Blog post 12 : Alternative Rock

Although any attempt to try to draw a line at what any genre, sub-genre will have its critics I will attempt to at least give an example of a few bands that could be considered to fit within the "alternative" rock genre and I will explain why I have made these characterizations.

Some components of alternative rock would be majority of the time one or two guitars usually distorted. although not as much a a metal band. The distortion is either fairly light compared to metal, or more specifically an overdriven tone. This type of distortion is usually given by pushing a tube amp past its comfortable range an breaking up the tone, or distorting it with a mass amount of signal to create a very thick, warm tone to the distortion, differing much from a metal guitar tone that usually has extremely high gain, and drops the middle frequencies to help emphasize the low end, that gives the gut punching tone. Now of course this just a generalization, many alternative bands will really crank the distortion.

Another feature of alternative rock would be the emphasis on very lyrical and melodic type of vocals. Unlike metal for instance, the lyrics are very clearly articulated, and the lead vocalist sings very melodically. There is an emphasis on the chorus for the most part, this is where the line gets hazy between alternative rock and pop rock, the chorus is usually pretty catchy and easy for the crowd to remember and sing along too.

The musical aspects of the alternative music would include a rather simple rhythmic pattern, not to say its limited to that, but a solid 4/4 time signature with a subdivided snare hit every two beats with a sixteenth subdivided symbol can fit thousands of rock songs, of course so many variations occur here depending on the mood of the song, solo's in alternative music are rather limited. Unlike classic rock, metal, and glam metal from the eighties, there is a less emphasis on musical virtuosity. Not to say that alternative rock is not difficult to play, the standard type of rock, with a screaming guitar solo after the bridge that demonstrates the lead guitarists amazing speed at running scales, arpeggios, sweeping, tapping(Mr> Van Halen) these techniques are just generally not there. There might be a lead guitar solo, but generally it is a more simplistic powerfull melodic solo, the phrase less is more might fit here, the emphasis is less on technicality, and more on musical expression and dynamics.



here is a song by the almost that almost that incorperates many of the aspects of alternative rock I was speaking about, a catchy anthem like chorus, a simple drum pattern, mostly overdriven chords played by the guitars, and the lead guitar playing more expressive arpeggios with a very expressive, spacey type tone created by alot of reverb and delay



another example here is flyleaf-chasm
this song is a little "heavier" than the first, by that I mean the distortion and gain on the guitars are pushed up higher, the rhythm and lyrics are more agressive, yet it still retains that relatively catchy chorus and lyrical component.



lastly is thrice - in exile
here we see many of the same similarities, an overdriven guitar playing a repeated arpeggio, a catchy chorus, rather simple drum pattern