Sonically,, what seperates ProgRock from other Rock???

Progressive rock lyrics are no more or less nerdy than those in any musical genre.

Progressive Ears
http://www.progressiveears.com/

like the three points of an equilateral triangle.

http://www.seeiscool.com/student/lauren/Absolute-Idiot.gif

I don't really follow this. If anything, it would seem that something like "And You and I" has more emphasis on melody (at least in the sense that there's more going on melodically) than, I dunno, "Anarchy In the UK" or "Walk This Way". And surely what's happening rhythmically is a pretty important part of "Close to the Edge" or "Red". Do you just mean that the rhythms (and melodies?) are less straightforward and obvious?

I think there are sonic elements that are pretty clearly shared between various prog bands that distinguish them from other rock bands but they're the ones you could find in any basic book on this (mix of trad/folk/classical instruments with rock instruments and new-for-the-time electronics, larger-scale song/composition structures, a tendency towards more complex rhythms, jazz and/or classical influences, bombastic but usually on-pitch singing, etc). Are you looking for something else?

More like his personal experimental troll lab. Considering the number of folks who respond as if he's 100% sincere and not taking a giant piss-take at ILM, PEW's skills are quite sharp. Far better than Buttez (RIP).

loflz @ the prospect of PEW poking his head above the parapet at the prog ears forum, as per matian's post upthread. He'd get eaten alive.

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:oPek4tDaPvMJ:ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php%3Fmsgid%3D7315276+ilm+paul+edward+wagemann&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4

Posting the same questions all over the internet is odd, but not actually a problem. It could be a sign of a troll, but this, and the others, are not completely stupid questions.

Maybe someone can point to a thread where he posts something and there are quite reasonable responses, but he still winds people up.

x-post

But what about rhythm and melody? Is it fair to say that ProgRock has less emphasize on rhythm and melody than other Rock?

-- PEW (HouseholdNam...), December 12th, 2006.

I think it's a fair follow-up question for him to ask (even though I don't see where it's coming from and answered accordingly), even on more than one board.

Was it the double commas in the title? Kind of a dead giveway, amirite?

(cue Dom's lady-with-magnifying-glass jpg...)

http://www.attracco.it/immaginiascolt10/Genesis_nursery_cryme-front%5B1%5D.jpg

http://www.topinsivut.net/Levytkansio/Levykannet/Fragile.jpg

Yes and no. I don't really wanna Google up his best threads, but PEW drops little hints of his real intentions only when folks are drawn into extended discussions with his impossibly-obtuse persona. By that point, his sparring partners are so pissed-off at him that they have no chance to pick up on these morsels, but they're a bit more apparent to the uninvolved spectator.

Maybe Buttez realized that his 1995-era trollkit wasn't working when folks started to come out and proclaim him the god of ILM amusement, and then he refitted himself with a more modern set of eye-pokers as PEW. Or not. Buttez really was never as good as PEW.

if you're a troll, I didn't write this. otherwise, there are probably a lot of people who would agree that melody and rhythm in regular rock songs seems more "obvious" than in prog. Why is that? It isn't really the instrumentation that is show-offish about some progressive rock -- bass, drums, guitar, vocals, keyboard are all featured in most normal rock too -- but the actual patterns being played, sometimes the harmonies, these are not only what differentiate (musically speaking) a prog song from a "normal rock" song (and also every other kind of music from every other kind of music). However, it's a mistake to think you can generalize progressive rock by the kinds of rhythms being played. Rhythms are essentially numbers and accents. If you divorce them from what you hear on a CD, even the most complicated ones aren't inherently any kind of music -- they're just bits of information, and maybe came from a Yes record, or maybe came from a folk song from ancient China. This is why I say it's hard to generalize prog as being one kind of thing. The same thing goes for normal rock music, though I would argue that a greater number of people at least have a semi-passable definition of what they think it is (which isn't saying much).

