Surf Rock

Surf (surf pop, surf music) - American music of the early 60s of the XX century, originally beach music, that is, for resort visitors and especially for surfers. The music is mostly instrumental, the beginning of the surf is Dick Dale’s original guitar style, from which it all began. Originally based on simple cyclic melodic drawings, the surf gradually became more significant musically. Thanks to Dick Dale and The Ventures, surf rock improved and achieved some success in the 1960s. Then followed the years of surf stasis, when even the founders of the genre (including The Beach Boys) departed from surf rock.


However, in the 1990s, surf-revival was born in America. Interest in surf rock has increased significantly: new groups are emerging, old surfers are recording new, excellent sounding albums. Changing the style of music. Some shifts were outlined back in the 1960s, when The Ventures group switched from traditional surf themes (beaches, cars, girls) to space themes - life on other planets, aliens, and so on. It is this element of the surf that was eagerly picked up at once by a number of modern surf groups - Man or Astro-Man?, Los Straitjackets, Shadowy man on a shadowy planet.

Surf rock popularity

This specific instrumental style is widely popular in narrow circles of fans. Sometimes this explains the fact that the style in the 1960s almost did not go beyond the state of California. Surf was also considered to be purely American music, although the English surf team The Surfin’ Lungs is known.

Surf can be divided into several genres - it is surf-rock, classic-surf, and horror-surf, thrash-surf, electronic-surf, and other combinations. Some believe that the surf is unthinkable without a saxophone, others do not represent it without the reverb handle turned out to its maximum. But this is, first of all, guitar music. However, not every guitar instrumental is a surfboard. The surf is dedicated to the themes of the sea, the waves and the sunny beach. The guitar recreates the sound of the sea - the characteristic staccato "to nowhere" and "from nowhere" a la Dick Dale are known to very many. The effect of movement, in addition to staccato, is also created with the help of harmony - the track begins with a chord, and after several losses it seems to return to the beginning. Such “jumps” create the sensation of waves.

In the 1990s, the surf became popular again, and this popularity threatened to overshadow the popularity of the surf of the 1960s. Numerous groups broke through to the indie scene, which gave the surf a wider audience. So, the band Man or Astro-Man? considered to be a significant event also in indie circles. The group adheres to classic surf canons in music, but often experiments with lyrics. The music of the group, essentially instrumental, periodically includes inclusions in the form of recitatives and verses about the life of the Cosmos, the magic of extraterrestrial civilizations.

The 1994 film Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino, had a significant impact on the popularity of the surf. The plot of the film to the surf had nothing to do, but the director put in the film a few surf hits. In many respects thanks to these songs, Tarantino was recognized as the master of the selection of a harmonious sound series for his creations. The film includes songs: Misirlou - Dick Dale, Bustin Surfboards - The Tornadoes, Bullwinkle Part II - The Centurions, Comanche - The Revels. An absolute hit was the composition Surf Rider performed by the group The Lively Ones (the original composition was recorded by the group The Ventures), which plays in the last minutes of the film and credits. All tunes taken by Tarantino come from the 1960s and are absolute hits in the surf world.

Recently, the popularity of surfing has again become the lot of narrow circles, although most of the groups that flashed in the 1990s continue to perform.

The most basic harmony of music for surf can be called the following harmony: Am Am Dm Am Em Dm Am, similar to the classical blues harmony, but in the surf more, as a rule, minor chords.