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Joined: October 12 2011
Location: Florida, U.S.
Status: Offline
Points: 46
Posted: February 02 2014 at 21:23
As far as inaccessibility goes music is like art in that you can't expect to like or understand it upon first glance. You have to look at the art from many different angles and perspectives. You have to look at it, walk away, and then come back later and look at it some more. Even then you can't expect to fully appreciate it.
The best thing about music is that as you push your boundaries and try out artists outside your comfort zone you learn to appreciate other points of view and personalities. Really listening, and i mean really focusing your full attention, on different styles of music can strengthen your mind and your soul. As you listen to different kinds of music outside your primary tastes you start to unlock and discover parts of yourself that even you didn't know about.
If you have never screamed at the top of your lungs while listening to a song, you are not there yet. If you have not been overcome with joy while listening to a song, you are not there yet. If you have never gotten up and danced while listening to a song, you are not there yet. If you have never bawled while listening to a song, you are not there yet.
I don't claim to be an expert on music but that is the beautiful thing about music, it does things for the mind and the soul that no other worldly thing can.
Joined: December 19 2013
Location: New York
Status: Offline
Points: 67
Posted: February 03 2014 at 07:52
I don't knkow if they're considered prog, but P16.D4 might be the most inaccessible thing I've ever heard. I think they're loosely associated with Rock in Opposition, but their sound is essentially harsh droning noise ( from brass instruments and electronics, I think). It's pretty unlistenable, and I usually like experimental music.
I know it's not prog, but most people would consider "Metal Machine Music" by Lou Reed to be inaccessible. Along with Yoko Ono, it's a good album to put on to get rid of unwanted guests.
In general, people who are not fans of prog think of prog as inaccessible in general, except for Yes, Jethro Tull, a few ELP songs and Rush.
Though not inaccessible to me, I'm pretty sure stuff like Gentle Giant, Magma and "Tarkus" by ELP is too inaccessible for conventional ears.
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 16610
Posted: February 03 2014 at 09:59
Hi,
The more I read this, the more I think how insensitive and un-tuned most ears are, IN TIME.
We can go back and find that folks didn't like Debussy. Folks didn't like Stravinsky. Folks didn't like Satie. Folks didn't like this or that. And today? No issues with it whatsoever.
But unlike the past, we now have RECORDINGS, which they didn't then, so one opinion was rarely refuted, like it can be today. And I think this is a massive difference, in understanding and learning about music that was not available previously, or heard, or understood.
Today, I might not get something, and someone makes a comment, and I go hear it again, and oh yeah ... that is alright, and the appreciation improves. You did not have that as much , or as well varied, as you do today!
I don't find anything in "prog", or "rock", or "jazz", inaccessible or impossible to listen to. And I was not a great listener of the ones that love to play with dissonance and off kilter stuff like "Art Bears" and what I usually call the quasi-academic look at music, which to me, is far more inaccessible than 90% of all the rock music out there, prog or not prog! Heck, I find some pop music much more inaccessible than ALL of the prog out there!
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com
Ron Geesin...As He Stands, Right Through, and even Music From the Body are inaccessible to a great deal of people and since age 22...I've always hid myself away when listening to them. I did the same thing with Not Available by The Residents, In The Shadow of the Sun-Throbbing Gristle, Hopes and Fears-The Art Bears, Zeit-Tangerine Dream, X-Klaus Schulze, Trans-Harmonic Nights-Peter Baumann, The Zoo of Tranquility-Johannes Schmolleing, ....all Popol Vuh albums, David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir, Terry Riley, Mort Garson, Ruth White, Jorge Reyes, Pauline Anna Strom, Emerald Web, White Noise, ...In the last 40 years...I have discovered only 2 people interested in listening to these artists. I have yet to meet anyone interested in hearing more than 2 minutes of my Art Zoyd collection. It creates bad vibes for the average or back in the woods people. If you force this music on them...they might drive home, go to bed,..and have a nightmare about you cutting them into little pieces?
