I'll be the Secretary of the Treasury, too. 

Reminds me of a thing or two ... and the most important one is how we have (somehow!) organized the sounds to "define" music. And then in the rock/jazz age, someone has the gumption to define a new"style" as an instrument added to the equation, and no mention whatsoever, as to what music itself really is ... one could even unplug it, so one could study the musical aspects, but no one will ever do that to most of the thrash and metal material, I don't think.

The tree that fell in the forest too far away from our ears, DID have a sound, even though we were not able to hear it due to the distance, and this is something that is important ... just because it is too far away, we should not be "removing" its innate properties and sounds.  AND, this is what happens to a lot of listeners here on this PA board ... many have not heard something else ... and they are interpreting music as the all-meaning definition of it, which is ridiculous when one thinks about it.

IF, music, is the "organization of sounds", we have a problem ... there is a lot of "music" that has no organization of sounds that we can discern ... and yet we are getting ahead of ourselves and defining something that we do not know, or understand. .... that is soooooooooo .... christian religion of 1500 years ago ... the world is flat and the sun revolves around the world!

I'm OK with a few definitions to help some folks see/find things, but there are some of them that defy reality and imagination ... like calling a band "symphonic" simply because it has a keyboard, or a player doing 2 of them at the same time! At that point, the music is distorted! It is no longer about the "resulting sound", but about the fact that there are/were two keyboards that gave it a sound that we define as this or that.

Again, my example is, if you unplug the dang thing ... and look at it on a score sheet, how does it stand up as a compositional work? It is, this "exercise" that helps us define what "sound" is, and what has made "music" what we think it is, however, in this exercise, we are making the sound itself, be the music, and I'm not sure that the sound itself is what the music is.

A violin has a sound, and so does another instrument. THAT, is not the music ... the combination of what one does with it, is the music, thus, a simple amplification should not define the music at all.

Tough subject ... good job everyone ... but I would like to see more done and worked in this area to help a place like PA become more valuable as a definition of progressive and prog music ... we have got to stop using the sound for a definition, lest we kill the music anyway, and start doing things with sound effects ... we've done that many times (Space Pirate Radio was a master of that!), and it DID create another music ... but more ears every where can not listen to it ... it's bad enough that folks think that Ax Gernrich was not a guitarist in GG's first album, but the results are there ... and I know that Jimi did not sound any better or less interesting doing almost the same thing on stage ... that we could not handle but thought was far out. There was a lot of "noise" in some of that early material, that hardly cries for the word "music" ... and we can not enjoy to it enough ... to help find a good definition of it all ... and I think we have to get past that!