This has lead me to wonder: what do you personally look for in progressive rock/progressive music in general?

For me personally:

The main characteristics of the music I like are:

Complexity, variety, experimentation/exploration of sound, 'fullness' (a lot of sound/sounds), and percussive/rhythmically inclined 

From a prog angle, I look for all those things in a rock context. 

Right on! What are your thoughts on the term "Art Rock" as a reference to progressive music?

I think the most I like in prog are mysterious, great melodies and those early seventies prog sounds. Also I have liked quite long different rhythms, 4/4 never been enough to me.

I have always searched from music something otherly world, strange and also holy.

I do tend to be drawn more to odd time signatures, longer pieces, and frequent changes of pace.

 

It's quite true that the Average Joe doesn't get progressive rock. But I guess that what makes this an elitist attitude is the view that popularity isn't a measure of quality.

 

 

 

 

Hi,

Nothing in particular, other than a relationships between the instruments that just shakes your insides totally inside out and makes you just love it to pieces.

Since this can be done in Harlem, with a plastic bucket and a stick, there is no requirement in the arts that it must have ... those would fit into my "personal favorites" category, but appreciating MUSIC is not a category for me, and thus a "preference" for this and that, will only PREVENT you from finding new music elsewhere.

It's best to have no expectations, so you can be surprised.

This, was one of the reasons why "Different Every Time", the book on Robert Wyatt, is the best biography/autobiography of all of them ... it has everything you can think of, and you learn quickly it is not about likes and dislikes ... it's about something else that you can not exactly define, but your every day minute helps you find it.

I, personally, always thought the best moment in it was about Syd Barrett. And it was bypassed and ignored, because musicians will really freak, if they had to put up with it. Someone was trying to play with Syd, and they asked what key he was in. The reply is ... Syd doesn't know any keys, he just plays!

And you don't get it?

It's about something that is not what we expect, know, or understand ... the finding of something totally new and how to use it. Has less to do with "music" than it does my "preferences" ... and us asking, is actually very scary for me ... are we simply trying to tell each other that this is the only music I can hear?

And what's weird for me, is that this is posted in a "progressive" board where it is a given that DIFFERENCES is one of the most important parts of it. Just weird for my mind, that we do not get it!

Awesome, I will definitely check that album out then!

I also enjoy really, really avante garde stuff, such as Beefheart Trout Mask Replica and Gorguts Obscura.

 

 

 

Eh. To me 'art rock' is sophisticated pop/rock (like ELO, Bowie, or APP) that really isn't progressive musically speaking but adds a certain (dare I say?) pretentiousness to the proceedings compared to 'normal' pop/rock of whatever era we are discussing (although I seems art rock is mainly a term used to describe 60s/70s bands). That said, I understand the history/evolution of the term (at least anecdotally), meaning that art rock was the predominate term being used at the time these things were starting to happen, whereas prog-rock seems to be introduced later (how much later being a product of where you are in the world). 

I guess for me personally prog serves as a form of escape. You can't really "escape" with three minute pop songs. Regular verse chorus songs are great but they ubiquitous.  Prog is sort of like music from another dimension and universe. It's maybe not nearly as secretive as it once was but it's still not mainstream so I'd say there's still a bit of mystery about it and that's also part of the appeal.

Also, I think I like prog largely because of the instrumental sections and not so much for the lyrics although there are some notable exceptions(Rush, echolyn and early Marillion come to mind as well as VDGG and Peter Hammill). It is during these instrumental sections that you go ona  journey where you don't know it's going to lead you.

Also, I like the exotic sounds and incorporation of unusual instrumentation or at least instrumentationthat is not common to most "normal" rock or pop music.

Once I started listening to that type of music, I started liking the complexity, layers of sound, repeating motifs--that were more than just "a hook"--and recognizing variations on themes. To the point that discernible complexity seems to be the keynote of music that I like--but way back when I started it was Sci-fi. 

AWESOME post man, especially the bold part! 

You can kind of escape, but a 3 minute song doesn't really have the time and pace to build up that "feeling" of escape like say a 23 min track like Echoes, Song of Scheherazade, Histoire Sans Paroles.

There's absolutely a difference between looping the same 3 minute song over and over 5 times, and listening to one 15 min epic that builds. Good for you being able to enjoy that loop. I don't.

I second the Trout Mask Replica comment, though.

and those 23 min track "don't really have the time and pace to build up that "feeling" of escape" like great classical symphonies. So what? I can get just as much kick from a 3 minute song as from an hour long symphony.

Hi,

The strange side of the OP question is that the very same little thing that attracted you to "prog" or "progressive" can be found elsewhere in music, and be attractive, but just in a different context. And this is the reason why I say I listen to "music" not "progressive" or "prog" or "jazz" or "classical". 

I do have to use the definitions in their simplest form sometimes to write these comments, but in general, my listening is not about anything in particular except that it creates a new vision, a new poem, something new for your imagination or body. The essence is the same, but the context is different.

 Lyrics tend to be secondary for me, I listen more for the music. 

Mostly this  

If I had the money, I would build a studio and pay musicians of top quality to produce extended versions of all my favourite prog - such music they would make - Under the name "Children of the Night".....

Chicks with large melons.......

Mostly weirdness is a thing that facinates me, but of course I have heard also really boring weird music. For example Throbbing Gristle.

Also, I really love mellotron, but Barcley James Harvest Once Again could have been better, if they hadn´t use mellotron as much as they used into it. But it´s not just mellotron, it´s also that too bombastic production.

 

On a similar note, music can be experimental but the experiment has to be successful. Releasing crap in the guise of being experimental doesn't cut it for me.

 

 

 

I guess I'm hoping for music that creates a soundscape, that creates its own world. A world where emotions and ideas surge and flow. Where the music is complex enough to embrace two or more things going on at once.

I found it interesting to think of singles from the pop world that satisfy the same itch, because it helps to isolate the things that make prog interesting. I have dozens of them and they're really varied: Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, Birdhouse in your Soul, Mony Mony, Someone Saved my Life Tonight, All These Things that I've Done...