I don't know.  Maybe I just don't get it.  I've tried to like Pink Floyd, I really have.  But to me it's just an occasional good rock song followed by strange spaciness.  I've never done drugs.  Would it help?

Before I found progarchives, I never considered Pink Floyd prog.  All the other classics -- Yes, Genesis, Rush, etc. -- to me that's prog.  But here it seems that half of everyone are Pink Floyd nuts.  Are there others like me who just don't get them or am I stranded on my own island?  Does it help to be English, perhaps?

What is it about Pink Floyd that makes them prog?

Pink Floyd were 10x as inventive and progressive as Rush (who I also like ).

They transformed psychedelia into an art.  You dont have to play a million chords a minute to be prog. 

If you listened to Dark Side or the later albums starting with The Wall, your description is correct. But if you listen to stuff from Piper to Obscured By Clouds, and Wish You/Animals, you will see long compositions, complex arrangements, and all other characteristics of prog perfectly present. They had long, complex epics like Atom Heart Mother, Echoes, Saucerful Of Secrets, Alan's  Psychedelic Breakfast and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Animals is a very "prog", extremely complex concept album. They even experimented with avant garde on Ummagumma. Are you sure you heard the right albums? 

Let's look at the PA definition of prog.

• Long compositions, sometimes running over 20 minutes, with intricate melodies and harmonies that require repeated listening to grasp. These are often described as epics and are the genre's clearest nod to classical music. An early example is the 23-minute "Echoes" by Pink Floyd. Other famous examples include Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" (43 minutes), Yes' "Close to the Edge" (18 minutes) and Genesis' "Supper's Ready" (23 minutes). More recent extreme examples are the 60-minute "Light of Day, Day of Darkness" by Green Carnation and "Garden of Dreams" by The Flower Kings.

I mentioned the epics above.

• Lyrics that convey intricate and sometimes impenetrable narratives, covering such themes as science fiction, fantasy, history, religion, war, love, and madness.

Pink Floyd were one of the first to experiment with narratives, Barrett and later Waters were great lyricists who covered all these aspects.

• Concept albums, in which a theme or storyline is explored throughout an entire album in a manner similar to a film or a play. In the days of vinyl, these were usually two-record sets with strikingly designed gatefold sleeves. Famous examples include The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis, Tales from Topographic Oceans by Yes, 2112 by Rush, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall by Pink Floyd, and the more recent Metropolis Part II: Scenes from a Memory by Dream Theater and Snow by Spock's Beard. Aqualung, perhaps the best-known record by Jethro Tull, is often regarded as a concept album due to its recurring themes, but songwriter Ian Anderson has always claimed that the album is just "a bunch of songs".

This point well covered too. Although I think Animals beats these two.

• Unusual vocal styles and use of multi-part vocal harmonies. See Magma, Robert Wyatt, and Gentle Giant.

Plenty, especially on Animals and The Wall.

• Prominent use of electronic instrumentation — particularly keyboard instruments such as the organ, piano, Mellotron, and Moog synthesizer, in addition to the usual rock combination of electric guitar, bass and drums.

They used all those instruments, except I'm not sure about Moog and Mellotron. 

• Use of unusual time signatures, scales, or tunings. Many pieces use multiple time signatures and/or tempi, sometimes concurrently. Solo passages for virtually every instrument, designed to showcase the virtuosity of the player. This is the sort of thing that contributed to the fame of such performers as keyboardist Rick Wakeman and drummer Neil Peart.

PF did amazing drum perfomances, weird guitar and keyboard work on the early albums(watch Live at Pompeii), later it was reduced to more straightfoward, but still as technical and virtuose solos.

• Inclusion of classical pieces on albums. For example, Yes start their concerts with a taped extract of Stravinsky's Firebird suite, and Emerson Lake and Palmer have performed arrangements of pieces by Copland, Bartók, Moussorgsky, Prokofiev, Janacek, Alberto Ginastera, and often feature quotes from J. S. Bach in lead breaks. Jethro Tull recorded a famous cover of J. S. Bach's "Bouree", in which they turned the classical piece into a "sleazy jazzy night-club song", according to Ian Anderson. Marillion started concerts with Rossini's La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie). Symphony X has included parts by, or inspired by, Beethoven, Holst and Mozart.

