# Research on Pink Floyd and progressive music. Your thoughts?



## Acreator (Feb 9, 2013)

I'm taking a doctoral seminar on the music of Pink Floyd. I never really gave them a fair chance when I was younger  I was too obsessed with metal  so it's really interesting to discover them now.

I've been surprised to learn that there is some debate in the musical community regarding the Floyd's genre. I was wondering what your thoughts on this are.

1) Do you consider Pink Floyd "progressive rock"? Some albums more than others?

2) What bands and/or songs do you consider to be, without a doubt, "progressive rock"?

3) What do you think is the defining attribute of "progressive rock" as a style or a genre?


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## Varcolac (Feb 9, 2013)

Acreator said:


> I'm taking a doctoral seminar on the music of Pink Floyd. I never really gave them a fair chance when I was younger  I was too obsessed with metal  so it's really interesting to discover them now.
> 
> I've been surprised to learn that there is some debate in the musical community regarding the Floyd's genre. I was wondering what your thoughts on this are.
> 
> ...




1) Yes. They're almost an exemplar of the genre. Long instrumental explorations, concept albums, twenty-minute songs, they're prog as hell.

2) Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis with Peter Gabriel (definitely not with Phil Collins on lead vocals), King Crimson and Jethro Tull (though they're a bit trickier to place, Aqualung and Thick as a Brick are pure prog)

3) Development of themes. Hence the long instrumental explorations, concept albums and twenty-minute songs.


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## JSanta (Feb 9, 2013)

Acreator said:


> I'm taking a doctoral seminar on the music of Pink Floyd. I never really gave them a fair chance when I was younger  I was too obsessed with metal  so it's really interesting to discover them now.
> 
> I've been surprised to learn that there is some debate in the musical community regarding the Floyd's genre. I was wondering what your thoughts on this are.
> 
> ...



1. Without a doubt I consider Pink Floyd a progressive rock band. I think what they were able to do in the studio with sounds and tones and the stories they told would make them one of the if not THE best progressive rock band from that era.

2. From that era Genesis, Yes, King Crimson

3. This one is going to be a bit broader for people, but the progression of themes and intense musicality, along with not following a song writing formula.


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## Hollowway (Feb 9, 2013)

Please tell me the doctoral seminar was not on trying to identify to which genre Pink Floyd best belongs. I would hate to think that our country's brightest minds are hard at work on something like that.


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## tedtan (Feb 9, 2013)

I largely agree with Varcolac, but I would probably call their first several albums (_Ummagumma_ through _Meddle_) phychedelic/acid rock rather than prog. Their prog era began, IMO, with _The Dark Side Of The Moon_.


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## SP1N3SPL1TT3R (Feb 9, 2013)

1.) I'd define Pink Floyd as a forefronting the "progressive" concept, but they are far from what we define today, as "progressive music." Floyd was heavily structured, compare to modern prog. Eg., most of Gilmour's playing and solos specifically use the D Pentatonic scale. Although, he is a jazz guitarist at heart and he accents notes, like a blues guitarist. He's is one of the very few guitarists, that can make a guitar express emotion. Listen to the 1st and 2nd solos of Comfortably Numb. Gilmour's also a master of guitar tone. The Wall, including the live version, is the greatest sounding album of all time. Soundscape. I could go on forever about them...

2.) The 2 best examples of prog: for classic rock, Rush. For modern music: Opeth and Dream Theatre, hands down.

3.) To me, prog is just a derivative of jazz. A lot of prog sounds almost like a band of different types of musicians, trying to play their own thing, but also trying to mesh their ideas together simultaneously. Eg., some of the musicians in Opeth were primarily death metal musicians and the others are not. That's why most prog songs sound like 5 different piece of music, put into one. And why most of the songs are 12 minutes long. That's where Floyd sounds different, although they have some longer songs. Their songs all fit together, by using an underlying theme/concept, and used a unifying musical structure (choice of notes, composition techniques). Alot of which hippy jam bands try to copy. Floyd had a musical chemistry that can't no other band has had since.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 10, 2013)

Acreator said:


> I'm taking a doctoral seminar on the music of  Pink Floyd. I never really gave them a fair chance when I was younger  I was too obsessed with metal  so it's really interesting to discover them now.
> 
> I've been surprised to learn that there is some debate in the musical community regarding the Floyd's genre. I was wondering what your thoughts on this are.



I live in the 70's, so I'll bite.



> 3) What do you think is the defining attribute of "progressive rock" as a style or a genre?


"Progressive rock" is a sidenote in the evolution of pop culture mentality during the twentieth century. Think about what the twentieth century was for a minute: we saw the birth and rapid development of communications technologies (including mass media, meaning that pop culture was born here), the expansion of militaries, industry, as well as a stubborn opposition between expanding political and economic forces. Democracy, communism and fascism drove the era's principle military events. In the United States, females and blacks (not to mention homosexuals, members of other ethnic minority groups, and sympathizers to non-mainstream political schools) suffered social inequality in spite of the legal reforms made in the previous century.

After becoming involved in World War II, being told that the purpose of the conflict was to destroy an evil dictatorship bent on cleansing the planet of 'lesser races' so that one would remain on top, the people of the United States saw an incongruity between their mission abroad and the reality of life at home. This war was a huge factor in the push for equal rights, a movement that came from the bottom of the social ladder and surged right on up. These people strongly questioned authority, and when that authority told them to go fight in a bleak conflict in Vietnam, they redoubled their skepticism.

If you look at the popular music and art from before World War II, then some of the less mainstream music between the 40's and 50's, then the popular music from the 60's and 70's, you can see a violent transition from what is a largely superficial style to something much edgier and "real".

Before...

Frances Langford - Easy To Love


After...

Charles Mingus - Fables of Faubus


(^ Read about this one here: Fables of Faubus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Eric Dolphy - GW


Booker T. and the M.G.'s


The Rolling Stones - Bitch


Rock and roll is a little easier to stomach than experimental jazz, so it became the voice of protest. People were listening to Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, music that had a profound message. In this environment, teenagers and young adults severed their cultural identity from that of their parents. This meant a lot of experimentation, on all fronts. For music, this is when you see overdriven amps, lyrics about a lot of topics that were previously off-limits (ranging from thought-provoking to absolutely idiotic), and a myriad of ideas driven by drug culture, the space race, and a general freedom enjoyed as a result of an audience ready to listen.

This is where one finds the beginnings of progressive rock. With the adventurism of the psychedelic movement came an exposure to and desire for new and interesting sounds. Naturally, some of the rock musicians wanted to get beyond three chord songs. A common tactic among this demographic was to draw on models in an effort to expand the vocabulary of their music. Some imitated the sounds of the classical concert hall (The Beatles, Yes, Genesis, ELP), others took to jazz (King Crimson, Soft Machine, ELP), folk music (Genesis), non-Western sources (The Beatles, Yes), etc.

I do not believe that there are common musical traits to 'progressive rock', but rather that the term represents a mindset, a push to transform and elevate the style. It is important to note that the style has already been elevated, so people doing music in the same style as the progressive rockers of the 60's and 70's do not qualify as 'progressive' by that definition. Sorry, Dream Theater. Hell, Rush was riding on the wake of Yes and Led Zeppelin, so I can't even call them progressives.



> 2) What bands and/or songs do you consider to be, without a doubt, "progressive rock"?


