Talk:Progressive music/Archive 1

Comment: House
I'm sorry to even put progressive house as a genre of forward thinking music shows great ignorance. It is a standard genre of dance music that works within in *very* well definied boundaries. The term progressive house was origianlly coined in the early nineties by some dance music journalists because artist like Leftfield started introducing real instruments into their music as opposed to relying on samples like most artists of the time. However, like many terms it has stuck to the genre whilst it has mutated and changed and now is just a vestige of a former era. Really progressive electronic music would most definitely be the IDM (loathe as I am to use such an awful term) genre not this straightforward club oriented music. This article really needs to be changed as does the 'progressive electronica' section. In fact it would be better to delete it and begin again imo.

I think you just haven't been listening to the right music. Every genera has its good and its bad. Progressive has plenty of artists churning out songs from the "progressive" formula. But there are also artists who pay no mind to the rules and do things that are genuinely creative. --Starx 18:06, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Comment: Metal
Is "Look What I Did" really a representative progressive metal band? I heard of them on this page for the first time, and I believe I have some clue about progressive (metal) music... They're not an archetype of your typical prog metal band, they combine a horde of diverse genres and I believe they aren't influential enough and well known as the other bands on the list. If no one has anything to say in their defence, I'll remove them in a couple of days. -- zweistein 13:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Comment:POV
this article is only full of faked information and POV.I think it should be deleted and changed into a disambiguation page. Please, the authors should mention any musician, musicologist or music critic that has ever quoted the term "progressive music" as a specific genre. I suppose that if that has ever happened, very likely the word "progressive" has been used just as a simple linguistic (and not musical) attribute.Brian Wilson 01:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * But you don't know, so what makes you say all of the above? Please give some examples of fake information and nonNPOV statements in the article. Hyacinth 07:53, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and what makes you think that I don't know? If you are so "very well" informed on my "knowledge", we should assume that you know me; on the opposite, I don't know your real identity (though I have suspects). Simply "progressive music" is an invented term: just like motorik, krautrock, psybient, illbient, glitch; there are dozens of articles on Wikipedia that deserve to be deleted. You have to proof and support your statements not me. You should provide evidence, such as real books reference, or real magazines, or trustable website.Brian Wilson 11:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment:Progress
"Progressive", as in contains musical progressions, and not necessarily having to do with Progress (note that capital "P") as in better than, improved, followon, etc. In other words, not (so much) a personal, political, or other judgement call, as a technical style. Clearly, musical genres, especially ones formed in the revolution of the electronic, are wildly new, novel, changing, and subjective. It would be perfectly possible, however unpleasant, to have retrograde progressive music (no comments please :-), but possibly even that would be more fun than sniping at each other. -- Tom Jennings


 * I hope you don't mind and will not be hurt by my following statements: please don't make me a fool, of course i am aware that the word "progressive" in this context has nothing to do with the historical progress of humankind and so on. Just please note that the definition says: Progressive music is the name given to a certain approach to musical composition that has been applied to several different music genres. 


 * So at least, may I ask you where did you read that? There is nothing new in the music of last ten years, unless you were born just yesterday, in that case everything is new. It seems that guys aged 20-30 are desperately trying to proof that they are able to invent something new as their "anceestors" in music did. it's pathetic.
 * Actually, it seems that most of music-related articles are edited by some people aged about 20-25 that are used to get information only from very old or very recent sources, maybe their 60 y/o parents and their college friends. So, in the definitions of facts, the experience and the knowledge of late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s are missing at all. This is worst than a sort of POV, this is a very self-destructive behaviour, maybe this project (Wikipedia) is just a game for some of you, but I am sure that many web users would be happy to see the knowledge-that they got in many years of study, work and experience- all organized in just one place.

