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moshkito 
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
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 Posted: April 03 2012 at 13:05 |
Hi,
Tough answer ... but if you listen to some of the really early Spanish bands, I would say that YES would be the largest influence -- but would that not be weird when all they are doing is eiother singing in Spanish or adding a spanish guitar? When you listen to the Italians, I would say Classical Music was more the influence than anything else. The English version is mixed. The Germans would tell you that they didn't care about history or style ... check out that massive special on "krautrock" and specially the words by Edgar Froese ... which are really important ... and will tell you more about the time and what eventually became "progressive" music than anything else ... also make a serious note about the time and place ... which is even more important.
The "influence" thing is funny, weird, frustrating ... so you're band wants to use a Hammond Organ, and all of a sudden you are compared to blues bands! If I want to use a Moog, you are considered Progressive, and if you use ... a Fender Guitar ... no one gives a dang? See the problem? ... it becomes about similarities in sound and not necessarily the music itself. I always thought it was funny that people thought that Triumvirat or Kayak were ELP clones, and these bands are really different and not even close to ELP. Or in more recent times, seeing Eric Norlander (Lana Lane and the Rocket Scientists) being given credit for being as good as Keith Emerson ... and while you may like Beethoven, I don't go around calling you Ludwig'ian because you have a drum set in your closet.
I, personally, prefer that we judge music by itself. That influences are more about the listener, a lot of times, than they are about the music itself.
Check this out ... let's try this game: If you were the keyboard player and had these three keyboards, and I played bass, and Dean played Guitar and Snow Dog played Vocals ... we would likely be playing what we want to put together in music, and I doubt that you would say ... I'm gonna play this like Keith did in blah and blah ... or that I'm going to bass this like Chris does or did, or that Snow Dog would say ... I'm gonna do this just like Vivian did ... and so on ... you can for a minute but after that you become you ... not that person ... and this is why I do not think that "influences" are that important.
Now let's look at Richard Wright in PF ... have you tried to separate his keyboard parts? ... how do you define the "influence" from most of that stuff? Yes ... there are a few bits and pieces that we call "jazz'y" ... but in the midst of this ocean of weirdness? (You can do this, btw, in any DAW out there ... and listening to these keyboard parts is a trip ... an amazing trip and better than the albums btw!
Edited by moshkito - April 03 2012 at 13:20
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com
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jmatos
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Joined: April 29 2011
Location: Puerto Rico
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Points: 45
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 02:05 |
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The obvious names would be KC, Yes, VDGG... don't forget about Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Thanks to Keith Emerson Bob Moog had to constantly make improvements on his synths so Keith could play them live. He had much to do with the development of the synth.
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Horizons
Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: January 20 2011
Location: Somewhere Else
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Points: 16952
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 06:20 |
 moshkito wrote:
Hi,
Tough answer ... but if you listen to some of the really early Spanish bands, I would say that YES would be the largest influence -- but would that not be weird when all they are doing is eiother singing in Spanish or adding a spanish guitar? When you listen to the Italians, I would say Classical Music was more the influence than anything else. The English version is mixed. The Germans would tell you that they didn't care about history or style ... check out that massive special on "krautrock" and specially the words by Edgar Froese ... which are really important ... and will tell you more about the time and what eventually became "progressive" music than anything else ... also make a serious note about the time and place ... which is even more important.
The "influence" thing is funny, weird, frustrating ... so you're band wants to use a Hammond Organ, and all of a sudden you are compared to blues bands! If I want to use a Moog, you are considered Progressive, and if you use ... a Fender Guitar ... no one gives a dang? See the problem? ... it becomes about similarities in sound and not necessarily the music itself. I always thought it was funny that people thought that Triumvirat or Kayak were ELP clones, and these bands are really different and not even close to ELP. Or in more recent times, seeing Eric Norlander (Lana Lane and the Rocket Scientists) being given credit for being as good as Keith Emerson ... and while you may like Beethoven, I don't go around calling you Ludwig'ian because you have a drum set in your closet.
I, personally, prefer that we judge music by itself. That influences are more about the listener, a lot of times, than they are about the music itself.
Check this out ... let's try this game: If you were the keyboard player and had these three keyboards, and I played bass, and Dean played Guitar and Snow Dog played Vocals ... we would likely be playing what we want to put together in music, and I doubt that you would say ... I'm gonna play this like Keith did in blah and blah ... or that I'm going to bass this like Chris does or did, or that Snow Dog would say ... I'm gonna do this just like Vivian did ... and so on ... you can for a minute but after that you become you ... not that person ... and this is why I do not think that "influences" are that important.
