Rockpedia
Rock branch Full entry · 1961

Surf rock

Emerged 1961 Origin California, USA Subgenres — Vocals Instrumental
Heaviness
2
Speed
6
Melody
9

Instrumental. Usually no vocals at all.

In short

Instrumental, drenched in tank reverb, with fast tremolo picking. The sound of the Californian coast, later recycled by punk and by Tarantino.

How it sounds

  • Fender tank reverb dialled almost to maximum — the wet sound is mandatory.
  • Fast tremolo picking on a single note, a technique Dick Dale took from his family's Lebanese music.
  • Almost always instrumental; where there are vocals, they are Beach Boys-style harmonies.

Hear what that means

Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. 1 of 3 is cued to a second read from the upload's own tracklist.

The specifics

Tempo
160-200 bpm
Song length
2-3 min
Tuning
E standard with very heavy strings, through a Fender amplifier's built-in spring reverb turned high — a physical spring in a tray, which is why the sound cannot be cleanly imitated digitally.
Production
Wet. The reverb is the record: everything is drenched, the guitar is close-miked and bright, and the arrangements are built to leave room for it.
Written about
None — the genre is overwhelmingly instrumental, Surfing, by title only, The Middle East, via Dick Dale's Lebanese family

What each part is doing

  • Guitar Fast alternate-picked single notes on the low strings, using the wet reverb and a heavy pick attack. Dick Dale played left-handed on a right-handed guitar without restringing it, which is part of why his phrasing is unusual.
  • Reverb Effectively an instrument. The Fender outboard unit was designed for this music and the genre is inseparable from it.
  • Bass Simple and driving, holding a shuffle or a straight eight under a very busy guitar.
  • Drums Heavy on the toms and the ride, with a machine-gun snare figure that is the genre's other signature.
  • Saxophone On the vocal-adjacent wing, carrying the melody's second half — a hangover from the rock and roll the genre grew out of.

What it isn't

That the Beach Boys are surf rock. They are surf pop — vocal harmony records about surfing — and the instrumental genre they are filed beside is a different thing: Dick Dale and the Ventures made fast, wet, wordless guitar records, and the two only share a subject and a decade. The confusion has cost the instrumental wing a great deal of its due.

Told apart from

  • Rock and roll Surf takes rock and roll's guitar and removes the singer, replacing the vocal melody with a reverb-drenched lead line.
  • Garage rock Garage bands and surf bands shared equipment, venues and frequently members. Garage kept the singer and lost the technique.
  • Psychedelic rock Several surf bands turned psychedelic in 1966. The reverb stayed and the tempo dropped.
  • Space rock Space rock inherits the idea of a guitar treated with effects into a wash rather than played as a lead, at much slower tempos.

The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.

History

Dick Dale played halls in Balboa for surfers and wanted his guitar to sound like a wave. Fender built him amplifiers specifically to survive his volume. The genre vanished after the British Invasion, but its reverb became one of the most recycled sounds in cinema and in independent rock.

Descended from

Siblings on this branch

Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree

  • Emo revival 1.4 apart by rating · meets it at Rock
  • Emo 1.4 apart by rating · meets it at Rock
  • New wave 1.4 apart by rating · meets it at Rock

Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim.