HOW TO DEFINE AND CLASSIFY PROGRESSIVE ROCK?  (V3)

What can be regarded as a global Prog community often makes use of several, or even quite a lot, different sub-genres of Progressive Rock, but is it also possible to give some theoretical grounds for doing so?

By DAVID HELIN, November 2010

The subject of what has to be considered as Progressive Rock has surely been one of the big battles in the history of the genre, and still seems to need a lot of more clarifying. It also seems to me as a rather large part of the debating has somehow had wrong starting point and because of that, has not been particular fruitful.

    How so? Well, I think that many of the discussions made assumed Progressive Rock to be a certain music, and then the involved parts could not agree whether, for instance, a certain band, let us say Pink Floyd, played this kind of music. But in my opinion, we have to start with understanding Progressive Rock as first and foremost a word, a term, and then, depending on how we define this term, we can determine whether a certain band can be characterized as progressive or not.

What is it all about?

I better explain this further because, before trying to make a definition, it is a very good idea to have a quite clear notion of what all this defining business actually is about and what shall be the theoretical purpose of it. So, let us start to state that the concrete reality of the music world consists, among other things, of bands (or solo artists, but for convenience’s sake, let us just say bands), each playing in some way different music. Some parts of these bands have certain similarities and a part play even very similar kind of music. These similarities can be described and named, or labeled. As we surely know, many musicians for different reasons don’t like being labeled, but for fans and other persons interested in music, it can be very convenient to have terms to describe different kinds of music. And if these terms have to be useful in a good way, we need to define them more or less precisely.

    To define them means to classify or to bring in, in our heads, some order and get a general view of the concrete reality of the very complex world of bands and different music; and it is, as already mentioned, like to invent some labels which we can use to describe the music being played. These labels can have different sizes, so they either can be small and only used in connection with those bands who play very similar kind of music -- in that case we talk about narrow definitions. Or they can be larger and used with less similar bands and then called broader definitions.

    Making definitions, we also try to put focus on or demarcate a specific part of the concrete reality of the music world, and depending on whether our definitions are narrow or broad, the demarcated parts are smaller or bigger. When we have made a specific definition by clarifying which criteria shall be applied by using a certain term, for instance progressive rock, we can in principle more or less exactly decide which bands we are talking about; and then further find out what is specific about these bands and their music. So, as regards to the very beginning of this article, I will conclude here that all the discussions of the characteristics of Progressive Rock have to start with the question of the definition of the genre.

    Two more aspects are needed to be mentioned in these initial considerations: 1. The question of the definitions in general, and concerning Prog-Rock in particular, is in my opinion to some extent a matter of, if not just taste, certainly some subjective preferences, especially as regards whether to use a more narrow or a broader way of defining – which is very important for my approach. On the other hand, it cannot be said to be arbitrary, so one definition is as good as another. A good definition must possess inner obvious logic and coherence, just as some definitions can be more practical and have other advantages comparing with other definitions.

    2. The process of defining can be very complex. When a definition is made, it has to be evaluated with that part of reality it is supposed to concern, which I guess in most cases leads to some need of improvement, evaluating again, and so on. In connection with music styles, the process must be still on-going due to the never ending changes of the music over the time. So, all of you theoretically minded friends welcome to a show that never ends.

Some definitions made/used in the past

Looking now at some definitions made/used in the past, the main books written in English, which have attempted to describe progressive rock as a genre, seem to be:

Edward Macan: Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture. Oxford University Press 1997.

Paul Stump: The Music’s All that Matters: A History of Progressive Rock. Quartet Books 1997.

Bill Martin: Listening to the Future: The time of progressive rock, 1968-1978. Open Court 1998.

Jerry Lucky: The Progressive Rock Files. Collector’s Guide Publishing 2000.

    To start with, Edward Macan, who indeed offers the most thorough analysis of his subject, in the matter of definition and as the title of the book suggests, Macan sticks to the tradition which limits progressive rock to being symphonic rock; that is “…mainly a classical/rock fusion with some folk and jazz elements included…” (p. 27).  It has to be added though that even as Macan considers Jazz-Rock and Folk-Rock as styles different from Progressive (Symphonic) Rock, he finds some parts of them to be related to the latter. This applies to a lesser extent to some of Heavy Metal, too, and avant-garde electronic music and Minimalism (pp. 126-143).

