Welcome to my KZread channel, "Is It Prog?".
On this channel, we take a look at what makes a band or album "progressive" and dig into some of my favorite band's catalogs, as well as other topical material related to the genre or other interesting music.
When the band being looked at is obviously a prog band, I spend more time asking 'why' are they considered Prog; What have they done to further the genre? What are the most interesting things about the band?...
If the band's status as prog is on shaky ground, maybe we look at why or why not they might be considered progressive.
One thing that sets this channel apart from any others is that I plan to continue to use clips of the actual bands that I'm analyzing. I believe that it is really important to be able to hear these amazing songs, be able to talk about them openly for educational reasons, and not be afraid of losing the ad revenue.
I hope that you enjoy the videos, and will stick around to support my work!
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I get where you're coming from, but this is capitalism at work. It's about maximizing efficiency and increasing profit. Also, I enjoy AI generated music. I also used to be the bass player for a cover band for 10 years. I get it. It's cool to feel special cause you can make music and others can't. Time is changing though. It's lame people are using it to scam spotify tho.
I as a musical artist and producer will always be me not Ai. I'm always genuine
As someone who uses AI as part of a serious, non-exploitative music creation pipeline, people on both sides of this issue drive me stark raving bonkers. On the one hand, you have the idiots who think it's okay to flood the market with click-button created trash, and insist they are somehow entitled to a payday. On the other side, you have the idiots who think AI can't be used to create real art, and that anyone who claims otherwise ranks just *BENEATH* the Nazis in the scale of who counts as "good people". I am a writer. Words are my talent. But music has always been my passion. When I write lyrics, I can hear the songs in my head, but with AI tools like Suno, I have been able to bring them out of my head and into the world. It's never a fast process, because I often have to re-generate each section of a song dozens of times to get it to sound like I envisioned it, and even then, there's a lot of post-production I do both on my own and with the help of my girlfriend to get a track just the way I want it. Out of 1k credits on Suno, I get (on average) three songs that match my vision and that I could share with others without shame. That also reflects, at minimum, an hour of work each (though given how naturally writing lyrics comes to me, the majority of that time is spent scrapping failed music generations and trying again, with the next-biggest chunk going to post). *EDIT: That's an hour per song segment, so each verse, the chorus, a lyrical bridge if I have one, etc.
For every person like you only using generators to "previsualize or practice before recording your own voice" theres a 100 people that generate the whole song, image or design without hesitation, especially on corporate level where it matters. This is really like saying that I support the petroleum industry to use gas in my lawn mower in my garden but something certainly should be done to reduce the amount of cars globally.
I really think that if it's use could be constrained to that sort of thing, it wouldn't be an issue. That's what I was trying to get at with that portion. Unfortunately, it is not and really cannot be (as you said). It would be best, in my view, for none of it to exists. But it does, and so it should be addressed, and the most effective level to address it on would be the corporate level. I guess I should also mention that I don't often do the "previsualization" thing that I mentioned in the video. In searching for potential use-cases for the technology it is one of the things that I have tried, which also helped me to better understand the way that it works so I could form an informed opinion on the subject. To your last point, I don't actually see any sort of contradicton there. Yes, the vastly larger aspects of a problem should be addressed before the minute ones.
@@progrock I understand your point but I think when facing such dangerous paradigm shift, one should simply refuse and totally revoke this phenomenon altogether rather than compromise and experiment with limited usage that will never be respected by the absolute majority of the people - that only leads to normalisation and gradual adoption, its all salami slicing tactics starting with "previsualisations", sketches, tests and moodboards, then "less important" applications and social media "content", and before you know it, all we are waiting for is an update with slightly higher resolution or quality that would let us print this or billboards, play it in cinemas and on radios. To me it is not a technical limitation or an issue of flawed musical harmony, its a deeply troubled and cursed technology on an almost ontological level and I want nothing to do with it.
I love ELP since high school in the early 70s. Never heard the term "prog" until this decade... 🤷♂️
"DJ Not You Style Tebang" is so bad that is good
It really is a marvel of technology
I'd say the essence of Canterbury has little to do with genre, personnel, or, particularly, geographic determinism. Instead, it's more about a certain sensibility: dead-pan wit, unapologetic silliness, lightly-worn erudition, musical ecumenicalism, and virtuosity deployed as a means not an end. One of the regular clichés is the "scene" is quintessentially English, which may be true, but it's the weird, wide-open- mindedness of, say, William Blake, Lewis Carrol, Michael Powell (another Kentish lad), The Goons and Monty Python rather than the beligerant, close-minded, xenophobic middle-Ingerlnd that it truly represents. After all, Canterbury is closer to France than it is to London!
