Music

There are so many different genres of music that it can be difficult to focus on one. There are also many different ways of obtaining and experiencing music that it can be difficult to escape it.

We could listen to rock, but then rock itself has a wide range of sub genres such as punk, prog, grunge, metal, indie and pop rock. It means that bands are diverse and can range from the Sex Pistols to McFly, from Pink Floyd to The Kinks or from Nirvana to Iron Maiden and everything in between. There are also many ways to enjoy it. We could go to live shows in arenas and theatres across the country or we could go to festivals like Glastonbury, Leeds, Reading, T in the Park, the V Festival, Lattitude, Oxegen (Ireland) or Download. Then there are all of the record shops selling CDs and vinyls as well as outlets online that allow us to buy and download mp3s to play on our computer or our mp3 player on the go.

But there are other genres. What about pop music, the kind of music we hear on the radio and in the charts? We could hear Britney Spears, The Sugababes, Girls Aloud, Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke, Will Young, Take That, Madonna, Michael Jackson or Westlife. And just as with rock music there are many ways to hear these artists, from arenas and theatres across the country to festivals like Glastonbury.

Then there are genres like classical music, which we can hear from classical orchestras all over the country such as the London Symphony Orchestra or the London Philharmonic Orchestra where up to a hundred people play and make up sections like the brass, woodwind, strings and the percussion. We can still enjoy numbers written by classical composers like Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky and hear them in classical music halls all over the United Kingdom.

Then there are genres like hip hop and rap with artists like Dizzee Rascal, Jay Z and P Diddy along with reggae artists like Bob Marley and Europop like the Vengaboys.

Music comes in all shapes and sizes. We listen to it through our whole lives and from an early age we are often encouraged to learn it and play the instruments ourselves. There is a world of music out there to be enjoyed.