They didn't have that one, although Atom Heart Mother is a classical piece of its own.

• An aesthetic linking the music with visual art, a trend started by The Beatles with Sgt. Pepper's and enthusiastically embraced during the prog heyday. Some bands became as well-known for the art direction of their albums as for their sound, with the "look" integrated into the band's overall musical identity. This led to fame for particular artists and design studios, most notably Roger Dean, whose paintings and logo design for Yes are so essential to the band's identity they could be said to serve the same function as corporate branding. Hipgnosis became equally famous for their unusual sleeves for Pink Floyd, often featuring experimental photography quite innovative for the time (two men shaking hands, one of whom is in flames, on the cover of Wish You Were Here). H.R. Giger's painting for Emerson Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery is one of the most famous album sleeves ever produced.

The most amazing works of Storm are PF sleeves.

All points except for one covered. Need any more proof?

PF are milestones of Prog and psyhodelia.

Comparing them to Rush makes no sence.

Listen to Atom heart mother and Ummagumma before you say they are more rock and roll than prog.

I don't like some of their albums (Wall, Delicate sound.., Devision bell), but they made some great ones  (Atom heart mother, Pipper at the gates of down, Medlle, Animals, Dark side of the moon).

prog or not, they are the best

They innovated. See albums like Umma Gumma and Atom Heart Mother for details.

Incidentally, I don't like Pink Floyd very much.

They were instrumentle in pushing rock music away from comformaty along with a lot of other bands.

Yes and PF both started out as Psycodelic bands but wheras Yes advanced to there symphonic sound from The Yes Album onwords, PF maintaned a semblence of their roots.

Personally I think Animals, WYWH and The Wall are three of the progiest albums about.

    They have always been considered prog and are one of the seminal bands. Listed to Atom Heart Mother and Meddle and you will see why. Creatiivity dropped later on but this seems to be a problem for all bands before long.

Let's drop the notions of long complex arrangements, complexity and all the other nonsense that tends to go with describing prog for a moment.

Prog Rock is not about being hideously complex, or being able to improvise for hours on end -although Pink Floyd more than demonstrated their abilities on their earliest output. In fact, if you think about it, everything after Meddle was one concept per album - the Wall being the ultimate consumation of coherent concept-building.

The biggest problem with Pink Floyd as a Prog Rock band that I see is modern perception of Prog Rock - which seems to have little or nothing to do with actual Prog Rock, and more to do with casual sources of reference like Wikipedia, which is one of the worst sources of information about music that I have ever seen - simply because of all the opinionated and factually inaccurate articles therein.

Prog Rock is defined by the bands who were there first - the bands who defined Prog Rock.

Pink Floyd are one of those bands.

That's why they're Prog

Blacksword wrote: ^ I love this level of debate..

Agreed!

^ Less is more...

said the prog fan......

Because they play in a style which progresses beyond the guitar, bass and drums format.

Why is Bob Marley reggae? 

viperjr98 wrote: What is it about Pink Floyd that makes them prog?

 ... you've captured the chaos in my mind with few words... bravo!

There seem to be 3 main related questions here: what is prog rock, how is pink floyd's music defined and what difference it makes...

For the first to questions, I think you've answered them yourselves, and if you haven't, someone else can do it better than me... now for the third one: what difference does it make to you that PF would be prog or not! yes, I know, it wouldn't be in this site! But apart from that, you like Floyd or you don't, that should be the question... anyway, as I am not answering ANYTHING, I'll remain an observer.

bobo wrote: being inventive isn't enough to be prog - Dylan was inventive, the beatles were inventive, does that make them prog? hell, punk was inventive! it's not right to say that they're prog 'cause they did things that weren't done before. personally, I don't get they're thing either. besides the fact that I'm not excited about they're music (it's rather plain to me), I don't see what's prog in them. I'm with viperjr98 on this one. it's just a bunch of rock songs, usually slow ones, with odd space sounds. so what?

