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Joined: July 01 2004
Location: CA
Status: Offline
Points: 15058
Posted: February 17 2015 at 14:34
richardh wrote:
Also should be noted that Greg Lake started using a different bass guitar from 1977 onwards . It has almost the feel and sound of a rhythm guitar as evidenced by the track Fanfare For The Common Man where you hear a lot of clicking. Kind of weird but also very distinct.
Alembic basses, right? I've never looked to Lake for a good bass tone, not since '71-'73.
Joined: February 18 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Status: Offline
Points: 26199
Posted: February 17 2015 at 14:09
pfontaine2 wrote:
Regarding ELP and the GX1, Emerson clearly loved the sound but it didn't have the "ooomph" of the Moog gear he was using in the early 1970's. Much of their music after Works (including their live album and Love Beach) was all mid and upper range sound, very little bass. Perhaps it was a change in recording technology that changed their sound. The earlier albums felt "warmer" while the albums after Works sounded cooler and thinner. Listen to any Works Live recording and even the Hammond has a thin sound and the GX1 sounded terrible on older material like Tarkus (IMHO).
Personally I like a lot of the music created by Progressive bands throughout the 1980's. I very much like ELPowell and the "3" album. I don't mind the pop influence throughout Genesis' output because they still managed to devote ten minutes to a longer song on each album. If those long songs had disappeared, I would have been very disappointed.
I really like Yes' output during this time as well. Jethro Tull had a harder time of it but as was already mentioned, they seemed to understand that their appeal was in guitar-driven progressive rock and not in drum machines and synthesizers.
I don't think the Moog had anything to do with the more warmer sound of the music but everything to do with the way music was recorded. You can hear a clear parting of the ways on Brain Salad Surgery where that high end 'trebley' sound started to dominate although intriguingly the live album that followed did have that warmer feel. Perhaps they managed to 'fix' it? Also should be noted that Greg Lake started using a different bass guitar from 1977 onwards . It has almost the feel and sound of a rhythm guitar as evidenced by the track Fanfare For The Common Man where you hear a lot of clicking. Kind of weird but also very distinct.
btw Live At Nassau Coliseum 1978 is way better than that horrible Works Live thing which you rightly take a dig at. To be fair much of that recording was from the Montreal Olympic Gig where they had some massive technical issues that they were clearly not able to overcome. The end result is very thin sounding and a bit nasty as you suggest.
Joined: October 07 2004
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 39
Posted: February 17 2015 at 11:41
Regarding ELP and the GX1, Emerson clearly loved the sound but it didn't have the "ooomph" of the Moog gear he was using in the early 1970's. Much of their music after Works (including their live album and Love Beach) was all mid and upper range sound, very little bass. Perhaps it was a change in recording technology that changed their sound. The earlier albums felt "warmer" while the albums after Works sounded cooler and thinner. Listen to any Works Live recording and even the Hammond has a thin sound and the GX1 sounded terrible on older material like Tarkus (IMHO).
Personally I like a lot of the music created by Progressive bands throughout the 1980's. I very much like ELPowell and the "3" album. I don't mind the pop influence throughout Genesis' output because they still managed to devote ten minutes to a longer song on each album. If those long songs had disappeared, I would have been very disappointed.
I really like Yes' output during this time as well. Jethro Tull had a harder time of it but as was already mentioned, they seemed to understand that their appeal was in guitar-driven progressive rock and not in drum machines and synthesizers.
Joined: June 20 2012
Location: Oklahoma
Status: Offline
Points: 7946
Posted: February 15 2015 at 16:54
verslibre wrote:
The "problem(s)" with synthesizers in the mid-late '80s were, amazingly, the introduction of more sampled waveforms and more memory.
Synths like Roland's D-50 and especially Korg's M1 were a delight for keyboard players who played in jazz and new age groups (Yellowjackets, Spyro Gyra, Shadowfax, Mannheim Steamroller, etc.) because their soundbanks stored so many immediately accessible sounds that were one or two button clicks away. Therefore, programming unique sounds got tossed by the wayside because the presets were often deemed "good enough" especially after being effected with delays and reverbs. Need drums? Alesis' HR-16 was the hottest selling drumbox of its time and it was ridiculously affordable when compared with its predecessors.
