Theme: Debates- What music is better: rock music or pop music?

Aims: develop skills of dialogue speech;

  develop the ability to comparison, inference, synthesis, analysis, logic;

  develop the skills to express their attitude to the matter, to find out and discuss the opinions and attitudes of the interlocutor to that question.

Aims: develop skills of dialogue speech;

  develop the ability to comparison, inference, synthesis, analysis, logic;

  develop the skills to express their attitude to the matter, to find out and discuss the opinions and attitudes of the interlocutor to that question.

2) The main part. Debate Procedure

- Let me open the debate. The floor is given to the first speaker of Proposers. Time: 4 minutes.

1. Proposer 1

Good morning, Honorable Jury, Time-Keeper. Good morning, dear colleagues.

Let me introduce myself and my team. I am P1, the first speaker. The second speaker in our team is P2. And the third speaker is P3.

Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in 1950s America and developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and later, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States.

It has its roots in 1940s' and 1950s' rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources.

Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.

The sound of rock is traditionally centered around the electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularization of rock and roll.  The sound of an electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by an electric bass guitar pioneered in jazz music in the same era, and percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals.  This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of others, particularly keyboards such as the piano, Hammond organ and synthesizers. 

A group of musicians performing rock music is termed a rock band or rock group and typically consists of between two and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer and occasionally that of keyboard player or other instrumentalist.

Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies are often derived from older musical modes, including the Dorian and Mixolydian, as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Rock songs from the mid-1960s onwards often used the verse-chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition.

The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country and western. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.

Time-Keeper: Your time is over. Thank you. Now the floor is given to the second team. Would you like to take time-out to discuss questions to the speaker?

2. Opposer 3

- Would you answer some questions?

Proposer 1: Thank you for your questions. I try to answer them.

Thank you. The floor is given to Opposers.

3. Opposer 1

Good morning.

I’d like to introduce myself and our team. I’m O1, the first speaker. This is O2, the second speaker and O3 is our third speaker.

We agree with the statements given by the speaker P1. But we can’t agree with the motion of the debate.

Pop music is better than rock music.

Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is a genre of popular music which originated in its modern form in the 1950s, deriving from rock and roll. The terms popular music and pop music are often used interchangeably, even though the former is a description of music which is popular (and can include any style), whilst the latter is a specific genre containing qualities of mass appeal.

 As a genre, pop music is very eclectic, often borrowing elements from other styles including urban, dance, rock, Latin and country; nonetheless, there are core elements which define pop. Such include generally short-to-medium length songs, written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure), as well as the common employment of repeated choruses, melodic tunes, and catchy hooks.

So-called "pure pop" music, such as power pop, features all these elements, using electric guitars, drums and bass for instrumentation; in the case of such music, the main goal is usually that of being pleasurable to listen to, rather than having much artistic depth. Pop music is generally thought of as a genre which is commercially recorded and desires to have a mass audience appea.

Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre:

an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology

an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities  an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance.

 A tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments.

 much pop music is intended to encourage dancing, or it uses dance-oriented beats or rhythms.

The main medium of pop music is the song, often between two and a half and three and a half minutes in length, generally marked by a consistent and noticeable rhythmic element, a mainstream style and a simple traditional structure.  Common variants include the verse-chorus form and the thirty-two-bar form, with a focus on melodies and catchy hooks, and a chorus that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and harmonically with the verse. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment. The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions.

Harmony in pop music is often "that of classical European tonality, only more simple-minded." Clichés include the barbershop harmony (i.e. moving from a secondary dominant harmony to a dominant harmony, and then to the tonic) and blues scale-influenced harmony. There was a lessening of the influence of traditional views of the circle of fifths between the mid-1950s and the late 70's, including less predominance for the dominant function. 

The term "pop song" is first recorded as being used in 1926, in the sense of a piece of music "having popular appeal". Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music.

 It has also made use of technological innovation. In the 1940s improved microphone design allowed a more intimate singing style and ten or twenty years later inexpensive and more durable 45 r.p.m. records for singles "revolutionized the manner in which pop has been disseminated" and helped to move pop music to ‘a record/radio/film star system’. Another technological change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s; with televised performances, "pop stars had to have a visual presence". In the 1960s, the introduction of inexpensive, portable transistor radios meant that teenagers could listen to music outside of the home. Multi-track recording (from the 1960s); and digital sampling (from the 1980s) have also been utilized as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music. By the early 1980s, the promotion of pop music had been greatly affected by the rise of Music Television channels like MTV, which "favoured those artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna who had a strong visual appeal".

Thank you. The floor is given to the Proposers. Would you like to take time out? If yes, you can use 2 minutes to consult each other.

4. Proposer 3

The speaker tried to change our minds saying …

But I’d like to hear the answers to the following questions. (Proposer 3 asks questions)

Opposer 1 answers them.      

3)Conclusion

Please, vote for the decision.

Homework - preparing for new debates: Why Is Smoking Good or Bad  For You?