So the question is "What is Surf Music?"?

The answer is: Good!

…okay: I would say without being too much scientific: Surf Music is instrumental guitar music with a splishy splashy cool feeling! Reverb drenched guitars. Feelings from totally powerful to ultra moody to happy or just supercool. Easy melodies which make you think that you want to hear them again! : )
That`s it.

Twang cheers!

Ralf Kilauea

www.kilaueas.de

https://kilaueas.bandcamp.com/album/touch-my-alien

JakeDobner wrote:

Good music does not contain:

1.) Saxophone

Really?

Pink Floyd - Us and Them, Money
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
David Bowie - Young Americans
King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man
Supertramp - Logical Song
Champs - Tequila

Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley

None of these are good music?

Ironically, it's kind of a fuzzy category. I always figure I'm safer saying I like instrumental rock & roll. It's true, and it's a hell of lot easier to define. Some of it is even surf music. Some surf music may not be instrumental, but it's definitely always the instrumentation and sound that define it. Vocals are usually absent, but the players have never actually been gagged and sometimes they do quite a lot of vocalizing, some of it actual singing.

With apologies to Emilien, I don't think Fender has that much to do with it. It makes the sound a lot easier, of course. And it's cooler than calling surf music the Silvertone sound, which, in the end wouldn't be that accurate anyway. It is the sound, but the sound comes of the guitarists and the recordists and their taste.

Everything today sounds kind of punk, have you noticed? Fortunately it's kind of independent of what makes surf surf.

The drumming is definitely important, but at my (low) level of understanding it's not the "beats," but the style - the use of fills and what parts of the kit get used for what - and the tonal qualities. In a lot of more recent bands the drumming isn't very surfy.

We redefine surf music every time a new band comes along that claims to be playing it all or even just some of the time. I think the whole process of fussy definitions of what it is didn't really take off until John Blair and that generation started to try to define what it was that they liked well enough to revive. In the process they managed to canonize a lot of things the first wave might have excluded on the grounds that the bands were a bunch of non-surfing ho-dads from the wrong high school. The sounds were more important to the second wave than the schools and clothing and lifestyle.

And, of course, they heard with only one ear, an ear raised in a guitar-based milieu.

surf music is to play a sparkle guitar throw a reverb unit and a showman amp and hit that shit as hard as possible......

El Papu & los Fantasticos Reverberantes

Last edited: Oct 07, 2014 17:51:33

Number9 wrote:

1.) Surf Music is not the music that surfers listen to

I am actually surfing and the music related to surfing means a lot to me.
And i'm surely not the only "surfer" that's got a spot on Surf Music.

Jack Johnson is surf music if what I say is not true.

2.) Mentioning surfing/the ocean does not surf music make

Obviously.

Seen Freddie King's 'surf album'? Surf themed album that has nothing to do with surf music. Or the Drums 'Surfing'

3.) Surf Music can not contain lyrics that are sung

That has been debated a lot ;) but i really dig The Sunrays myself.
And would also consider The Beach Boys somewhere in the surf music area.

Yeah, I personally consider the Beach Boys a surf band. I'm really just ruling out bands nowdays being surf and having a lot of vocals.

Surf Music is:

1.) The music associated with surfing in the early-mid-60s

There are people surfing nowadays and currently interested in the vacuity of this lifestyle and actual music.
Then you wrote: "Surf Music doesn't not necessarily need...:
1.) to be an homage to 60s culture/retro shit"
that leaves me wondering.

You missed the words "does not necessarily need to be". Surf music is that music that was associated, at first, with surfing in the early to mid 60s. But you don't need to make it an homage to an era. I've been heavily influenced by all the great surf music but I'm not trying to copy or make an homage. I'm putting my own experiences and taste into what I get out of listening to that music. Music should be timeless, not confined to an era.

2.) Instrumental
3.) Guitar based
4.) Heavily reverbed lead guitar
5.) It will be 90% of the time uptempo(relatively uptempo)

That is your opinion.

