What characteristic of Prog do you most value?

There are a number of commonly held characteristics of Progressive Rock. I attempted to list them below as best and completely as I could, although I certainly could have missed something:

A commitment to:
•Innovation in timbre
•Innovation in structure/composition/juxtaposition of material in general
•Freedom from composition/free-form/improvisation
•Innovation in time, rhythm, meter, polyrhythms...
•Exceptional musicianship, well-demonstrated capability with instruments
•Incorporation of varied styles and genres
•Innovative lyrics, subject matters, themes
•...Other

Which do you find to be the most highly valued, or what do you yourself most highly value? Why?
No, you don't have to associate yourself with just one. I don't. But maybe there is one (or two) that you rank above the others. What might it be?
Please understand that this thread is NOT intended as another tired discussion on the definition of Prog. The question is which one of its commonly accepted properties particularly stands out for you?

I biased the list with my highest ranked commitment on top. I am most delighted and inspired by the use of interesting timbres. This might be through employing unusual instruments or non-instruments, creating unusual sounds from well-known instruments, sound synthesis, the use of found sound samples, and so on. I always gravitated to things like Genesis’ The Waiting Room with all its breaking glass and such, Jamie Muir’s use of anything and everything on Lark’s Tongues, Zappa’s early forays into musique concrete, and some of the sounds Henry Kaiser would get from guitar torture on Moose and Salmon and on his collaborations with Fred Frith. Synthesizers were always cool to me, and when they began to have guitar synthesizers, cooler still. I still have a great deal of affection for Adrian Belew’s album, Desire Caught By the Tail, where he seemed to do every odd thing he could think of with a guitar synthesizer. For myself, I am constantly buying and messing around with effect pedals and guitar synthesizers. I receive extra delight when I run across a particular sound that comes not from a single effect but from some combination of effects, and I’ve always considered this sort of resourceful fiddling to be an essential of the creative process.

How about you?

Of course I love the whole package. But I'll stick with this three:

•Innovation in structure/composition/juxtaposition of material in general
•Incorporation of varied styles and genres
•Innovative lyrics, subject matters, themes

Personally, I like the works that goes beyond music. That kinda of thing that, when you're reading a book you go "aaahh, thats the thing about that music from Gentle Giant!". And when you come back to the music, you find new stuff that you didnt notice in the first place. That goes on music structure, lyrics and design of covers.

The albums I have most sense this feeling are: "A Passion Play", "Octopus", "Arbeit Macht Frei", everything from Henry Cow and some things from Genesis.


Edited by GKR - June 25 2015 at 13:21

Creativity over record sales.

kenethlevine wrote: It's of course a complex question.  To me prog is as much about attitude as anything else.  I like its tendency to move beyond the superficial or ordinary musically or lyrically.  I also like the variation, the contrast between lightness and darkness, joy and pain.  Melody is also usually important to me, but what I find neat about that is that people all have different ideas on what is a good melody and what isn't

Mostly these:

Thanks for all the great responses so far. I would just like to ask Smurph and Frinspar if there's any particular sort of "creativity" or any particular sort of "experimentation" that you frequently return to or actively keep an eye out for?

For me, prog rock is way more fun than all other genres.

I like subversion in art in general but preferably within a structure. It so happens that prog has plenty of artists that fit these 'requirements'.

Freedom.

HackettFan wrote: Thanks for all the great responses so far. I would just like to ask Smurph and Frinspar if there's any particular sort of "creativity" or any particular sort of "experimentation" that you frequently return to or actively keep an eye out for?

Not really. Not in any major conscious way. Genesis, mostly due to lineup subtractions, presented something a bit different with each album and I appreciate them all. Dream Theater, starting with Scenes 2, started to bore me, because they sounded exactly the same from album to album at that point and beyond.

Some things that have excited me through the years are groups like Naked City and other John Zorn projects, Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere, to name a few.