I hate that label. "Art rock" is what I prefer, because it's broader and acknowledges that Progressive Rock was a thing that happened. Truthfully, putting art into genres is counterproductive. Art should speak for itself.

Here are some groups you should check out that are along the lines of this topic: Comus (psychedelic, big influence on Mikael Åkerfeldt), Captain Beyond, Egg, King Crimson, Caravan, Kansas, Genesis (for the love of God, start with the 70's stuff), Henry Cow, Hatfield & The North, Deep Purple, ELP, Gentle Giant, Gong, Jethro Tull, Khan, Magma, Van Der Graaf Generator, Rush, Yes



> 1) Do you consider Pink Floyd "progressive rock"? Some albums more than others?


Eh, yeah. I don't consider Pink Floyd's music to be anywhere near the level of progressiveness and exploration exhibited by King Crimson or Yes. Most of Pink Floyd's tunes, to me, are nothing special. An exercise in diatonicism and wandering around aimlessly, for the most part. The lyrics are really good, but to look at the music and say that it brings something new to the field is not very accurate, considering how far out some of their contemporaries were. "Blues" and "psychedelic" are better descriptors from my observations on Pink Floyd.



JSanta said:


> 3. This one is going to be a bit broader for people, but the progression of themes



I have a hard time believing that most musicians know what to do with a musical theme, seeing as thematic development is one of the least common elements of rock, pop, metal, blues, et cetera. These styles have a predilection for riffs and grooves. I challenge anyone to find five examples in non-classical music of a theme being transposed, transformed, expanded, contracted, and generally having its character altered. Please do - my own list is pretty short. Genesis actually wasn't too bad with the developmental process, although they still tended to keep things in the same key and didn't do a whole lot to make a theme actually feel developed, but they did it more than most. Their form was certainly better than most. It wasn't too uncommon to record an idée fixe...


Henry Cow - Nirvana For Mice


Henry Cow - Nirvana Reprise


Genesis - Eleventh Earl Of Mar


(^ The first 30 seconds of that)

Genesis - Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers... and ... In That Quiet Earth


(4:55 - 5:00 and 6:46 - end)

... but that really doesn't count as development in my book. It's a shame that it's so easy to play in every key on the guitar, and yet so many songwriters restrict themselves to such a limited pitch language.



> and intense musicality,


Obviously subjective. The common accusation on progressive rock is that it is a bombastic genre overrun with pretense and Tolkien geeks. Pink Floyd is definitely a lot more laid back than the standard prog band.



> along with not following a song writing formula.


There's a formula?


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## Acreator (Feb 10, 2013)

Varcolac said:


> 1) Yes. They're almost an exemplar of the genre. Long instrumental explorations, concept albums, twenty-minute songs, they're prog as hell.
> 
> 2) Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis with Peter Gabriel (definitely not with Phil Collins on lead vocals), King Crimson and Jethro Tull (though they're a bit trickier to place, Aqualung and Thick as a Brick are pure prog)
> 
> 3) Development of themes. Hence the long instrumental explorations, concept albums and twenty-minute songs.



I'm so glad people are responding to this thread!

Thanks Varcolac. In regards to (3), what does "development of themes" mean to you? SchecterWhore rightly points out that instances of thematic development (as defined by music theory/composition for centuries  Thematic transformation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) are quite rare in rock and pop musics, with transposition being one of the few procedures prevalent. Truncation, fragmentation, elision, fugal and canonic procedures, inversion, retrograde, augmentation, diminution, modulation/modal shift, etc. are not immediately apparent in Pink Floyd's work.


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## Acreator (Feb 10, 2013)

JSanta said:


> 1. Without a doubt I consider Pink Floyd a progressive rock band. I think what they were able to do in the studio with sounds and tones and the stories they told would make them one of the if not THE best progressive rock band from that era.
> 
> 2. From that era Genesis, Yes, King Crimson
> 
> 3. This one is going to be a bit broader for people, but the progression of themes and intense musicality, along with not following a song writing formula.



Thanks JSanta.
Regarding (1), how do you square the Floyd's sonic experimentations in the studio  which give the impression of being planned and structured  to their much simpler live performances in the 1960s, where the same songs would be systematically stripped down to straightforward jams/improvisations by the four musicians with a minimal recourse to special effects (besides reverb and echo)? Does that make their albums more "prog" than their live act? How much of the studio sound can be attributed to Norman Smith's production and Pete Brown's mixing/editing, for instance?

As to (3), again I have to ask: what procession of themes? On Piper and Saucerful, there are maybe two or three explicit musical themes / formal sections that alternate in a relatively predictable manner without any particular thematic transformation procedures. They themselves discussed their pop music aspirations in interviews in the '60s, and scholars are still investigating the extent to which particular Floyd compositions/performances balance straightforward pop elements (HUGE Beatles influence) with more proggy/experimental/psychedelic elements.

Your thoughts?


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## Acreator (Feb 10, 2013)

Hollowway said:


> Please tell me the doctoral seminar was not on trying to identify to which genre Pink Floyd best belongs. I would hate to think that our country's brightest minds are hard at work on something like that.



It's amazing what the country's brightest minds are hard at work doing.

No, this seminar is not about the Floyd's genre. It is an open seminar in which we investigate all aspects of Pink Floyd's oeuvre between 1967-1979, spanning music theory, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music history.

My own doctoral research is on the compositional nature of progressive metal music, and in particular its potential basis in the manipulation of rhythm, meter, and rate of change.
Consequently, I am very interested in arriving at some kind of objective conclusion as to what, exactly, "progressive" means as applied to music. 
This Floyd seminar is an excellent starting point.


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## Acreator (Feb 10, 2013)

tedtan said:


> I largely agree with Varcolac, but I would probably call their first several albums (_Ummagumma_ through _Meddle_) phychedelic/acid rock rather than prog. Their prog era began, IMO, with _The Dark Side Of The Moon_.



Interesting. Many seem to agree that the Floyd's early work is best characterized as "psychedelic rock", while "progressive rock" become more appropriate later on. Their early emphasis on timbral exploration and temporal manipulation, while common to prog music, is counter-balanced by a pronounced pop music influence from more straightforward rock and pop musics (especially the Beatles, with whom they had direct contact in the '60s, even recording Piper at the EMI studios while the Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper next door).
Barrett's departure left Waters and Wright to take over more of the composing duties, which significantly altered their style.

So, what is it that, to you, makes DSotM a prog album, and how does that differ from their prior work?


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## Acreator (Feb 10, 2013)

Interesting, SP1N3SPL1TT3R. You're taking on a different tack from the above posts.



SP1N3SPL1TT3R said:


> 1.) I'd define Pink Floyd as a forefronting the "progressive" concept, but they are far from what we define today, as "progressive music." Floyd was heavily structured, compare to modern prog. Eg., most of Gilmour's playing and solos specifically use the D Pentatonic scale. Although, he is a jazz guitarist at heart and he accents notes, like a blues guitarist. He's is one of the very few guitarists, that can make a guitar express emotion. Listen to the 1st and 2nd solos of Comfortably Numb. Gilmour's also a master of guitar tone. The Wall, including the live version, is the greatest sounding album of all time. Soundscape. I could go on forever about them...



Yes, Gilmour was very expressive. But you say "soundscape". By this I presume you mean sonic experimentation, a fascination with timbre and space, ambience, etc. How does that differ from "ambient" genres of music, ranging from new age to underground electronica to Radiohead to Enya?