Now let's look at Richard Wright in PF ... have you tried to separate his keyboard parts? ... how do you define the "influence" from most of that stuff? Yes ... there are a few bits and pieces that we call "jazz'y" ... but in the midst of this ocean of weirdness? (You can do this, btw, in any DAW out there ... and listening to these keyboard parts is a trip ... an amazing trip and better than the albums btw! |
no
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Crushed like a rose in the riverflow.
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Snow Dog
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: March 23 2005
Location: Caerdydd
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Points: 32995
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 06:24 |
Horizons wrote:
moshkito wrote:
Hi,
Tough answer ... but if you listen to some of the really early Spanish bands, I would say that YES would be the largest influence -- but would that not be weird when all they are doing is eiother singing in Spanish or adding a spanish guitar? When you listen to the Italians, I would say Classical Music was more the influence than anything else. The English version is mixed. The Germans would tell you that they didn't care about history or style ... check out that massive special on "krautrock" and specially the words by Edgar Froese ... which are really important ... and will tell you more about the time and what eventually became "progressive" music than anything else ... also make a serious note about the time and place ... which is even more important.
The "influence" thing is funny, weird, frustrating ... so you're band wants to use a Hammond Organ, and all of a sudden you are compared to blues bands! If I want to use a Moog, you are considered Progressive, and if you use ... a Fender Guitar ... no one gives a dang? See the problem? ... it becomes about similarities in sound and not necessarily the music itself. I always thought it was funny that people thought that Triumvirat or Kayak were ELP clones, and these bands are really different and not even close to ELP. Or in more recent times, seeing Eric Norlander (Lana Lane and the Rocket Scientists) being given credit for being as good as Keith Emerson ... and while you may like Beethoven, I don't go around calling you Ludwig'ian because you have a drum set in your closet.
I, personally, prefer that we judge music by itself. That influences are more about the listener, a lot of times, than they are about the music itself.
Check this out ... let's try this game: If you were the keyboard player and had these three keyboards, and I played bass, and Dean played Guitar and Snow Dog played Vocals ... we would likely be playing what we want to put together in music, and I doubt that you would say ... I'm gonna play this like Keith did in blah and blah ... or that I'm going to bass this like Chris does or did, or that Snow Dog would say ... I'm gonna do this just like Vivian did ... and so on ... you can for a minute but after that you become you ... not that person ... and this is why I do not think that "influences" are that important.
Now let's look at Richard Wright in PF ... have you tried to separate his keyboard parts? ... how do you define the "influence" from most of that stuff? Yes ... there are a few bits and pieces that we call "jazz'y" ... but in the midst of this ocean of weirdness? (You can do this, btw, in any DAW out there ... and listening to these keyboard parts is a trip ... an amazing trip and better than the albums btw! |
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Can I play drums instead? And who is Vivian?
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
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Points: 37575
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 07:12 |
^ Stanshall?
So, Pedro, are you saying that no one who ever picked up an instrument was ever influenced or inspired to play by someone whose playing they had heard before? And by implication of that, every artist is unique and original?
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What?
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Vibrationbaby
Forum Senior Member
Joined: February 13 2004
Status: Offline
Points: 6898
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 10:14 |
So nobody was influenced by the Mahavishnu Orchestra? I know McLaughlin was pretty sh*t and still is.Has no clue what he was doing back then or now. The Mahavishnu Orchestra played on bills with bands like Gentle Giant and King Crimson back in the glory days and blew them away. Prog bands couldn't touch these guys back in 72-75. As I said before McLaughlin sure as hell influenced Zappa. Back in the seventies Zappa raved about McLaughlin in just about every interview he gave for chist sakes. Was another band that was copied often. What about Neu!? nobody mentioned Neu! unless I'm going blind in my old age. They were copied by everyone from Hawkwind to Bowie.
Edited by Vibrationbaby - April 05 2012 at 09:05
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spknoevl
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Joined: December 14 2011
Location: Dallas, TX
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Points: 296
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 10:41 |
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I agree that Johnny Mac and Mahavishnu influenced many people. Fripp has stated that he was so influenced by MO that he had to stop listening to them so he wouldn't up doing an imitation. However, I don't really consider MO a progressive rock band - just a great jazz-rock band that influenced the prog rock movement and jazz movements.