Unfortunately, it took a while for most of these players to acknowledge the sounds on the new Korgs and Rolands weren't of the same quality and a shorter duration between composition and realization doesn't necessarily add up to good music.
This is pretty much my position too. The presets were a negative influence. I'm not talking about providing musicians more control, possibly creating their own presets. I'm talking about factory presets. Once musicians could just take the thing out of the box and just start selecting sounds already provided, this drained a lot of creativity out of the act. One of the big things that separated Prog from other styles with good musicianship was its creative use of timbre, which got to be less and less creative eventually. I have similar disdain for multi-effects too, on the guitar side of things. Still, this was surely only contributing factor. @SteveG, Is this still on topic?
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Points: 5093
Posted: February 14 2015 at 13:15
Dean wrote:
Perhaps you are confusing them with Casio, who did indeed make timepieces but not before spending several decades making electric and electronic calculating machines. Who can forget the earth-shattering impact of their entry into the world of musical instruments...
Yeah I had one of them (perhaps the question is who didn't)
Joined: July 01 2004
Location: CA
Status: Offline
Points: 15058
Posted: February 14 2015 at 11:50
The "problem(s)" with synthesizers in the mid-late '80s were, amazingly, the introduction of more sampled waveforms and more memory.
Synths like Roland's D-50 and especially Korg's M1 were a delight for keyboard players who played in jazz and new age groups (Yellowjackets, Spyro Gyra, Shadowfax, Mannheim Steamroller, etc.) because their soundbanks stored so many immediately accessible sounds that were one or two button clicks away. Therefore, programming unique sounds got tossed by the wayside because the presets were often deemed "good enough" especially after being effected with delays and reverbs. Need drums? Alesis' HR-16 was the hottest selling drumbox of its time and it was ridiculously affordable when compared with its predecessors.
Unfortunately, it took a while for most of these players to acknowledge the sounds on the new Korgs and Rolands weren't of the same quality and a shorter duration between composition and realization doesn't necessarily add up to good music.
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Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
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Points: 37575
Posted: February 14 2015 at 10:58
moshkito wrote:
richardh wrote:
...
Japanese instruments were not the problem in themselves.
...
Sort of ... really. Look at this.
Of the 3 big names in Synthesizers, Korg, Yamaha and Roland, 2 of them were invented by Japanese (might even be all three!), and two of those inventors were (previously) clockmakers!
Oh lumey. If a merest fraction of what you have said here was true then your following presumption would still be wrong.
1. All three are Japanese.
3. Yamaha started out as a maker of acoustic instruments.
4. Korg and Roland made electronic instruments from the get-go.
5. None of them were ever clockmakers.
Perhaps you are confusing them with Casio, who did indeed make timepieces but not before spending several decades making electric and electronic calculating machines. Who can forget the earth-shattering impact of their entry into the world of musical instruments...
moshkito wrote:
Yeah, there was a problem ... it automatically had to be tied to "clock" or a "metronome", because it was all they knew!
Erm... well... erm... no.
moshkito wrote:
Synthesizers, and even the software stuff these days, DAW's mainly, are so tied to the BPM that it is sickening ... it takes the creativity and the music feel out of the person's hands and changing it later is too hard.
Really?
moshkito wrote:
The "beat" should be secondary, not a major part of it. And then Bass Player, or Bass Magazine only doing articles that bass players have to make up the "rhythm" of the band, to support the guitar, pretty much tells you that most rock/jazz music is not even that good, because it is tied ... instead of "free" and "progressive"! And a lot of jazz these days is just "Easy Listening", which was the name of the genre in the old days at big record stores!
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
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Points: 16190
Posted: February 14 2015 at 09:50
richardh wrote:
...
Japanese instruments were not the problem in themselves.