However, if you say 85% of "normal rock" songs sound like they could be grouped in the "4/4 time, backbeat, doesn't typically use highly altered chords, or highly unusual harmonic patterns in comparison with other songs in the genre" club, then you put prog in the "not necessarily 4/4/ time, not necessarily a backbeat, sometimes uses highly altered chords or unusual harmonic patterns", then you can start to see general differences. The problem comes when you actually start analyzing data. A lot of prog stuff *is* in 4/4, *does* use pretty conventional harmonic and melodic patterns. I think the lesson is that there are a lot of things to be done w/normal sounding melodies, rhythms and harmonies that can create a whole piece which seems very not-normal.

As I see it, there are two ways to approach this question seriously. And one is just to say "I know it when I hear it", and this prog song x is different from this rock song y because of a, b & c. It's quick and subjective, and what usually happens anyway, and as long as we're not voting on government funding for the next 20 years, I don't have a problem w/it. The other is a lot harder and more expensive: have a team of people who can agree on 50 songs they call "prog", and 50 songs they call "normal", and analyze their every musical, sociological and physiological aspect/effect. Over (a really long) time, patterns will emerge, and then someone will be able to make some (probably still very general) conclusions about differences. It would be fun to see even if I didn't agree with anything that came out of it.

otm

Fucking CLASSIC!

Well, actually, it was Pin... oh I get it.

I don't have much issue with the "nerdy lyrics" part, where nerdy = having intellectual as opposed to populist/visceral/erotic aspirations (or pretentions, some will say). I would have more of an issue with the "show-off-ish instrumentation", not only for the reason Dominique gave but also because I strongly doubt the artists' intentions in most cases were purely to show off and because I almost never hear it that way.

yeah, but how to name this? Somtimes kind of jazz-ish, sometimes discordant, or at least more harmonically varied than most songs you hear on classic rock radio, and songs usually goes on longer than most "normal" songs, ha, vocals can be grating (when they have them)... For example, what if I also threw Steely Dan in this mix? Are they prog?

1) Prog takes iteas and approaches from classical music and jazz and applies them to rock. It's a self-consciously exploratory form that takes its own artistic worth very seriously. Prog musicans and fans tend to value heroic chops, wild ambition and a grandiose (grotesque?) sort of taste. Prog isn't at all afraid of theatrical pretention or outright geekiness in pursuit that moment of majestic uplift. Long songs, complex/shifting time signatures, orchestral arrangements, and a certain kind of Nordic (70s) hygiene of mind all figure in. Stallions against the sunset, manes flowing untamed... Crucially, progressive rock is tied to a specific notion of progress: that onwardness and upwardness are tied together, that more and bigger are intrinsically better. Every day in every way we are getting better and better. Prog seldom says no to dessert.

2) Prog is that which sounds "proggy" to the listener's ear, as informed by the doings of group 1, above.

Steely Dan is just too ... American. The "general aesthetic/conceptual outlook" thing I mentioned - I think of prog as a pretty fundamentally European sensibility and something that was overtly tied to the counterculture. But even just on a sonic level, Steely Dan (at least from what I've heard, which includes a couple of albums and a lot of other songs) was way more tied to trad pop song form and songcraft than any prog band I can think of (certainly any that I listed). (They're not that far off from The Eagles or Fleetwood Mac, really.) The vocals are more 'street' (and very American) and less theatrical than any of those bands. The lyrics are more concerned with a direct sort of realism.

I mean, it's not an exact science but I don't think that means it can't be identified at all.

And I also think that our ideas of how much, say, Steely Dan owes to Western classical traditions has a lot to do with our proximity to Steely Dan. I think in 100 years, music historians aren't going to find a lot of real difference in the harmonies and structures of Steely Dan and Soft Machine. Both of these bands owe a ton to Western ideas of melody and harmony, regardless of who they appeal to, and what they might have been thinking when they played their stuff. (the main difference they'd find, imo, is that SM improvised a lot more -- but even then, far enough removed, how many people are going to be able to tell that SM were "out" and SD were "in"? or which one was more "street"?)

Here's a goofy blog I wrote once about how I classify Styx as a Prog band (ProgPop perhaps--like Supertramp?) Anyway it only half serious:

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