Subgenre Discussion
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Site News, Newbies, Help and Improvements
Forum Name: Help us improve the site
Forum Description: Help us improve the forums, and the site as a whole
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=44205
Printed Date: June 16 2025 at 21:15
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 11.01 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Subgenre Discussion
Posted By: Shakespeare
Subject: Subgenre Discussion
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:24
I've always thought that there should be very few subgenres. I think the site would work very well if the genres were simply:
Perhaps it would be wise to give a few more separations, but still. It keeps things neat, concise, and general. I like the idea of very few subgenres, but the description of the subgenres can give insight to the many subdivisions of the subgenre. Seems as though a lot of people do like having many subdivions, and some people want even more! I'm not suggesting that we make this a change for the site (especially since we JUST re-did the metal subgenres) but I'd just like to talk about it. What are the advantages to many subgenres? P.S. (I never understood why we need 3 genres for metal when it's all metal.  ) |
Replies:
Posted By: Ricochet
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:30
Definitely no.  Just a thought out of many: however various we've gone, I simply dislike the terms "Other" or "General" being attributed to a musical orientation/genre. ------------- 
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:38
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I would like a tree (subcategories), but apparently the software does not make it possible at this time. For instance: you click on Prog Metal and then the subcategories are listed but also includes a master band list of all metal bands. I wouldn't want a category called "Other (Zeuhl, Avant, Electronic, Raga, etc.)" or general either, but I do think that Zeuhl could be made a subcategory of Avant, and one could include Krautrock and Canterbury too). Or maybe not, as there is that relation to jazz/ rock fusion in Canterbury, Zeuhl, RIO, and well lots of Prog... Never mind.. needs more thought. I've sometimes wondered if jazzy prog and non-jazzy prog categories would work. haha. Way too simplistic, but subcategories would be great. ------------- Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I have observed before. It can be much like that with music for me. |
Posted By: Shakespeare
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:40
Yeah that would be great! And by the way, by saying "Other (Zeuhl, Avant, Raga, etc.)" I wasn't suggesting that would be the genre's name, but that rather the description of it. |
Logan wrote:Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:42
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I rather guessed, haha, but went with the ball anyway. Sorry about that. Oh, and definitely hadn't thought you mean "other" as a genre name (though that could be seen as synonymous with "alternative"). Alt. Prog (suitable for crossover). Oh wait, I forgot that all the categories are categorised as "genres" here (even when they aren't recognised musical "genres"). ------------- Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I have observed before. It can be much like that with music for me. |
Posted By: Shakespeare
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:49
Wait....we've had that discussion before, haven't we? |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:55
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Shakespeare: No doubt we have. I'm glad you brought this up, I think it's very messy as it is and closely related ones should be grouped together on the front page (but seperated to as subcategories at the page you hit after you click on the master category). And then we need album multi-tagging to complement the categorisations.
------------- Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I have observed before. It can be much like that with music for me. |
Posted By: micky
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:57
The advantages.. . are many... but simply... we don't have to like all the tags and categories we have here... but part of managing the site is recognizing that people DO use such tags.. to help find what they like. The site and it's current structure isn't for us to like or dislike... it is to serve those getting into prog. For those of us who love prog.. all prog across such barriers... if doesn't matter.. but really... all of this is to serve the new people ...and to help naviagate and explore the vast array of prog out there. that was the reason for splitting up PM... anyone who has the interests... and understands what we are trying to do here... should recognize that. Having all those groups together served no purpose... to those new or exploring PM. For myself.. it is much easier to find the groups I might like. Simple as that. ------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: Shakespeare
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:57
| I'm not crazy about the album-tagging idea, or categorizing by album....just throwing that out there. |
Posted By: micky
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 13:59
that is where this site is going to go someday... and it can't happen a day too soon IMO ------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 14:04
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Hmm, I've always thought that multi-tagging would be useful, especially if the search engine supports it well. Say I'm looking for a folk prog/ avant prog/ krautrock/ Zeuhl/ fusion/ symph crossover album (to be overly complicated). I'd also like to be able to search related bands (but I'm sure that there was another thread on that).
