Monday 9 April 2012

Dividing Up The Pie

I was playing around with my music map, figuring out where to locate my favourite artists. Came up with this:
Things get a little crowded in the centre, which makes sense. Given my assertion that psychedelic has a dose of Classical, I'd like Cream to be more to the left. And, given Gilmour's guitar playing, I'd like Pink Floyd to be more to the right, touching the Blues.

The Rock circle is definitely the busiest. Those that touch the circle but are partially outside make sense to me (e.g. Eagles being part Rock, part Country - as compared to Buddy Holly who is Rock but you can hear the Country influence.

It was easy to put Petty and Young at the confluence of Folk Rock and Country Rock. On the other hand, I confess that the placement of Springsteen was purely arbitrary.

The model breaks down for some artists. Dylan has a heavy Blues influence, and Zeppelin was pretty good at Folk, but I don't have Blues and Folk overlapping. CCR and The Beatles both need to touch the R&B circle but I couldn't do that without giving up something else.

Of course the best bands defy categorization, and cover more territory than I was able to allocate.

One nice bit of foresight (if foresight can be accidental) was the little blank space just north of Rock centre where you could say the influences where everything and nothing. Good place to put the most versatile - and unique - bands, isn't it? And those would be The Beatles and The Stones.



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