    Paul Stump’s definition has rather different focus point than Macan’s and finds similarities among progressive bands in what he calls shared ideology: in their considering themselves as not just musicians but as artists “…driven by high Romantic notions of personal expression and originality, individual authenticity, honesty and similar praiseworthy universals.” (p. 10). The term Progressive contains also in Stump’s point of view the phenomenon that the music is in a state of permanent evolution. This way of regarding Progressive Rock allows Stump to apply much broader musical scope than Macan, including some bands playing Jazz-Rock, Folk-Fock, Avant-Prog, Space-Rock and even a bit of Electronic Rock. On the other hand, I would say it is more precise and can be altogether better to define Prog-Rock by means of music styles, like Macan does.

    Bill Martin’s criteria for qualifying the genre results in an almost as broad musical scope as Stump’s, except from Electronic Rock. Also in a way similarly to Stump, he has some claims that the music has to be visionary and played “…by musicians who have consummate instrumental and compositional skills…” (p. 121) - that is, in fact, be virtuosos. Further, Martin considers Progressive Rock as in its core a phenomenon of English culture, which he, by the way, shares with Macan and Stump, and “…expressive of romantic and prophetic aspects of that culture.” (p. 121). Should the latter be used as criteria in the definition of Progressive Rock, it will of course limit the genre quite a lot.

    The last of the here presented authors, Jerry Lucky, defines Prog-Rock by means of 10 strictly musical criteria (4^th edition, p. 132, 133). They offer indeed a very precise definition as they are very specific, concerning the type of styles, compositions, arrangements and instruments used. Looking at his book as a whole, it is not quite obvious for me which styles Lucky will include under the banner of Progressive Rock. I’m afraid though, his 10 claims, if all or maybe even just most of them to be fulfilled, will exclude a quite large part of the experimental rock music.

The possibility of a broad definition

Even as the four authors have quite a lot in common in their description of Progressive Rock, as it can be seen of my short account, their definitions of the genre are rather different. On the other hand, if they have to be compared to what quite often is considered as Progressive Rock in what might be called “the global Prog community”, one thing can in my opinion be concluded: their definitions are more narrow, and I think it is also the case with most books written on the genre; including maybe the latest in Charles Snider’s The Strawberry Bricks Guide to Progressive Rock (2007), even though this guide reviews other music than Snider defines as Prog-Rock, too.

    Nevertheless, the broader “Prog community definition,” as, for instance, used but not really formulated in the co-founder of ProgArchives, Ronald Couture’s Essential Mini-Guide to Progressive Rock: Past & Present (2006), have obvious advantages: it includes more different music and makes “the Prog movement” wider and thus stronger. On that account, the interesting question needs to be answered: is it possible to formulate and argue for a broad definition of Progressive Rock?

    Well, as it already could appear from my initial considerations, that is my conviction and what I will try to begin in this article. For that purpose, let us first have a look at the following styles: Symphonic Rock, Jazz-Rock, Folk-Rock, the more experimental Electronic Rock and Avant-Prog. What do they all have in common? You probably already know it: as their names suggest, they are all a synthesis of Rock and very pronounced elements from mainly one of some other main genres, namely Classical Music, Jazz, Folk and the electronic avant-garde or other avant-garde music, respectively. And should all these Rock styles be a part of Progressive Rock, must that kind of synthesis be one of the criteria of the definition. Krautrock, Zeuhl and the more avant-garde influenced part of Post-Rock can be characterized in the same way except from, they are typically more eclectic. 

    So far so good, but at this point I guess there are a huge number of Prog aficionados who miss Progressive Metal and some Psychedelic Rock here. Well, that is no problem because the syntheses of Rock and the other main styles mentioned above give possibilities for these styles, too – Progressive Metal being mainly a synthesis of Heavy Metal and Symphonic Rock/Classical Music, while Progressive Psychedelic surely is a synthesis of Psychedelic Rock, but then, there are different possibilities: electronic avant-garde, Folk, Jazz and others.