SP1N3SPL1TT3R said:


> 2.) The 2 best examples of prog: for classic rock, Rush. For modern music: Opeth and Dream Theatre, hands down.



You must be part of the commonwealth ("Theatre") ;]
Rush is interesting. Some, like Wagner in his history of progressive metal Mean Deviation, actually consider early Rush to be more of forefather of progressive metal rather than progressive rock proper. Sam Dunn seems to agree in his pseudo-musicological documentary Metal Evolution. What makes them "classic rock" to you?

I certainly agree about Opeth and Dream Theater (as do Wagner, Dunn, and many researchers in the field), but others (like SchecterWhore) might disagree based on a literal interpretation of the term "progressive": that is, some of those bands may not progress or innovate enough to qualify for the term. Even Wagner argues that Dream Theater started out as "progressive", but after latching onto a particular sound/style, they stagnated and stopped "progressing".

Your take?



SP1N3SPL1TT3R said:


> 3.) To me, prog is just a derivative of jazz. A lot of prog sounds almost like a band of different types of musicians, trying to play their own thing, but also trying to mesh their ideas together simultaneously. Eg., some of the musicians in Opeth were primarily death metal musicians and the others are not. That's why most prog songs sound like 5 different piece of music, put into one. And why most of the songs are 12 minutes long. That's where Floyd sounds different, although they have some longer songs. Their songs all fit together, by using an underlying theme/concept, and used a unifying musical structure (choice of notes, composition techniques). Alot of which hippy jam bands try to copy. Floyd had a musical chemistry that can't no other band has had since.



I have to admit that I don't hear the majority of prog music as "5 different pieces of music", or the musicians all "trying to play their own thing". That implies a high level of chaos, which is far from evident in this music. If anything, these artists' music tends to be far more highly structured and musically integrated than you seem to imply.

I also don't see how jazz can account for the genre. As SchecterWhore points out, many classic prog bands (ELP, Genesis, Yes) and modern prog metal bands (Symphony X, Adagio, much of Dream Theater) have more overt "classical" (often coming more from film music and music theater than actual concert music) influences in their music.

As for length of songs, yes, "prog"-ish bands tend to have songs longer than what is considered standard in broadcast (pop singles should be 2:30-3:30 in duration), but not by much. 12- and 20-minute songs are relatively few among these bands, with a majority ranging between 4 and 8 minutes. Look at quintessential prog albums like Dark Side of the Moon, Scenes from a Memory, A Sceptic's Universe, etc. Meanwhile, you'll find songs of similar length in otherwise very straightforward rock & metal albums (Metallica's self-titled is a key example, as is pretty much any Iron Maiden album).

So, does song duration really play such a defining role in our perception of "progressiveness" in music?


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## Hollowway (Feb 10, 2013)

SchecterWhore said:


> God-like post



SchecterWhore - he knows more than any mortal in all things musical.


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## Acreator (Feb 10, 2013)

And now the big one...

SchecterWhore, as always you have offered a thorough, well-considered, and well-supported argument. Kudos to you. Always a pleasure to read your stuff. I take it that you have or are currently studying music in university?



SchecterWhore said:


> I live in the 70's, so I'll bite.
> 
> "Progressive rock" is a sidenote in the evolution of pop culture mentality during the twentieth century. Think about what the twentieth century was for a minute: we saw the birth and rapid development of communications technologies (including mass media, meaning that pop culture was born here), the expansion of militaries, industry, as well as a stubborn opposition between expanding political and economic forces. Democracy, communism and fascism drove the era's principle military events. In the United States, females and blacks (not to mention homosexuals, members of other ethnic minority groups, and sympathizers to non-mainstream political schools) suffered social inequality in spite of the legal reforms made in the previous century.
> 
> ...



Absolutely. This is very similar to the prevailing musicological interpretation of WWII's devastating effect on artistic conception and intent in the mid-20th century. In this view, the total disintegration of traditional musical styles in concert music and the turn to highly abstract, complex, pseudo-scientific procedures and aesthetics (Boulez's integral serialism, Cage's aleatoric musical philosophy, Xenakis's mathematical/architectural models) stem from a profound disenchantment (perhaps too light a word) with the moral and societal values that made fascism possible. Those same values were seen to underpin traditional art forms like classical music, and so to abandon them in general human institutional systems meant to also abandon them in the arts.

It is interesting to see the argument applied to popular musics. Does it, alone, account for "progressive" (and its cousin labels "art", psychedelic, avant garde, experimental) as an emergent phenomenon? Others would postulate the key role of intermediary factors, not least of which is the adoption of psychedelic drugs (especially LSD) in the '60s. Add to that the perhaps inevitable cross-proliferation of genres in America and the UK, where classical, jazz, folk, et al no longer needed to be isolated to completely separate societal compartments...



SchecterWhore said:


> I do not believe that there are common musical traits to 'progressive rock', but rather that the term represents a mindset, a push to transform and elevate the style. It is important to note that the style has already been elevated, so people doing music in the same style as the progressive rockers of the 60's and 70's do not qualify as 'progressive' by that definition. Sorry, Dream Theater. Hell, Rush was riding on the wake of Yes and Led Zeppelin, so I can't even call them progressives.



You appear to take the word "progressive" fairly literally, meaning something along the lines of: constantly changing, innovating, exploring, adapting, challenging.
Some authors agree, including Stump and Wagner in their histories of prog rock and prog metal, respectively. Dunn also implies this in the Progressive Metal episode of Metal Evolution.

Others, including myself, would argue that cultural norms are less fluid than that. Inevitably, any musical genre begins with some degree of innovation, experimentation, novelty, etc., but as soon as the artists at the forefront of the movement become household names, their "sound" or "style" at that moment become synonymous with whatever genre label happens to be prevalent at the time. Wagner points out that this is exactly what happened in the early '90s with Dream Theater: while their style was foreshadowed by pioneers like Rush, Fates Warning, and Queensrÿche, they quickly established a set of compositional conventions that became literally associated with the industry label "progressive metal". As their popularity grew, so did their influence on younger musicians, who in turn appropriated and propagated those same musical conventions and continued to call themselves "progressive metal".

Thus a genre is encased in aspic.



SchecterWhore said:


> I hate that label. "Art rock" is what I prefer, because it's broader and acknowledges that Progressive Rock was a thing that happened. Truthfully, putting art into genres is counterproductive. Art should speak for itself.



Yes, it can be very counterproductive, and can be seen as navel-gazing when undertaken in scholarly environments. But it is a matter of reality &#8211; a very basic fact of human evolutionary biology, really &#8211; that categorization in all aspects of life is simply the way we function. Note that there is no prevailing (accepted) definition of "progressive" in music &#8211; and yet legions of music listeners, both trained and not, have used such labels in various respects for almost six decades, usually with conflicting connotations. Just look at the first six replies to this thread. No one agrees, but everyone has a fairly strong, personal "feeling" about what that word means, and why it should (or shouldn't) be used.

As Voltaire said, "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms".

I've always found it fascinating that artists who are widely considered "progressive" (Pink Floyd, Rush, Spiral Architect, TesseracT) have in one way or another renounced the term. Some seem to feel an aversion its elitist connotations, others feel that it doesn't adequately capture just how complex and singular they are (Watchtower and Spiral Architect vehemently insist on the "technical metal" label, to show that they're even more progressive than "progressive").

