[Vocals and First-Year Students] 29. Making Songs Three-Dimensional: Genre!

*This content was translated by AI.

Recently, I repeatedly heard similar questions from students practicing different songs in my lesson room.

"What genre is this?"

"I want to know about genre."

"I think I'm singing without really understanding what genre means."

One student was practicing a song influenced by Afrobeats, another was copying an R&B track, and yet another was rehearsing rock music for a performance. Each student had diligently memorized the melody to avoid mistakes in pitch and rhythm. However, the "flavor" of the songs remained flat. There were no specific errors, but the unique atmosphere characteristic of each piece of music was missing.

In such cases, I bring up the topic of genre. "Since this is an R&B song, it would be good to sing with a laid-back rhythm, slightly behind the beat." "Since this song is influenced by Afrobeats, let's not just follow the melody but feel the movement of the rhythm more precisely within the beat." For ballads, I also suggest creating the flow of long phrases rather than articulating each note separately. Slowly, the songs begin to change. Then the students ask, "Ah, so that’s what genre is?" Even with diligent practice, songs sometimes remain flat.

In popular music sheet music commonly used for vocal lessons, melodies, rhythms, and lyrics are typically recorded as the central elements. Sheet music does not capture every expression a singer uses within a single song. In one sense, this is an omission; in another, it is an open space.

Even with the same notes, the song changes completely depending on where accents are placed, how note lengths are adjusted, whether to sing slightly ahead of or behind the beat, how strongly consonants are used, and how vowels are connected. Sounds can be roughened, or breath can be mixed in to create a softer tone. The blank spaces in the sheet music are filled and completed through vocal interpretation.

I consider this process as turning flat melodies into three-dimensional music. If the melody drawn on the sheet music is the basic blueprint, then vocals add articulation such as phrasing, rhythm, diction, dynamics, and tone color to create actual music. Among the many criteria guiding these countless choices, genre is one of the most important. Even with the same melody, the way to keep rhythm, pronunciation, tone color, and weight of sound changes depending on whether it is interpreted as R&B, approached with the grammar of rock or hip-hop, or expressed through the breathing and phrasing of a ballad. Therefore, even if one practices diligently only on melody and pitch, strangely "uncharacteristic" songs may be produced despite having no errors.

So why does each genre develop its own distinct grammar? No one decided on a certain day that R&B must be sung this way or hip-hop performed that way. Genres have formed over long periods within the lives of people who created and enjoyed specific music in particular eras and regions. The history of blues and hip-hop cannot be explained separately from the historical and social experiences of African American communities in the United States. Latin music, too, has developed within the diverse cultures and musical traditions of Latin America and the Caribbean. Country music also grew closely connected to the lives, cultural images, and communities of specific regions in the United States. In this sense, genres sometimes become more than just musical styles; they can represent the identity of a community.

Therefore, when musicians from other cultures borrow expressions from a specific genre, it often brings issues beyond simply introducing new sounds. Understanding and respecting where that music came from and whose experiences and history shaped it is also part of understanding genre. However, genres have not always strictly guarded their boundaries against each other. In fact, the history of popular music is also one where different musics met, influenced each other, and created new styles. The phenomenon we often call "crossover" is one such process. Genres have continuously changed by meeting other genres while maintaining their own roots and identities.

In recent popular music, these boundaries are moving even faster. Within a single song, musical grammars originating from different regions and eras meet, and sometimes several genres intersect within a short time. Especially for vocalists singing K-POP, which actively borrows and combines the grammars of multiple genres, it has become increasingly important to have ears that can understand and distinguish between genres.

So, does studying genre mean singing like an R&B singer, producing sounds like a rock singer, or simply copying representative vocal techniques from specific genres? No, it does not. Genre is closer to grammar for understanding music rather than a fixed formula. Without knowing grammar, it is difficult to construct sentences, but learning the same grammar does not mean everyone writes identical sentences. The same applies to vocals. First, one must understand the grammar of genre and internalize that grammar through ears and body by repeatedly listening to good music. Then, one must be able to independently choose what to take from within it and how to express it. It is not about merely replicating the original singer's phrasing and tone color but understanding why they sang that way and then deciding how to sing it oneself.

I recall again the words the student first said: "I think I don't understand genre well." At first, it seemed like a simple statement meaning one did not know the names or characteristics of genres. But perhaps that question was more fundamental after all: "I think I still don't quite understand how this music speaks."

If you have ever wondered why your singing sounds so flat, let's pause for a moment and stop looking only at the notes on the sheet music. We need to first listen to where the music we sing originated, what rhythms and emotions it holds, and how other songs in that genre speak. Learning the grammar of genre is the process of adding three-dimensional texture to melodies that were placed flat upon the sheet music.

However, the purpose of learning this grammar is not to imitate someone else convincingly. It is to understand the language of that music and then be able to choose one's own expression within it. Only then does a song begin to sound "characteristic of that music" while simultaneously sounding "like oneself."

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*This content was translated by AI.