    Now we have got really a lot of different music to offer, but as a matter of fact, too much. That is because the criterion suggested so far includes all kinds of, for instance, Jazz-Rock, Folk-Rock and Space-Rock, and thus a lot of almost mainstream music, which an average Proghead does not seem to be interested in. Therefore, I will further suggest an additional criterion for some music to be labeled Progressive Rock, and that shall be that the music is rather complex or at least to some extent experimental in another way than argued so far.

    OK, if we now in all have enough precise instruments to determine what kind of music we would like to have under our banner is of course a question that will have to be tested in practice. But I suppose everything looks rather OK for a start, except from one problem. Not so few bands play music which is very difficult, if at all, to fit into one of the styles/sub-genres mentioned so far because they are more eclectic and mix several different styles. Therefore, we need an additional sub-genre which can be named Eclectic Prog to label those kind of bands.

The proposal

Then, I can summarize:

I will propose that some music to be called Progressive Rock has to:

1. be a synthesis of Rock and at least one of the other main genres: Classical, Jazz, Folk, electronic avant-garde or other avant-garde, AND

2. be rather complex or at least to some extent experimental in another way than #1.

* Symphonic Prog, incl. Neo-Symphonic (Neo-Prog)

* Progressive Jazz-Rock, incl. most of Canterbury

* Progressive Folk-Rock, defined as Rock fused with Traditional/Folk music from any country in the entire world

* Electronic Prog

* Avant-Prog/RIO and Zeuhl

* Psychedelic Prog, incl. Progressive Space-Rock

* Progressive Metal, defined as all the sub-genres of Heavy Metal which can be considered Progressive

* Eclectic Prog

* Krautrock

and finally

* Progressive Post-Rock, defined as the more avant-garde influenced part of Post-Rock

What have we then got?

I believe that Progressive Rock, defined in this way, depict quite well what mostly is understood by this term today, or, that it at least is worth to consider, if it not should be so. It is obviously not a single style but an umbrella for a number of different styles which have some similarities. The main point of this way of defining is for me to separate a large part of the experimental and more ambitious Rock music from the mainstream in order to strengthen its identity and help building it up as a broad cultural movement. Progressive Rock, again as defined here, has sure gained in popularity over the period of the last 20 years, but I think it is important to support or at least respect each other across the different sub-genres instead of not so rarely almost fighting each other. Those are the main ideas behind this article and some ideas I find very worthy to work for, and I hope some of you do too.

    Something quite else is that the definition, I have proposed here, has some stiffness as Prog-Rock is defined by means of certain specific styles, and it might be said to be best suited to classify the different types of music included in Progressive Rock. An alternative could be a definition which has been presented by Mark Stephens (of Progpositivity Dot Com) as one of topics to discuss in ProgArchives. It suggests

Progressive Rock: music springing from or incorporating distinctive elements of the rock genre while expanding beyond its traditional musical limitations and constraints

This definition is very dynamic as it can currently incorporate all the new experimental Rock music. On the other hand, it is very broad and not so little broader and including than the one, I propose. Still, it could be a good alternative, if it could be accepted and used by musicians and fans of “the old sub-genres of Progressive Rock” and “the new ones” which it will include as the part of the genre.

Other references

Mike McLatchy: The Guide to Progressive Rock Genres. V2.0. 2003

which is a survey or a kind of extensive article, updated and available at http://www.gepr.net./articlesfram.html" rel="nofollow - .

• The Dark Side of the Moon

• 2112., Moving Pictures, and Permanent waves. They. has none of the above elements. But, a farewell to kings and hemispheres are prog because they include folk-rock references and that's the only reason why.

• All Tool.

• All Dream Theater.

I know that this topic has been much discussed. But as I write in the beginning of my article, I’d also say that

“..I think that many of the discussions made assumed progressive rock to be certain music, and then, the involved parts could not agree whether for instance a certain band, let us say Pink Floyd, played this kind of music. But in my opinion, we have to start with understanding progressive rock as first and foremost a word, a term, and then, depending on how we define this term, we can determine whether a certain band can be characterized as progressive or not.”

