Excellent question. There are several elements all working together that shape music into specific styles. The most obvious one to our ears is the instrumentation itself.

For example, if you a take a rock song and rearrange it for a string quartet, the music will now take on a strongly classical flavor. You could also take that same piece of music and rearrange it for the accordion, acoustic bass and drum set and it will sound like polka music. And you could also take that same piece and make it sound jazzy by using jazz related instruments such as the vibraphone and saxophone.

So the first thing the ear picks up on is the instrumentation itself. But to really make the music sound authentic to a specific style, you also need to focus on other elements such as tempo, meter, harmony and melody. For example, to make your rock song sound a little more like polka music, you might have to speed up the tempo a little to give it that fun polka feel. And if you want to rearrange that song to have a jazz flavor, you might want to adjust the meter of your music so that it’s in a swing or triplet feel.

Then there’s the issue of harmony. To give a piece of music an authentic jazz feel, you will want to use jazz harmonies like the Major 7th chord, as well as the 9th, 11th and 13th chords. Jazz also uses a technique called “chord substitutions” that help color your harmonies in a very cool way. For example, in pop music, if you’re in the key of C and are playing the tonic chord and want to go to the IV chord – the F chord – you might insert a C7 chord to help emphasize the move to the F chord. But in jazz, you would substitute the bass note of the C7 chord with the note F#, and remove the note G in that chord. So instead of a C chord to a C7 chord to an F chord, you would use a C chord to a C7 chord with an F# bass (and no G note) to an F chord. If you try this, you will immediately hear that the music sounds more jazzy.

And then there’s the issue of melody. Since most pop melodies are based on scales, you would use different scales to create the melodies in various moods and styles. For example, the natural minor scale is very effective for sad ballads. The pentatonic scale is very effective for rock songs as well as “world music”. The diminished scale can also help color your music with an exotic flavor.

I would strongly recommend you check out the Secret Composer software where we teach you the various styles that can be created by using different scales, harmonies, rhythms and orchestration. You also asked if different styles are based on different chord progressions. I think you would really enjoy the chapter called “13 Lucky Chord Progressions” where we demonstrate how chord progressions are used in several varying styles.

As you can see, there is no simple answer to your question. But the more knowledge you have about music, the easier it will be for you to compose in any style of music you desire.

Hope that helps!

- Gary