Why classic prog faded?

Argonaught wrote: Surrealist wrote: The failure to manifest odd metering, key changes and other time tested tools of the trade into musical sensibility of some sort is where most of the neo prog bands I have heard are failing to make the impact they could with the listener, whether it be a Prog fan or not.  I am sure this is why my wife fell asleep at the Dream Theater concert.  Technical showboating rocked her to sleep. Thanks for reminding me about Dream Theater. In the past, I have made several earnest attempts to develop some level of affinity with this band,  but it just wouldn't work. My only vivid memory is that of  Portnoy ('cause this was before his departure), bludgeoning his kit with great vigor and stamina. That said ... genre-wise, aren't they supposed to be metal rather than (neo)-"prog"?

Dream Theater are strictly progressive metal with some symphonic prog elements as well. Virtuoso and technical ability is the bands niche. They are the godfather of prog metal. A creative force that cannot be shut down even with the loss of one of the best drummers in the world. To me, that shows major character.

[ I'm not sure that I explained properly what I mean, it's hard to find the right words but I know what I meant. When I listen to some albums from the 70's, even if they may not be masterpieces I may have a feeling of this could only have been recorded in the 70's.   [/QUOTE wrote: Think how you want to explain this if I'm reading it correctly is that each time period or generational class of music ie(70's-80's-90's) carries a distinctive technological sound. For instance, when I hear drum Machines and electro synth I think 80's. When I hear the moog, mellotron and organ I

Think how you want to explain this if I'm reading it correctly is that each time period or generational class of music ie(70's-80's-90's) carries a distinctive technological sound. For instance, when I hear drum
Machines and electro synth I think 80's. When I hear the moog, mellotron and organ I think of the 70's and of course when I hear grunge peddle tweaking with the guitar I think 90's. That is distinction and authentication from each era to me

Gerinski wrote: I love much modern prog but I can somehow guess what Surrealist is talking about, and I think it has to do with the sense of "authenticity" or "innocence" or "undeliberation" or "unadulteration" or I don't know how to call it.   Back in the 70's prog scene it was too early to talk about influences, sub-genres, clones etc. Prog bands just did what they felt right at that time with very little pre-existing similar music to base themselves on, and when they got the planets and stars in the right alignment (don't shoot me this is a metaphor) the result was simply lovely, pure, unadulterated, authentical brilliant music resulting from a genuine situation of open musical freedom.   Nowadays of course proggy musicians keep trying to do their own thing at their best and surely a lot of great prog is being made, but the thoughts of "comparison", "influences", "sounds like this or that", "it's derivative" etc etc are unavoidable except for truly avant music or new sub-genres, so much prog made today even if composed and played proficiently may suffer from a lack of authenticity or purity compared to the 70's masterpieces, it simply can not sound as genuine, not because of the musicians fault but simply because of the historical conjucture.   Just as any modern car has it really hard to become so authentically iconic as the original VW Beetle or the original Fiat 500 or the original Mini.   Of course this is not valid when we go to contemporary really progressive-avant styles which share little if anything with 70's prog.    I'm not sure that I explained properly what I mean, it's hard to find the right words but I know what I meant. When I listen to some albums from the 70's, even if they may not be masterpieces I may have a feeling of "this could only have been recorded in the 70's".

I have mentioned this on another thread and received much resistance, but digital recording has been an absolute disaster to progressive rock in particular.  The great Prog bands stood out because they were technically superior musicians in most cases compared to your standard rock musicians.  Before digital editing where EVERYTHING can be fixed after is has been recorded, bands actually had to play the parts even when multitracking.  Now, musicians spend more time on a computer than they do playing their instruments.  Most every musician these days is so caught up in the computer editing software they literally would not know what to do without it.  Line everything up perfect, fix this, fix that, change the pitch of the vocal that was flat, quantize the drums and bass together, play 5 seconds of perfection and copy and past it endlessly or loop it over and over and thump your chest with your fists and declare you are a "golden god".  Sample someone elses perfect sounds... etc.  It is an absolute disaster stripping the humanity and life out of nearly every recording.  As bad as digital recording is in the hands of street consumers, poor quality recordings are standard fair and accepted as status quo.  While Prog in the 70's often had real pros working with the bands, now it amateurs teaching amateurs how to be sound engineers.  George Martin is now "Cee Low" rapper.

The public now expects the homogenized sound everyone has access to. 

In the 70's, the lack of this "silly luxury" kept it real and musicians actually had to practice to lay quality tracks.  In that extra practice also came ideas while practicing so this aided the creative process as it had for thousands of years. 