Comment: Disco

 * Club music (or disco music) has been "electronic" almost since its early beginning, and those guys, artists, producers and sound engineers, just for market purposes, are being inventing "something new" since then. In other words I mean, Wikipedia is not a place for advertisement or promoting. If press tomorrow invents the n-th word for just selling their magazines, or becouse they have cognitive problems, we can't let them to have a large space even here in Wikipedia. Brian Wilson 11:04, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Rock
OK, this is my first attempt to weigh in on a Wikipedia topic, so bear with me if I don't follow the usual forms correctly. I agree that the term "Progressive Music" is almost a useless one. I should know ... I'm the editor of the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock (http://www.gepr.net), the oldest and among the most respected of the web sites that attempts to discuss this subject. I took over as editor about 6 years ago, and the more "Progressive Music" I'm exposed to, the more I realize that I don't have a clue what the term means. The Wikipedia "Progressive Rock" entry (as opposed to the "Progressive Music" entry) does a pretty good job of describing what I consider to be "Prog" music. This "Progressive Music" entry doesn't add much value, and in fact I agree with the others who have written here that the "Club Music" version of "Progressive" has nothing to do with what progressive rock fans think of when they use the term. Nonetheless, it is a term used by makers of this electronic dance music, so there should be some attempt to define it here. I actually have several of these bands listed in the Gibraltar Encyclopedia simply to warn my readers that this isn't "progressive" in the sense they think of it. For the moment, I disagree that an entry on krautrock deserves to be deleted simply because it's a manufactured word. It's used all the time in describing certain musical styles of the electronic variety (even those that aren't German), so it deserves to have a definition in the Wikipedia. I haven't read the article yet to see how well I agree with the definition, though there is one. The Gibraltar Encyclopedia hosts a page called "The Guide to Progressive Rock Genres" which attempts to define the terms used to categorize progressive rock and its related musical genres. Of course, in a musical style which prides itself on being different, experimental and genre-breaking, any such list is obsolete the instant it's published. Still, since these terms are used all the time to describe music generally called "prog", the GEPR has made at least an attempt at saying what they all mean. At the risk of starting a heated debate (let's face it, a lot of these definitions are in the ear of the beholder, to mix a metaphor), you can check it out at http://www.gepr.net/genre2.html. So how does this work on Wikipedia? Who decides whether an article gets removed? Fred Trafton 16:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Electronic
I'd say that the usage of the adjective "progressive" in electronic music is entirely independent from its usage in progressive rock. There is no "progressive music" as such, no common denominator between progressive house, progressive trance etc. on one hand and progressive rock (which includes progressive metal) on the other. Progressive rock is "progressive" in the sense that it uses more advanced and complex musical techiques and goes beyond the blues-based verse-and-chorus scheme of most other kinds of rock music. Progressive rock is usually complex and changeful, with an intense musical dramaturgy. In progressive electronic music, the word "progressive" means that layer upon layer of repeating musical patterns are applied to the piece, and lack of dramaturgy is as characteristic of progressive electronic music as dramaturgy is characteristic of progressive rock.

As controversial the term "progressive" is in both rock music and electronic music, as unrelated are the genres described by that term. It is a linguistic coincidence that both bear the word "progressive" in their name, and hence, the "progressive music" article should best be stripped down to a disambiguation page. --WeepingElf 19:33, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Dance
Personally I dont agree with the term Progressive being used for dance music which builds in energy until it hits a crescendo or breakdown. This is an arrangement technique evident in many songs accross all genres.

For me the term "Progressive House" refers to music which has many of the house trademarks but attempts to push it to a new exciting level, or at least bring fresh ideas to the style, i.e. make progress.

House music can quickly become stale, especially when here in Europe there are many charting house acts who follow a cardboard cut out template. To me, prog should be the antidote to this commercial house, keeping everyone on their toes.

Regardless of my opinion, it seems that by now the term Prog has settled into being its own genre, unfortunatly. A kind of minimal house style with elements of tribal and trance. This in my opinion is rather ironic.

Progressive house/dance and progressive rock deserve entirely different wikis.


 * Yes. Electronic dance music of whatever stripes is lightyears away from progressive rock.  Progressive rock, like all rock music, is handmade music, played real-time on guitars, keyboards, drum kits and various other instruments.  What sets it apart from other kinds of rock music is its advanced compositional and lyrical sophistication.  Electronic dance music, on the other hand, is programmed, and it is usually rather unsophisticated.  It is music for dancing, not for listening to and thinking about.  There is little room for musical or lyrical sophistication in it.


 * I haven't yet heard a piece of electronic dance music that is "progressive" in the sense progressive rock is. Probably because such a beast would run against the 'purpose' of electronic dance music, and because such music would be very difficult, if not impossible, to program on the equipment used in electronic dance music.  And indeed, that is not what the adjective "progressive" means when applied to electronic dance music.  And Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music says that "this nonsense has to stop".


 * There is also a huge difference between "electronic music" and "electronic dance music" which shouldn't be ignored. Electronic music began in the early 1950s, when swing music dominated the dancefloors.  This early electronic music, made by people like Stockhausen and Boulez, wasn't dance music, it wasn't even popular music: it was highly sophisticated, avant-garde, high-brow art music.  And this kind of electronic music is still made today - and virtually ignored by the general public.


 * Electronic dance music has nothing to do with that, except that it uses electronic sound sources. It began when DJs cobbled together their own tracks - so called "house tracks" - in the late 1970s.    I don't think they were even aware of the works of Stockhausen, Boulez or whoever.  Or at least they didn't consider themselves part of that tradition.  Nor do the composers of electronic art music consider the makers of electronic dance music brothers in mind.

--WeepingElf 14:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Little value
I totally agree that this article has very little value in itself. It has almost no own content and a disambiguation page would be a better choice.Pax:Vobiscum 21:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)