I don't know???? That's the reaction many people give because they are very stupied & ignorant about it. If they go to the movie theatre to see a horror or sci-fi film and the music soundtrack is from the same swamp in hell as Univers Zero....then that's okay! huh? really? Either because they don't notice it or they've been conditioned to believe that any bizzare sounding music written must exist only in a film. As a backdrop for a film. Really? When in the real world..it should be accepted like the music of 20th century composers. Bernard Hermann's score to "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is much more enjoyable without the film, leaving your mind with an option to drift about all on it's own..which if it's good music, it will do that for you...without concerning yourself with the importance of the visual film projection to guide everything...and every experience you feel..at all times....as if you're breaking set rules if you don't...which is why most people can't relate to anyone named Ron Geesin or the Avant-Garde noise makers of the 20th century like Edgar Varesse. Most people will never understand how George Crumb's Black Angels was set up, carefully planned, COMPOSED.....and can make no sense of it whatsoever and fine the people listening to it questionable.
^ well, that is funny Ian. I find that Neo/Prog has more accessable vocalists to my ears, but then again it's hard to say what sounds truly innacessable these days. I'm becoming so lost on this matter cause so much Prog sounds so accessable to my ears. Even Magma sounds accessable to me. Guess I got problems cause the popish side if things with commercial appeal are the least accessable to me these days. I guess Cross over Prog may get my vote right now. I know. Strange.
Well I have no idea why Radiohead is included ont his site. (Same with Japan but there we go). I have heard OK PC a few times over the years but decided to give it one more go. I borrowed a copy. I am left with tht horrible feeling that .. should I try CD2; shudder. This was like the worst aspects of Oasis, VDGG (over-emotive vox for me VDGG fans, I appreciate some of their music) and sub-par REM indie rock jangles all stuck together. No Surprises was the first indication of music - a melody. Yet an album so highly regarded - I thought what is it I am missing? The space age sounds... not much of that, bit disappointed there, some synths for orchestral backing (is this the prog bit) and some vocoder... Interesting lyrics? Not really, Some of the low star reviews on PA seem right to me. And I wanted to like this album. I really tried. Inaccessible or just plain drudge?
TDSOTM for the 90s? Hardly, imagine a PF album sounding like that! That honour might go to P Tree's Signify perhaps, now the former Japan keyboardist Richard Barbieri and his buddies know how to make an interesting and listenable album. (I included this a reference point; the releases were roughly analogous) to give an illustration of what I mean (assuming readers have heard and like the P Tree album). OK Mac/ PC to me was a horrible experience. I've heard Dylan at his vocal worst making me wonder what I am listening to at times. But this album was supposed to be a high point in a band's career.
Joined: March 12 2005
Location: Neurotica
Status: Offline
Points: 166178
Posted: March 21 2014 at 02:49
^ Radiohead is very accessible, so it's just plain drudge.
As for the topic...Idk for sure, but I would say it definitely resides in RIO/Avant. Electronic and Kraut and Zeuhl can make it a conversation, but overall the RIO/Avant strain goes well past accessible in a vast majority of cases.
Dig me...But don't...Bury me I'm running still, I shall until, one day, I hope that I'll arrive Warning: Listening to jazz excessively can cause a laxative effect.
^I don't know, and I'm not sure many of us do, which
is why I think it's preposterous to make such claims, if one hasn't got
any proof to back them up with. All this amounts to are unfounded
generalisations based on what some people think they hear or know, which
is far from being fair imho. If people know of certain instances where
these electronic tools stand in for lack of talent, then name em or
simply abstain from making empty accusations that are downright
disrespectful to the current scene.
Actually a lot of
this is not that new. Igor Stravinsky used to write and "record" lots of
player piano music (think those saloon bar pianos that played all by
themselves - on wax and metal cylinders. He never bothered with
playability but achieved music that is still music just not how one
player could do it. Oh this was 100 years ago or more...
All this
progression (which means change) is a threat to the aforementioned
comfort zones - look at the apprehensive attitudes toward Yes over the
past, er, 34 years as a great example. People are afraid of change and
in pop culture terms it means age, irrelevance, scorn, death - which
ever is worse. None of this is all that important (except death) it's
just how our pop culture environment conditions us to think bad things
designed to keep people in their place.
I'm all for quality
digital mastering for instance. We have people who leap back to vinyl as
though that were a good thing. Most records now are digital masters and
often sourced from the same DAT master unlike records of yesteryear
which had some very odd generational discrepancies. Records probably
sound better than older records and un-remastered, or badly remastered
CDs, After all which is going to sound best? 24 bit DVD Audio (my
preferred media though I don't have Blu Ray. Or some record with
crackles.)
