Brazilian music is famous worldwide — from bossa nova, to choro, to samba.

Bossa is cool, choro is amazing, but my favorite things about samba is that despite being “pop music” it still has complex rhythms and harmonies.

My top favorite thing is the prevalence of the 7 stringed guitar and their use of counterpoints (i.e., parallel melodies).

I love how what (I think) started as guitarists just playing harmonies, turned into them improvising bass lines and counterpoints every once in a while, which eventually became them doing MOSTLY counterpoints and bass lines and barely playing the harmony lmao.

These bass lines and counterpoints, from what I understand, are often times arpeggiations of the chords and so forth, but they add such an amazing effect to the music.

Examples:

  • @BlueSquid0741
    11•2 months ago

    Post-hardcore. Typically 90’s old school like Fugazi and Hot Water Music, and then especially 2010s style “the wave” Touché Amore and La Dispute.

    Not the 2000s style that veered into emo and Metalcore territory. Although there were some fantastic bands around that time that experimented with the classic sound, like Thrice and At The Drive In, and an obviously earlier example of that being Refused.

    The combination of hardcore punk with slow and mid tempo breaks, throw in spoken sections or poetry. If it’s done right it’s just beautiful and makes you feel everything.

    But if it’s done wrong, it’s so bad, don’t even bother. Honestly, for me, there’s so many 2000s-era bands that are unlistenable, and to me don’t even fit the genre as far as what came before and after them. But everything changes and people experiment with different sounds.

    And it’s such a flexible genre, you have bands that take post-hardcore sensibility and turn it into indie rock, like Manchester Orchestra.