So you see, I want to discuss with the specific, and I think rather new, approach that try to define prog as a term, and discuss how it can be done in the best way. As far as it concerns the PA definition, I know it very well but I don’t find it satisfactory. And as I also comment in my article, neither all the other definitions which have been put forward or used in the main books about progressive rock. Therefore, in my opinion, there's still a good need of discussing how to define prog.

A bit late answer/comments to your concerns, Mushroom Sword:

1.Whether Pink Floyd will be included in my proposal for prog definition?

Well, I don’t know what you have been thinking at in this matter, but it should be quite obvious that yes. As Pink Floyd is agreed to be characterized as space-rock and this style I explicitly mention as a part of the main sub-genre “psychedelic prog”.

2. The question of including Rush, Tool, Dream Theater and “hard rock”.

As the main thing here, I would not consider “hard-rock” as a major style equal to “my” main sub-genres/styles. So, I’ll suggest that we either have to do with some music where the heavy elements are very pronounced, and in that case we classified it as a part of the main sub-genre, I have defined as “heavy prog”. – And here I’ll surely include Dream Theater. - Or, we have to do with some music where other elements are more dominating, and in that case we classified it as one of “my” other main sub-genres. But in that case we can talk about sub-subgenres, for instance “hard symphonic prog” which I think would be a proper characteristic of Rush. Or another examples could here be “hard jazz-rock”, as for instance label for Liquid Tension Experiment, or “hard folk-rock” as the characteristic of the peruvian band Flor de Loto.
As far as it concerns Tool, I’ll prefer not to comment them here, because they are not so little quirky.

3. Concept albums and very long songs as a necessary criterion to be called “progressive”?

Well, you see, my whole proposal for prog definition is meant as an attempt to formulate a broad definition because that, as far as I know, haven’t been done yet, even it’s, in my opinion, quite important to attempt. To formulate a broad definition, we must avoid very specific criteria, because they limit what we will define as prog. If we demand concept albums and very long songs as a necessary condition to be called “progressive”, we’ll exclude very much of experimental rock music – for instance much of avant-prog quite often doesn’t have very long songs/compositions; similarly with concept albums.
That’s why the criteria, I have proposed, are not very specific and that’s why I find Jerry Lucky’s definition not satisfactory – and that definition is often regarded to be the so far best.

The italian prog is very peculiar that, but when we think of this ecletic prog is very comprehensive. But we could open up a subgenus for exemple: would be the IONA CELTIC PROG instead of folk prog

Hi Ivan!

Thanks a lot for your engaged and detailed comments. It has been very fruitful to get them.
But it looks like, you think my proposal is about how ProgArchives should look and what it should include or not include. That’s not the case. Actually, I’ve written the article even not specially for the members of PA, and my proposal concerns the matter of a quite general definition and classification of progressive rock. Saying this, I guess, “answers” some of your comments, so I’ll stick only to some of them. And please, keep it in mind, it’s not about how PA archive should be organized, I mean that’s not my intention here.

1. What to do with “neo-prog”?

Well, in my opinion it’s best to keep the definition from the 80’s, so “neo-prog” is equal to the symphonic style from the 80’s. And that we classify all the newer prog according to their styles and not just call all of it “neo-prog”. But I better write “neo-symphonic (neo-prog)” instead of just “neo-prog” in my proposal. Thanks.

2. How to classify Zeuhl?

As the first thing here can I say that for the sake of simplicity, I think it’s good to keep the number of the main sub-genres as low as possible. Then, I’d say that comparing with the other styles/sub-genres, Zeuhl is more avangardish. So, wouldn’t it be OK to put it together with the usual “avant-prog”? Also because some bands, like for instance Happy Family and other Japanese, play music in the middle between Zeuhl and the usual “avant-prog”. So, there is already an overlap between Zeuhl and the usual “avant-prog”.

3. Space-rock as a part of psychedelic?

Here, I just don’t understand your objection as both to me and almost everbody else, space-rock is psychedelic. So you’re more than welcome to write more on that.

4. Your objection to that of “my” sub-genres which I have called “heavy prog”and described as
“* heavy prog, incl. all the sub-genres of heavy metal which can be considered progressive”.