As a former (self-identified) progressive metal musician, I hope to arrive at some kind of objective parameters that induce listeners (both trained and untrained) to conceive of certain musics as "progressive".

So yeah. Categories can be very interesting.



SchecterWhore said:


> Here are some groups you should check out that are along the lines of this topic: Comus (psychedelic, big influence on Mikael Åkerfeldt), Captain Beyond, Egg, King Crimson, Caravan, Kansas, Genesis (for the love of God, start with the 70's stuff), Henry Cow, Hatfield & The North, Deep Purple, ELP, Gentle Giant, Gong, Jethro Tull, Khan, Magma, Van Der Graaf Generator, Rush, Yes



I'm working on it, I assure you. Because most of my formative musical years fell into the '90s (and of course because of my socio-cultural situation in a particular time and place), I was always much more interested in HEAVY music, and just couldn't stand what I heard as "limpness" in classic and progressive rock; I just didn't give these artists a fair chance. Now in my so-called maturity, I am much more inclined to explore the genre that brought prog metal (and metal in general) into being. The Floyd just happens to be my first specific focus (although I have been looking into the genre in general, thanks to Stump's history).



SchecterWhore said:


> Eh, yeah. I don't consider Pink Floyd's music to be anywhere near the level of progressiveness and exploration exhibited by King Crimson or Yes. Most of Pink Floyd's tunes, to me, are nothing special. An exercise in diatonicism and wandering around aimlessly, for the most part. The lyrics are really good, but to look at the music and say that it brings something new to the field is not very accurate, considering how far out some of their contemporaries were. "Blues" and "psychedelic" are better descriptors from my observations on Pink Floyd.



Yes, "psychedelic" is a strong contender in many people's minds as a characterization of the Floyd's style. But now my interest is piqued: their music is nowhere near "the level of progressiveness" exhibited by King Crimson and Yes? A bit tautological, no? Without begging the question, what is the "progressiveness" in the latter two bands that is absent in the Floyd? That's exactly what I want to know.

You pick on diatonicism; I honestly cannot thing of much pop/rock music, however progressive, that is not based on diatonicism. Even the highly chromatic music of Watchtower and Spiral Architect can be reduced to diatonic (both tonal and modal) systems that interact at various levels of complexity. Among the most jazzy progsters (King Crimson, early Dream Theater, etc.), jazz's inherently tonal and modal nature is again quite transparent.

But then you switch back to "progressive" as denoting innovation. Is it only about "bring[ing] something new to the field"? To some degree, every artist brings something new to the field, however small. In other ways, NOBODY does &#8211; everything is some kind of derivation or amalgamation of historical trends. Jim Jarmusch certainly think that "nothing is original", and similar thoughts have been expressed by many artists, composers, etc. in the past century. Wagner considers Symphony X to be just another Dream Theater clone with more overt nods to classical styles, yet they are widely considered "progressive metal". I can hear where they derive every single idea, yet I still think of them as progressive metal. WHY?!



SchecterWhore said:


> I have a hard time believing that most musicians know what to do with a musical theme, seeing as thematic development is one of the least common elements of rock, pop, metal, blues, et cetera. These styles have a predilection for riffs and grooves. I challenge anyone to find five examples in non-classical music of a theme being transposed, transformed, expanded, contracted, and generally having its character altered. Please do - my own list is pretty short. Genesis actually wasn't too bad with the developmental process, although they still tended to keep things in the same key and didn't do a whole lot to make a theme actually feel developed, but they did it more than most. Their form was certainly better than most. It wasn't too uncommon to record an idée fixe...
> 
> ... but that really doesn't count as development in my book. It's a shame that it's so easy to play in every key on the guitar, and yet so many songwriters restrict themselves to such a limited pitch language.



Yes, you're right, thematic development is highly under-represented in popular musics, even among the most "advanced" artists. There are instances in Dream Theater (reminiscence and re-contextualization of the themes, progressions, rhythmic motives, etc. throughout Scenes from a Memory) and Spital Architect (more of a Brahmsian "developing variation" approach to motivic treatment on A Sceptic's Universe). Modal shift, modulation, diminution, augmentation, etc. are rather common in Symphony X (V, The Odyssey), as is perhaps to be expected considering their obvious modelling on the music of John Williams.

But for the most part, rock and metal bands/composers (even "progressive" ones) limit their thematic treatment to simple transpositions at most. This is most likely a result of the fact that most of these musicians don't have much musical training outside of their instruments. I think that we will continue to see a marked increase in musical erudition among metal and rock musicians as more young musicians like ourselves undertake higher education. It's very interesting to see that former (and current) metal-heads like myself are infiltrating the academic music scene in various capacities &#8211; often in the fields of composition, theory, and musicology.

But back to the debate, does this then mean that thematic development as a compositional parameter is not instrumental in perceiving "progressiveness" as a genre, style, or musical characteristic? I think so, but I'd like to hear from you. I suspect that the objective, defining musical elements of "progressiveness" lie elsewhere... 



SchecterWhore said:


> Obviously subjective. The common accusation on progressive rock is that it is a bombastic genre overrun with pretense and Tolkien geeks. Pink Floyd is definitely a lot more laid back than the standard prog band.



Well, I don't know. Porcupine Tree and Opeth can be really laid back, but they sound pretty prog to me (and obviously to themselves and large portions of their fan base). Does the level of sonic, emotional, or intellectual "intensity" define the genre? What would that entail, exactly? What musical parameters would be attached to perception of "intensity", and how would we quantify that?



SchecterWhore said:


> There's a formula?



I think so. That's why I am dedicating my doctoral research to it. I could be wrong, and I'll be wasting some valuable years, but at the very least I will have learned a LOT about the kind of music that I really like. I firmly expect that this can only have a positive effect on my own compositional practice, seeing as how I have already been creating contemporary concert music (anachronistically referred to as "classical") that is very strongly informed by progressive metal for several years, and plan to continue doing so.


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## Overtone (Feb 10, 2013)

Make sure to credit this as one of your sources 

Progressive Rock | Cracked.com


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## Acreator (Feb 10, 2013)

Overtone said:


> Make sure to credit this as one of your sources
> 
> Progressive Rock | Cracked.com



Overtone, thank you! That is a great resource in terms of its representation of popular conceptions of genre without any concrete support. The "crazy time signatures" is indicative: almost all layman's definitions of progressive music involve the vague and inaccurate term "odd-time signatures"  which is not even a thing. There are indeed time signatures that use "odd numbers", but 3/4 is certainly not what is meant by the term as used to describe meter in progressive music.

This kind of thing goes to show why it would be useful to arrive at a defensible definition of genres labelled "progressive".


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 11, 2013)

Acreator said:


> And now the big one...
> 
> SchecterWhore, as always you have offered a thorough, well-considered, and well-supported argument. Kudos to you. Always a pleasure to read your stuff. I take it that you have or are currently studying music in university?



You got me. I'm paying tens of thousands of dollars to learn how to compose music for which I will never be compensated.