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http://martinwebb.bandcamp.com
The notes are just an interesting way to get from one silence to the next - Mick Gooderick
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 17524
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 12:01 |
Dean wrote:
^ Stanshall?
So, Pedro, are you saying that no one who ever picked up an instrument was ever influenced or inspired to play by someone whose playing they had heard before? And by implication of that, every artist is unique and original? |
Not everyone has learned music because they heard someone else. This, of course would be harder in the Western World, where we think that the music history is what defines music ... but that's like saying that the indian in the middle of nowhere in Canada can not play his flute ... let me tell you ... there are some that make Ian sound like a little kid playing with his stick. Or Spain, where there are more guitar pickers on the streets that will make 99 out of 100 electric guitar players look really bad ... EVEN in progressive and prog music! I keep thinking like this ... if someone plays a violin he is automatically a classic player ... and when you hear Shankar do this ... it should make you wonder ... is that really true? ... is it possible that there is music out there that we can not conceive that is not on the scales that we know?
I believe there is!
And the Indians in Mato Grosso in Brazil near where I lived played music ... very different from anything that you or I ever heard and the "rhythms" were not "westernized" ... or "african" ... as we know them. This is really hard to discuss here and explain .. because it is music defined on a "feel" ... not what you and I know. This is the same thing with "ragas" and their ultimate design and goal ... to free the musician to become a "master" ... which means that they can create "feelings" with their instrument that "takes you away".
I do believe, honestly, that a lot of this "progressive" work, was about people exploring these possibilities a lot more ... really ... listen to the lyrics of TFTO ... they don't make sense otherwise ... and is why that piece is so important for me and the "progressive" music genre. But yeah ... in the end ... nous sommes du soleil ...
And yes, Snow Dog ... drums is good ... I've always thought that with 2 drummers we could really spice things up nice!
So .. influential for me, as a foreigner with no country ... is harder for you folks I would imagine ... than it is for me.
Edited by moshkito - April 04 2012 at 12:21
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 17524
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 12:05 |
spknoevl wrote:
I agree that Johnny Mac and Mahavishnu influenced many people. Fripp has stated that he was so influenced by MO that he had to stop listening to them so he wouldn't up doing an imitation. However, I don't really consider MO a progressive rock band - just a great jazz-rock band that influenced the prog rock movement and jazz movements. |
Was, and I think it still is, considered ... "fusion".
The main problem today with a lot of this stuff is that some bands are using more effects and then calling themselves "metal" or "prog", where the one that goes "jazz'ier" is more instrumental and leaning towards the less effect style of work.
If I take the effects out of Dream Theater's guitar, I probably have someone just as good as Johnny Mac ... however, most folks will say that Johhny Mac is more important because he was born 20 years earlier ... and didn't use effects on the guitar! He used his fingers!
Edited by moshkito - April 04 2012 at 12:30
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 13:20 |
moshkito wrote:
Dean wrote:
^ Stanshall?
So, Pedro, are you saying that no one who ever picked up an instrument was ever influenced or inspired to play by someone whose playing they had heard before? And by implication of that, every artist is unique and original? |
Not everyone has learned music because they heard someone else. This, of course would be harder in the Western World, where we think that the music history is what defines music ... but that's like saying that the indian in the middle of nowhere in Canada can not play his flute ... let me tell you ... there are some that make Ian sound like a little kid playing with his stick. Or Spain, where there are more guitar pickers on the streets that will make 99 out of 100 electric guitar players look really bad ... EVEN in progressive and prog music! I keep thinking like this ... if someone plays a violin he is automatically a classic player ... and when you hear Shankar do this ... it should make you wonder ... is that really true? ... is it possible that there is music out there that we can not conceive that is not on the scales that we know?
I believe there is! |
I suspect you may be over-thinking this a little. "Folk" musicians learn by ear - the Indian flautist or the Spanish guitarist learnt to play by listening to better players - they did not teach themselves from scratch without having heard how the instrument should be played or without knowing the old tunes that older players had played. To be "traditional" in that they are 100% influenced by everything they heard before, it would be impossible not to be.
Someone who plays a violin is not a automatically classical player - the violin has been used as a folk instrument for centuries - fiddle-players can be classical, but it is not necessarily so.
