Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?

 

Yep indeed and I also mentioned Astra earlier in the thread who are good at creating that retro sound through analog recording.

You might also be interested in a band called Wolf People who have probably the most retro sound I've heard, They are not as 'proggy' as those bands you mention (although enough to be on PA) but they really do sound like they could have been plucked straight out of an early seventies rock festival.

I also agree about Steven Wilson. Sort of retro modern mix.

Anglagard is a very good example of 70's sound cloning, and I believe they record analog (as Opeth recently I believe), but there is also Wobbler. I think they really succeed to clone the 70's prog sound and it's mainly because of their huge knowledge of the genre! If you watched their Youtube making of videos, you'll see what I mean, they work on the sound of the snare to get close to King Crimson or searching for the sound of the toms of some Italian prog rock album.

And they used real vintage instruments like the famouse Rickenbacker 4001 bass (Chris Squire, Geddy Lee, Mike Rutherford...) or all the famous vintage keyboards...

I know it's not very innovative but I just love this sound so much, I'm trying to get that sound not because it's hype or anything but just because I love this sound, how music was mixed in the 70's, how the snare sounded, the lack of reverb, etc... 

By the way, Steven Wilson uses Mellotron but it's not enough to make it sounds vintage in my opinion, his sound is quite modern and very clean. I like it as well though 

In other words, she's a "clone" ... but not one that will be given any attention any time soon!

The recent biopic of Alan Turing is called "The Imitation Game", its title comes from a game where players have to decide the gender of a human respondent by a series of written questions, this he later developed into the Turing Test for machine intelligence, or more accurately the perception of machine intelligence, since the machines involved were imitating human intelligence rather than achieving intelligence. The key difference between the Turing Test and 'Emily Howell' is the interaction between the human interrogator and computer respondent. 'Emily Howell' does not respond to audience interrogation, it is merely imitating a human composer and the audience is passive in this scenario.

I haven't read it, but bearing in mind that it was written by Emily's creator David Cope, then any assessment or conclusion he draws regarding "its" creativity and style is inherently biased, as is any assessment we can draw from reading it. This bias also appears in the published works that the program has produced since Cope has selected pieces for general release and in doing so he is part of the creative process that he created. 

[Unlike infinite monkeys producing the entire works of Shakespeare where one wrong word in a monologue results in failure of the entire piece ("To be or not too be"), a 'wrong note' is not only acceptable, it is, from a pseudo-creativity perspective, desirable.]

The program-suite began as a style-imitator, and that is what it still does, albeit in imitation of a style that can be called "her" own that has resulted from the development process. That development process is wholly human since the 'Emily' program suite can only create musical notes, it cannot create algorithms or write computer code. The program suite has been created to compose classical music, it cannot create a pop song because the rules for a pop song have not been coded into the algorithms. 

I can use dice to create music. The roll of a die can be used to select a note, another to select note-length and thus a sequence of notes can be created, and since those dice rolls are random it will sound random and musically unsatisfactory. To make it sound more musical I can apply rules to each roll that are determined by the previous roll or rolls, for example I can limit the palette of notes to a particular musical scale and then determine which of those to pick based upon the preceding note using very simple rules of harmony and rhythm. Now the creation of note-sequences appears to be analytical because it is no longer purely random, yet no actual analysis is involved, it is still a sequential process of placing one note after another. The more rules I apply the more a distinct style will develop, but that style is decided by the rules I create, not by the random sequence of dice rolls. I have automated the creation process but not the creativity process. The more rules that come into play the less random and automaton the piece becomes, but it is still a pseudo-organic mimicry, and these rules are not unique to this algorithm, they are the same rule-sets that any human composer would employ when composing, even when improvising. [We've discussed improvisation several times before and although some people will claim some instinctive, metaphysical or mystical processes are involved during free-form improv., rules are still being applied, albeit instinctively or subconsciously. Improv. is not created without knowledge and experience of music and playing an instrument.]