Different music genres

There are many different genres of music throughout the world, many being more dominant than others. As you can see from the mind map which I have created below, each genre also includes a selection of sub-genres although these are less commonly used to describe a piece of music. Before I can begin planning my music video I need to choose a song and understand what genre that song falls under. This will allow me to research the codes and conventions of music videos related to that genre and therefore I can produce a suitable music video which would appeal to the predicted target audience. This information will be a lot easier to attain for certain genres such as R&B as this type of music video is very common and the public expect to see particular things from both male and females while there should also be some form of sex appeal to help sell the music. This varies once more with dance/ hip-hop genres as a lot of fast paced shots and bright flashing images/colours are used to make the video seem very upbeat and happy like the music. Although I have included a wide range of genres, there are also less common genres not included. Examples of these include screamo, trance and dance.

The other mind-map included in this post shows the main genres with examples of artists/bands which cover that type of music. This is crucial when deciding what song to cover as many artists/bands stick to one particular genre and I will need to understand what particular genre I am dealing with before beginning the planning stages of my video. As you can see from this particular mind map, there is a larger selection of different genres, especially seeing there was more room on the page. This is because after considering the genres included on the last mind-map, I have decided that I would be interested in other options as these will provide me with more of a challenge than carrying out the most popular music videos.

By producing these two mind maps it has opened up many new opportunities as I was not aware that there were so many different types of genres and sub genres. This will lead me to look at the conventions of each genre as I need to consider the resources available to me and whether particular genres are suitable for this project.  It has also allowed me to consider some of my more favourite artists as well as showing me that there are some less famous artists which I could use for my musical production.