> Absolutely. This is very similar to the prevailing musicological interpretation of WWII's devastating effect on artistic conception and intent in the mid-20th century. In this view, the total disintegration of traditional musical styles in concert music and the turn to highly abstract, complex, pseudo-scientific procedures and aesthetics (Boulez's integral serialism, Cage's aleatoric musical philosophy, Xenakis's mathematical/architectural models) stem from a profound disenchantment (perhaps too light a word) with the moral and societal values that made fascism possible. Those same values were seen to underpin traditional art forms like classical music, and so to abandon them in general human institutional systems meant to also abandon them in the arts.
> 
> It is interesting to see the argument applied to popular musics. Does it, alone, account for "progressive" (and its cousin labels "art", psychedelic, avant garde, experimental) as an emergent phenomenon? Others would postulate the key role of intermediary factors, not least of which is the adoption of psychedelic drugs (especially LSD) in the '60s. Add to that the perhaps inevitable cross-proliferation of genres in America and the UK, where classical, jazz, folk, et al no longer needed to be isolated to completely separate societal compartments...


I absolutely think that it applies to the realm of popular music, right up through the Progressive Rock movement. Watch Ken Burns' documentary on jazz sometime. World War II's effect on jazz was bebop, which is, of course, where jazz really starts breaking away from its pop/swing association. If you follow those artists, you run into Miles Davis, whose influence on pop musicians was undeniable. Richard Wright spoke of Miles Davis quite a bit, and I recall an interview in which he talks about lifting a piano part from Bill Evans from Kind of Blue. Hell, Chick Corea and John McLaughlin played on Bitches Brew before launching off into their own respective projects, if you want to talk about the intermingling that happened between rock and jazz.

Another reason that World War II was hugely influential on music was recording technology. Following the war, record companies began adopting the long-playing vinyl (LP) as their standard distribution media (1948), but what was even more revolutionary was the discovery of magnetic tape (1928) that the Nazis had been keeping secret. Pink Floyd wouldn't have been able to do all that echo and delay if they had recorded straight to vinyl. Keep in mind tape's applications in video and information technology, as well as in the Mellotron (helping to expand the timbral vocabulary of pop and rock musicians worldwide). Overall, WW2 caused an explosion of technologies that catapulted us into the information age. Amplified music would really be something different if Hitler hadn't been a complete douche.

The technological advances made during and after the war, coupled with the counter-culture that emerged in the 50's and 60's, are directly responsible for the musical happenings the immediately followed said events. I don't know how counter-culture made it across the pond for consumption by the Brits, but there certainly was an interest in the rock music and hippie scene that was going on in the US. The historical Progressive Rock was undoubtedly fueled by affluent adolescent males, for whom literary topics made the most sense, so I think that there is a bit of a class separation between American protest rock, the more blue-collar British rock, and what we know as Progressive Rock. There is a definite departure between these two images:

Shut the fuck up and listen to my manifesto:






Prancing in the woods:





The protestors liberated the field, and the prog/fusion guys went into the field to play around.



> You appear to take the word "progressive" fairly literally, meaning something along the lines of: constantly changing, innovating, exploring, adapting, challenging.
> Some authors agree, including Stump and Wagner in their histories of prog rock and prog metal, respectively. Dunn also implies this in the Progressive Metal episode of Metal Evolution.
> 
> Others, including myself, would argue that cultural norms are less fluid than that. Inevitably, any musical genre begins with some degree of innovation, experimentation, novelty, etc., but as soon as the artists at the forefront of the movement become household names, their "sound" or "style" at that moment become synonymous with whatever genre label happens to be prevalent at the time. Wagner points out that this is exactly what happened in the early '90s with Dream Theater: while their style was foreshadowed by pioneers like Rush, Fates Warning, and Queensrÿche, they quickly established a set of compositional conventions that became literally associated with the industry label "progressive metal". As their popularity grew, so did their influence on younger musicians, who in turn appropriated and propagated those same musical conventions and continued to call themselves "progressive metal".
> ...


I see it both ways. My own definition relies on the fact that some of the artists made a conscious effort to change the musical style. Yes deliberately associated themselves with concert music (they often play a recording of the finale from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite at the beginning of their shows; Rick Wakeman is trained in classical music and often contributed sounds from the classical world to the music of Yes as well as to his solo work) and were very much latched onto oriental philosophy. Keith Emerson made obvious allusions to jazz and concert music as well, borrowing harmonic, rhythmic, textural, and formal techniques where he could, not to mention doing arrangements of classical tunes. King Crimson made it a point to make complicated un-pop music. Peter Hammill consciously made the decision to explore expressive vocal timbres. Ornette Coleman and the other musicians on Free Jazz got together with the express interest of creating purely improvised jazz music. There is intent here, and not just a product as a result of an amalgam of inputs.

A documentary you should watch. Not the best, most complete, or most objective film by any means, but whatever.



> Yes, it can be very counterproductive, and can be seen as navel-gazing when undertaken in scholarly environments. But it is a matter of reality &#8211; a very basic fact of human evolutionary biology, really &#8211; that categorization in all aspects of life is simply the way we function. Note that there is no prevailing (accepted) definition of "progressive" in music &#8211; and yet legions of music listeners, both trained and not, have used such labels in various respects for almost six decades, usually with conflicting connotations. Just look at the first six replies to this thread. No one agrees, but everyone has a fairly strong, personal "feeling" about what that word means, and why it should (or shouldn't) be used.
> 
> As Voltaire said, "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms".
> 
> ...


Yes, there is the whole gestalt business. "Progressive" is so overused, and messily so. "Experimental" describes music that is experimental. "Traditional" describes music that is traditional. "Progressive", in the context that one encounters on message boards, can really be whatever.



> Yes, "psychedelic" is a strong contender in many people's minds as a characterization of the Floyd's style. But now my interest is piqued: their music is nowhere near "the level of progressiveness" exhibited by King Crimson and Yes? A bit tautological, no? Without begging the question, what is the "progressiveness" in the latter two bands that is absent in the Floyd? That's exactly what I want to know.


The tautology is purely the result of laziness. In actuality, I could not care less for Pink Floyd. Their music just doesn't do it for me. For a moment, I'm going to suspend the definition of "progressive" that I have been defending in favor of the more static one that encompasses a bit more (speaking of which, you might want to read this), just to make this go faster. Harmonically, stylistically, formally, and rhythmically, the music of Pinky is kinda standard fare. On the other hand, they have a few lengthy and timbrally experimental tracks, which seems to be the hallmark of Progressive Rock. Looking at King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Rush, Soft Machine, the representatives of the movement, they too have the long songs with weird sounds, but they also have the vocabulary that Fink Ployd does not exercise. I'm not saying that any one is better than the other, but recognizing that one is going to find a more dynamic sound from minute to minute in the music of the "prog giants" than what you find in the Floyd. Pink Floyd's lyrical content has much more social and political commentary than the standard tune by the other guys I mentioned. They're the outlier.

Pink Floyd has their own sound, and they spawned clones. There can certainly be prog rock à la Floyd. After all, the music of Yes and King Crimson are worlds apart. Why try to push them into the same box based on stylistic similarities when those similarities rarely result in the same music?



> You pick on diatonicism; I honestly cannot thing of much pop/rock music, however progressive, that is not based on diatonicism. Even the highly chromatic music of Watchtower and Spiral Architect can be reduced to diatonic (both tonal and modal) systems that interact at various levels of complexity. Among the most jazzy progsters (King Crimson, early Dream Theater, etc.), jazz's inherently tonal and modal nature is again quite transparent.


Don't have the patience to get to this right now. All I'll say is that you can go a long time in Pink Floyd and hear nothing but jamming in D minor. There isn't a whole lot of harmonic variety.



> I think that we will continue to see a marked increase in musical erudition among metal and rock musicians as more young musicians like ourselves undertake higher education. It's very interesting to see that former (and current) metal-heads like myself are infiltrating the academic music scene in various capacities &#8211; often in the fields of composition, theory, and musicology.


