Is Progressive Rock truly pretentious?

Canterzeuhl wrote: Is it pretentious because we know what we're talking about? To imagine for a moment I don't know what a time signature is, nor what a Moog sounds like and instead I enjoy a thumping backbeat to grind in a dingy club to, and I asked you what sort of music you like, I don't think you could sound like anything else other than pretentious. Well, other than boring and unsexy.

Maybe, but thats the fault of the complete ignorance of this hypothetical person rather than the music/musicians they are calling pretentious.

People who are truly exploratory and love doing new things in music will naturally expand, sometimes into odd times, unconventional instrumentation, structure, and composition. If you want to call it pretentious, go ahead. Musicians will keep doing what they feel they should, with or without approval of the mainstream. This isn't just rock music. It's underground music everywhere.

As mentioned before, for the pop oriented public, progressive music (not just prog rock) sounds quite pretentious, simply because they are just looking for a nice beat and a catchy riff to dance to. They are not interested in listening to arrangements, orchestration, instrumentation, etc. So yes, they will think prog is pretentious, since they want music to dance to, not something which has been written to be listened to.

tamijo wrote: Nobody ever said that to me, People said lets listen to something easier, or lighter. Seems it sound too complex or hard to follow or dark, in some peoples ears, but actualy i dont thing many people would be thinking its pretentious, they just want something more easy for them to swallow. Pretentious is the kind of word critics would use, not the everyday guest in your house.

No.

In the end all that matters is do you like what you hear.  The pretentious comes from critics who like to do a weak justification for something they just don't like.

Very pretentious critics postulating Prog is pretentious.

^ Pretentiousness has nothing to do with accessibility, complexity or ambition. Music is pretentious if it is pretending to be something it is not or if the fans pretend it is something it is not. Anyone claiming Progressive Rock is Art Music and not Popular Music is being pretentious.

I don't think so.

I would wager a piece doesn't get to be called "Art Music" just because it was classical or jazz, and looking at the Wikipedia page doesn't clarify much. It's all very vague. I would think works like Tales from Topographic Oceans and "Close to the Edge" (song) straddle the line between art music and pop music, and pressed to choose one of the other art music fits better. And I was thinking today, works like Phaedra by Tangerine Dream and most of Klaus Schulze's repertoire are strictly art music, or classical music, just with synthesizers. In fact, I find them more interesting than most 20th centural "typical classical". The instruments, performance technique, composition, and notation is wildly new and innovative, and it would take an astonishing traditionalist to believe it's "popular music."

Edited by stonebeard - December 09 2011 at 14:08