Learn English – Word for the opposite of electronic music

antonymsmusic

I'm looking for a word to distinguish electronic music from non-electronic music. I'd like to categorize into these two terms and I am aware that acoustic music or maybe even analog music might be the first things that come up everybody's mind.

However, if music is categorized into electronic and acoustic music, where do I put Rock songs? I mean they are not electronic in terms of Techno, Dubstep, House etc., but they are also not acoustic like a String Orchestra or a Piano song, since acoustic means without electronic amplification.

What would you suggest? Will I need more categories to cover everything? Or would you still put Rock music into one of the two given categories without question? If so, why?

Edit: To avoid confusion I'd like to add that my task is to categorize full songs by their genres and group them into the 2 mentioned categories. Although a Techno song may have an acoustic guitar in it, the song would still be classified to the electronic category of course. Now all I need is the right word for the opposite of electronic music and electronic genres, or let's call them digitally produced music maybe. So this other category should contain acoustic guitar songs, Rock music, piano songs, orchestra songs, big band melodies etc. I hope this specifies my needs better.

Best Answer

Spotify has a category called Acoustic Rock. (Amazon Music also has this category.)

Guitar World has an article entitled The 25 Greatest Acoustic Songs in Hard Rock.

EDIT Note that the songs mentioned in the "25 Greatest Acoustic Songs in Hard Rock" include Stairway to Heaven (and many others), which has a distinct minority of "acoustic song." The OP might consider a techno song with acoustic guitar to simply be techno. /edit

You could distinguish your electronic / non-electronic dichotomy as:

Rock / Acoustic Rock

or

Hard Rock / Acoustic Rock

EDIT The Beatles are, by definition, Rock. But how would you classify the track Blackbird (on the White Album)? It consists of acoustic guitar and a single vocal. I think it would be natural to categorize the entire album as Rock, including "Blackbird." If the OP requires the precision to call that track Acoustic Rock or Soft Rock or even Folk, then the OP will need the additional categories. /edit

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