Genres?

I'm having a hard time with all this genre stuff.   I've been a prog fan since early 70s and now find classification extremely difficult now...PA's  main site only offers an extreme confused explanation on the genre.  Has music got so complicated we have sub- genre everything...

Saperlipopette! wrote: noni wrote: Can someone please explain these extra sub- genres in simple terms.   No lol - but if I had the time I could explain how and why our brain needs to categorize and classify... everything. If you want to you can scroll down and read about all these Sub Genres instead. I find a few of them silly and superfluous myself but I rather have one too many genres than far too few because PA covers a lot of ground.

I think a lot of them are pretty self-explanatory, and if you listen to various music in all of the categories it won't need explaining.

The categories are useful to find acts with similar qualities. I mean, it makes sense to me to have disparate music such as Tangerine Dream, Dream Theater, Marillion, Hatfield and the North, Art Zoyd, Miles Davis, and Pentangle in different categories. It makes it a lot easier to find the kind of music you like instead putting it all under one heading as the music in the categories have stylistic relations. I just wish we had individual album tagging since not every album by a band might fit one category, and various albums will fit various categories. There is lots of overlap, and categorization is not a precise science. If you're a Dream theater fan and looking for similar music, I'm going to suggest that you check out the Prog Metal category, not the Indo-Prog/ Raga Rock one. Heck, I wouldn't need to, people can get it without me saying so.

I'll try this, but these are poor definitions as I won't spend ages thinking about it and I don't feel like researching:

Canterbury Scene: drew on jazz, improvisation and psychedelia. Pretty disparate music but the movement or scene started in the late 60s and was based on improvisational musicians many of which were based around Canterbury, Kent. There is also a sort of Canterbury sound, so you find artists listed in that category that were inspired by the Canterbury Scene artists such as Picchio dal Pozzo from Italy and Cos from Belgium.

Crossover Prog: Music deemed Prog that crosses into pop or very mainstream music. Like Prog generally, it's a hybrid, and of course artists in other categories cross into pop/ mainstream, but this is deemed a significant stylistic component.

Eclectic Prog: It's eclectic and commonly crosses various Prog categories without leaning so much towards one that it goes in that category instead. For instance, if a band is one part psyche. one part jazz prog, one part Symphonic Prog, but in fairly equal measure then it might be a good fit for Eclectic. RIO/Avant and Crossover also both often have those qualities but in Crossover its poppier and in Rio/Avant it's commonly more avant-garde.

Prog Experimental/Post Metal: The first is experimental metal and post-metal has similarities to post-rock. In post metal it often takes slude, doom, stoner rock, and grunge elements.

Heavy Prog: it's like hard rock prog, or classic heavy metal prog.

Indo-Prog/Raga Rock: influenced by South Asian music, and generally has psychedelic qualities.

Jazz Rock/Fusion: It's fusion of jazz and rock essentially, and can also fuse other styles with jazz.

Krautrock: a German based music that was influenced by psychedelia. I use the term Kosmische commonly for it. Sort of a cosmic German rock.

Neo-Prog: Apost symphonic prog movement where symphonic prog was mixed with medlodic and arena rock, and new wave in cases. It draws on Genesis heavily, but classically has an 80s aesthetic.

Post Rock/Math Rock: Post rock is like after rock , commonly uses rock instrumental to create less rock music, can feel quite classical and soundtracky and can be very ambient. As for math rock, I used to like to think that it was rock music composed through mathematical calculation, probably with the aid of calculators, computers and weird algorithms to create the rhythms, but I think of it as angular music (which does bring in geometry in a sense).

Prog Folk: progressive folk rock fusion, my favourite is acid folk.

Progressive Electronic: electronic music with elements of progressive rock.

Progressive Metal: Much like progressive rock only metal,

Psychedelic/Space Rock: Psychedelic and cosmic rock deemed progressive.

RIO/Avant-Prog Rock: RIO was a movement of musicians that made rock in an avant-garde less commercial way. It had concerts and the original collective signed on to a manifesto. It also had a political element. Avant Prog is experiemental, avant-garde rock. RIO bands can be called AVant prog, but most Avant Prog acts are not RIO.

Progressivo Italiano Symphonic Prog: Italy's version of symphonic Prog. The music has a distinct Italiano flavour.