You have a very nice avatar.

s1ipp3ry wrote: Pink Floyd is poor mans prog ... For people who don`t get it but think they get it

OK, could you explain it to those of us who don't get it, then?

If you ignore the MUSIC of Of Dark Side, The Wall and The Final Cut (not the concepts), I can't understand how you could NOT consider them a Prog Rock band.

This doesn't apply to post-Waters era Floyd, which is something entirely different, even though "Cluster ONe" rules.

erlenst wrote: Certif1ed wrote: Let's drop the notions of long complex arrangements, complexity and all the other nonsense that tends to go with describing prog for a moment. Prog Rock is not about being hideously complex, or being able to improvise for hours on end -although Pink Floyd more than demonstrated their abilities on their earliest output. In fact, if you think about it, everything after Meddle was one concept per album - the Wall being the ultimate consumation of coherent concept-building. The biggest problem with Pink Floyd as a Prog Rock band that I see is modern perception of Prog Rock - which seems to have little or nothing to do with actual Prog Rock, and more to do with casual sources of reference like Wikipedia, which is one of the worst sources of information about music that I have ever seen - simply because of all the opinionated and factually inaccurate articles therein. Prog Rock is defined by the bands who were there first - the bands who defined Prog Rock. Pink Floyd are one of those bands. That's why they're Prog   Actually I think wikipedia's article about progressive rock is excellent and follow pretty much the same definition as this very site does.. I really have no idea what you are talking about .

I can tell.

This site got the definition from Wikipedia, hence the similarities.

And if you haven't noticed the inaccuracies and bias, then you don't have a working definition of Prog

FragileDT wrote: Genesis doesn't play a million chords a minute and they sure are prog .

Genesis do play a milion chords a minute. of course there are those who play a bilion... ELP for example ;)

erlenst wrote: In other words you have a definition of prog which is different from the one on this site and 90% of the people in here. Sure, I agree that a lot of the stuff in wikipedia is inaccurate, such as the ridiculous art rock definition they have. But a lot of the stuff there is really great also, for instance a lot of the scientific articles.

That's not what I said - but it's probably true nonetheless - I note you don't actually disagree

Most people do not have a good working definition of Prog - and many who visit Internet forums get a lot of their information from the Internet. I have yet to see a "good" definition of Prog Rock on the Internet - this site included. Nothing's perfect.

I agree that some of Wikipedia is great - I didn't say it wasn't - I said it's "one of the worst sources of information about music that I have ever seen - simply because of all the opinionated and factually inaccurate articles therein.".

For example - the article on Twelve Note music is actually entitled Twelve Tone music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-note_music - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-note_music

And this article on Rock music is just an unstructured mess of opinions and potted histories of author's favourites;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_music - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_music

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

SaintVitus wrote: viperjr98 wrote: I never considered Pink Floyd prog.  That's A Sin!

THAT'S A REALLY BIG SIN

well check it at a dictionary, near the word prog...

Rockin' Chair wrote: I think Pink Floyd are 50% prog.

Lol, that pretty much sums it up for me... Perhaps even slightly less than 50% so that I can continue to omit them from my personal prog album list  I don't know, I really really like PF -some of their records I simply adore. Yet I can't bring myself to list them among bands like (classic) Yes, Genesis and King Crimson, it just doesn't feel right, no matter how innovative they were. The musicianship just isn't up to the standard I have in my mind for prog music and that is what I personally put above criterias such as whether a band makes concept albums or create soundscapes that differ from straight rock'n'roll (sooo many bands would have to be included in the prog category if this was one of the primary criterias, really)

In a way Pink Floyd were proto prog at a time when "pure" prog was already riding high. They went a little bit further than The Beatles but not far enough to be authentic prog, at least not for me. Yet I will continue to like them, just as I like The Beatles... It doesn't have to be prog to be great.