You write:

“Heavy Metal or Prog Metal are  a completely different specie that Heavy Prog (which IMO should be called Hard Prog to make a difference), bands like Uriah Heep or Titanic, have nothing in common with Dream Theater.“

Yes! I understand very well your objection, as I’ve defined “heavy prog” (for myself) in a quite different way then the usual one but I’ve described it misleading where I mention it. I should have written: “* heavy prog, defined as all the sub-genres of heavy metal which can be considered progressive”, because that’s how I’ll suggest we define it. Thanks again.

More about, how I’d like to define “heavy prog” and how, I’ll suggest, we classify what you’d like to call “Hard Prog”, have I written in one of my previous comments (posted 4 November European time), and that is: 

There is no truer way to define prog other than "that weird sh*t I listen to".

I now understand that you consider space-rock as a part of the subgenre "Psychedelic Prog".  "Heavy Prog" is one of your subgenres of Prog as well. 

Perhaps you could supply a listing of your "main genres" and "subgenres" as you currently have them envisioned? 

Main Genre list:  Classical music, jazz music, ethnic music, electronic music, and avant-garde music.  Are there any new additions?

------

I'd like to post some remarks about the article in its current state.

First of all, I'm the author of the Russian wikipedia article on progressive rock. The article isn't a translation of the English one, but instead is based on a book by Valery Syrov, a Russian music theorist. The English info about the book is http://www.people.nnov.ru/syrov/Eng/Book.htm - here . AFAIK it's unavailable in English. And though he distinguishes between prog and art rock, I'm using in my comment my own interpretation of the issue with both his prog and his art rock being termed "prog".

And in this book, written in 1997, he is using the very same idea of "prog-is-synthesis". I can even remember he probably doesn't attribute this idea to himself, but cites some Western scientists. He uses the idea only to define prog, but the definition of subgenres is straightforward. He doesn't restrain the genres to be fused with only to the top ones, which immediately eases the addition of the Heavy prog subgenre to the classification. However there is no objectively verifyable criterion of prog in the book. He says that prog "is a creative enrichment of rock music via a dialogue with other musical movements" and by "dialogue" he explicitly means something which is the inverse of "shallow copying, simplified reproduction or common blending of genres without attempting their synthesis and comprehension" - some kind of your #2 part of the criterion.

Overall it's a funny read with great ideas like the use of "silence" (interchanging heavy with mellow music - presented in the book by waveform views of the audio files) pioneered in rock by prog and a lot of factual mistakes like asserting Portnoy being Russian by origin...

And there is also another independent comment on the synthesis hypothesis by the http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=6020 - Arsenal (band legendary in USSR) frontman: "Progressive rock for the rock music is the same as fusion for the jazz music" (my own translation, as is, no warranty, etc). This IMO doesn't include any analogue to your #2 restriction.

And now my own thoughts on the subject.

Skip this paragraph if it bores you, but just a minor issue:

David_D wrote: The broader “Prog community definition” has obvious advantages: it includes more different music and makes “the Prog movement” wider and thus stronger.

David_D wrote: The main point of this way of defining is for me to separate a large part of the experimental and more ambitious Rock music from the mainstream in order to strengthen its identity and help building it up as a broad cultural movement.

Actually I'd like to have a classification to support understanding of "another" identity. Sorry for the pun, I've just run out of words, but I'm talking about my own identity as a prog listener. What music traits I tend to like? What other albums might have such traits? This is what, say, last.fm tags are about. And this brings me to my own view of an ideal and thus impossible "classification". Just take the last.fm principle of tags instead of hierarchic classification (this kills the eclectic category, which is anyway just a bin for the yet unclassifiable), then decide to tag primarily albums (but also compositions and bands) and use only the objectively verifiable traits as tags. Some examples of "objectively verifiable traits" so that you see why I call it ideal: apart from easy tags like "from Sweden" or "contains a long track", there is a theoretical way to decide some more interesting traits. You can get an educated person to tell the time signatures and if they are changing, and also the musical modes, characteristic note patterns, etc. Another more theoretical way is to try to devise stochastic algorithms to analyze the music as a signal and to say if it contains all the above, or numerous character changes and if these changes are predictable (like in chorus-verse patters) or not. Same thing to see if there are heavy/mellow changes - the last is clearly doable.