Defining Prog ... could it be that simple?

Hm, true.

Edited by npjnpj - July 15 2009 at 04:47

Check out this: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Write_a_Progressive_Rock_Song Some things are hilarious but there's a bit in it somewhere about how it uses wierd 'tempos' and not Time Signatures!

joelossia wrote: Check out this: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Write_a_Progressive_Rock_Song Some things are hilarious but there's a bit in it somewhere about how it uses wierd 'tempos' and not Time Signatures!

Is it true that the last thing progressive rock fans want is for their music to actually be progressive?

The simple is, progressive music is not simple. "Tales From Topographic Ocean" of Yes.....

joelossia wrote: Check out this: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Write_a_Progressive_Rock_Song Some things are hilarious but there's a bit in it somewhere about how it uses wierd 'tempos' and not Time Signatures!

Edited by tamijo - August 02 2009 at 03:27

I know that this might sound a bit uncharacteristically simple to the majority of people posting in this thread, but I have to say, in my humble opinion, that progressive music should be defined by what its name. Progress. Just take a genre, ANY genre, and then try and make things that you should not usually do in it, that's the reason why I think that the line that separates Avant-garde and progressive music is thinner than it looks. What do you think of this?

Perhaps that's the reason why Fripp showed some disagreement regarding this style.
However, there's still something that bothers me... may it be completely or not realized, art itself is, subjectively, not able to progress, is it? The only thing I'm 100% sure about is that we're talking about art.
Sorry if I'm getting a bit philosophical here, but it seems there is no other way but to recur to this discipline to try to figure out this. Speaking as an artist. if you try to draw in as many elements as you want, but you end up in a creative loop, that means you're set on something really big and you want to boldly make your statements "someone important in this world", using what you have, but you may be regarded as pretentious and breaming with self-indulgence. If we take it from this point of view, we might draw the conclusion that the "progressiveness" comes from the subject's creative aspirations. That is one of many theories. Another one could be the theory of the ones who try to understand the art. In other words that "progress" can be achieved by the global outcome of an album of piece or "something of some sort", and its overall originality, although this is not a word I like to use. There maybe a lot more theories, but they're just theories...

It might not help anything to have this pointed out, but the term "classical" is not held up by the music that represents it, perhaps not any more than "progressive" is.  I don't mean to conjure once again the simple observation that the term classical is used for music not in that style; that's true but it's something we all know, a different argument. 

I mean the term was invented, later, to refer to a music that sought to achieve the pleasing balances, but by new means, that the people of that time were discovering (and assuming) the Greeks and Romans (ie. the Classical people) to have employed and to have invested in their works of art, chiefly in the ancient architecture, sculpture and drama. 

So if I'm not wrong here, and Classical music was a label for musics preoccupied with balance, with everything having a reason and place, well then you immediately find problems.  I won't even bring up Beethoven, who existed on the brink of change (progress?, anyway I'm sticking to classical here).  Scarlatti might hold up, but the oft-cited father of the style "Papa" Haydn violated his own principles when he pleased, for instance writing sonatas that had a middle movement in a quite unrelated key (even ugly by a thorough-going analysis).  In fact Mozart used Haydn's models and was more "classical" than him!  The real classical in music, if you accept the term, lies mostly with all the composers whose names have not been passed down to us. 

Anyway, if you accept all this then you see with Classical another term invented to describe something that had already got quite underway without a name; and as time went on it lost parts of its rigor (as a definition) and accepted fresh somewhat-related musics that kept it alive, because, you might say, it had to.  Thoughts?