You know what...any idiot who defines music and decides what is best for the people is a jerk.
Lots of things i can think of are already mentioned in the comments including Cassandra Gemini which might be my fave. Not seen Pineapple Thief mentioned so "Parted Forever" (18mins) & "What we have Sown" (27mins) are my contribution.
critics are pretentious by nature. Professional jealousy?
It sure does seem that way sometimes. I guess if you can't do, "critique". Appreciate you leaving a comment, man!
No mention of the Moody Blues 1969 “To Our Children’s Children’s Children “ ????? The whole album is about outer space and dedicated to the moon landing. So dam typical to leave out the Moody Blues.
That definitely would have been an important one to include! Looking back, I'm kind of surprised that I didn't. Good catch, I'm sure I missed a ton of things for the sake of getting it done.
You keep mixing up remixing and remastering. I don't think the terms are interchangeable.
I definitely did do that a bit when I made this video, it's also confusing because Wilson does both. I promise I understand the difference lol. In the future I'll take more care with that sort of thing, because it does bother people.
Keep feeling butthurt that I can actually make an ai song, with lyrics I wrote, and make it sound 100X better than more than 3/4 of what current mainstream music churns out. Music is music. It's either good or it's bad. Deal with it.
That's fine, man. I think you're completely missing the point of what music even is. You're free to feel and think that way, but I'm not above seeing it as pitiable, confuse that for "butthurt" at your leisure.
@@progrock I've been around a long time. So long in fact that I grew up listening to music on vinyl, cassettes and then CDs. If I usually like a band, I buy their album. I enjoy AI music and it's gotten quite advanced to the point that you sometimes can't tell it's made by AI. I disagree with those who say it's soulless. I made a pop song that had plenty of soul in the vocals. The future of music isn't as bad as some make it out to be. Those that lack the people to make music with instruments that write lyrics are in for a good thing with AI because it brings their songs to life. I think Spotify will be fine. The music industry had problems in the past already with people downloading music at no cost on what were P2P programs and torrents; although there are still torrents out there. Things always seem to change but some things stay the same.
Prog snob? You mean a Tool fan
Hell yeah brother
"This is of course the correct position to hold...but you can't just go around saying it." You spent 8:27 setting up that nice deadpan line, and you totally stuck the landing!
I think you might be the first person to actually get my sense of humor with that! Appreciate you, man.
That question can be answered in one word. Envy.
That's easy... because jazz and classical musicians do everything that prog musicians do but better! The things that prog is good at, jazz is better at. Also, prog lyrics tend to be childish and overblown. I don't give a fuck how many time signatures a song has or how many tropes you've ripped off from Tolkien, if its soulless virtuosity, it sucks, and that's what a lot of prog is. (Note: Zappa is exempt from this criticism, and he's not really prog.)
Zappa was definitely prog (grated he was whatever he felt like, but saying he wasn't "really" prog is asinine). Honestly most of your comment seems to come from a place of ignorance of prog bands more broadly. I think it would be a stretch to call 70s Genesis lyrics childish, certainly not King Crimson. And what exactly are Jazz and Classical 'better' at than prog?
@@ApophisTw0Thousand6309 They are better at composing songs, playing instruments, and making people feel, and according to the Zappa bio by Miles, Zappa disliked prog and explicitly rejected it. Prog fans can try to claim him all you like, but he will never be prog. He's closer to Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern than Rush, Yes, and King Crimson.
@@ApophisTw0Thousand6309 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is good. I'll give you that.
@@mattmiller4917 Whether he thought he was Prog or not changes nothing. Prog is a broad label. And don’t cite classical composers as proof that he wasn’t Prog. Where do you think those other Prog bands take influence from? Also, better at playing instruments? Lol.
@@mattmiller4917 Yes, the Lamb is very good. And so is Selling England by the pound, Foxtrot, Nursery Cryme, Trespass, A Trick of the Tail, Wind & Wuthering, and even And then there were Three.
