Knowra Easy listening Easy listening Easy listening is a popular music style built around accessible melodies, smooth vocals, and restrained arrangements. It often adapts songs from pop standards, film, and Broadway for relaxed listening.
Muzak : A brand and later a generic term for recorded background music distributed to commercial spaces. Both favor unobtrusive sound, but easy listening is a music style rather than a background-music service.
Big band : An ensemble-based jazz tradition using large groups of brass, woodwind, and rhythm instruments. Big-band orchestration and its popular-song repertoire helped establish easy listening's polished sound.
Adult contemporary music : A radio and chart category for accessible pop music aimed primarily at adult audiences. Adult contemporary radio inherited some easy listening's emphasis on melodic, polished songs.
Rock music : A popular-music family built around amplified instruments, strong rhythms, and varied song forms. Rock's emphasis on rhythmic impact and amplified performance contrasts with easy listening's restraint.
Orchestral pop : Popular song arranged with orchestral instruments or techniques, often including strings and brass. Its lush arrangements overlap with easy listening while retaining a stronger pop-song focus.
Tin Pan Alley : The New York music-publishing district and songwriting industry that shaped American popular song from the late nineteenth century onward. Its standards became a deep source of songs for easy-listening singers and arrangers.
Elevator music : Background music played in public spaces such as elevators, hotels, and offices. Easy-listening recordings were often adapted or selected for this unobtrusive setting.
Lounge music : A broad popular-music category associated with relaxed settings, intimate performance, and nightclub or cocktail-bar atmospheres. Lounge music overlaps in setting but often signals a performance mood rather than a specific arrangement style.
Vocal pop : Popular music centered on lead singing, clear melodies, and accessible song forms. Many easy-listening recordings use vocal-pop conventions and polished lead performances.
Nelson Riddle : American arranger and composer known for orchestral arrangements for Frank Sinatra and other popular singers. His sophisticated, carefully controlled arrangements exemplify a sound central to easy listening.
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