I hope that the trend continues. The last few concerts I've been to (I recently attended a few of the LA Phil's programs on Peter Eötvös) had a larger percentage of 20-somethings than I am accustomed to seeing at such events. They're probably all composition students, but hey, every bit helps. 



> I think so. That's why I am dedicating my doctoral research to it. I could be wrong, and I'll be wasting some valuable years, but at the very least I will have learned a LOT about the kind of music that I really like. I firmly expect that this can only have a positive effect on my own compositional practice, seeing as how I have already been creating contemporary concert music (anachronistically referred to as "classical") that is very strongly informed by progressive metal for several years, and plan to continue doing so.


I'm trying to give JSanta shit for using "formula". It's one of those weasel words that one often finds in music. "Never play the same thing twice" is as much a formula as "ABABCB" or "base the pitch and rhythmic organization of this piece on the ratio &#966;". There is a misconception among people who either don't know how to listen for this stuff, or don't choose to listen for this stuff, that X music genre/band is better because they don't conform to Y pop trend. And, for some reason, these people often look to form (probably what is meant by "formula") as an example of 'Y pop trend'.

Hatfield And The North - Mumps


There is a lot of aimless noodling in the middle, but one could easily see this music as a ternary form (ABA), or head-wankland-head, or whatever. Not a lot of form, but form nonetheless.

How about an undisputed prog classic?

King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man


0:30 - A
0:49 - B
1:03 - A
1:23 - B
1:37 - A'
2:08 - C (from elements of A)
2:28 - D
2:46 - D'
3:38 - D"
4:24 - D
4:40 - C'
5:24 - C
5:49 - A
6:08 - B
6:22 - A
6:39 - Coda

C and D are really representing a larger solo section, or bridge, so one might look at this as ABABA[C]ABA, which looks like a rondo to me. As an aside, some guy once argued with me that there were no blues licks in this song. 

Let's take the longest track on Dark Side.

Pink Floyd - Us And Them


0:00 - Introduction
1:43 - A
2:50 - B
3:16 - A
4:22 - B
4:48 - A(') < Prime in parentheses because nothing is changed except for a saxophone solo.
5:53 - B(')
6:19 - A
7:25 - B

Binary form. Doesn't get much simpler than that.

Based on the observation that the tunes from the Progressive Rock &#339;uvre range from formless to quite formful (yay suffixes), it's probably not wise to make any broad statements about form in progressive music, except maybe that Progressive Rock tended to fall into a range from formless to formful.

(In case you are wondering how not to do it, or need to be convinced that longer &#8800; better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dZbAFmnRVA)

And I'll address the rest of this discussion at a later point.


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## tedtan (Feb 11, 2013)

Acreator said:


> Interesting. Many seem to agree that the Floyd's early work is best characterized as "psychedelic rock", while "progressive rock" become more appropriate later on. Their early emphasis on timbral exploration and temporal manipulation, while common to prog music, is counter-balanced by a pronounced pop music influence from more straightforward rock and pop musics (especially the Beatles, with whom they had direct contact in the '60s, even recording Piper at the EMI studios while the Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper next door).
> Barrett's departure left Waters and Wright to take over more of the composing duties, which significantly altered their style.
> 
> So, what is it that, to you, makes DSotM a prog album, and how does that differ from their prior work?


 

Several characteristics set the two periods apart, IMO, and DSotM is the first Pink Floyd album to exhibit these characteristics that would go on to become hallmarks of the Pink Floyd sound.


*- Moodscapes.* Pink Floyd is the first band I am aware of to create what I refer to as "moodscapes". These differ from ambient music in that abient largely consists of washes of reverb and delay tails mixed together in layers to create a background ambience, whereas PF's moodscapes are up front and actively pull the listener into the mood the band is creating - no drugs required. These moodscapes are typically accomplished through relatively simple chord changes, often as simple as "droning" on the I chord for extended periods of time. The only band I can think of off the top of my head that manages to accomplish this effect as well as PF is Opeth, with "Harvest" from their _Blackwater Park_ album serving as a prime example (and one that features plenty of droning on the I chord, to boot).


*- Samples.* Aside from the samples of existing instruments found on the mellotron, bands were not really using samples when Pink Floyd began using them. Sure there were some canned samples that existed for television and movie post production use, but that was about it. PF began using samples of speach as well as found sounds (e.g., the clock heard on "Time" or the cash register heard on "Money", both from DSotM) to enhance the mood and storyline of their songs. As their career went on, these samples were used more extensively to add to and help convey their concept albums' story lines.


*-* *Concept albums*. DSotM is not a proper concept album, but certain ideas/themes do repeat over the course of the album (e.g., insanity). Later PF albums, including _Animals_ and _The Wall_, expand this lyrical approach to proper concept album status, telling a story over the course of the album. Aside from The Who's _Tommy_, these concept albums are not really heard in the rock/metal world outside the realm of prog.


SchecterWhore mentions (more than once I might add ) that Pink Floyd's music is simplistic compared to other prog bands of the time. I agree. When viewed through the lens of traditional western art music theory, PF's music is simple. And this is likely why there is debate as to whether or not PF is a progressive band. However, one must be careful when applying the lens/rules of one culture's art to that of another culture (or even other art within the same culture). Givem the fact that the intent behind the art is not necessarily the same, that lens can lead one astray in these situations if one is not very careful.


Pink Floyd managed to invent moodscapes, adopted the use of found sound samples before their contemporaries (and certainly to an extent well beyond that of their contemporaries) and devised longer stories to be told over the course of an album's length. They progressed the form beyond that of their influences and contemporaries (rock n roll, pop rock, phychedelic rock, folk and country rock, etc.) and managed to define a very unique sound. For these reasons, I dub Pink Floyd progressive rock, whether or not SchecterWhore agrees with me.  


As an aside, the older I get, the more I realize that the simple has every bit as much a place in music as does the complex. In fact, it is the contrast between the two that I find most appealing these days. And if I have a constructive criticism regarding PF's work, it is that it needs more contrast between the moodscapes they created so well and something more complex (or at least significantly_ different_). But don't let the simplistic nature of their music fool you, even without that contrast: it is simple for a reason - mood. And PF excels at this.


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## groverj3 (Feb 11, 2013)

This has been an interesting read. Whenever I talk about progressive rock I seem to run into two camps of people.

1. Those who consider _Progressive Rock _a genre of its own. Having a defined style and songwriting conventions. Time changes, extended song lengths, instrumental show-offyness (my new favorite made up word).

2. Then there are those that think of things in terms of _Progressive_ Rock. Meaning, bands that can be classified as rock music, but advance the genre by incorporating novel ideas.

However, in Pink Floyd's case I believe they fit both sets of criteria. A band like Dream Theater (I'm a big fan) or Symphony X does not really fit into the definition of group 2. They just built on what other bands did before them. Which, IMHO, takes nothing away from their music. However, it will get harder and harder to incorporate novel ideas over time due to the limitations of instruments and human ability to play them.


