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Is Progressive Rock Keyboard Playing a Priority ?


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I don't hear anything "prog" in SOA's music at all. Metal, yes. Hard rock, yes. You can tick either or both of those boxes quite readily, but prog? I don't hear it. As I mentioned above, it's going to boil down to someone's definition of prog, but still:

1) Complex rhythms? No.

2) Changing rhythms? No.

3) Long compositions? No.

Etc.

Now, I want to make clear that I haven't been through all their stuff, so there may be some things that are more "prog" than I've heard so far. If that's the case, I'll eventually get there, because I like some of what I'm hearing and I'm going to keep listening.

 

But prog?

 

I just don't see it. Not in this case...or at least not yet.

 

Try this one on for size, but don't give up on it in the first 2-1/2 minutes, you have to listen to all 9:22. In particular, everything going on through the roughly 3-8 minute marks I think check all the boxes you said "no" to above.

 

[video:youtube]

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Never felt the need to learn progressive rock. Never played progressive rock. Never had a problem finding work. Granted, I have played stuff that some people call progressive rock that was crossover to pop/rock. But the market share for progressive rock is very, very small. You don't NEED to learn it or play it. It is not a priority. If you enjoy it, go for it. But don't persue it because you think it will get you more jobs.

This post edited for speling.

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progressive rock. I didn't think the topic would become a 5 pager-

 

its cool folks are having a good time and discussing really interesting bands- bands I had no clue about.

 

we live in difficult times, for sure. So the money and gig worthiness of live performance is going thru a seismic shift.

Applies to all genres I suspect.

 

Anyway, I am of the opinion is that a performer or an artist or both has to build his/her audience

 

Today, Covid aside, if you/your band is starting out, I am not sure if there is 5000 or even 500 people sitting in a county,

just waiting for you or your band to create your 3 sets. Then discover

your venue at a club, then they sit down, drink, enjoy your 3 sets.

 

I thought a new band in a county or populous area has to grind it out, build a following, 50 people at a time,

promote like crazy, advertise advertise, splash on youTube and FaceBook, beg old friends to show up at the venue, etc etc etc.

 

IOW, you or your band has to create a loyal bunch of listeners.

 

Feel free, as a new band, to edit the above. How you would have to proceed to build your listener

audience. It could be country music, top 40, metal rock, tribute. whatever. I thought its a huge grind and expense

to promote and advertise. Part of the challenge is that there numerous new bands and current bands competing for

the same audience.

 

When Steven Wilson goes on tour, he says he is competing with 'millions ' of other bands to land the venues on the country tours.

 

Maybe ' millions ' is metaphorical. But I get his point.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

My Soundcloud with many originals:

[70's Songwriter]

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Music doesn't always just have to be about money. Anybody, regardless of musical style, who plays originals is unlikely to ever make a living doing it. Some do, but very few. Conversely, it's relatively easy to make a living (as long as all of the bars and restaurants aren't forced to shut down) playing covers. For me, I make money playing in various cover bands around town as a fill-in guy which keeps my schedule flexible. For creative outlet and personal enjoyment, I write, record, and occasionally perform in the progressive metal band. Shows aren't huge and don't pay a lot, but the fans are loyal, and with an online presence, regions of the world where our style is more popular can get exposure to us without us ever visiting. When we look at the reports of where our streams are going, a lot of it is in Europe. Strangely for some reason, quite a few in South Africa. We have never promoted outside our local town but I guess it gets around. We have no delusions of grandeur, it's a labor of love, and when I'm long gone from this world, my kids can go online and show my grandkids and great grandkids and so on what I produced.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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I read somewhere--can't remember where--that there are fewer than 200 full time authors...everyone else has a day job. Speaking from experience, I can attest that writing is a "don't quit your day job" kind of thing. I've got a spreadsheet that I use to keep track of the stories I've sold. If I had made all that money in one year, I'd count it a fair living at doing something that I like to do. Split it into two years and it's close to poverty wages. Divide it over the length of time I've been writing and it's pretty paltry per year, but good beer money.

 

How many full time musicians there are, I do not claim to know. I sense that the statistics are much better than they are in the writing game. Still, it's clearly difficult to make a living at it unless you're teaching--which to me counts as a day job, the same as an author who teaches.