I"Change returns success, action brings good
fortune." Pink Floyd, quoting a Chinese proverb from a long time back.
Further than the the 60s I think.
Is this really "most inaccessible" or "music I hate"?
Bit of both perhaps. While a little negative it is born from a desire to see behind the various music curtains prog and it's wide varieties (death growls to Japan...). Not as bad as sl*g.ing off genres butt focusing on actual examples.
I find this thread quite illuminating.
Oh while I remember, I was glancing through a book about popular music a while back and found something some might appreciate.
It was a disco thing. It went something like "The Bee Gees were so false. They weren't real disco at all. It was just ... pop music."
Whatever you use to make music, even your farts, is ok until the music is good. Computers or not it's the result what matters. OF course there's more fun in watching Mr Wakeman playing with his undetermined number of fingers instead of Edgar Froese standing in front of a sequencer, but when it comes from a speaker there's no difference.
When Geesin and Waters have put farts and trivia of this kind on tapes and Geesin played piano on it the result was quite good and progressive and between tapes and computers the difference in this case is in the use of scissors instead of a mouse.
Think to the most experimental period of Battiato (late 70s). He has released albums made mainly of tapes cut and pasted together plus various synths and sequencers. When he later decided to make pop music he hired Giusto Pio and his violin.
What about the music of spheres by David Gilmour and The Orb?
I can get your point and I hate house and techno as well as I hated the 70s disco music, but your attitude sounds just conservative and close-minded to me.
If you were around in the early 60s what would have you thought about Theremins?
Re: the farts. Warren Zevon used this.. feature to record and synthesize and use it as a solo. There's a statement in there somewhere but I shall not go into that one. Just a thought on someone transcribing it...
This thread has a lot to do with personal taste I guess, which makes the whole thing quite interesting. Most prog musicians are very good, but for some reason, fans rate them good or bad, mostly depending on their personal taste.
I'm not into the Metal side of things, since it's the type of music I don't really like, but I like heavy, melodic rock. All the screaming/growling is something I cannot relate. But I could not dare say they are not good musicians, or that they have no feelings/emotions into their music, it's simply that is not my kind of music, and I'll leave it at that.
Yes, this something that sounds like my dear old parents reaction. They didn't like it was bad. Though my dear old duck was very hypocritical about Zeppelin. She even liked the drum solos (!) but felt obliged to deride my taste in polite society.
The key to preferences and "good" and "bad" is understanding objective versus subjective, though many here do I see. My idea of bad music is really incoherence. much of what is mentioned here I like, playing some Dream Theater now, love Magma (though one does have to choose the starting point wisely), Miles Davis is all fine with me as well. Henry Cow too. Space rock and Hawkwind... um, well, I have tried you know... I don't dislike, it's just not necessarily my cup of green tea though.
Oh re- the copy and paste thing - Miles and his producer used to do things like remove melodies and then issue those post-bitches Brew live albums. This was angular music at it's most determinedly inaccessible and I recall struggling with it as a kid. Now I'm older I can more easily remember struggling with it as an adult. I was amazed at how edited and retaped In A Silent Way was pieced together - not until I heard the Sessions CDs. Same with Yes and CTTE. Now people use PCs as they would have back then...
Love the Agharta and Pangaea material but I do prefer the more jazz drumming to the beat oriented fusion like some Stanley Clarke material. Sounds too easy for what he could be doing...
For trying to "get" some of these challenging musics perhaps just start listening to one instrument e.g. the drums and "get" that, and mentally add in other instruments until the picture is complete. Some music does take a while , but we recognise it's worth and persist until 'the moment" Click!
Joined: September 03 2006
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 9869
Posted: March 21 2014 at 23:33
uduwudu wrote:
TDSOTM for the 90s? Hardly, imagine a PF album sounding like that!
Yeah, PF melodies don't get as beautiful as Airbag or Tourist. On the other hand, there is a bassline in Exit Music which is a lot like that on the Money interlude (where Gilmour picks up his solo just after the saxophone) and also a guitar riff in Lucky that evokes Dogs. It's a very layered album with a wide array of influences...if you can get past how 90s it sounds superficially.
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