My dad and I were talking in the car about “the creativity of people” and how they never seem to run out of new genres of music. I also had this thought before, so I decided to make this scientific.

I’m going to judge music types off of three things:

melody presence: how much melody is present

drum/beat presence: how much drum/beat is present

and lyrics: how much lyrics there are

This is technically a three-dimensional grid of possibilities, so I’m going to try to nest some lists.

Top is: drum/beat presence

Side is: melody presence

Inside lists are: lyrics (in the form: high, medium, low)


- - - high medium low
high pop, heavy metal, swing? pop?, electronic music, lo-fi & swing? soft rock, ???, classical
medium rap + pop, pop, easy listening? vocal & hip hop, blues, k-pop, jazz & dance band musical theatre, folk, ragtime
low rap, rap, garageband beat maker rock, k-pop?, ??? not a song

Actually, it looks pretty filled out. Just saying, I don’t know much about music theory (is that a thing?), so I’m probably missing a lot of things and placing a bunch of the things in the wrong places.

The choices visible here are:

low beat, high melody, medium lyrics and medium beat, low melody, no lyrics

If you want to pioneer a new music age, maybe try those choices!