Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 March 6

= March 6 =

Advances in digital music processing
What improvements or new technologies have there been in digital music processing (e.g. synthesisers, aftereffects, etc.) over the last 5-10 years? I need a few bullet points (as a "state of the market" for a fictional company), and the only thing I can think of is autotune. MChesterMC (talk) 15:21, 6 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I believe there have been improvements in digital compression that allow music to be compressed and sent faster, without losing quality to a noticeable degree. Combine this with faster data speeds and this has made streaming audio practical, as opposed to having to download music first, then play it.


 * Also, this has provided the ability to add more channels, which now makes it possible for the consumer to have their own mixer, where they can turn up the volume of instruments or vocals they like, turn down others, etc. We may see a lot more of that going forward.StuRat (talk) 15:35, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Pink Floyd being classified as prog rock
I feel like everyone in the world knows Pink Floyd is very obviously a progressive rock band, but recently I encountered a discussion where many people seemed baffled by that claim, instead saying they were more of an "art rock" group, with one guy saying he'd been a fan of them for 40 years and only recently heard them classified as prog. How can this be? They are pretty much the quintessential prog group. Is this classification actually only a recent thing, or were they known as progressive rock in the seventies and on? NIRVANA2764 (talk) 16:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The first thing to say is that categories like prog rock are loose and ill-defined, and you're never going to get 100% agreement on what constitutes prog (or any other genre, for that matter). Now, here is a good article that discusses this very question.  Briefly, the argument is that Floyd's music does not contain many of the defining characteristics of prog.  It doesn't have unconventional time signatures, it doesn't have any influences from jazz, the lyrics are not flowery and pretentious, and so on. --Viennese Waltz 16:10, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * 7/4 is a conventional time signature? -- Jayron  32  23:56, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Their music has plenty of influences from jazz - Richard Wright was a jazz pianist before Pink Floyd. In fact the cadence used in Breathe to introduce the sung part is a jazz cadence. (My reference for this is the documentary on Dark Side of the Moon shown on the BBC but I have no idea how to show that here - it has been broadcast on the BBC several times in the last couple of years.) --TammyMoet (talk) 10:41, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I've hated them for 40 years, and have always thought of them as prog rock. Our article on prog rock specifically references Pink Floyd as one of the genre's most influential groups. Certainly, much of their work is "pretentious", "pompous" and "overblown" (see article!). I don't think of Pink Floyd as art rock, because they lack the self-awareness that a typical art rock group tends to have. Although our article doesn't say this explicitly, I tend to think of "art rock", and the closely-related "art pop" as being as concerned with the nature of the performance - its sensibility and theatricality - as with a perceived need to make rock music more "sophisticated". A good test is to consider the average Abba fan: most Abba fans would probably tolerate Roxy Music (art rock/pop), but probably wouldn't care for Pink Floyd (prog rock). That might be a useful way to define the difference... RomanSpa (talk) 21:06, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * For what little it's worth, I enjoy ABBA and Pink Floyd (as well as the Moody Blues and ELP and Yes, speaking of quintessential prog bands), and dislike what little I've heard of Roxy Music. —Tamfang (talk) 09:08, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh that's fascinating. You're probably the first person I've even encountered with that particular constellation of tastes. We are, however, digressing a little from the question. Is the general consensus (amongst lovers and haters alike) that Pink Floyd are generally counted as prog rock? From people's comments here, it looks to me like that's the case, though of course there are legitimate debates about the meaning of the term and who qualifies for the category. RomanSpa (talk) 11:21, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Pink Floyd is sui generis, there's nothing they've done that has ever followed a mold--they have created genres, not adapted themselves to them. I Find RomanSpa's comments shocking.  I suspect there are even people who deepfry live kittens.  Floyd has no equal. PS, Obscured by Clouds and Meddle might be progressive if you had to force a choice. μηδείς (talk) 21:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd rather deep-fry a stack of kittens than listen to Pink Floyd. RomanSpa (talk) 22:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Deep-fried mold sounds quite yummy, too. :)  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  00:16, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I've been a fan of Floyd since the mid 90s and have always thought of them as a prog rock group. Many magazine articles I've read about them, and a few books, have contained a sentence similar to "Pink Floyd, probably the world's best known prog rock group, ..."  I don't have any at hand now but I know they've been on the cover of Prog Rock magazine (hrm, no article) a few times.  Dismas |(talk) 21:55, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It really depends on the album and the person listening. Atom Heart Mother is decidedly prog to my mind for the first and last tracks, but not so much with the middle three.  The Wall? Not so proggy.  Concept album, yes.  Rock album, yes.  Prog? Barely.  Matter of opinion? Absolutely. Mingmingla (talk) 00:16, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Seriously. Is there some sort of way we can have User:RomanSpa banned?  I don't mean from Wikipedia.  I mean like from the universe of all acceptable people?  And I don't even like cats.  Dayamn. μηδείς (talk) 04:33, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I think they invented prog rock in the 1960s, stayed there until Dark Side of the Moon, when they left to explore more operatic forms of music, and after The Final Cut became more mainstream. Certainly by the time of their final album (The Division Bell) they were bordering on pop. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:45, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you need to read our article Progressive rock. There were many, many artists in the late 60s who were in at the start of progressive rock, and Floyd were only one of them.  And if you count Dark Side as prog, there is no reason not to call Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall as prog either.  --Viennese Waltz 11:01, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree about many parents to the birth of prog rock, but I wasn't calling DSOM prog: if I was I'd have said "after" between "until" and "Dark". --TammyMoet (talk) 17:55, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You raise an interesting point: is "prog" something that describes bands, albums or individual tracks? RomanSpa (talk) 11:27, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it describes individual albums or tracks rather than a band - at least, if you wish to define a band as belonging to a particular genre, you need to specify which incarnation and at what time. Genesis for example, started out as prog, moved to mainstream rock after Gabriel left, and finished up as more mainstream pop than Floyd ever did. Doesn't stop them playing stuff from every period of their career on their live sets, I'm just thinking of the original releases and their time of release. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:55, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Again, I think you're simply wrong. Dark Side is quintessential prog (here I agree with the OP), and the first two Genesis albums after Gabriel left, Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering, are as prog as Genesis ever got.  Sorry TammyMoet but I think your grasp of rock history is shaky at best. --Viennese Waltz 18:33, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh well I only lived through it, went to see the bands and bought the albums at the time, how was I to know how they'd be classified in 2014? At the time, to me, prog was Yes, Soft Machine, Van der Graaf Generator and other far out groups. I don't see how Genesis albums past TOTT can be truly prog as they don't contain a track longer than about 7 minutes, for a start, and no strange time signatures. They were definitely more populist than Lamb or Foxtrot, and even now their tracks are played on the more mainstream rock radio stations in the UK (whereas tracks from Lamb or Foxtrot are conspicuous by their absence). I remember reading an interview with Tony Banks who said they made a conscious decision to move away from Gabriel's lunacy towards more accessible rock. --TammyMoet (talk) 20:03, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * "Ripples" is 8 mins and "One for the Vine" is 10 mins, but let that pass. For the record, I don't agree with the article I linked to in the very first response to the OP.  I don't think music needs to have strange time signatures to be progressive.  Prog is about ambition, sophistication and artistic significance, and DSoTM, WYWH, ToTT and W&W are all full of those - they are certainly not "mainstream rock".  --Viennese Waltz 20:52, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * One way to explore this that is slightly less subjective and more scientific: consult the Music_Genome_Project. While I can't claim it is entirely objective, it attempts to classify songs, artists, and albums by specific features (e.g. "excessive vamping," "prominent bass-line," "heavy use of vocal harmony", etc.), rather than somewhat arbitrary genres. At the end of the process, a genre like "prog rock" can be somewhat rigorously defined as a song, album, etc that posses a set of features (note the features I list above are not meant to directly relate to prog). I believe one can get access for research purposes by asking, but if I recall that requires some affiliation with a research institution. Of course you could also get an account on the related commercial service Pandora and look through their tags. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:31, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

