock yourself out by voting for it.

And really, it's easy to quash arguments of an album being part of a genre because there's 50 websites that can verify if it is or isn't part of that genre, so as long as the person claiming it or arguing against it can use said tools, discussion over. Now if one out of 50 websites says it, the person claiming that one website has to use their brain and realize that the 49 don't claim it as such.

This really should be easy and fun. No need to complicate it.

Just to clarify, do you plan on going through all the listed macro-genres and then moving on to sub-genres? Or doing a given number and then switching it up?

And as to your second bold point, I'm sorry if I sucked the fun out of this for anyone. I hope not Neutral

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RichardSauce

sethmadsen wrote:

Well it's the Olympics, right?. You got your Michael Phelps (rock) and you got your greatest badmitton player in the world nobody knows about (avant-garde). I know that's a terrible analogy, but who is to say the badmitton player isn't cooler than Michael Phelps?

Now I'm just curious what curling equates to....yodeling?

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Another thought about how this could be done a bit more organically, is if you want to know more about a genre or sub genre, or want to talk about a genre or subgenre, post a link of the thread you start here as a library of them?

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

RichardSauce wrote:

sethmadsen wrote:

Well it's the Olympics, right?. You got your Michael Phelps (rock) and you got your greatest badmitton player in the world nobody knows about (avant-garde). I know that's a terrible analogy, but who is to say the badmitton player isn't cooler than Michael Phelps?

Now I'm just curious what curling equates to....yodeling?