Progressive (Prog) Primer

[Spudman***]

Here is a brief primer into progressive music. It is not all inclusive.

The reason I am doing this primer is because people say that there seems to be a shortage today of good guitar music that is well crafted an produced. Not so. Progressive music fills that bill. Most progressive artists are not in it for the money. They simply love the music, love to create and to play so they do what they want to do and the result is music that is vast in emotional depth, structure and musicianship.

There are many sub genres of Progressive music: Prog metal, art rock, neo prog, prog rock etc. Mostly evolving from psychedelic rock prog rock incorporates a variety of time signatures and like classical music can contain several movements within one song. For example Yes - Close To The Edge is a 22 minute epic. Many other bands include epic songs on their albums that regularly go into the 10 minute plus range. These songs are not shoe gazer jams but songs that are variations on a theme.

Wiki can give you more in depth information than I can on the subject of prog.

Before you scoff at the idea of Prog remember that some of the best bands are prog bands. Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, ELO, The Who, King Crimson and even the Beatles and Stones all are considered progressive at points within their careers.

There are a couple of other sources for Prog information and listening that I use.

To listen to great Prog from your computer go to http://www.deliciousagony.com/
The audio fidelity is awesome.

For reviews and interviews http://www.progressiveworld.net/main.html

And my main source of info is http://www.dprp.net/index.php The Dutch Progressive Rock Pages

[tot_Ou_tard]

I guess I started out as a progite as the first band that I really got into was Jethro Tull, & later ELO, King Crimson, & Yes.

[marnold***]

Many would argue, but Rush is basically a Prog band too. Using that definition, they are far and away my favorite band from that category. I'm not the hugest Prog fan, but there is definitely some stuff that I like. Dream Theater's "Images and Words" is a great album. Savatage is mainly a metal band, but their "Edge of Thorns" album has a Prog feel to it. As a bassist in college, I always wanted to learn the bass part to Yes' "Roundabout." That's a real bass tour de force.

[Katastrophe]

Sweet, Spud!!!

I tuned into deliciousagony.com today for a while, and I was amazed at the range of styles that "prog" covers. I heard some trippy synth stuff, followed by some Steve Howe era Yes with classical styled guitar, to technical metal-ish stuff. All of it was well played.

I also did a youtube search on Roine Stolt, and I like his guitar style quite a bit. I'm gonna have to delve a little deeper into some more Flower Kings music as well.

This is a genre of music that I have been missing out on. That will change.

Thanks for the info and links.

[Spudman***]

I just love to have Delicious Agony radio going during the day. I'll often stop what I'm doing and jump on the computer to find out who is currently playing because something sounds fantastic and I haven't heard it before.

[king_petrucci]

Im a huge prog fan. It started with dream theater and just expanded from there. Im a little surprised they havent been mentioned too much around here actually