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## JSanta (Feb 11, 2013)

Acreator said:


> Thanks JSanta.
> Regarding (1), how do you square the Floyd's sonic experimentations in the studio  which give the impression of being planned and structured  to their much simpler live performances in the 1960s, where the same songs would be systematically stripped down to straightforward jams/improvisations by the four musicians with a minimal recourse to special effects (besides reverb and echo)? Does that make their albums more "prog" than their live act? How much of the studio sound can be attributed to Norman Smith's production and Pete Brown's mixing/editing, for instance?
> 
> As to (3), again I have to ask: what procession of themes? On Piper and Saucerful, there are maybe two or three explicit musical themes / formal sections that alternate in a relatively predictable manner without any particular thematic transformation procedures. They themselves discussed their pop music aspirations in interviews in the '60s, and scholars are still investigating the extent to which particular Floyd compositions/performances balance straightforward pop elements (HUGE Beatles influence) with more proggy/experimental/psychedelic elements.
> ...



I think there is something to be said about what they did in the studio to create those soundscapes, and from what recordings from the 70s I have found, they seemed to capture that same tonal imagination live. I would say that partially had to do with the fact that it was close to impossible to recreate some of those tones live at the time. That didn't make them any less progressive to me, just using the tools they had to do as much as they could. I don't have much of an answer to your last question there, but would venture a guess that the producer had a part in the "progressive elements," but it was more David and Roger that drove that.

I think the thematic elements really became prevalent with Dark Side of the Moon. There are many more "pop" elements in their earlier recordings that borrowed from the pyschedelic stylings of the 60s, but to me it wasn't until that time that they started making concept albums and breaking away from what they had done on previous albums


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## ArtDecade (Feb 12, 2013)

To me, Pink Floyd is a rock band with some progressive elements tossed in. Gilmour is primarily a Blues based player playing against some interesting soundscapes. That said, I feel there are more progressive elements in a typical Grateful Dead set than anything that Pink Floyd were doing at the same time in the late 60s - early 70s (and beyond). Jazz, rock, psychedelic, funk, blues, country, pop, noise, soundscapes, etc. etc. 

Is Opeth progressive? Their most recent album sounds like a classic progressive rock album of the 70s, but that does not really mean that they are "progressing/advancing" the genre. If anything, their new music is derivative of what has already been done (and in many cases - better). They are a fine band, but they stopped moving death metal forward when they decided to take on the "progressive" tag.


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## darbdavys (Feb 17, 2013)

Haven't been here for a loooooooong time.. and now accidentally stumbled upon this thread, quite lucky here, haha.

As I have digressed from my previous affections towards progressive metal (not the Floyd, however) music to electronic music, where the term progressive is very seldom used - I've only heard it once, actually, but with the upheaval of new sounds the last decade, even though basically all 'serious' (the current wave of hip-hop, synth-pop, post-dubstep) electronic music nowadays could be considered progressive in the way SchecterWhore described in his first post, 'pushing the genre', I'd like to give a tad different perspective (a more diverging from the genre, progressive one? hahahah)

As electronic music is an extremely quickly changing style (as it still has lots of potential to discovery - somewhat more difficult now in instrumental music, as it seems to rely more heavily on harmony, which has been exploited extensively for years now), producers are pushed to experiment a lot on what now may be considered somewhat the norms of a genre - let's say Gang Starr in hip-hop or Surgeon in techno (yet I'll concentrate on hip-hop). What we now get is somewhat similar to what Tosin Abasi does on guitar (don't know any new prog metal bands, not following the news here, yet still immensely enjoying AaL) - trying to approach long known techniques in new ways.

'Intellectual' instrumental and electronic music now seems to be evolving in similar ways - pushing the boundaries of structure (song structure, rather than metric) and techniques, both compositional and studio, used - it's the tools and the desired outcome differ. Harmonic experimentation is not overly pronounced in electronic music - really it's more about creating a vibe, rather than 'melodicism' or technicality.

Here are some examples, for ones that are interested:



vs




 (this dude's completely crazy, my absolute favourite and me, and many others, would most certainly call progressive)
 (recorded with a mic, 


For something different


vs




Now what I see to have happened with Pink Floyd seems to me to be the exact same thing as we can see with electronic music now - experimenting with various compositional and studio techniques to express a strong vibe (sorry for such an ambivalent word, but I feel it to be the one closest to what I mean. change with mood, if you like) through music, a thing I haven't seen to have been done before the Floyd.

Everyone seems to be talking about the Dark Side - let's digress a little bit to Animals. 'Dogs' uses a supremely simple song structure, with basically 2 basically looping chord progressions (one being a variation of the another), it is not concentrated on melodic variation or technicality (harmonic, structural, whatever) - the focus is all on the atmosphere, the mood of the song. Which, dare I say, is extremely strong and not achieved by many prior bands/composers. Same with Echoes, Welcome to the Machine, Shine On, et al. 
Thus, I don't see why Pink Floyd should not be called progressive - their primary focus wasn't on technicality, melodicity, or song structure, yes, but the mood created by their tunes was exceptional, which I believe to count towards their progressiveness and in fact the main factor towards it (IIRC they said in an interview that their main focus was exactly that - the mood).

This, I believe, makes the boundaries of the notion 'progressive rock' more vague - yet leaning closer towards the literal meaning of the word.


Now as for Dream Theater and prog metal overall, the literal meaning seems to have been somewhat lost and the term 'progressive' seems to have been adapted for the technical, somewhat neck-masturbatory, structurally complex, metal (no offense there, I enjoy the technicality myself).

Dunno, I think 'progressive' may as well be treated differently in 'progressive rock' and 'progressive metal', with the first having a literal meaning (akin to the current evolution of electronic music, even though the term itself isn't used) and the latter being more of a construct to depict a certain sound or characteristics of the music. Homonyms, if you like.


my 2c


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## broj15 (Feb 27, 2013)

1. In order to answer this i must first explain how I define "progressive" which is anything that draws much of it's influence from jazz. There can be progressive metal, progressive rock, progressive rap, whatever. While Pink Floyd does have a fair amount of jazz influence I still would not call them progressive. this is because i view Pink Floyd as an "Experimental" rock band (experimental meaning taking taking an already defined genre of music and moving far outside of it's recognized boundaries). While Pink Floyd is progressive I feel that their use of "soundscapes" (more prominent in their earlier work, meaning everything released pre-'73 and including Meddle) causes their experimental side to greatly overshadow their progressive side. In all honesty I define Pink Floyd as "Acid Rock" or "Psychedelic Pop" (yes, pink floyd was a pop band when they first came out -they topped the pop charts in the UK long before anyone in the US had ever heard of them- however they exhibited heavy psychedelic influence).

2. Frank Zappa is (by my definition at least) about as progressive as it gets while still being considered rock music. I also consider math rock such as .Moneen. and American Football to be progressive in their own way (subtle use of dissonance, intricate drum patterns, unconventional song structure, changing time signatures).

3. As stated above, progressive music is any genre of music that draws it's primary influence from jazz.


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## hairychris (Mar 5, 2013)

A bit late to the party but you can't do work on Floyd without taking Syd Barrett into account...


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## Acreator (Apr 1, 2013)

groverj3 said:


> This has been an interesting read. Whenever I talk about progressive rock I seem to run into two camps of people.
> 
> 1. Those who consider _Progressive Rock _a genre of its own. Having a defined style and songwriting conventions. Time changes, extended song lengths, instrumental show-offyness (my new favorite made up word).
> 
> ...



Yes, that appears to be the crux of the argument regarding "progressive" music, particularly in academia. Is it a style/genre or a literal interpretation of the word in the sense of "constantly evolving"?

