Originality - An observation by King By-Tor

King By-Tor wrote: ... And then there's the vocal minority who makes claim that any song that has little to no structure MUST then be good. ...How then is simply having no structure being original? Comments?

No one ever claims stuff like that! you're just making things up.  Who on earth are these people?

Laplace and Pnoom! has a lot of good points here. You don't.

Pnoom! wrote: Toaster Mantis wrote: That said, I'd rather listen to an extremely derivative album that's decent but in no way special than an experimental album that misfires. Sorry to call you out on this, but I honestly find it quite a lame response (not to mention cliche; I don't know how many times I've seen some equivalent of it).  There are so many experimental albums that don't misfire (regardless of your taste) that you should rather listen to than a decent derivative album that that statement really doesn't mean anything at all.I'm sorry if that didn't make sense.  Basically, it doesn't mean anything to say you'd rather listen to a decent derivative album than a poor experimental album because there are lots of great experimental albums, so why waste your time on either the decent deriv or the poor exp?

Well said

King By-Tor wrote: Pnoom! wrote: King By-Tor wrote: Should this music simply have faded away when the time was right? Yes and no.  The classic style (Gen, Yes, KC) definitely.  The new bands that are pushing the genre's boundaries (TMV, Kayo Dot, etc), no. I'd like to know how they're pushing boundaries that is so different from other bands. Honestly, they make a lot of random noise with no structure and that's fine. But how does that push boundaries?

Since that's a blatantly false statement (whether you like them or not, neither band is "random" or has "no structure"), I find it hard to imagine I'll convince you, but here goes.

The Mars Volta pushes boundaries because of the way they've managed to turn punk songs (at heart) into prog songs.  Other bands have melded punk and prog (This Heat, Cardiacs, Ruins, etc), but TMV are the only band whose songs are not a mix of punk and prog, but rather simultaneously both punk and prog.  In that way, they opened up a whole new avenue in prog music still waiting to be explored.

Kayo Dot pushes boundaries because they don't just take the classical influences of trad prog and work them into rock songs, they, as the Mars Volta do for punk and prog, make songs that are simultaneously classical and rock/metal.  In addition, the way they layer their songs isn't present in any other prog bands.

Another good example would be Battles, who blur the line between prog and indie, and also take the inherent mathematical, intellectual end of prog hinted at in Genesis and take it to the extreme, further than any other prog band ever has in terms of mathematical precision.

All of these bands use similar techniques/influences as Genesis, Yes, and KC, but the way they structure their songs is different from those bands, whereas in Spock's Beard, the only reason their song structures aren't identical to those of those three bands is because their song structures are mashups of smaller sections, each identical to those used earlier by Gen, Yes, and KC.

Pnoom! wrote: King By-Tor wrote: Should this music simply have faded away when the time was right? Yes and no.  The classic style (Gen, Yes, KC) definitely.  The new bands that are pushing the genre's boundaries (TMV, Kayo Dot, etc), no.

I'd like to know how they're pushing boundaries that is so different from other bands. Honestly, they make a lot of random noise with no structure and that's fine. But how does that push boundaries?

King By-Tor wrote: Should this music simply have faded away when the time was right?

Yes and no.  The classic style (Gen, Yes, KC) definitely.  The new bands that are pushing the genre's boundaries (TMV, Kayo Dot, etc), no.

kibble_alex wrote: Original or Unoriginal, if i like the sound of it, i like it. If the arrangement has been done before, i couldn't care less if i'm honest. Although it is nice when a band/artist/composer delivers something completely different, but that's exceedingly hard to do nowadays.

This and what Walker said I'll say this about.

It's not that people go, oh man this music is unoriginal ergo I will now chose not to like it. Rather it happens, oh man this is terrible, what is it about it that I dislike so I can warn other who may have similar taste, ah this sounds like everything else I've heard in my life thats why I don't like it.

Finnforest wrote: Walker wrote: I grow weary of these discussions. I listen to music that I like and don't listen to music I don't like. What others think of this or of the artist is irrelevent to me. I like it, therefore it's good. I have a similar contempt for attempts to fit music into some type of genre.   I'm not adding anything to the discussion at hand, so I'll shut up now. Walker, not at all!  Yours is a perfectly valid view.  People just like to talk about the "why" rather than the "what' sometimes.

I grow weary of these discussions. I listen to music that I like and don't listen to music I don't like. What others think of this or of the artist is irrelevent to me. I like it, therefore it's good. I have a similar contempt for attempts to fit music into some type of genre.

King By-Tor wrote: It's not that I want the retro bands to be seen as unpredictable or original - because really anyone who is familiar with any genre will find neither in any music they happen to find - actually I find that nothing is original because everybody thought of something SOMEWHERE. And yet everything is original because even a riff that's not been used in a certain context before is original.Not an unfavorable response Laplace, actually, quite what Im looking for

Well of course if you fix your semantics like that you make those claims, but if we were to always do that it would be very easy to make points with little substance.

Equality 7-2521 wrote: King By-Tor wrote: Are we so fed up with people trying to appeal to our tastes that we simply turn them away?Are we simply nostalgic so that no new bands could possibly be as good as we remember the old bands as being? The reason we label them as unoriginal is because they seem like they're deliberating pandering to a progressive fan's taste by emulating progressive formulas that history has shown to appeal to us. Its no different than what pop bands do. Of course such music we would call unoriginal and turn away. The rejection of retro bands has nothing to do nostalgia, and I would say those eaten up by nostalgia are the ones who embrace retro bands for the most part. Progressive music has no room for retro bands. The giants of the 70s realized prog-rock was an evolving style by necessity which is why we saw their sounds change. Good post but I have to disagree with most of what you said. Particularly about influence and emulation being the same thing. And I don't think you can call 'Close to the Edge' your typical song just extended with noodling. Also, I feel to some degree I'm misunderstanding you. So maybe some things will be cleared up.

I think that "progressive" as a label was a poor one in general. Sure, I love it, but can any genre really PROGRESS indefinitely? Even now people call down Math rock for not being like prog, and yet it is the way the genre has PROGRESSED.

Close to the Edge was actually the song I had in mind when I made the comment about Yes, it's subsections divide into typical songs strung into one, really.

I don't mind disagreeances or misunderstandings, they're what I'm looking for. I think this topic needs some discussion.