The Rock Instrumentarium

The essence of quality in rock terms is to be found in the interaction of a guitar, a bass, and drums.

There is an ideological cast to the instrumentation that forms the kernel of a rock band. Joe Carducci, writing in 1990 and from a position deeply infused with his experience working for one of the most influential independent music labels of the foregoing era—SST Records—sought to boil the rock form down to a set of core ingredients. Carducci’s assertion is representative of a view that has held strong sway in many quarters where rock is perceived to be an entity distinct from “pop” —whether that be 1960s psychedelia, 1980s hardcore, or 1990s grunge. Carducci is clear that his definition of “rock” is not to be confused with “rock and roll” (or rock ‘n’ roll), the unruly transitional form that emerged some time during the first decade after the Second World War. Rock ‘n’ roll admitted more sounds, so the thinking goes, because it was not yet defined and so was still working through the sources and influences that informed it—jump blues, western swing, honky-tonk, mambo, etc. Rock was a more self-conscious form within which the aesthetic orientation became more codified. That Carducci specifies not just a set of instruments but a number of players—a guitar, a bass, and drums—is integral to this outlook. The ideal type of the rock band is here construed as three individuals who come together to play collectively while maintaining their individuality, with two of those players (the bass and drums) working to create a solid foundation and one of those players given more agency to move freely within and on top of the support structure created by the others...