Ultimately, those who take the second view rely on value judgments that are, perhaps, difficult or impossible to support in order to decide who can legitimately lay claim to the label. Saying Dream Theater and Symphony X are not "progressive" because the "built on what other bands did before them" is an example of this. I defy you to find any artist in any field in the history of humanity who has not "built on what other [artists] did before them". That is, in essence, the very nature of history and evolution.

Furthermore, one might argue that DT and SX indeed have played an immense role in developing and innovating the genre of metal (or progressive metal if you will) through a long-term heuristic process. With every album (to a point), these bands have evolved and refined their compositional and arranging techniques resulting in distinctive styles that hundreds of other musicians have deemed worthy of emulating. Much like Pink Floyd or King Crimson, in fact. Or Madonna for that matter. In order to argue that they don't evolve (or stopped evolving), wouldn't we have to point to specific musical examples that would support the point? That's what I've been trying to arrive at with this thread, some indications of what musical-compositional parameters are paramount in identifying this elusive quality of "progressiveness".

A final note about the second interpretation of "progressive"  the literal one  which you briefly touched upon: one might argue that expecting any artist to infinitely evolve and innovate throughout their entire career is analogous to the untenable economic principle of infinite growth. How do we measure innovation and novelty? Are there objective qualities in the music that we can focus on to make such a determination?

Another way to view "progressive" music is not in terms of how much the band avoids sounding like their previous album, but how much the music itself changes or evolves _within_ the context of a single album/work. Opeth's _Heritage_, for instance, is a very interesting example of thematic development and transformation, with clever references back to _Ghost Reveries_ and _Watershed _to boot (possible to earlier albums as well?). Beyond the purely melodic developmental techniques on this album, there are also threads in the harmonic, rhythmic, lyrical-thematic, and production realms that could lend themselves to an in-depth analysis of development and self-reference, and which could be the subject of scholarly investigations. This continual musical development can perhaps justify the label "progressive", particularly if these features can be discerned in other bands/albums that many consider to be progressive metal or progressive rock.


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## Acreator (Apr 1, 2013)

tedtan said:


> Several characteristics set the two periods apart, IMO, and DSotM is the first Pink Floyd album to exhibit these characteristics that would go on to become hallmarks of the Pink Floyd sound.
> 
> 
> *- Moodscapes.* Pink Floyd is the first band I am aware of to create what I refer to as "moodscapes". These differ from ambient music in that abient largely consists of washes of reverb and delay tails mixed together in layers to create a background ambience, whereas PF's moodscapes are up front and actively pull the listener into the mood the band is creating - no drugs required. These moodscapes are typically accomplished through relatively simple chord changes, often as simple as "droning" on the I chord for extended periods of time. The only band I can think of off the top of my head that manages to accomplish this effect as well as PF is Opeth, with "Harvest" from their _Blackwater Park_ album serving as a prime example (and one that features plenty of droning on the I chord, to boot).
> ...



Interesting post!

Regarding "moodscapes", what objective criteria do you use to assess whether a musical excerpt counts as one? You may be onto something here &#8211; something that could tie together music ranging from Pink Floyd to Radiohead. Procul Harum and Soft Machine can be said to create "moodscapes" (and are labelled progressive by some), but so can Brian Eno. Then again, Rush does very little droning or ambient texture, yet is a paragon of progressive rock and even progressive metal. 
Does "moodscape" have to be quiet/soft/ambient? It seems you're relying heavily on your subjective experience when you say that "PF [...] actively pull the listener in to the mood the band is creating". To someone who loves the Beach Boys or Metallica, their music may also accomplish this...

"Samples". Yes, PF was a pioneer in incorporating the techniques of musique concrète into the popular realm. Some have argued that they influenced the Beatles in this regard, as Sgt. Pepper and Piper were being recorded at the same time at the EMI studios. That being said, while working with "found sounds" and musique concrète became an integral part of Pink Floyd's style (not quite "sampling", as that implies using recordings of others' music), many bands who are widely considered "progressive" never dabbled with those techniques, or at least not to the point where it became a definitive feature of their music.

"Concept albums". To be honest, I'm kind of with you on DSotM. I don't really see its "concept alum"-ness. Often, the lyrical themes of conflict, greed, the passage of time, death, and insanity are cited as playing a key role in the integrative nature of this work. I fail to see how such a multitude of themes can count as unified enough to label it a concept album, especially since none of the lyrics ever repeat/return, and there is no particular overarching narrative akin to "The Wall", "Abigail", "Operation Mindcrime", or "Scenes from a Memory". 
Musically, there are basically no instances of long-range thematic development, reference, transformation, or whatever. PF slapped a "heart beat" drum figure at the beginning and end of the album as a superficial attempt to make it seem like the whole thing is a continuous loop, but that alone does not justify the appellation "concept album". Even the clever transitions between segments of "Echoes", for instance, are almost entirely absent from DSotM.

As to the question of simplicity... I'm not convinced that this is a useful term when describing PF's work. While a thorough musical analysis of many of their albums will certainly reveal a certain compositional naivety and haphazardness, their level of production, studio technique, and band arranging have consistently displayed a sophistication that must be considered an integral feature of their music as a whole.


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## Acreator (Apr 1, 2013)

broj15 said:


> 1. In order to answer this i must first explain how I define "progressive" which is anything that draws much of it's influence from jazz. There can be progressive metal, progressive rock, progressive rap, whatever. While Pink Floyd does have a fair amount of jazz influence I still would not call them progressive. this is because i view Pink Floyd as an "Experimental" rock band (experimental meaning taking taking an already defined genre of music and moving far outside of it's recognized boundaries). While Pink Floyd is progressive I feel that their use of "soundscapes" (more prominent in their earlier work, meaning everything released pre-'73 and including Meddle) causes their experimental side to greatly overshadow their progressive side. In all honesty I define Pink Floyd as "Acid Rock" or "Psychedelic Pop" (yes, pink floyd was a pop band when they first came out -they topped the pop charts in the UK long before anyone in the US had ever heard of them- however they exhibited heavy psychedelic influence).
> 
> 2. Frank Zappa is (by my definition at least) about as progressive as it gets while still being considered rock music. I also consider math rock such as .Moneen. and American Football to be progressive in their own way (subtle use of dissonance, intricate drum patterns, unconventional song structure, changing time signatures).
> 
> 3. As stated above, progressive music is any genre of music that draws it's primary influence from jazz.



Its. Possessive pronoun.

Interesting that you focus entirely on the influence of jazz. I must admit, everything you said is so vague it is actually difficult to argue with. How about a string of questions instead?

What kind of jazz? Any particular artist, era, style, sub-genre? If so, which and why? If not, why?

What are the objective musical parameters of "jazz" that a rock or metal band has to reference in order for it to count as progressive? Why?

Where in the word "progressive" is there any reference to one particular musical genre such as jazz? Every attempt at a definition for progressive rock or progressive metal that I can find mentions these genres' origins in pop, rock, blues, classical, jazz, folk, and a number of other genres. What happened to all of those?

I'm actually quite interested to see if you or anyone on this board would like to support this claim. I certainly see some jazz influence in a number of progressive rock and metal bands that I can think of, to varying degrees. But I very much fail to see how _any one stylistic influence can define a genre._ 
Typically, musical taxonomy (categorization) is based on concrete, discernible musical features that are perceived to contribute to a stylistic identity that can be shared by a number of artists. What musical features are exclusive to jazz, and how do they define "progressive" genres?


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