Vocal And Instrumental: Dissecting Surf Music Closer





                When Dick Dale invented the surf music, it was originally intended to be without vocals and purely an experience of harmonics and guitar. People loved the early stage of surf music because such a technique was particularly new to their ears. Instrumental surf music was all about the simulation of the feel and thrill of the beach, the waves and surfing. It can be characterized by broad whams of reverbs and guitar effects to fully capture the sound of an artistic wave rushing through the summer sea.

Vocal surf music on the other hand is all about still the feel of the waves but on top of the sound of the summer breeze, the vocals added a prose- a narrative to the already rich culture that was portrayed by instrumental surf music. Vocal music was all about telling a story of the summer experiences and the various parties that happened during that time.


                Among the famous people in the field of vocal surf music were the Beach Boys as well as Jan and Dean. They were both popular for telling a story of the summer breeze through the rich lyrics as well as the infusion of the oriental music.

Among the instrumental artists were THE Dick Dale himself, Ventures, and the Del-Tones. All of them collaborated with each other to create the foundation of early surf music. They championed the early system of surf music where it was all about the music and harmonics that brought the people into their feet.

Strange enough, almost all of the artists during this period were never really into surfing. But this was exactly the reason why surf music gained so much traction. It did not matter whether you were a beach-person or someone who really wanted to surf. It never took a surfer in order to appreciate the genre of surf music. Even the artists themselves were not really attached to surfing. However, this did not stop them to gain so much traction and affinity towards the people.


The beauty with surf music was that even if they had different sub-genres, both parties still did their best in uplifting each other’s music. They were game in terms of preaching their music and they even played with each other in different concerts.

As a whole, both genres and types of surf music each had its own way of portraying to the people how good summer is. Each of these types have contributed greatly to the fame of surf music as an institution in the field of music.