Prog's not prog.

Thanks Nuke!  To me, seems that you are allowed to say anything you want as long as you don't have a strong opinion about something here.  One of the Metal sites that I visited had a list of requirements on liking metal, of course only half serious, but one was that you become completely defensive and violent if anyone knocks metal.  I thought that was funny.  I think there were about 100 and some listed.  See what you have me doing?  Going to metal websites.

Nuke wrote: Nah, LanCaiHe's not a troll, just a bit stranded on a different musical world than us. It's okay, metal is an acquired taste. I don't call my best friend a troll for not liking coffee now, do I? And Lan, you are right about the rite of spring not being ugly. It is just what we conventionally consider to be ugly. Same with metal, I guess. It's more about expressing yourself strongly by casting aside conventional rules in favor of more primal sounds. Both metal and the rite of spring uses dissonance, the octatonic (or just chromatic) scale, instruments in different ways than they were intended, ect. in order to create unease and get adrenaline flowing. That's a bit of an overstatement since I can't speak for all metal, but rather for the essence of "true" metal, but you get my point.

Good Lord, I certainly hope not!

Dean wrote: LanCaiHe wrote: seems like they don't go through, but I must not double click.  Sorry again. LanCaiHe wrote: yes, please, sorry about that.  Thanks. ;-)   Dean wrote: can I delete some of your duplicates Jim? Your keyboard isn't polyphonic is it?

Haha, yes, I understand.  Although I don't believe Stravinsky's Rite of Spring sounds ugly at all, nor do I believe it was written to sound ugly.   I have listened to it for over 30 years and still I keep finding new beauty in the harmonies, thanks to digital recording! ;-)

Nuke wrote: LanCaiHe wrote: Ok, listened to Samba Briza, I don't have any problem at all with that.  It doesn't make much sense compared to the other thing I heard, sounded like two completely different bands.   Be that as it may, I don't think there is anything to "get" about metal.  Ok, we play as fast as we want, so we end up sounding like a polka band from hell, and let someone scream like they are having their heart ripped out by a demon?   There isn't one redeeming quality about it.   Listening to Atheist made me really appreciate rap music! If I wanted to listen to Latin jazz,  I think I would rather listen to THE CARRIBEAN JAZZ PROJECT or ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM, and definitely not to a death metal band called ATHEIST.    Ironic Indeed!   Well, there's definitely something to get about metal. It is music which is purposefully ugly, something that very few people would understand. It's also an ugliness which evolved naturally, not deliberatly like the rite of spring, so that means it has it's own language wheras the rite of spring is written ugly in the language we all know. The amusing thing is that even though you were trying to be funny in your description, many metal bands actually would love to sound like a polka band from hell with the heart being ripped out by a demon!

Yes, and that's really cool, especially when I am trapped in the musical wasteland of the US.

Dean wrote: LanCaiHe wrote: Sorry, but the UK is not the US, especially when it comes to music.   I should have said "US top 40".   Imagine a country where Steeleye Span can have a top 40 hit?   No, this is definitely not the US.   Pretty funny.   Dean wrote: I got carried away  .... and a couple of Prog related slipped in   several of these bothered the UK top 20, and a couple even got to #1   Dire Straits - Money For Nothing - 8:26 Dire Straits - Telegraph Road - 14:21 Laurie Anderson - O Superman 8:21 Donna Summer - Love To Love You Baby - 16:50 Donna Summer - I Feel Love - 10:00 Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird - 9:06 David Bowie - Station To Station - 10:14 The Damned - Curtain Call - 17:13 Jane's Adiction - Three Days - 10:48 Elton John - Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding  - 11:09 Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell - 9:48 Smashing Pumpkins - Starla  - 11:01 Spiritualised - Cop Shoot Cop - 17:43 NOFX - The Decline - 18:19 Neil Young- Cowgirl In The Sand - 10:06 The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again - 8:32 Television - Marquee Moon - 10:40 Siouxsie & the Banshees - The Lords Prayer - 14:09 Issac Hayes - By The Time I Get to Pheonix - 18:40 Marvin Gaye  - Got To Give It Up - 11:48 Faithless - Slava Mea - 10:47 Art Of Noise - Moments In Love - 10:18 The Byrds  - Eight Miles High - 16:03 Credence Clearwater Revival -  Heard It Through the Grapevine  - 11:07 Swans - Animus - 10:41 Roxy Music - Bogus Man - 9:20 Frankie Goes to Hollywood  - Welcome To The Pleasure Dome - 13:58 (UK #1) New Order - Confusion  - 8:12 Cat Stevens - Foreigner Suite  - 18:06 Enigma - Principles of Lust  - 11:43 G'n'R - November Rain - 8:57 Weezer - Only In Dreams - 8:00 Jane Siberry - The Bird and the Gravel  - 10:34 Green Day - Jesus of Suburbia - 9:10 Derick & The Dominos - Layla - 7:02 (damn!)   This is a multinational website - you will get opinions from all corners of the map, not just the centre.

Editing for time

A radio edit is often just a shortened arrangement that makes a song conform to a more traditional (2 1/2 to 4-minute) pop structure. Some radio edits are just "early fades", the song not being played to completion. A professional radio edit may shorten the track by removing many short sections of the track, such as long guitar solos or instrumental sections rather than simply fading out at the end. Since it is usually shorter than the original version, a radio edit is more cost-effective for commercial radio stations, allowing more time for commercials, talk, news and other content to be programmed.

