Around the Alphabet in 26 Musical Genres

What's This?

By Hannah Orenstein2013-07-17 19:01:26 UTC

What's the point of being insanely musically gifted if you don't have a little fun with your talents? Music producers Andrew Huang and Dave Brown collaborated to create a song encompassing 26 genres in alphabetical order.

The song spans from ambient to zouk, stopping along the way to feature grunge, K-pop, and reggae. Despite the rapid changes in instruments and lyrics, a chord progression links each genre's 10-second clip together. A label in the lower right-hand corner of the screen indicates which genre you're currently listening to, making the video a cool, compact musical education.

The behind-the-scenes video demonstrates the duo's incredible wealth of knowledge about music. It also shows they're up for anything — just because they aren't familiar with the musical stylings of quan ho, a Vietnamese genre of folk music, doesn't mean they shy away from it. They perform it with gusto, including Vietnamese-inspired costumes and instruments.

Fans of the song have requested full versions of each genre's clip. Huang and Brown plan to develop a few of the sampled genres into full-length songs. (Comment here to vote for your favorite.)