Is Pink Floyd prog rock?

Frenetic Zetetic wrote: I thought PF was noise/grind?

I believe you're thinking of Punk Freud

I'm genuinely impressed this thread keeps managing to continue!

Why wouldn't they be?

For me it's Space Rock through all albums except The Wall and The Final Cut (which is more opera or whatever)

Firstly, the track "A Saucerful of Secrets". This piece is pretty wholeheartedly avant-garde; the first section uses non-traditional mic setups in order to capture different sounds, while the second section uses tape loops. In general, the whole piece is an experiment in recording methods and extended techniques (e.g. slide guitar, banging fists on the piano).

Secondly, "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast". This piece actually incorporates a pretty interesting manipulation of acoustic space, spreading the different recordings of the breakfast scene throughout the stereo field in a way you would never really hear if you were in the room. They also make use of tape effects and overdubs on the breakfast scene itself, manipulating both the breakfast sounds and Alan Styles' voice. As for the music itself, the first section makes some interesting processing choices on the steel guitar, the second section is a modified fugue, and the third section makes use of overdubs and stereo manipulation.

Lastly, pretty much all of The Dark Side of the Moon, but especially "On the Run", "Time", "Us and Them". "On the Run" is just a straight-up avant-garde electronic piece. It makes use of modular synthesis, tape manipulation, extended technique on the guitar, stereo manipulation, general effects usage, as well as some pretty extreme experiments with acoustic space. "Time", of course, opens with numerous clock recordings all put on top each other, followed by a two minute instrumental section; it also includes "Breath (Reprise)", which I'll talk about in a second. "Us and Them" is one of the most interesting tracks on the album when it comes to production. Segueing out of Money, as each instrument enters, it occupies its own unique acoustic space (through a combination of how it was recorded and the reverb/delay effects applied). Very few of the instruments occupy the same space; instead, Alan Parsons overlays multiple different spaces to create a very expansive sound despite only using a few instruments. 

This was actually the focus of my paper, because this technique is used throughout the whole album to achieve a very "cosmic" effect. The problem producers often run into in creating a "full" or "expansive" sound is instead creating a very crowded acoustic space. Alan Parsons avoids this and makes The Dark Side of the Moon an album that is so heavily associated with a psychedelic or "space-y" sound, despite the very minimal use of synthesizers that are usually so characteristic of space-related music; only four tracks ("On the Run", "Time", "Any Colour You Like", and "Brain Damage") actually have synthesizers, and two of them only use it to a fairly minimal extent (doubling the bass in the instrumental intro of "Time" and the synthesizer melody at the end of "Brain Damage").

The Dark Side of the Moon, I would argue, is actually one of the most progressive albums ever, because the band so heavily—and expertly—incorporates elements of classical avant-garde and electronic music. Half of the tracks ("Speak to Me", "On the Run", "Money", "Brain Damage", and "Eclipse") incorporate tape loops and/or tape effects into them, often as one of the defining features of the track (the various voices on "Speak to Me", the cash register on "Money"). Furthermore, the track "Speak to Me", in addition to being a very excellent sound collage, effectively serves as an overture to the whole album, introducing many of the motifs that will show up again later: the heartbeat from "Eclipse", the clocks from "Time", the laughter from "Brain Damage", the cash register from "Money", the helicopter from "On the Run", and Clare Torry's vocals from "The Great Gig in the Sky". It also contains the first spoken segment on the album, which is a motif that shows up in most of the songs (briefly in "On the Run", "The Great Gig in the Sky", the end of "Money", the beginning and middle of "Us and Them", the end of "Brain Damage", and the end of "Eclipse"). The second track, Breathe, is also reprised at the end of Time. The motivic nature of many of the albums' defining features is undeniably related to the classical tradition, most notably to Wagner's operas and to the "German" (i.e. Beethovenian) symphony.

These are only a couple of examples of how Pink Floyd uses avant-garde techniques; others include the extended vocal technique on "Pow R. Toc H."; avant-garde recording and extended techniques on "Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun"; musique concrète on "Quicksilver"; manipulation of stereo field and acoustic space on "Grantchester Meadows"; tape effects on "Several Species of Small Furry Animals..."; electronic noise, vocal processing, and tape manipulation on "Atom Heart Mother"; non-traditional/long-form/sophisticated compositional structure on "Echoes"; and tape effects and fairly complex overdub and synthesizer work throughout Wish You Were Here. 

To summarize, I would argue that Pink Floyd is absolutely a progressive rock band, due to their combination of avant-garde/electronic composition with rock music, and would actually say that most of Pink Floyd's work from their inception through The Wall is very progressive in its approach (The Wall, more straightforward and commercial though it may be, is an excellent rock opera and is a fine example of the use of motifs in rock music).

EDIT: Despite being roughly 1000 words, this is in fact a significantly abridged version of the original 5000+ word paper .

Jaketejas wrote:    Bravo!   Very educational. Thank you!

I second that. If we gotta have such a thread running for months and 8 pages for ultimately getting something like this, it is well worth the patience.

While I agree with you, I do have to point out that Schizoid has many time changes. Mostly in that middle section with the pauses. That was kind of the point of the track: to be complicated and be like nothing that came before. In this case, the time changes sort of defined that track as "progressive" within the context of the time. But PF did stuff that was progressive or prog or whatever in the context of the time too, so I agree with your overall sentiment.