As to other scales... sure there are lots, all of which are easily conceived - just using 7-notes out of the 12 chromatic notes in an octave there are 462 possible scales we could use (and we generally use two of them - the major and the minor - or perhaps use one of the 7 modes if we are feeling particularly adventurous). If we go micro-tonal then there is no limit to how many scales we could create, all of them perfectly conceivable.
moshkito wrote:
And the Indians in Mato Grosso in Brazil near where I lived played music ... very different from anything that you or I ever heard and the "rhythms" were not "westernized" ... or "african" ... as we know them. This is really hard to discuss here and explain .. because it is music defined on a "feel" ... not what you and I know. This is the same thing with "ragas" and their ultimate design and goal ... to free the musician to become a "master" ... which means that they can create "feelings" with their instrument that "takes you away". |
And? One of the strange phenomenons of music is that even though some indigenous music sounds a little strange to our ears, all music is actually of a very similar structure and formation through out the human world. While we have invested a lot of academic time and effort creating the even-tempered scale and other wonders of Western Music Theory - this is only so we can collect together 82 different musicians in one place and have them play in tune, and then send that music score across the world and have another 82 different musicians play it and it will sound exactly the same. Yet for all that we haven't progressed much further than Pythagoras in the identification of octaves their division into tonal intervals. The human ear likes that tonal interval, and we all seem to naturally like pentatonic scales derived from those tones - there are strong science-y reasons why this is that I'll not go into here, but suffice to say Brazilian folk music and Indian folk music and Indonesian folk music and Hebredian folk music and Baroque Classical music and Progressive Rock and Regaeton all uses scales that are mathematically very similar.
Ragas are examples of some of those pentatonic modes (scales) taken from a 7-note scale within the 12-step octave, they are not a rhythm, they are a melody based upon those five (pentatonic) notes. They sound "eastern" to our ears because they are not based upon the even-tempered scale of Bach, but essentially they are the same as western pentatonic scales which is why Shankar, Harrison and McLaughlin could incorporate them seamlessly into western music.
Rhythms are also "genetically" similar throughout the world because we are bipeds and rhythms are made for dancing, even odd-meter rhythms can be counted in steps. Four to the floor, Dubstep and Waltzes (3/4 and 6/8) are popular because they are instantly recognisable as danceable, but more than that, we can count them in our heads very easily without having to be Carl Palmer. So when get to the odd time-signatures and rhythms we manage those by sub-dividing them into what we can count in our heads, for example - 13/4 is a mind-funk to count until you realise it's really just 3/4+3/4+4/4+3/4 (waltz-waltz-foxtrot-waltz).
moshkito wrote:
I do believe, honestly, that a lot of this "progressive" work, was about people exploring these possibilities a lot more ... really ... listen to the lyrics of TFTO ... they don't make sense otherwise ... and is why that piece is so important for me and the "progressive" music genre. But yeah ... in the end ... nous sommes du soleil ... |
moshkito wrote:
And yes, Snow Dog ... drums is good ... I've always thought that with 2 drummers we could really spice things up nice!
So .. influential for me, as a foreigner with no country ... is harder for you folks I would imagine ... than it is for me. |
Dual drummers never really work IMO (seen several bands try them and the results are disappointing - Space Ritual for example) - a better solution has always been to have a drummer and a percussionist (Gong).
Edited by Dean - April 04 2012 at 13:21
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What?
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OT Räihälä
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 09 2005
Location: Finland
Status: Offline
Points: 514
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 14:01 |
Vibrationbaby wrote:
What about Nue!? nobody mentioned Nue! unless I'm going blind in my old age. They were copied by everyone from Hawkwind to Bowie.
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Never heard of Nue! Can't be that big influence... unless you're talking about Neu!  [neu] means [new] in German.
Edit:
Oh, and Moshkito: why do you always put three fullstops when one is enough? How can you afford so many? And have you thought about your carbon footprint? [Tongue in cheek mode off] It's a pain to read when there are one million needless fullstops.
Edited by OT Räihälä - April 04 2012 at 14:03
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Snow Dog
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 14:03 |
OK...I will sing then! 
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 14:18 |
OT Räihälä wrote:
Vibrationbaby wrote:
What about Nue!? nobody mentioned Nue! unless I'm going blind in my old age. They were copied by everyone from Hawkwind to Bowie.
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Never heard of Nue! Can't be that big influence... unless you're talking about Neu! [neu] means [new] in German.
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Neu! didn't have to influence a lot of people to make an impact, they just had to be an influence to the right people, and thus be an influence once-removed as it were. I think it is fair to say that many of the post-punk synth bands of the 80s were indirectly influenced by Neu! through being themselves being influenced by Eno, Bowie, Joy Division, Ultravox!, Numan etc.