I normally don't paint with a broad brush, but in this case "Critics are funking idiots" and know nothing.
do critics still hate prog? it seems like such a 1970s or 1980s thing. haven't they moved on?
The only thing the critics achieved was that people with good taste learned to ignore this garbage line of think.
they are paid to be mean.
they want sell the shit noise without imagination or techniques that is easy to produce and can play on the radio cheaply
What would Mozart or Beethoven or Bach would do if you give them the 70's instruments and studios?
probably they are frustrate musicians that can't play or create virtuose music or they are paid to say bad things.
Because it's boring, most of the time...
YES! you make an important point about the 1970's studio medium producing sonic blending via tape roll-over- an effect which musicians worked around. Thuss the 2015 YES ALBUM mix can seem musically unstable. eg, with 'Yours Is No Disgrace' the main melody line absolutely dissolves into the dissonance of the 11th-chord vocal textures, which being pushed forward favor the harmonic structure. These remixes are acts of revelations at times
Your analysis, insights, and scholarship are impressive. Well done.
Progressive rock after 1975 overstayed it's welcome. The world moved on.
very interesting thought, thanks... prog was interesting until 1975... after that, most groups released less strong records, whether Genesis, Pink Floyd or Gentle Giant... two years later, the punk arrived full of new energy and wiped out all that... I repudiated prog when I fell into punk/new wave/industrial in the early 1980s... but today I appreciates prog classics as much as punk classics...
Prog rock is head music. Real trippy. It’s not for everyone. You have to dig deep and look for it. I like it ‘cause it’s really out there, stellar. I’m not always in the mood for radio singles or straight forward simplistic music.
In reality all contemporary music of western origin* evolved at its root from mostly European classical. For some closer examples hip hop began as an offshoot of disco which was heavily Motown influenced and which was THE defining pop subgenre for much of the 1970s. Progressive, art, and theatre rock as well as heavy metal spawned from late 1960s psychedelic rock which itself came from a mix of folk rock and non-western musical influences (this was later reinjected into western music via artists such as Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel incorporating Afrobeat into their sound from the 1980s onwards) as well as those from the British invasion (both of which were in part contributed to by The Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison who brought Indian influence into The Beatles later work as well as his solo career) whose artists in turn gained influence from the predominantly American 1950s rock n rollers and Motown artists who were all influenced by some combination of blues, jazz, and country. Going forward from progressive rock we get the creation of punk as an antithesis to its long-winded compositions with their short aggressive songs with simple chords and unpolished vocals; though ironically many of the greats in both scenes collaborated even at the time and speak very highly of each other. New wave and by extension its various offshoots and subgenres such as synthpop (just to name one off the top of my head) has roots in both prog and punk with many artists from both scenes either moving genres or collaborating heavily with new wave and synth pop/synth rock artists going into the 1980s. Many artists of those genres cite progressive rock artists such as Rush, and Peter Gabriel and/or Steve Hackett era Genesis as major inspirations such as the members of Norwegian synthpop-rock band a-ha (also if you haven't listened to them beyond Take On Me you don't get to dispute the rock categorization). Electronic music originated due to things like synthesizers and drum machines/electronic drums which were popularized by synthpop artists of the 1980s. Some techniques of which (such as gated reverb on drums) were discovered and first popularized by former and then current lead singers of Genesis; Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins respectively who of course have indisputable progressive rock origins; and autotuning and other vocal effects which itself has since spun into things like dubstep. Meanwhile synthpop (especially that emulating an 80s style) has been revitalized in the 2010s (due to nostalgia cycles and Lorde and pop superstar Taylor Swift's influences) and to some extent the 2020s where it has itself spun into things like bedroom pop which has became the musical perching spot for artists such as cavetown and girl in red. This is a major over simplification and doesn't include nearly all the subgenres that were part of 20th and 21st century music but ultimately any two no matter how distant they seem probably have some tangential connection. Is this to say that liking one subsection of modern western music obliges you to like it all? No of course not! It is however an encouragement to give things a chance. If you end up hating it feel free to turn it off next time it comes on, but at least consider giving it a spin (whether literally or metaphorically) first. *I know this is a loaded term for some people and the stark distinction between so-called "western" and "eastern" music has been falling apart since at least the mid to late 1960s thanks to and as evidenced by some of the examples mentioned above and when it comes to culture at large the crumbling of that divide has been happening (sometimes slowly and sometimes in a huge wave) since at least the end of the second World War and perhaps even the first one.
