Violin in Prog - Progressive Rock Music Forum

Dave Arbus from EAST OF EDEN , he's great on baba o riley from the WHO Wink

Most of you spoke about KC's David Cross or VDGG / String Drive Thing's Graham Smith, to say nothing of the smart (but over rated) Robby Steinhardt.

But apart from Curved Air's Darryl Way / Eddie Jobson who are gifted musicians, IMHO, the best prog fiddler ever is Ray Shulman of Gentle Giant.

Spirogyra has used violin in some songs.It's a great prog folk band.

kenethlevine wrote:

The polish group BELIEVE does a good job with this. Their player Satomi is excellent
I liked what the German group Pell Mell did too, although I guess that was more classical
The Canadian group FM used electric violin

FM ... and Nash, the Slash ... same guy.

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Mushroom Sword wrote:

King Crimson's Red (album).

By the time they released that album, David Cross had already left the band (or rather, asked to leave), and thus there are no violins in it except for one live improv track (which I particularly don't even like).

EGE YURTUM wrote:

High Tide - Simon House drives those records with some very unique and very noisy violin... he's a good few decibels lower with Hawkwind......

And his solo stuff as "Spiral Realms" where the music is treated so heavily to effects that it is actually hard to listen to at times. He also plays a lot of violin with Hawkwind -- best use of it is in "In the Hall of the Mountain Grill" and then "Astounding Sounds Amazing Music". Simon also doubles as the keyboard/synthesizer guy and oftens plays both at the same time when the synth sound is sequenced.

Others (out from the top of my head):

Graham Smith with VdGG/Peter Hammill

Graham Smith with String Driven Thing -- worth every moment of it!

Darryl Way with Curved Air -- shame on you for asking! Punishment is all three versions of Vivaldi with Cannons back to back full blast until you repent!

Jean Luc Ponti and others with Frank Zappa

David LaFlamme with It's a Beautiful Day

--- forget her name -- sorry --- the lady that passed away that played violin with Par Lindh -- she was better than him or the band!

Anekdotten has a violin, does it not?

PFM - Lots of violin in the earlier days

Banco also has violins and other instrumental pieces but they are all over the music, not exemplified as we prefer to in the "rock music" context

Amon Duul 2 has so much violin that no one listens to it! And it loves to duet an electric guitar ... and very well too! But it might be considered too proggy because it doesn't have that "anglo-american" sound! The way the violin is used here is different, because it is also soloing almost all the time right next to the guitar, and I think this confuses people's musical minds when they think that you can only hear one thing during a "solo" ... but what if it is NOT a solo, but a part of the music? ... Yeah ... !!!!

And ... I'm sorry ... I would rather listen to Charlie Daniels, or Doug Kershaw than have to live through a Kansas album again! At least you get some honesty and down home feeling in the music that is not pretentious or pleads to be something that one is not in my book!

Edited by moshkito - December 13 2010 at 21:28

Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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Curved Air's first three albums make excellent, extensive use of violin in a rock capacity. Also they are just plain masterpieces.

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A very good Van der Graaf's album "The Quite Zone/Pleasure Dome"

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