What Gives Japanese Rock It's Distinct Sound?

Some Japanese rock music seems to have some distinctive, identifying sound to it.

Perhaps it's the scales they use? Or certain kinds of instruments?

I don't know how many people here are into music theory or whatever, but discuss! Also please let me know I'm not crazy and I'm not the only one who thinks there's a distinct sound.

Here's some examples

I'm not really sure how to answer this. I do know that it sounds way better than what any other music sounds like. I always thought it could be because they are more advanced than we are. Maybe they just know how to make music better. Though, I'm not saying other kinds of music are really bad. Just that to me, visual kei sounds better. It's really just my own opinion. :x

DuckieIsAdorbz said:

I'm not really sure how to answer this. I do know that it sounds way better than what any other music sounds like. I always thought it could be because they are more advanced than we are. Maybe they just know how to make music better. Though, I'm not saying other kinds of music are really bad. Just that to me, visual kei sounds better. It's really just my own opinion. :x

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Yeah it definitely seems that Japanese music has much more complex technical guitar playing in it.

In these cases it might be the difference between using an umbrella term versus using the actual genre of music. If we're comparing the "j-rock" here to rock music we're used to listening to, then yeah, there's bound to be a difference in the sound, because they might not be quite the same thing.

And what I mean by that is: while I can't be bothered to go look up the details for the other two songs, by genre the first band shown as example here is a metal band - and the sounds present in that song are things I've heard in enough metal songs before, mostly power and symphonic metal. Complex guitar solos, same deal. So if it's called rock, it might be "distinctive" compared to other rock songs, but it's not that distinctive overall if you consider the actual genre of the bands.

Still sounds good though, but I'm also a sucker for sounds like that regardless of what they're called.