Musicmap is a free website where you can explore the genealogy of all the major music genres and their sub-genres. The map basically keeps the music styles that existed from 1880’s at the top in circles and tumbles them down into more diverse music genres that have developed throughout the years till now. The genres are laid out into a spectrum of colors where a certain group of colors (say the red-yellow family) represent the converging circles of music (Heavy Industrial music to Rock and Metal). As the colors change, the style also starts to change. The sub genres marked within the different colored strips are connected with other genre/sub-genres that they share musical style with.
This is a complex and awesome map for music lovers to check out the history of their favorite music. As a music lover myself, I was excited to try each and every feature of this map. Each genre also gives detailed facts about itself along with popular songs that belong to that genre. This online web application can be used to discover music that you haven’t yet heard of. Exploring Musicmap is a must.
To discover more about your favorite music genre, you can check out Tubeats. Tubeats is a free online music video player that will help you discover more bands and artists from your music taste.
So let’s explore the world of music with Musicmap!
How to use Musicmap
You might feel confused the first time you look at Musicmap with all the lines, colors, grids and circles. In fact, it’s simple but just a little condensed. At the top are musical styles in circles that were identified in the 1800’s. They spawn out different genres that later develop into various other genres as time passes. On the left side of the interface is a panel where you can check out the introduction and abstract of Musicmap. The legend of the map is available for toggling too. Users can navigate to a specific genre and also search for a genre with Navigate and Search functions respectively.
Many of you might know I love the Metal genre, after reading a couple of my articles. So here, I’ll show you how Death Metal came into existence with the help of Musicmap. Let’s go to the top in 1880’s. Folk music was very much popular these days and it helped in development of blues.
Down in the timeline, Blues was diversified into many sub genres which included British Blues and Blues Rock in the mid-1960’s as it is shown in Musicmap:
This laid the foundation of Classical Metal which featured bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. When you hover over a genre, you’ll find the connecting lines highlighted for better visibility:
You can see Classical Metal gives birth to Thrash Metal and Extreme Metal. And finally, Extreme Metal in turn begets Death Metal.
When I clicked Death Metal, I found a pleasant surprise. Along with a detailed article about Death Metal, I also found a short YouTube playlist where I could check out some popular songs from the genre. Awesome isn’t it!
Final Words
Musicmap is an awesome tool for music lovers. I definitely urge you all to check it out and discover music genres proximate to your favorite music genre. The only thing that I found troublesome was the inability to scroll down some of the windows in this tool to read the entire content. I award Musicmap 5 stars for its awesomeness.
Try Musicmap here.
