The first genre of rock music to gain international popularity in the mid-1950s was rock ‘n’ roll (rock and roll, from rock and roll, “to swing and spin”). Rock ‘n’ roll is primarily dance music. It is a combination of simplified and fast-paced rhythm and blues with country music.
In the late 50s, England, where the rock ‘n’ roll craze came from the United States, had its own performers whose music the British called big beat, or simply beat. The most prominent representatives of this trend are the Beatles.
Blues rock, which was formed in the second half of the 60s, is a direct continuation of rhythm and blues, rock and roll and British blues. All styles of rock combine the features of blues rock with different types of musical culture – folk (folk rock), classical music (art rock), jazz (jazz rock), etc.
At the turn of the 60s and 70s, the hardest and most powerful genre of rock music, which required virtuoso performance techniques, emerged – hard rock (hard rock, from hard – “tough”, “heavy” and rock). The British bands Led Zeppelin, Deep Purpule, Uriah Heep, and Black Sabbath are considered to be the creators of hard rock.
A group of musicians who play rock music most often calls themselves a rock band or just a band. The repertoire is usually composed by the band members themselves.
As a rule, rock musicians use electric instruments, but rock can be acoustic, synthesized, and even purely vocal. The instruments of a rock band usually include one or two electric guitars, a rhythm section (bass guitar and drum kit); sometimes there are keyboards in the form of a piano, electric organ, or synthesizer.
To sound a rock band at a concert or rehearsal, you need technical devices. Microphones convert voices and drum sounds for further amplification. A mixing console allows you to balance the sound of vocals and individual instruments in terms of volume and timbre.
The amplifiers produce the sound of the required volume and transmit the total signal from the console to the speaker system.
In addition to the speakers of the speaker system directed into the hall (portals), small speakers (monitors) are used, which are located on the stage to allow musicians to hear each other and themselves. There is also a combo on the stage – an amplifier and a speaker combined in one case, which are designed to convert and amplify the sound of individual electric instruments (guitar, bass guitar or synthesizer).