Tech/Extreme Prog Metal: technical and extreme prog metal.

Zeuhl: Mama is the premiere band and the genre was named after their conception of music. Reliant on rhythm and bass and often has an operatic component -- think Carmina Burana and Wagner meet Prog with phat bass to boot.

Various Genres/Artists Prog:
Various albums and artists. Includes tribute albums, concept albums and a lot of stuff that didn't make the usual categories. often the albums themsleves are compilations of various artists, but you also have wide variety of stuff.

Prog Related: Acts and music that are deemed to have a Prog Relation but are not put into one of the so-called proper-prog categories. There are criteria to limit the numbers.

Proto_prog -- music considered important to the development of early Prog and music considered to be Prog in embryonic form without being suitable for a Prog category.

There is a lot of overlap in the categories, but I actually wish we had more categories. Prog is a pretty nebulous concept and we have a lot of music in PA that might not fit the traditional of view of Prog. By including lots of categories it makes it easier to bring in a wide variety of music and for people to discover music of interest to them (certainly it makes it easier for me to discover music that I will like). Most of has have preferred categories/ styles of music under the prog umbrella. The music is very disparate, and not wanting sub-categories here seems to me kind of like not wanting categories of music. Someone might say, it's all music so why not have rap, country, crunk, classical, Chinese opera, and rock all in the same place? In fact why not include all art under the same category music, painting, sculpture, performance art etc.? Classification helps.

Much like a museum, I won't want everything jumbled together, and I think one can say that of many archives.

Explain why HABELARD2 is classed  crossover and not Neo/ Symphonic??

noni wrote: Explain why <span style="font-size: small; font-family: ' Sans', ' Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: -0.06em;">HABELARD2 i</span><span style="font-size: small; font-family: ' Sans', ' Sans', Arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.06em;">s </span><font face=" Sans, Sans, Arial, sans-serif" size="2"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.7799999713897705px;">classed  crossover and not Neo/ </span><font face="Sans, Sans, Arial, sans-serif" size="2"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.7799999713897705px;">Symphonic??</span>

I don't know it, but Micky's right, someone thought they fit that category best. And right too that it's a guide and not an absolute. Many bands/ albums could fit various categories, and not everyone will agree which category is best, but the most important thing is to find the band a place (and make sure that the category fits quite well is important). If we had album tagging, perhaps that band's album would be tagged Neo, Symphonic, Crossover. A lot of Neo bands crossover into popular music styles anyway.

I just listened to a Habelard2 sample, and it didn't sound out of place to me for Crossover. I hear a crossover into mainstream/ pop music, for instance with the vocals, but I commonly find that in a lot of Neo-Prog and modern Symphonic Prog (such as Spock's Beard) too. Don't worry too much about individual artists as you'll find many that could fit multiple categories, and albums that be better suited to other categories. Categorisation is helpful as a general guide to discovering music. I agree with mechanicalflattery that you should try listening to the most well-known acts in the category to generally get a good understanding of the kinds of music it contains. After a while maybe you'll be coming up with your own definitions that you think better describe the category in whatever your native tongue is.

Of course if you think that a particular artist is wrongly classified, you can try to build a case for it, but of course it's easier make the case when you're very knowledgeable about the kinds of music in the categories and you can understand the definitions for the categories.

There is a saying that I like to repeat, "Nomenclature is the bane of the archivist."

noni wrote: Explain why HABELARD2 is classed  crossover and not Neo??

Logan writes an essay-length response to try and help you out and it doesn't merit a "thanks" in your response?

Edited by Mascodagama - August 27 2017 at 03:08

Mascodagama wrote: noni wrote: Explain why HABELARD2 is classed  crossover and not Neo?? Logan writes an essay-length response to try and help you out and it doesn't merit a "thanks" in your response?

Mascodagama wrote: noni wrote: Mascodagama wrote: noni wrote: Explain why HABELARD2 is classed  crossover and not Neo?? Logan writes an essay-length response to try and help you out and it doesn't merit a "thanks" in your response? Crikey man,  a man has to sleep or don't they sleep where you are?.... With a baby in the house, basically no! Possibly why I'm a grumpy t**t, sorry.