I like his mix of Rush's A Farewell to Kings, such a well balanced mix and magically creative use of panning on the drums. He should have been asked to do all the albums as Richard Chycki's mixes are full of mistakes, and all lack bottom end.
spacemen 3,here and now
ash ra tempel,acid mothers temple
you just provided a tutorial on how to it, especially when suggesting distrokid as though they were your sponsors
The only wrong part here is botting part/manipulating the system to steal views from others by duping the same track and posting it under different names over and over. AI generated music in general is not wrong. It only becomes wrong if it is of poor quality and you artificially push it through the algorithm. It is 100% okay to make money off of AI generated music if people end up liking it. After all, that's what matters in the end, isn't it? The quality of the end product. For example, an artist can spend hours, even days to produce art, which you could generate with an AI within seconds. One costs money and the other doesn't. Both are same quality. Which do you choose? For your convenience you would ofcourse, choose AI. It is about what fulfills your need. That is all what most people think about. Yeah that artist put a lot of effort in creating the good quality art, which AI can generate within a few seconds. Effort and hard work doesn't matter. That is the truth of the world. You can put lots of effort into something and AI can do better than you did. Just means that your content was inferior to an AI's
I don't believe that "people liking it" is the end goal of music. Music is a form of higher-order communication, and if there is only a "listener" who is participating then they are just talking to shadows. The effort and hard work do not matter to the economics of it ("fulfilling needs", the loss of stake in the industry to musicians), which I think is what you're talking about with "the truth of the world". But it matters essentially to the progression of music as an art form, and the sanity of a healthy human race. There is a higher set of principles at risk than musicians losing listeners on streaming platforms. It concerns cultural enrichment, spiritual/intellectual well-being, and other "truths of the world" which are not as shallow as the basic materialistic breakdown you offered.
@progrock people liking it IS the end goal of music. Because what it takes to be a hit song is for many people to like it. And it doesn't even have to be materialistic. If the music is liked by most people, that just means that the music is high quality. If it isn't, it is not. If real artists lose listeners on streaming platforms, it would be because their songs didn't have the quality required to retain those listeners. Liking AI music does not mean anything because at the end of the day, people like what they like. AI has gotten advanced to the point that it can generate its own music. AI can give you any type of music you desire if your prompts are detailed enough. What do real artists offer above all that? Anything they sing, AI can sing. The only solution is for them to perform better than AI can. I know it will limit human creativity. Because a lot of musicians will be using AI, let's not kid ourselves here. The progression of music will improve thanks to AI becoming better. AI can perform operations better than humans can. If an AI gets trained enough, it can produce really creative songs. It won't affect the sanity of human race. What affects the sanity of human race is other things people see online
I appreciate you responding, man. It's cool to have a little back and forth about it. I don't completely disagree with you about everything. I don't think that AI can really offer the same kind of innovation as generations of musicians exchanging ideas. It can potentially run a simulation of that at a faster rate, but it's not really the same thing. Even if AI did create something as revolutionary as, say, jazz was to music theory - it results in brain drain for people. It's not part of an organic, gradual process. The development of music technology and expansion of music theory is a triumph of the 20th century akin to walking on the moon. Song form and composition are scientific, these things go beyond being entertaining and writing "hits". Like I said in the video, I'm pro-human. I think that standing to the side and watching a fundamentally human endeavor being taken by machines because of profit motive is a society-deranging exercise. The humanity is an essential component to the end product. Like I said I'm my first comment, music is a conversation, a higher-order language that transmits emotions from person to person. Could you really have a true and honest conversation with a chatbot in the same way you do another person? Id argue that if you can, you are either selfish or solipsistic.
@progrock AI can offer innovation like humans do. In fact, AI can innovate at a much faster rate than humans. It already produces unique music from existing datasets. And it is still in its infantile stages. Most things humans can do, AI can do better. The future is AI and it is better than to have than to not have it. People do not have to listen to the same song over and over again anymore and can hust generate any type of song their heart wishes
ffs... I found this video after investigating because I heard a couple of suspiciously garbagey sounding spotify songs pushed into my recommended. It's even worse than I thought.
I started getting them submitted to my playlists 4ish months ago, and the number of them now has exploded, even since uploading this video. - I have a feeling it's going to get a lot worse before (if) it gets better.
