The best ones have a immediate impact

moshkito wrote: In general, the best ones usually always have an impact in one way or another and none of the groups you mentioned had an immediate impact, btw ... in fact PF had serious issues with Syd at the lead, and some of the things they were doing live, were not the pop songs on the albums, which created a live issue for the band. YES, spent a long time trying to get it down and together, and it was their 3rd album that kicked in. Rush, I prefer not to discuss and PFM was already an established band by the time we heard about them in the rest of the world ...

The social impact of a group has nothing to do with the personal impact of a piece of music, which is what the OP was talking about.

Hi,

The albums I consider masterpieces usually struck a chord with me on the first listen.  Tales from Topographic Oceans, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Mei, etc.  They all grabbed me and held on.

There are exceptions. albums that took time to sink in.  The Hemulic Voluntary Band is one of those.

QuestionableScum wrote: HarbouringTheSoul wrote: QuestionableScum wrote: I enjoy Stravinsky and Bartok myself, but my point was to say that because their music is still enjoyed by others nearly 100 years after it was produced this shows that their music is not forgettable. And why would it be? In accordance to rdtprog's "theory", much of their music has made an immediate impact on me. It took me several listens to truly enjoy Bartok and Stravinsky, and I know it has taken several listens for other people. So while it may have had an immediate impact on you, I think for many it was not something that immediately connected with them.

Sure, it took me several listens to 'truly enjoy' their music, simply because it's too dense and complex to absorb in one go. But nevertheless something caught my interest right away. This might not hold true for everybody, and neither do I claim it does, but it holds true for my experience.

QuestionableScum wrote: Also, the OP's theory made some comments about the melodic character of music, and as much as I love Stravinsky and Bartok, their music is not particularly melodic. Dissonance usually dominates over consonance in terms of harmony.

Melodies can be dissonant. There's this tendency in casual conversation to use the word 'melodic' to mean 'consonant' or even 'catchy', but that's not true. Both Stravinsky's and Bartok's music is perfectly melodic. It just might be harder for the ear to parse these melodies, because they're often outside of the harmonic relations we are familiar with.

Polymorphia wrote: You may like a song that impacts you instantly, and that's fine. I do too; however, if you say that instantly impacting music is necessarily better than gradually impacting music, or vice versa, we have a problem. By saying so, you have necessarily prescribed one mode of listening/appreciating over another (instant gratification in music is better than gradual gratification in music), which is very limiting to aesthetic taste and can cause one to miss out on a lot of masterpieces.

Gratification isn't the same as what the OP called 'impact'. What I call 'impact' is when I recognize something in a piece of music that interests me. That doesn't mean I instantly enjoy the whole piece, but it gives me the indication that it's something I might enjoy. I have yet to come across a piece of music that didn't interest me at all on first listen and later became something I enjoyed. Of course, when I say 'first listen', I mean a real listen, not just putting the music on in the background while doing something else.

thellama73 wrote: I feel like I'm going to scream having to listen to you idiots.

That, we can all agree on, is objectively rude and insulting. I reiterate: It's not about adding "IMHO" to every opinion. It's about accepting that when it comes to taste, other people's opinions can coexist happily with yours. When you say "accessible pop music of course isn't good", you're trying to invalidate the opinion of everybody who might actually enjoy accessible pop music. Had you said "pop music sucks", that would have been fine. I would have disagreed (and rather vehemently so), but it would have been a valid statement of your opinion, regardless of whether you designated it as such. But when you add something like "of course", which implies that what you said should be self-evident to everybody, you're no longer just stating your opinion, you're implying that something must be wrong with everybody who disagrees because he doesn't see the truth that you find so obvious. That is offensive, even if you add "IMHO".

Regarding the "exhibit A" that's being used in this thread, my opinion on Tales has stayed pretty much the same from my first listen to the most recent one: It has some good parts and some boring parts. The magnitude might have changed - I like the bulk of "Ritual" more than I used to while a good portion of "The Remembering" has just grown duller and duller - but not my general opinion - I've always liked the bulk "Ritual" and disliked a good portion of "The Remembering". Repeated listens (and there were many of them) have improved my awareness of what's going on, but they have only confirmed my initial assessment. The good parts are still good and the crappy parts are still crappy.

Dean wrote: ^ that.   Exhibit A:

rdtprog wrote: I am curious if some agree with me, when i say that the best songs we can hear on a progressive rock cd are the one that have a immediate impact on you. I mean when you can clearly feel the sense of the melody and you are immediately affect positively by it. And the songs that take many takes to get something out of it don't have such strong melody and are easily forgotten. For those kind of songs it takes great songwriting by the artists to be able to connect emotionally to the listener. I don't want to say by this, that only songs that have a strong or catchy melody have a impact on you, but that they are the songs that are the most memorable for us and, that we want to listen over and over again. There also songs that we can enjoy for the sound, the atmosphere or the complexity, but i think that those things should never overshadows the melody in the songs. I think that the bands that have strong songwriting ability, by creating the best songs, are rare. Is this what we call "genius" , "gifted"? Is melody the essential part of music and the at a point where sometimes we can say that its surpassed the artist, just like he was control by a higher energy impossible to describe. Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, PFM, Rush are in the category that i have in mind, and soul... when i am thinking about great songs with a sense of melody, which mean more than a succession of notes and tones, but something that reach the listener deeper,  a bit like when you find yourself humming or when people say that they can't get the songs out of their heads.

The simple short answer is NO, i love a lot of music, that i cant hum.

Dean wrote: Dayvenkirq wrote: Dean wrote: ... it takes time to appreciate the skill that Wakeman in particular used on that album in connecting those disparate melodies. Wakeman? Wasn't the album a work of Anderson and Howe? "Rick, please, I want you to nail those keyboard parts." Anderson and Howe produced the themes, melodies, concept and ideas. Excluded from that creative process Wakeman was left to connect the dots and provide the glue that holds it all together, which I suspect is why long sweeping swathes of synth are prevalent throughout creating atmosphere and more importantly, an ebb and flow of music - there are a couple of very good solos from him on the album, but that wasn't his role (and that's ultimately why he left). It's not his best work as a solo performer within a band, but it is some of his best work as a band member. Here (IMO) Rick Wakeman is forced to do what Rick Wright did so effortlessly - blend in.

This is well said. I find that Tales has a cohesiveness between the movements that is lacking in most other prog epics, and a large share of that credit does indeed go to Wakeman. It's sort of like the difference between A Beethoven symphony (the fifth, for example, in which all the movement's are built on the rhythm short-short-short-long) and a Mozart symphony (in which the movements are entirely unrelated.)

Varies a lot. Some things that hit me first time are still my favourites and other things I didn't like on a first few listens have grown to be favourites.

Dean wrote: ... it takes time to appreciate the skill that Wakeman in particular used on that album in connecting those disparate melodies.

Wakeman? Wasn't the album a work of Anderson and Howe? "Rick, please, I want you to nail those keyboard parts."