I sold some gear to a guy who said his 13 year old son has written 10 full symphonies on a computer, even though he can't play any instrument.  This is utter nonsense and needs to stop. 

Of course the recordings pre digital age were much more honest.. and everyone could feel the band and how they were shaping the music and their sound. 

Music IS NOT about perfection in production any more that oil paintings should look like photography. 

We are getting TV dinner music compared to grandma's home cooking goodness. 
So I know the same folk here are going to go on and on about how things change, and it's not the 70's anymore, and prog progresses and yadda yadda yadda.. but that is just that crap argument for TV dinners are the grand progression of human food processing.

The prophetic "Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging" has arrived and I hope it tastes good to you guys.. it sure doesn't to me.

Surrealist wrote: I have mentioned this on another thread and received much resistance, but digital recording has been an absolute disaster to progressive rock in particular.  The great Prog bands stood out because they were technically superior musicians in most cases compared to your standard rock musicians.  Before digital editing where EVERYTHING can be fixed after is has been recorded, bands actually had to play the parts even when multitracking.  Now, musicians spend more time on a computer than they do playing their instruments.  Most every musician these days is so caught up in the computer editing software they literally would not know what to do without it.  Line everything up perfect, fix this, fix that, change the pitch of the vocal that was flat, quantize the drums and bass together, play 5 seconds of perfection and copy and past it endlessly or loop it over and over and thump your chest with your fists and declare you are a "golden god".  Sample someone elses perfect sounds... etc.  It is an absolute disaster stripping the humanity and life out of nearly every recording.  As bad as digital recording is in the hands of street consumers, poor quality recordings are standard fair and accepted as status quo.  While Prog in the 70's often had real pros working with the bands, now it amateurs teaching amateurs how to be sound engineers.  George Martin is now "Cee Low" rapper.

Surrealist wrote: I have mentioned this on another thread and received much resistance, but digital recording has been an absolute disaster to progressive rock in particular.  The great Prog bands stood out because they were technically superior musicians in most cases compared to your standard rock musicians.  Before digital editing where EVERYTHING can be fixed after is has been recorded, bands actually had to play the parts even when multitracking.  Now, musicians spend more time on a computer than they do playing their instruments.  Most every musician these days is so caught up in the computer editing software they literally would not know what to do without it.  Line everything up perfect, fix this, fix that, change the pitch of the vocal that was flat, quantize the drums and bass together, play 5 seconds of perfection and copy and past it endlessly or loop it over and over and thump your chest with your fists and declare you are a "golden god".  Sample someone elses perfect sounds... etc.  It is an absolute disaster stripping the humanity and life out of nearly every recording.  As bad as digital recording is in the hands of street consumers, poor quality recordings are standard fair and accepted as status quo.  While Prog in the 70's often had real pros working with the bands, now it amateurs teaching amateurs how to be sound engineers.  George Martin is now "Cee Low" rapper. The public now expects the homogenized sound everyone has access to.  In the 70's, the lack of this "silly luxury" kept it real and musicians actually had to practice to lay quality tracks.  In that extra practice also came ideas while practicing so this aided the creative process as it had for thousands of years.  I sold some gear to a guy who said his 13 year old son has written 10 full symphonies on a computer, even though he can't play any instrument.  This is utter nonsense and needs to stop.  Of course the recordings pre digital age were much more honest.. and everyone could feel the band and how they were shaping the music and their sound.  Music IS NOT about perfection in production any more that oil paintings should look like photography.  We are getting TV dinner music compared to grandma's home cooking goodness.  So I know the same folk here are going to go on and on about how things change, and it's not the 70's anymore, and prog progresses and yadda yadda yadda.. but that is just that crap argument for TV dinners are the grand progression of human food processing. The prophetic "Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging" has arrived and I hope it tastes good to you guys.. it sure doesn't to me.

That's quite different from what I said or meant, I don't think that the new recording techniques are necessarily a problem for the quality of modern music, at least not in the environment of prog.

Gerinski wrote: That's quite different from what I said or meant, I don't think that the new recording techniques are necessarily a problem for the quality of modern music, at least not in the environment of prog.   What you say may be right for much mainstream music out there but we still have real musicians in prog and I believe that most of what we hear in modern prog studio albums has actually been played "live in the studio" on a real instrument. If what you say was true modern bands would not be able to play live concerts.   I do agree that the extensive use of digital technology and post-recording editing of some modern prog makes it sound more sterile, but that is not the rule.   And I do agree with Rogerthat that generalising, modern musicians seem to tend to pay less attention to composition, though I am aware that this statement is subjective.

