Acoustic rock...?

Most of the musical genres that feature guitar are pretty well defined, meaning everyone knows what you’re talking about when you reference them. But I still don’t really know what “acoustic rock” means. I’ve only ever heard it described as the basic set up - electric guitar, bass, drums - plus a steel string flattop. Is there a better definition?

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The instrumentation doesn’t really define the genre. I mean, those instruments together can be heard on everything from Elvis to Led Zeppelin to Shania Twain to the Goo Goo Dolls to Avenged Sevenfold to Taylor Swift. Jazz, Rock, Metal, Pop, Country and everything in between. That instrumentation pretty much spans all styles of music for the last 80 years. Do you have a specific example of the style of music you’re talking about?

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Acoustic rock is more of a radio format. Genres are movements in music, for example country or metal. If you’re a dork you can break down genres to subgenres, for example bluegrass or speed metal (although I do think that is a move towards thinking about music more like a record collector rather than a musician)

Genres are like the names of the sections in a record store. Radio formats are more just mishmashes of different musical movements that are “inoffensive in a uniform way” (I actually really like this BS definition: I think it is probably pretty close to how radio programmers actually think about it). Acoustic rock is music, mostly from the 70’s and 90’s, with prominent acoustic guitars. It’s like the radio format AOR but there’s always got to be an acoustic guitar

TLDR : Acoustic rock doesn’t describe a unique movement in music so I would not call it a genre, but it is used to describe a radio format that is just classic rock with acoustic guitars leaning slightly towards the mellow side, but not as mellow as something like the radio formats Singer-Songwriter it Lite Rock.

PS
I implied that musicians name genres and radio programmers name radio formats. That’s not exactly true. For example, RnB was first a radio format that just meant “black music that is fun and easy to move to for white kids.” The people involved with the actual music production usually said they were making blues or rock and roll. Then, in the 60’s, The Rolling Stones and The Who were called RnB (I think partly because they were incorporating a little gospel and soul into their rock and roll much like a lot of the black artists, but I think it was also to give those white artists a little bit of credibility and implied blackness). But here’s the twist! Nowadays, as I’m sure you know, musicians do call what they’re making RnB! For example, that late '90s Soulquarian stuff was referred to as RnB by ?uestlove and D’Angelo etc. Stuff like Usher, R Kelly etc. Marvin Gaye and Prince were both pretty pivotal in the shift of how the term r&b is used but I’m bored now and I’ve already wrote way too much so I’ma stop

Enough! Or too much!

Right. Though I guess I thought there was something people were commonly identifying as ‘acoustic rock,’ and that it probably had some defining characteristics that include instrumentation.

Imnobedhead’s comment is helpful - distinguish between genre and format. The latter is a way to package and sell. I do think that formats can be useful ways of thinking about music, though many artists seem pretty uncomfortable with those labels.

Maybe putting too sharp a definition on it is futile. But if classic rock, metal, etc. completely defied definition, it would frustrate conversation about them, you know?

Good rule of thumb but there are exceptions: gypsy jazz comes to mind for example

True! Although, even gypsy jazz isn’t entirely defined by the instrumentation. It’s not very common, but there are instances when a mandolin or an accordion are the melody instrument in gypsy jazz rather than a guitar. Similarly, rock music is most typically associated with guitar, bass and drums, but Kansas had a violin, Jethro Tull had a flute and the Doors had a keyboard handling the bass part.

I think every genre has its most common instrumentation. My point was only that just because the music contains electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums and bass doesn’t necessarily mean it is within the genre (or format) of “Acoustic Rock”.

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True enough. And that’s important to always have in mind. When A overlaps B, not everything within B will also be A. But…

Guess I’m really asking, is there enough commonality between bands/albums/songs people refer to as “acoustic rock” to create at least a loose definition? (And would that definition be something like: ‘electric guitar, bass and drums with at least a noticeable, sometimes prominent, dash of notes played on acoustic guitar’…?)

Acoustic rock is what I was playing when I had no electric guitar but I pretended that I had ))

From a more technical point of view all those ‘unplugged’ versions of different rock bands could be considered as acostic rock… I guess…

Also an example of acoustic metal from Nik Nokturnal ))

Also wonderful remix of Gnarls Barkley’s song from Don Ross. Though people don’t call it ‘rock’ for me it has that rock-ish sound

Yeah, those are great, and probably both qualify.

Ummm…that cover of Crazy is amazing! Maybe I should stop wasting my time trying to shred and go all in with something like this…sort of capitalizing on what comes naturally to me with my classical training but still getting to satisfy my rock upbringing :slight_smile: Thanks a lot for sharing this!