Any Prog characteristics in music theory?

Very good questions posed in the OP, and I can't answer with any real authority but I would be inclined to say 'probably not' As innovative as prog rock can be in terms of combining musical styles, utilising complex rhythmic components, unusual chord progressions and odd tuning, these approaches exist in music elsewhere, notably in jazz and classical music; polyrhthyms, dissonance, counterpoint etc etc...

Am I misunderstanding?

Of course, Johann Sebastian Bach played only the finest synthesizers!  

Edited by cstack3 - January 21 2020 at 22:12

Odd meters and diminished scales (think King Crimson). I Rock this is unique to prog mainly. It turns up in metal from time to time but with no where near the same quantity and inversions that Crim and the RIO world contributed.

Easy Money wrote: Tom Ozric wrote: maybe a branch from the intended discussion, ; a style that has baffled me forever - Free Jazz. What is the purpose ?? i love Soft Machine, Elton Dean, Henry Cow etc. when they break in to an Avante piece of music, it throws me 6 feet the opposite direction of my mindset. i love what these gifted musicians do, but i just don’t get the semmingly ‘randomness’ of it all. a good example is an Elton Dean Quintet album in have - Boundaries. it’s a difficult listen to me (as open as my ears/mind can be) but i persist, enjoy, and even ‘wow’ at this form of music and structure. what am i missing ?? Some people like it and some people don't, but free jazz is exactly just that, they are improvising without any set chord progression, tonal center or even steady time. Everyone is just winging it. For my own tastes, I thought it was kind of interesting when it first appeared in the 60s, but over time it has become somewhat repetitive and predictable.

This reminds me of the "jazz plus jazz equals jazz" scene from an episode of Parks and Recreation:

On rhythm, I think a lot of composers have ideas about rhythmic tension, but, as far as I know, I don't think there's any formalized theory. Xenakis might possibly have something to say about dimiunition of points on the time access or something.

Edited by Polymorphia - May 23 2018 at 09:02

In classical music theory, you have things like German, Italian and French augmented 6s... Well I figured Canada should have a chord too, so I have designated F#7add11 as the "Canadian 7th" - for the uninitiated, that's the guitar chord that Alex Lifeson from Rush uses in several songs like Xanadu, Hempispheres, Far Cry and probably a few more.


Edited by ForestFriend - May 22 2018 at 20:42

What a cool topic. This is my first post here. Granted I only have an associates degree in music theory so perhaps I can't give a detailed answer to the OP. As a previous poster stated there is nothing new under the sun. Beethoven explored syncopation but that didn't make his music ragtime. But syncopation is a defining characteristic of ragtime. So I can only answer what I think is the spirit of the question. I would say that the overall contribution of Prog is the further exploration of musical ideas in rock context. What I mean by that is that a standard rock song presents a melody maybe a counter melody a change and maybe even a reintroduction of those phrases with some kind of dynamic modification. That is pretty much as far as it is explored. Prog however will often take the time to use techniques usually found in other more intellectual (sometimes called "serious music") such as key changes, modified melodies, different chord patterns behind a given melody, forays into "free passages" etal. It also seems to be pretty exclusive to prog to take the time to explore a topical idea i.e. Concept albums. Obviously a classical oratorio could fit the description of a concept album but it isn't in a rock context.

^It sounds less like a polyrhythm and more like a bit of swing to me. But similar stuff is bothering me. I don't know a lot about what music theory has to say about rhythm and meter, beyond the obvious naming of things (whole notes, half notes, eighth notes, dotted eighth notes...polyrhythms - three over two, five over four...). I have never come across any treatment of how rhythm, time signature and meter interacts with cadence (how it moves phrases to a resolution). If anyone has any knowledge or perspective on this, please enlighten me. Are there rhythms that are thought of as dissonant? A lot of what we get in RIO/Avant is Zappa's musique concrete, or Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser torturing their guitars with pliers in a way that can be more percussive than harmonic in nature.







Edited by HackettFan - May 21 2018 at 14:24

That's my point as well You're firing on all cylinders tonight!
There's so much more to music than sheets and theories. One day there is suddenly new music that sounds like nothing before it. Whether or not the principles behind said music are old or not is beside the point and the experience of listening to something new that you can't quite put into a box.

moshkito wrote: Hi, I can't help thinking that the correct statement and question would be how much "music theory" is in Prog and show examples. This discussion has some interesting things, but all in all, is ... just weird for me.

On these matters, you have tried in the past to advance an intuitive approach to artistic improvisation. As a deeper theory of what the mind does inside its black box, I don't think invoking intuition amounts to much of anything. Music theory also has an applied side that allows it to be used as a 'music theory strategy' to predict what may work in the future based on the past and why so. The point you have made in the past is also valuable in an applied fashion. Hopefully, if I'm not misrepresenting you, your point is that thought gets in the way of improvisation. This may lead to a fruitful alternative to the music theory strategy for music creation. Which strategy a musician leans on more, I expect, is a matter of personality.

So far, since proposals for contributions from Prog to music theory seem to be lacking, it appears that everything in Prog subsumed within music theory, so the answer to the question would be all of it. The answer of how so, would require a thread whose purpose is instruction, and this could be quite valuable in the future. There is another logical possibility; that music theory has not advanced because of Prog because it has not kept up with Prog. I have no examples yet, and may never have.