We can be mad about it or adapt to it. Either way it’s not going anywhere
Great video. This was a very nice, in depth exploration and analysis of Progressive Rock and why the Rock critics hated it. It just boils down to personal bias, lack of objectivity as well as no taste in good music!
Unbelievable 😡 this is absolutely brutal to musicians such as myself who has struggled to get out music out there genuinely. I'd say this has to stop ASAP. The musicians are struggling because of this garbage 😡
Maybe just put high quality stuff out there?
Well, they don't ... The haters of prog-haters of prog-haters of prog-haters of prog-haters are just haters. Like hating americans making a video on things they haven't got a clue about,.
Wonderful, that someone felt the urge to make a video like this! Thanks man!
It's very hard to analyse a song with the mas of 5 songs in its entirety if you haven't even analysed a single song with the mass of 2. I am not just saying this to be pretentious, most songs just do not aim for a complex structure because that burden is supposed to be carried by the next song, which means that critics just are not trained with analysing multi-section song structure.
About the AI art cover I'm fine with them. I don't like AI art but I don't think we should blame the broke musicians who can't pay for the real art. People say it's a missed opportunity but that logic is weird. When a broke ass collage student eat a cup noodle instead of going out for a dinner, will you say that it's a missed opportunity for restaurants? In some cases people just choose for a cheaper option when they think it's not that important. I mean they are musicisns not painters. As a musician and an illustrator myself I'm all good when an artist use generic souless AI music for their speedpaint video or something cause that's not the point for them
We need anti AI site. Lets how they survive once all the real artist pull out their songs on the platform. Web dev and coders out there this is your opportunity. Real artist are looking for a place. Make a place for human artist only and you can rake in the $$$.
The story with the tree of development and the little monkeys provides the answer. Those higher look below and see heads…. those lower look higher and see asses …
Completely unrelated to the video topic, but how would you compare post rock and prog? Pardon the ignorance, but I literally know next to nothing about the prog genre, but all of the music you played in the video gave me VERY big post rock vibes so I kinda figured they were related. Also, crazy to see you're from Canton lol, since If These Trees Could Talk is based out of (Akron iirc?) and I'm from Salem. Apparently there's something in the water in NE Ohio that makes people want to do super technical, atmospheric soundscapes.
Cool to see someone else from Ohio! "If These Tree Could Talk" is an awesome band. I'd say that there is some crossover with Prog and Post Rock, but they're a bit different in ethos. Prog is an older genre and focuses more on things like experimenting with time signatures and having complex song structures then post rock tends to. Where post rock will often have a "minimalistic" feel with drones and focus on building harmonies on top of that, Prog rock has a "Maximalist" ethic that tends towards having instrumentally dense sections that frequently change key and rhythm. Prog rock often is more vocal-forward, while many (but not all) post bands have little to no vocals. Some bands in the prog genre were among the first to experiment with "post rock" sounds, though. One of the notable ones to me is Robert Fripp and Brian Eno's collaboration "No Pussyfooting", which is a solid precursor to post rock. Fripp was from the band King Crimson, which is a classic progressive rock group from the 60s. Other early "post" sounds can be heard in "space rock" bands like Tangerine Dream, who were also very progressive. You could potentially label some of The Moody Blues early work as sounding like "Post Rock" all the way back in the 60s, but I don't think the term would have been around and there are definitely some differences. Post rock started in earnest in the 90s with bands like Bark Psychosis, Disco Inferno, and Stereolab. It continued with bands like Slint and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who are both very experimental and "progressive" in their own way. As time went on, there have been bands that have made more of a crossover like Mogwai or Swans on the post side, and prog bands like The Ocean doing split EPs with post bands like Mono. It'd probably be a cool video topic, thanks for that!
@@progrock Okay, awesome! That really opened my eyes to a lot of the nitty gritty technical details of the two genres and that was certainly more than I was expecting lol. I think you've definitely pointed towards some new listening material.
What a scam, artists are facing this the system is definitely rigged kzread.info/dash/bejne/fqyOzZWvhMifcbQ.htmlsi=zEBI5WEMpZeuljWj
As a lofi artist, I fear my genre will be the first domino to fall. All we can do is hope Spotify bans AI music before us small artists are decimated! Cheers everyone
it's scary how quickly AI is changing every industry..