Definitive Guide to Music Types & Styles

The Guide to Music Types & Styles is an essential reference guide for all music fans. Written by a distinguished team of music journalists, musicologists and musicians, it offers up-to-date, comprehensive and accessible introductions to Rock, Pop, Jazz, Folk, Blues, Country, Classical, Electronic, Dance, Reggae, Gospel, Hip Hop & Rap, Soul & R&B, World, Soundtrack & Theatre, and Popular & Novelty.

Each chapter contains sections focusing on sub-genres of the styles, such Eighties Pop, Latin Jazz and Musical Theatre, each with a four-bar musical example and a list of leading exponents. With information on more than 12,000 musicians, performers, composers and songwriters, and an Instruments’ Glossary, this is the one guide that everyone passionate about music should own.

Paul Du Noyer (founding editor) has written about music for over 30 years, beginning as a reporter on the NME, editing Q magazine, launching Mojo and being an associate editor of Word. With hundreds of interviews to his credit, he’s been face-to-face with legends such as Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie. His books include We All Shine On, about the songs of John Lennon.

Sir George Martin (Foreword, 1926–2016) produced more than 700 recordings in a 50-year career that encompassed a wide range of musical genres – jazz, rock, classical, comedy and film soundtracks, and an unprecedented 30 No. 1 Beatles and post-Beatles hits. Knighted in 1996, and recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys in the same year, George Martin was arguably the most influential and prolific record producer in history.

Stanley Sadie (contributing editor and author) was music critic for The Times for 17 years, editor of The Musical Times for 20 years and music consultant to the television series Man and Music, and from 1970 worked as Editor of the standard reference work, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980, new edition 2000) as well as its associated dictionaries, on instruments, opera and American music. He wrote extensively on Mozart and Handel and was president of the Royal Musical Association (1989–94) and the International Musicological Society (1992–97). He was appointed CBE in 1982.