Penny for your Genre?

What defines a Genre of music? Is it the Rhythm? The tempo? Could it be the instrumentation or the composition? Maybe it's the sound in general?

I listen to a lot of different music, take it from the size of my collection. I'm now over 56,000 songs in my library and it will continue to grow as long as I keep hearing things I like. Everything from Bluegrass, Classical, various electronic sub-genres and many instrumental and vocal genres as well as Classic Rock and Hip Hop. Music isn't just poetry with song, it's also art in sound. It's something that you feel, it stirs up emotions and feelings inside of you. If it doesn't, well then maybe you aren't at the same wavelength as I am when it comes to it.

Take Dubstep for example. There's a few different variations of it. Most describe it as "Garbage Disposal" music. Yes, there is some that can be so repetitive and boring that it makes you want to jump off a high rise to end your sorrows. But this goes for any other genre really. I prefer listening to the adrenaline pumping variations of it. The deep dark bass and sounds to it.

Music is dependent on my mood as well. Say I'm at the gym for instance (Yeah, I need to go back). If I'm doing cardio, I need to have something upbeat and positive like a good Dance, Progressive House or even Break Beat playlist going. If I'm going to lift weights, I need something that will make me feel that rush of a faux rage. Drum & Bass, Dubstep or Heavy Metal come to mind.

When you break down the music, you have a lot of varied parts of the song that make up the class or genre. Hip Hop is one genre that if you ask me, has been slowly ruined. Not so much because of the words or the lifestyle todays so-called rappers are living. It's down to one thing for me, Production Value. When someone like Dr. Dre puts a track together, the drums are crisp, clean and make perfect sense with the rest of the background. He puts detail into his songs that we take for granted. If you listen to some of the modern stuff, they just throw the same samples (a cheap snare, shitty and unclean basslines that hardly make sense) with poor thought put into the lyrics or even into the rhythm of the song. Hip Hop was an expression that made you move. Now it makes you want to live a lifestyle that is faked and staged more now than any reality show.

Maybe I think too much about all this, but it's what I do. I can listen to the many layers of a song or just bob my head back and forth because it just makes me do that with a smile. Sometimes I even still grind my teeth to some music.