Some of the long-term members may remember me as a once-rather active forum member, however in the last 3 years or so, for some personal reasons I have been absent from the forum.

One of my contributions to the PA community was a long article I wrote in 2013-2014 about the musical instruments used in Prog, which is still available in the Blogs section

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771

This post is to let you know that in the meantime that article grew up to a full-blown book which I have recently published and released, in Spanish (I live now in Spain). It's been much extended in both text and images and polished, being now a 266 pages book with over 480 pictures.

So in case there are any forum members of Spanish language interested, it's available through the online store of Lenoir Publishing Co.

http://www.lenoir.es/rock/2706-instrumentos-musicales-del-rock-progresivo.html" rel="nofollow - http://www.lenoir.es/rock/2706-instrumentos-musicales-del-rock-progresivo.html

The English version is on the making and I hope to be able to inform soon of its release, I'l need to find a publishing company which is interested in releasing it.

I hope that this "self-advertisement" is not forbidden by the PA rules, if it is forgive me for not knowing it, kindly let me know and the post will be deleted.

Cheers to all,

Gerard (aka Gerinski)

Congratulations ... well done work, although I still think that more time should have been taken in detailing some of the things that made this "progressive". It wasn't just the instruments. It was a time that included a lot of experimentation (specially the keyboards/synthesizer side of things) that helped bring about a NEW SOUND ... for the music. 

Sadly, the "sound" alone, should NEVER define anything "progressive". It should be about the composition and the work, and too many of the things listed are from folks that were mostly top ten players, and not exactly progressive in my book. I will not argue about Yes, KC, JT or some of the big names, but to think that a guitar shaped like a snake is the reason why something is progressive, is not only strange, weird and off key, but only shows how we have come to all this via PUBLICITY and FAME. 

If none of these bands had not "made it", this would not have been written and its value would have been severely limited.

I want to help the PROGRESSIVE music thoughts and designs last longer and make a definite mark in the history of music ... and I continually state that the 60's and the 70's were a time that was the most productive in the whole of the 20th century artistically, and that includes music ... which, sadly, we can only think of it as pop music. And leave behind all the other arts that came with it. Like someone like Roger Dean and Hipgnosis, did not help bring all this to the forefront.

But the amount of work itself is impressive all the same and kudos are in order. The previous posting has some of my thoughts on various instruments. But I like the SPIRIT of the time and the arts that it brought to the foreground ... instead of thinking of it all as just pop music with a funny/weird instrument.