erlenst wrote: Ok, I can definately see your point. I wonder though how anyone who obviously knows a lot of the theory behind Twelve Note couldn't get the name straight However, I would like to see your definition of prog, if that doesn't too off topic. Not that it's even particularly important, after all it doesn't matter what we call the music as long as it's awesome

I'm working on a full encyclopaedia entry type definition of Prog Rock. I doubt I'll get it finished until the New Year - but in a nutshell, I think that Prog Rock is defined by the bands that defined it back in the early 1970s, and, as such, it is virtually undefinable...

Or is that too confusing

Maybe I should just leave the definition at "It's awesome"

Pink Floyd have never really done it for me either. But that doesn't mean they're not prog.

Prog does not mean 'good'. Good does not mean 'Prog'. How many people on this site have ignored that basic perception of music?

• Prominent use of electronic instrumentation — particularly keyboard instruments such as the organ, piano, Mellotron, and Moog synthesizer, in addition to the usual rock combination of electric guitar, bass and drums.

They used all those instruments, except I'm not sure about Moog and Mellotron. 

Mellotron is used on Saucerful of Secrets & Ummagumma albums (and related singles e.g. Julia Dream) and Synthesiser (as opposed to the more specific Moog) is all over Dark Side (VCS3) and Wish & Animals (Oberheim & others)

A number of us old timers were baffled when both Rush and Pink Floyd found their way on to Channel Four prog top 10 groups not so long ago. It wasn't America heard DSOTM that the band was called prog, as opposed to psychedelia. So as to being more progressive than other bands, well until they over got over the loss of Syd Barrett it was felt they spent half a decade navel grazing, and progressing by a gnat's cock l

ength.

viperjr98 wrote: I don't know.  Maybe I just don't get it.  I've tried to like Pink Floyd, I really have.  But to me it's just an occasional good rock song followed by strange spaciness.  I've never done drugs.  Would it help? Before I found progarchives, I never considered Pink Floyd prog.  All the other classics -- Yes, Genesis, Rush, etc. -- to me that's prog.  But here it seems that half of everyone are Pink Floyd nuts.  Are there others like me who just don't get them or am I stranded on my own island?  Does it help to be English, perhaps? What is it about Pink Floyd that makes them prog?

Dick Heath wrote: A number of us old timers were baffled when both Rush and Pink Floyd found their way on to Channel Four prog top 10 groups not so long ago. It wasn't America heard DSOTM that the band was called prog, as opposed to psychedelia. So as to being more progressive than other bands, well until they over got over the loss of Syd Barrett it was felt they spent half a decade navel grazing, and progressing by a gnat's cock l

With historical restrospect, that seems like nonsense:

"Saucerful..." was a kind of "Piper 2", but the writing does show marked progression - the title track alone is practically pure Prog Rock, not just a psychedelic jam.

"Ummagumma" represents a major leap forward in terms of the experimentation on sides 3 and 4 - no matter what the band think about it now, I hear it as genius - pure stream of consciousness music (albeit with a smorgasbord of ego...).

"Atom Heart Mother" is very different again - I'm not totally convinced by it, but there are deliberate attempts to do different things and use new sonic soundscapes.

"Meddle" is a pure masterpiece - especially "Echoes", and a stunning progression from the <"Ummagumma" style.

Then there's the "Live at Pompeii" film, which I still find to be a stunning live performance to this day, not to mention "More", "Zabrieski Point" and "Obscured by Clouds"... OK, I did mention them, and they are all somewhat sub-par - but clearly show what the band were capable of when they were only ticking over. I generally don't count them as "bona fide" Floyd albums since they're sound tracks. They were handy doodle pads for later albums - and an interesting insight into the way they changed their collective approaches to composition.

Which brings us to "DSOTM" - which, of course, was performed live many, many months before the band hit the studio.

But that's just a retrospective perspective...