...
...
Of the 3 big names in Synthesizers, Korg, Yamaha and Roland, 2 of them were invented by Japanese (might even be all three!), and two of those inventors were (previously) clockmakers!
...
(removed. I have the article that had this and will look for it and post it. I would not have done so otherwise.)
Edited by moshkito - February 15 2015 at 09:31
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
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5093
Posted: February 13 2015 at 13:38
Big Ears wrote:
Keith Emerson, who made futuristic music with synthesizers, that was also exciting and dynamic, on albums like Trilogy and Brain Salad Surgery, slipped into mediocrity with some horrible Japanese keyboard instruments on Love Beach. I am one of the few who thinks LB has its redeeming features, but it should have been a lot better. Emerson probably believed at the time that he was taking his instruments a step further (as he had done previously).
For good or bad, it's true that the Japanese revolutionised the synths market and consequently the soundscape of our lives. Jean Michele Jarre talking about the American ARP 2600:
"ARPs are like the Stradivarius or the Steinways of electronic music. They were invented by craftsmen who, today, we’d place on the same level as the luthiers that built violins, clavichords, pianos – all of the acoustic instruments.
Interesting fact: all of the electronic instruments from this era more or less disappeared at the start of the 80s with the arrival of the DX7. Or in other words, at the time when the Japanese infiltrated the market of synthesizers with a much more commercial and aggressive vision than that which had dominated during the earlier days of electronic instruments. Today, same as a piano or a saxophone, an ARP remains a classic instrument, and one that we’ll still be using in two centuries time. The current trend for using old synths is like putting a Les Paul 58 or a Fender 52 into the hands of a guitarist who, up until that point, had only ever played an Ibanez or a poor Japanese replica model.
From the early 90s, the whole techno scene expanded with plug-ins and emulations of instrumental sounds which were fairly unconvincing digital replicas of analogue sounds. It’s not that I prefer analogue to digital, quite the opposite in fact. I think the two can co-exist perfectly well together and my music is proof of that. But there comes a time when we have to admit that it’s not the same thing. We can’t compare an ARP, which in its day cost 30,000 Francs [4500 euros] with a plug-in that costs 50 euros. It’s a question of sense! After having weighed up the advantages of the virtual, today we’re realising that we’re made of flesh and blood and we have an absolute need for an emotional and tactile relationship with our instruments."
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5093
Posted: February 13 2015 at 12:24
richardh wrote:
verslibre wrote:
I wouldn't say any of the sounds that Emerson used were categorically "bad" (as far as good taste goes) until the 3 album arrived. Some of his sounds lent an unfavorably low-rent veneer to the music.
The word is 'tacky' and Emerson admitted that this was his trademark sound so he was well aware of it. BUT the Yakama GX1 was a massive hunk of keyboard that Emerson used as well as anyone else.
Only tangentially related, but here's Emerson in 1983 talking about using the Fairlight for composing his movie soundtracks.
Joined: April 11 2014
Location: Kyiv In Spirit
Status: Offline
Points: 20506
Posted: February 13 2015 at 11:20
cstack3 wrote:
Dean wrote:
So what was it? Public disinterest? Had the Prog scene become too commercial for the die-hard Prog fan and not commercial enough for Joe Average? Were Marillion more commercial than their Neo-Prog compatriots?
We cannot examine the music of an era in a vacuum. As the times changed, so did the drugs of choice of those who tended to listen to rock music. Marijuana, which helped fuel the prog boom of the 1970s (Jon Anderson has written about this) was looked upon as an "old hippie drug," and newer drugs including stimulants and other synthetics became more fashionable. These did not lend themselves to sitting around in a dark room, listening to side after side of progressive music.
I think Charles got some undeserved flak from his statement as it leads to the bigger picture of cultural and social changes in society, which has had great effect on popular music's appeal in regard to many different genres in many different eras.
And the idea that drug intake while listening to Prog was only done by a select few is, frankly, laughable.
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richardh wrote:
(perhaps the question is who didn't)