Edited by Dean - April 04 2012 at 14:19
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What?
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harmonium.ro
Special Collaborator
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Joined: August 18 2008
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 14:57 |
Neu! was also essential for the early post rock movement (Tortoise, Cul De Sac, Trans Am, Ganger, etc.), and, before that, for the noise rock / minimalist punk / avantgarde etc.  movement consisting of people like Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham.
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Vibrationbaby
Forum Senior Member
Joined: February 13 2004
Status: Offline
Points: 6898
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 15:40 |
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So my German is a bit rusty. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
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Progdaybay
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Joined: March 13 2010
Location: Québec
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Points: 18
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 16:16 |
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I would say "The Flower Kings" and "Transatlantic". They are the masters of long and fantastic epics ! In the Symphonic sub-genre, which is the most "pure" prog, in my view.
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Horizons
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Joined: January 20 2011
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 17:21 |
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Crushed like a rose in the riverflow.
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trackstoni
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Location: Lebanon
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 22:13 |
maani wrote:
Influential....where? And FROM where? For example, there are non-English European prog bands who had quite a bit of influence on later groups. (PFM comes to mind.) And if we are talking influence ON non-English European bands, then Gentle Giant would have to be pretty close to the top of the list (along with Genesis, Yes, ELP and Floyd).
But it sounds like we are being U.S.-centric here, so...
I would question the "influence" of King Crimson: they were certainly among the progenitors of prog, and there are a few prog bands who exhibit some influence from them. (Mars Volta is among the most obvious.) But I would not say that their OVERALL influence was very large. On the other hand, Rush probably influenced more neo-prog and especially prog-metal bands than almost anyone (as well as quite a few non-prog bands!). (Though some of the most influential neo-prog bands - Marillion, Porcupine Tree, IQ, Spock's Beard et al - were influenced less by Rush than by Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant, Floyd, ELP, Moody Blues et al.)
Ultimately, it is difficult to trace influence back "clearly" with any certainty in order to establish a "hierarchy" of influence, since there was quite a bit of "cross-influence" going on vis-a-vis the seminal prog bands (mid-60s to early 70s), and the supposed influence of later prog bands is itself based on the bands that influenced THEM.
However, it is clear that the Beatles, while not prog themselves, began almost all of the "experimentation" that led to prog, and influenced almost every seminal prog band to one degree or another. (Floyd and Moody Blues are the two most direct, but Genesis, Yes, and even Gentle Giant show traces. Interestingly, Crimson seems to have "sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus," with little if any direct Beatle influence.)
BTW, I'm surprised no one mentioned Zappa. True, no one sounds exactly like him. But perhaps second only to the Beatles, his influence can be heard pretty broadly throughout prog.
Peace. |
Totally Agree with this !
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Tracking Tracks of Rock
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ghost_of_morphy
Prog Reviewer
Joined: March 08 2007
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 2755
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 22:43 |
Prog_Traveller wrote:
60's/70's The Nice, Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, VDGG, Magma, Camel, Caravan, Gong, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Nektar, Procol Harum, PFM, Renaissance and probably a bunch of others as well. SOme more than others of course. Any big or even moderately well known band is going to have some kind of influence on the newer bands.
80's Saga, Marillion, IQ, Peter Gabriel(he was very popular in the eighties), Kate Bush, Rush. Seriously there aren't that many from the eighties unfortunately.
90's Flower Kings, Spock's Beard, Porcupine Tree, Radiohead
00's Transatlantic, Neal Morse, Mars Volta, Opeth, Porcupine Tree(I'll list them in this decade as well since this is when they really broke big).
In order for a band to be influential they have to have some significant degree of popularity(at least within the specific genre in this case prog).
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I would argue that Genesis had the most impact in the 80's, although Peter Gabriel solo is also a good choice, Rush, well, maybe... but I wouldn't put them in the mix.
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ghost_of_morphy
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Location: United States
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Posted: April 04 2012 at 22:45 |
harmonium.ro wrote:
Neu! was also essential for the early post rock movement (Tortoise, Cul De Sac, Trans Am, Ganger, etc.), and, before that, for the noise rock / minimalist punk / avantgarde etc. movement consisting of people like Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. |
Neu! was very influential, but not on the scale of defining prog for a decade.
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Most influential Prog Bands