 

I see some people saying, in essence, "if I can't make money playing prog, it's useless." Okay, but that's an entirely different mindset than the one that says, "I feel it. I hear it in my head, and if I don't play it out loud, I'm gonna bust open at the seams." If money is your driving motivation for playing music, then you're going to arrive at entirely different answers than if you're being driven from the inside to play prog, win, lose, or draw. You can criticize any genre of art as being worthless because it won't make you money if you're in the wrong place or at the wrong point in the cycle for what you want to play/write/paint/dance/whatever. There's a pretty good chance that prog will fail utterly in the middle of the Amazon River basin. Likewise in the Congo. It would have failed in the 1700s, anywhere in the world. Obviously, it did well from the late sixties through the mid-to-late '70s, then went into hibernation. Now it may be stirring once more. If I'm right, we're entering a period where people may again appreciate more musical complexity after a diet of pablum pop; something more stick-to-your-ribs, rather than cotton candy. There are signs that things are trending that way in that vocals have become very flashy, with lots of trills and octave-wide leaps. So far the instrumental accompaniment has been rudimentary, but I believe that will change. Vocal harmonies are in vogue and that's also an encouraging sign. If we can get the instruments to where the vocals are, things will start happening.

 

Hmmm...vocal harmonies and complex music...kinda like Jon Anderson and Chris Squire, eh? (And, yes, a little help from Steve Howe on vocals...)

 

And, yes, the audiences will begin to show up. It's all cyclical. After listening to complex music, the trend swings towards simpler music. After a while, the mind starts hungering for something more substantial. That time is coming. If you want to play something else, that's fine. Even during the heyday of prog and fusion jazz, there were other sorts of music that were doing well.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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Prog was a thing of it's time. Amazing musicianship in the golden age of the music history. Like classical composers, I think as a genre it's a closed deal. A couple of artists here and there will pop up like something from another era but as a scene, no.

FunMachine.

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I keep mentioning Steven Wilson as an example.

 

It appears progressive music, prog metal, whatever variant is still relevant in Europe.

 

True, its not like 1970. But its not a closed deal, not in Europe.

 

http://stevenwilsonhq.com/sw/tour-dates/

 

In the US, yes, I am not aware of similar prog music acts or prog metal bands.

 

But the US is not the only bubble out there.

 

Its a big world of digital music listeners.

 

I have good listener data on my Sound Cloud with my 70 originals.

Have 109,000 listeners for the year, a YTD figure.

 

I have more listeners on the European continent vs the US.

 

In a way this makes sense, in that SoundCloud is a German co thus

they have a large inherent listener base in the various countries in Europe.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

My Soundcloud with many originals:

[70's Songwriter]

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Why so gloomy? Classical isn't dead. It's currently called "film soundtracks."

 

John Williams, Howard Shore, et. al. are writing beautiful Romantic classical music that's already slowly (in some cases, not so slowly) moving into concert halls as stand-alone music. We went to a Harry Potter concert last year (SC Philharmonic @ Koger Center, so a real, actual, formal sit-down concert) and his Star Wars music has been making the rounds for years. I saw John Williams conducting the Boston Pops cover that all the way back in the '80s. Some of Shore's music from Lord Of The Rings is outstanding. Hans Zimmer has done good work. There are others. Prokofiev wrote film scores, so there's precedent. Come on, man, don't be an Eeyore. All you have to do is open your eyes and look about. There's some amazing classical music right under our noses.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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A lot of the debate about prog IS about a useful definition of Prog. For me the essence is to paint an intense, creative music on a larger canvas than the typical song form. I hear prog aspirations in RTF's Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant, Metheny's The Way Up and Snarky Puppy's We Like it Here. Those comparisons might be horrifying to some, but I feel it's ok to see prog as a largeness of spirit rather then a specialized genre with prescribed licks, tropes and sounds. It is about art more than artifact. Looking back over prog rock history some of my favorite musical moments are when the musicians haven't codified a recipe yet. They are doing things for the first time and not entirely sure where they are headed.
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Those comparisons might be horrifying to some, but I feel it's ok to see prog as a largeness of spirit rather then a specialized genre with prescribed licks, tropes and sounds.
Exactly! The classic "prog rock" genre was born out of rock musicians wanting to be more adventurous and less predictable. As soon as you can pigeonhole it into "long songs you can't dance to with English folk influence and lyrics about outer space" (for example), it just becomes another restriction to work within and without.

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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For me "prog" is different depending on the context it's associated with - meaning for example: Prog Rock vs Rock is a different association that Prog Metal vs Metal, if that makes sense. I don't think you can take what you think differentiates Yes from 10cc and apply that same "difference" to metal to make it progressive. It's complicated by the fact that there are SOOO Many subgenres of metal. But I think anything that elevates the genre musically beyond what the basic norm would be within that genre, by definition is progressive. Hell, in most cases, just throwing in a bunch of keyboards could be considered progressive in a genre that is so guitar dominated usually with no keys to be found.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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