the importance of analog sound in prog

Here at Plane Groovy we've released a number of Prog albums on heavyweight vinyl - with universally positive feedback. The really heartening aspect of this is that, having listened to our releases, people are then going back and revisiting their old vinyl collections - in a hugely positive way. This makes me very happy!

Surrealist wrote: Progressive Rock music has been in decline since the late 1970's.  While there have been splashes of interesting things things from time to time.. I don't think I have yet to hear a contemporary prog band that has released something that has had the impact of the greats of the golden age.  I blame a lot of this on production.  Not for lack of it.. but more the opposite.  Too much.  The digital age has not helped this at all... both sonically and giving the artists the easy way out.  Instead of having the grind it out... and practice, they can just manipulate the tracks after the fact in Pro Tools etc.  The general public isn't impressed by a drummer who can actually play complex patterns in real time because all bands now... even pop bands have their releases homogenized by the engineers and producers who use quantization software on the rhythm section as standard protocol prior to mixing.  Carl Palmer, Bruford, Allan White, John Weathers etc didn't have that luxury. Prog has shifted in general toward Metal Prog which really is a separate genre of music completely.  Metal must be heavy for it to be metal.. and heavy drumming is not prog drumming just because it is in odd metering.  The great prog drummers used the entire spectrum, and ALL of them had good jazz chops also.  They could play in the pocket.. they could articulate jazz coloring, and of course drive it home in a heavy way when needed.. but with a certain amount of restraint as far as the overall content of an album.

Guldbamsen wrote: Well just because one prefers analogue to digital doesn't necessarily mean that others have their ears sown on backwards. I prefer vinyl - and in many cases I prefer analogue instruments to digital, but I won't sit here and say that I have anything real to base my opinion on. Personally, I feel that IQ's Frequency would have benefited immensely from a real piano and some analogue keys, but maybe that has something to do with the end production of the thing. Again, I don't pretend to know anything about this, but I still maintain that Frequency would have been a far warmer and vibrant album had these things roamed the way I would've liked them to. How's that for (anti)proof? Who said something about ranting?

Interesting opinion. Well I would like to hear what that would sound like. FREQUENCY is a terrific album.

timothy leary wrote: ^ There you go with that ear surgery stuff again.

Dean wrote:  I never made such a clam....

 I never made such a claim....

I agree Ian, it's one mouth-foaming rant too many. When argument fails then insulting anyone who disagrees is a not the way to put across any points that people will be willing to take notice of.Time to move on.

I could not agree with you more, it was & is, a significant factor.
Some weeks ago I bought a copy of Gentle Giant - In a Glass House on 180gm vinyl & it sounds nothing like my original U K. copy. Gone are  the spacial qualities, seperation & dynamic range of the original, it is a louder  & puchier, with the rythm section pushed so far forward in the mix & the rest of instuments so crouded, that I couldn't listen to it.. On examination, in small print on the back cover, I found the reason ''Re-Mastered from the Original1/4 inch tapes 2010".

To me it's so obvious what has been going on.. and just reading most of the responses here from other posters just shows how they have all swallowed the digital hype and then try to justify it with incomplete science.  It's like trying to talk to the zombies in "Night of the Living Dead"  Everyone is dead.. their ears are dead, their gear is dead, the medium they listen to is dead.  The bands are dead, and their fans are dead.

I always laugh at the endless arguments about "What is progressive rock?"  The typical silly argument is that it has to be "progressing"  WRONG.  It's a genre with it's own bricks and mortar and rules.  If it had to be progressing then it would HAVE to be moving into "electronica" to keep up with the times.

Classical music has a bricks and mortar protocol as does jazz, reggae, country, techno, etc. 

While progressive rock has the least amount of rules... it still has rules..

What classic prog band didn't use analog synths? Both acoustic and electric guitars, experiment in odd meter performed by top shelf musicians who usually had some formal training at least somewhere in the band?
The great bands had members who could actually sing, and none of the great bands ever digitally manipulated their music before the first pressing of the album...

Every great prog guitarist knew who Wes Montgomery was.  Every prog drummer knew Buddy Rich was God.  Anyone ever taking a prog solo had a copy of "Bitches Brew" in their album collection.  Every great prog band knew that prog didn't start with St Pepper.

"The Musical Box" is drawing better than Genesis did doing "Lamb"  today.  What does that tell you.  A LOT!
Pretty much says it all.

Surrealist wrote: Prog has shifted in general toward Metal Prog which really is a separate genre of music completely.  Metal must be heavy for it to be metal.. and heavy drumming is not prog drumming just because it is in odd metering.  The great prog drummers used the entire spectrum, and ALL of them had good jazz chops also.  They could play in the pocket.. they could articulate jazz coloring, and of course drive it home in a heavy way when needed.. but with a certain amount of restraint as far as the overall content of an album.

Progressive Rock has been in decline since the mid-70s. Production has got nothing to do with it. If you don't like modern Prog then fine, you don't like modern Prog. If you don't like modern production then fine, you don't like modern production. The Prog Metal connection is completely irrelevant since that is a merely a sub-set of modern Prog, there is plenty of modern prog out there thart has no Metal connection, and there is metal out there that has a jazz connection - none of these in themselves can be used to explain your distain. Good modern drummers aren't that hard to find, for example Gavin Harrison can knock-out complex polyrhythms and polymeters and (more importantly) knows the difference between them, all you need is articulated ears to hear them.