Radio editing for length started in the 1980s, when many pop songs had an original, 12" version of sometimes over 7 minutes in length. Examples are "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" by Ultravox, which was originally 9:52 in length, and "Gold" by Spandau Ballet, which was originally 7:11 in length. These long versions were popular with those buying singles and with club DJs, but were less desirable for airplay, and thus record companies began to create radio edits. Many of these edited versions would only be available on special promotional singles sent to radio stations. Examples: "Aquarius-Let the Sun Shine In"-5th Dimension(2:59), "Tiny Dancer"-Elton John(3:45), and a handful of Paul McCartney singles such as "Band On The Run"(3:50) and "Jet"(2:49).

On rare occasions, however, very long songs do not have a radio edit, despite sometimes being six or seven minutes in length. Famous examples of these include "Hey Jude" (1968) by The Beatles at 7:11, "Stairway to Heaven" (1971) by Led Zeppelin at 8:03, "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975) by Queen at 5:55, and Legião Urbana's "Faroeste Caboclo", at 9:03, which continue to receive considerable radio airplay in their unedited form. Many metal, progressive, classical, college radio and specialist dance stations also play long, unedited versions of tracks.

On other occasions, radio stations may favor the longer version of a song than the radio-edit version, for unknown reasons. One famous example is "El Paso" by Marty Robbins. The full-length version was 4:44, while the promo single edit came in at around three minutes. Although radio stations had the option of playing the more radio-friendly shorter version, the full-length version (despite its long-running time) was overwhelmingly favored.

Rarely, usually in the pop, R&B and dance genres, the radio edit is longer than the original song.

topofsm wrote: LanCaiHe wrote: topofsm wrote: LanCaiHe wrote: OK, now I see where you are coming from.  "Forward Thinking" is something that I feel is all relative.  If you compare anything that any prog band does to works by classical or contemporary classical composers you will find that there is nothing really "new" about what they are doing at all.  In other words, it's all been done before.  It's when it is blended with rock that it becomes progressive rock.   I think that for rock to be progressive rock, it has to have some of these basic characteristics:   1.  Song Length longer than 3 minutes, (around there, the standard allowable pop song length).  this doesn't mean that it can't be under 3 minutes, the Residents do this type of thing all the time.  Prog musicians do not write for the masses, if they were in it for the money, they wouldn't be playing prog.   "Breathe" by Pink Floyd is under 3 minutes. Quite actually, I never said that it couldn't be under 3 minutes, there is just a "rule" out there for top 40 airplay that it has to be a certain length and that length is something like 3 minutes and so many seconds.  The Residents have done many songs under that time limit and so have the Art Bears.    Also, I don't see what Pink Floyd has to do with it? I never considered them Prog.  At least nobody that I hung around with back in the 70's considered them Prog.  We just considered them Rock.  I'm sure I'll hear a lot about that.  Pink Floyd worshipers are about as bad as the people who worship YES.  Fair enough, plenty of people don't consider them prog here, though they're here.   2.  Rooted, or based upon Western classical music, not a heavy emphasis on the blues, i.e. lots of blues scales and funk motifs rhythmic or otherwise.   "21st Schizoid Man" is in the C minor blues scale Actually, I think 21st Century Schizoid Man is in a minor pentatonic scale, not a straight forward blues scale. Also, I didn't say that it could not be used, just to a much lesser degree than every single pop hit does.  So you could say it has it's influence in traditional Chinese music, with the addition of Indian and jazz rhythmic influences. It is pentatonic for the most part, but it does switch. The riff is definetely blues scale in any event, and the chord progression, especially during the complicated rythm part, relies on lots of chords in the 12 bar blues scale.    3.  Lyrics that have subject matter about things other than "I love your hips, I love your thighs, they make me high."  LOL  Prog lyrics are very programmatic or come from an entirely different point of view.   Roxy Music!  Yuck!  I'd rather listen to the B-52s for more interesting lyics. ;-) I'm not personally a fan, but there are people here who will defend to the death their inclusion here as prog.   4.  Players that have a greater than average technical skill at playing their instruments.  This has always been the case with Progressive Rock.   Pink Floyd never flaunted their technical skill  It's because they never HAD and technical skill!  You certainly nailed that one right on the head.   I disagree, and there are people who can talk about their compositional virtuosity and Gilmour's flawless playing for many a post.   5.   Of course things that have a lineage back to what I call the real Prog of the 70's, related to Gentle Giant, ELP, Yes, PFM, etc.,   Tons of prog metal like Atheist and Cynic only goes back to jazz.  You will really have to prove to me that there is a God for me to believe that!   Just my opinion, but I think metal is crap. I don't care how many people like it.  If that's the case, just listen to jazz. ;-) If you don't hear jazz influence in these bands you likely aren't familiar with jazz at all. In any opinion, it doesn't matter whether you think they're crap or not, they are considered prog here. Just cause you're a prog fan doesn't mean everything you like is prog and everything you dislike isn't prog. I dislike ELP, but there's no way in hell I'm going to argue that they're not prog.   Maybe many of you might add to this list?                  Nuke wrote: In my opinion, in order for something to be prog, it needs to be somehow descended from or else be one of the main genres that were called prog in the 70's. If it doesn't follow in the lineage of symphonic prog, italian prog, krautrock, zeuhl, or whatever, then it ought not to be prog, but if it happens to be adopted by the prog community and called prog because of it's innovative nature, then their style of music ought to be considered prog and all of their contemporaries as well. This means it is very weighty to call something prog just because it is progressive in nature. However, by progressive I just mean "forward thinking" or "innovative." Incidentally, lots of prog bands write music that is progressive, although not all (see neo-prog). I wouldn't call matte kudasai either progressive nor prog...   I'm just playing the devil's advocate... don't mind me.  I am the devil, don't mind me either! I find it hard to believe you're the devil when you don't even like metal.   It appears that I've pulled an Ivan here. Don't take this argument too personally please.