I'm in agreement with you here Gerard, though I would have to say that in a lot of mainstream music there are a high number of real musicians who are not only capable of playing live concerts, but also can replicate that in a studio and vice versa, whether we like that music or not - I'm no fan of Munford & Sons or Keane or any of those other "indie" mainstream artists, but I cannot truthfully say they are not real musicians or the albums they release are the product of cunning studio trickery. Sure I find Coldplay, Elbow and the like to be a tad over-produced and a little too pristine for my personal tastes but seeing videos Elbow performing live in Abbey Road creating the same lush over-produced sound without studio manipulation doesn't make me think that there is something amiss with modern production or they are not practiced (and well rehearsed) musicians. You only have to tune into Live With Jools Holland every week to see a plethora of mainstream artists doing what live bands have always been able to do.

Edited by Dean - November 23 2012 at 09:10

rogerthat wrote: Dean wrote: I must admit I've not given the idea of composition any thought, and perhaps because I do not see that much of a difference between then and now - even our favourite compositions of the golden era had a toe-hold in the basic framework of 12 and 16-bar blues with the variations in verse, chorus and bridge that has always existed in Popular Music since the days of Music Hall and family sing-songs around the piano in the parlour. How much those epic prog masterpieces were "composed" is open to conjecture, I'm sure many of them were little more than extended jams or were allowed to grow organically in the rehearsal studio or on stage. Certainly if you read what Rick Wakeman has said on how Yes created music it is more a case of Jon had a bit that did this, and Chris has bit that goes like that and his job was to come up with some twiddley bits to connect the two together while they went for lunch. Songs constructed by committee are never going to be "composed" in the traditional sense of the word in that there was ever an overal design or plan of how the final piece should be. I don't doubt that there is a lot of truth in that but my point was very different.   There is not much fascination today with trying to write interesting music or the desire to surprise.  Surprise has almost become a bad thing today; it seems to be eminently preferable to write music that conforms to somebody's comfort zone.   What is progressive about music that does not resolve conflict.  Prog rock bands in the 70s may have dipped into well entrenched sources but they did possess a sense of adventure that is today only found to some extent in extreme metal (which also seems to have peaked).    I am sure there would be moments where conflict is built and resolved in many prog rock tracks of the present day but the manner in which it is attempted has become more and more cliched.   And strangely, the more daring and less 'boxed in' artists, like Radiohead and Bjork, seem to be the ones that people have most difficulty in regarding as prog rock.    Which seems to support my, possibly unfounded, belief that many listeners have got too comfortable now, wanting more of the same and then moaning that there's not much creativity in the air.

Ah, I see, Yes I guess there is something to that - though I would not single that out as being an element of the whole compositional process that is lacking as such. I think there are artists such as The Enid who still compose with that dynamic element of sudden change and modern bands like The Mars Volta and The Dear Hunter (and still a number of metal bands like Orphaned Land) who are still capable of surprise and adventure in the music they produce. But then there are others like The Flower Kings, Phideaux, Manning etc  who maintain a more melodic flow to their compositions that belies the complexity of what they produce. In many respects it's like the course of a river that becomes meandering and slower in its old age - Progressive Metal was a young genre were being adventurous was new and fresh and anything seemed possible. Bjork is an interesting case in point, as you say some people have difficulty in regarding her as Prog Rock even when she fulfils all the requirements of weird and wonderful, of wacky time signatures, inventive key changes, non-standard structures and forms, unusual instrumentation and arrangement, meaningflully meaningless lyrics and wealth of surprise and adventure. It's a strange but beguiling world we inhabit.

Dean wrote: How much those epic prog masterpieces were "composed" is open to conjecture, I'm sure many of them were little more than extended jams or were allowed to grow organically in the rehearsal studio or on stage. Certainly if you read what Rick Wakeman has said on how Yes created music it is more a case of Jon had a bit that did this, and Chris has bit that goes like that and his job was to come up with some twiddley bits to connect the two together while they went for lunch. Songs constructed by committee are never going to be "composed" in the traditional sense of the word in that there was ever an overal design or plan of how the final piece should be.

 

^^^

Agree with the post above. Almost all the material (music and lyrics) was written by Ian himself.
The other band's members were mainly involved in arrengements rather than in composition.


Edited by Andrea Cortese - November 23 2012 at 11:00

To say prog rock musicians were better musicians than rock musicians back in the seventies is a strange and mistaken opinion in my opinion. If I remember correctly many rock musicians appeared on prog rock records back in that time period. I think if you want a totally nostalgic music site then PA is probably not for you. I think you might fit in wherever Walter is hanging out these days. I think you, Surrealist, are painting with a very narrow brush.