I know! But it is the same opinion of 80% of the people on this board.

Surf Music doesn't not necessarily need...:
1.) to be an homage to 60s culture/retro shit

Some word i dislike...

We covered this...

2.) to be influenced by 60s surf bands

Can you actually play "pipeline", my friend ?
I made a statement everyboby gotta know where he/she's coming from.

Yep. It was one of the first songs I ever learned to play on guitar about 15 years ago. My band still covers it.

3.) to follow a specific arrangement(ABABA)

Ali BABA ?

I'm going to presume you are stupid for a second... ABABA is a type of song composition. Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Verse. It's called pop music.

4.) to contain the 'surf' beat

What do you consider a "Surf beat" ?

The surf beat is the surf beat. Double hit on the two, a single hit on the fourt.

Good music does not contain:

1.) Saxophone

Now, we all know.

A jest!

2.) Regurgitated lessons in a nailing the perfect recreation of a certain era/time-frame.

Once again, i believe ...know your roots.
Can you play some Mr.Moto or Intoxica ?

Intoxica, no. Mr. Moto, yes. I've also written what I consider to be surf music. Instead of only playing the classics, I actively participate in furthering the surf legacy.

I often wonder what music would be like if someone had a long time to develop music, from square one... Without "knowing their roots".

IMO.

Some further thoughts on this: A lot of the attempts here to define surf music center on the musical or sonic characteristics of it, which brings with it two problems.

The first problem is, that all of the elements of first wave surf music was there before the "idea" of surf music or the name: There was instrumental guitar centered rock'n'roll (most notably the Fireballs and the Ventures), there was reverb (Duane Eddy), mediterranean/oriental scales in American music (John Coltrane's album "Olé" from 1961), the surf reference in titles (Art Pepper, Bud Shank) and so on. And there are of course even surfbands that don't employ most of these characteristics, most notably the Belairs, who didn't use reverb, had no oriental scales and no reference to surfing in their tunes what so ever.

Jake mentioned two things above that seem to contradivt each other, but are in my eyes the key to understand, what surf music actually is:

Surf Music is: The music associated with surfing in the early-mid-60s.

As to the account of Paul Johnson about the origins of surf music, he himself had no idea, that he was playing surf music until he was told he did by a local surf kid. The music (instrumental rock'n'roll) came first, the name for it came later, as a certain group of people claimed it as their own. Certain stories by Dick Dale can be interpreted in the same way: He was given the title "king of the surf guitar" by the surfers, one of whom also provided the title for his first surf tune (Let's go trippin).

However at some point surfers (pretty much like everybody else) stopped listening to this music, or as Jake would say:

Surf Music is not the music that surfers listen to.

In our contemporary world the reference to surfing is in a way a leftover from the past: Most of the surfers do not claim the music we call surf music as theirs anymore, but we continue to call it surf music, because it inspired a lot of titles for great tunes and provides a nice image to the music.

So, in consequence, I would say my definition of surf music is: a form of (mostly) instrumental, guitar-driven rock'n'roll that was originally associated with surfing in the 60s.

The second, more general problem is that I don't think that there is a clear definition based on the musical charecteristics of any genre, that does not exclude certain tunes or musicians, which are considered part of the canon by most fans of the genre. As an example: What exactly is this music called jazz? Is there a possible definition for a genre that encompasses music as different as Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew"?

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!

Last edited: Oct 08, 2014 06:14:08

JakeDobner wrote:

Good music does not contain:

1.) Saxophone

What's wrong with the sax? It is serpently not as iconic as the guitar in surf music, but it deserves it's place in this genre. Think "Surf Rider" by The Lively Ones... surf doesn't get much better than that.

Slick

East Coast Executive Director Of The Society Of Incompleted Projects

surf music is what I listen to, when not listening to 10 other kinds of music I like.

Jeff(bigtikidude)