What was the first movie to have its own website?
You know how every movie trailer these days includes the movie's website, facebook, twitter, etc. E.g. "ActionFlickTheMovie.com / @ActionFlickMovie". I'm wondering what the first movie campaign to have a website for it was.-- Brainy J  ~ ✿ ~ ( talk ) 23:27, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * While undoubtedly some movie was the first to do so (someone had to be first) it may be difficult to track it down. I've done some google searches using phrases that might turn something up, but have come up entirely empty handed.  It would have had to have been sometime in the early to mid 1990s, which is when the web was born.  -- Jayron  32  02:01, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Some claims from a Google search on : Star Trek Generations, Stargate (film), Pulp Fiction, all from 1994. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:25, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * One way to investigate this would be with the Wayback_Machine. You can browse (most of) the web as it was in a certain year. However, it looks like their coverage prior to 1996 is very sparse, so it might not catch e.g. the original "Pulp Fiction" page. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:35, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * There might have been earlier Internet sites dedicated to a movie, like in Gopher (protocol) or even on ARPANET. StuRat (talk) 16:42, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Ha! Of course not the www, but an interesting notion. Do you have evidence of any corporate pages on gopher or ARAPNET? I agree there may well have been "fan site" type movie pages on Gopher, but I don't know of any official corporate action there (to me, the OP's phrasing indicates official backing from the production company). Though, I only used Gopher a few times, and scarcely recall anything I did on the "real" internet until I somehow found NCSA Mosaic... For that matter, there may have been some "official" movie presences on some of the older, more famous BBSs, such as The_WELL, but I still think an unofficial fan effort is more likely. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:40, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * No, I don't know that such sites existed, I just think we need to consider that possibility. Perhaps some sci-fi movie might have made a splash there, like Star Wars or even 2001: A Space Odyssey.  StuRat (talk) 02:02, 11 March 2014 (UTC)