------------- Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I have observed before. It can be much like that with music for me. |
Posted By: micky
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 14:07
very useful..... again.. use Yes as an example.... how many of their albums are actually symphonic... on one hand you can count them. The genres are guides now... the problems are when people see them as absolutes... ------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 14:41
Absolutely... Not only did many bands change direction (approach other styles.. as a predominant value) but many albums have various styles. I definitely like the "genres," as an easy guide, which generally should define the most important characteristics of the Prog sound (or as in Eclectic, one style does not dominate enough and is particularly varied) but this would be very useful as a guide to albums, and to give one an indication of the bands' directions (which albums one should consider, and what one can expect of them. As it is now, the reviews serve that purpose to an extent, but this would make it much easier to find things via determined criteria). But what a massively long task it will be to include that info considering the huge number of bands in the database -- so if it's to be done, I hope it's done soon since more albums are being added each day. And then perhaps we'd need to open it up to members to tag (or enlist many people to tag) or figure it out in the forums wuth everyone's participation. Or whatever. ------------- Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I have observed before. It can be much like that with music for me. |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 14:42
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First off, you don't need to use the sub-genres - they are for guidance only - I use the Search function primarily to find bands, or the alphbetical list if my spelling of the bands name isn't up to standard (a slight argument against diatrics there When you've got 3,000 bands and 15,000 albums in just a few categories, genres or subgenres how would you find something that is similar or related to something you like? How would you encourage a new visitor to the site to explore other bands that are related to the one that brought them here?
If you reduce the number of categories down to three then there will be probably be 2,000 bands in one, 700 in another and 300 in the "other" - a nightmare to search through without someother means of narrowing down the search. Multi tagging will do that both for bands and albums, but until then, the plethora of sub-genres is as good a solution as we can manage within the single tier hierachy the database supports. ------------- What? |
).Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 14:45
Tag-teams  ------------- What? |
Posted By: micky
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 14:47
hahahhhah  a job like that would have to involve the whole site.... and finally get people really involved with this site. As I said in another thread.. the day that comes... will be a renaissance of sorts for the site ------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: December 08 2007 at 15:02
Great one! Anyway, we'll wrestle with that if and when the day comes.------------- Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I have observed before. It can be much like that with music for me. |
Posted By: Shakespeare
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 00:39
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I recognize that a lot of the subgenres are very distinct (Canterbury - Zeuhl - Kraut) but some are very redundant and just make things messy (three kinds of metal? Three kinds of symphonic?).... Anyway, three genres was really extreme, I was just making a point. |
Posted By: MikeEnRegalia
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 04:47
How can a genre like "General Progressive Rock" be "concise"? And if you're complaining about the metal separation, why do you want to have more than one genre for rock when it's *all* rock? All we need to accomodate your expectations are pages which group the current sub genres together ... it should be no problem to make a page which lists all metal sub genres, another one which lists all core prog rock genres (symphonic, psychedelic/space, neo, eclectic, heavy) and one which lists the rest. In fact I hope that M@x finally decides to spend 5 minutes of his life to create those pages, so that people like you can try them out and see for yourself why such a general categorization is not very helpful.  ------------- https://awesomeprog.com/release-polls/pa" rel="nofollow - Release Polls Listened to: 
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 06:48
If you acknowledge that there are a lot of distinct subgenres, then it is a natural extention of that to see that if a band is influenced by two or more of those subgenres then the amalgum is yet another distinct subgenre - everything is eclectic at some level - there are very few pure subgenre bands, even Magma is an alloy of several finite genres and subgenres.
The question then becomes where do you draw the line? - if a band exists at intersection of several subgenres in the Venn-diagram of Prog - which subgenre qualifies as the parent set? If you reduce the number of subgenres then most bands will exist simultaneously in more than one subgenre.
To my orderly mathematical mind classification only serves at a management tool and not as a linguistic containment field. In essence it is the bands that do not contain significant elements of the parent subgenre that define the child subgenre - ie it is the non-symphonic bands that define Neo and RPI; the bands that ventured away from pure-metal that define Post and Tech metal. (Art Rock is a different issue, since it always was a home for difficult to define bands like King Crimson, Van Der Graaf, Mike Oldfield, Moody Blues, Uriah Heep and Rush) ------------- What? |
Posted By: Kotro
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 07:18
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The more the subgenres the better. Even the ones we already have should be divided (like Psychedelic/Space Rock or RIO/Avant-Prog). Just stop labeling bands and start labeling albums. This has been discussed for ages now, is it that hard to implement? ------------- Bigger on the inside. |
Posted By: bhikkhu
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 10:28
Where were you when I was having this discussion before.
------------- a.k.a. H.T. http://riekels.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow - http://riekels.wordpress.com |
Posted By: Shakespeare
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 10:34
Well my post does suggest grouping all rock bands together.  |
Posted By: MikeEnRegalia
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 10:36
My point is that you don't need to remove the sub genres in order to get such a list.  ------------- https://awesomeprog.com/release-polls/pa" rel="nofollow - Release Polls Listened to:
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Posted By: Dim
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 10:37
Agreed, more subgenres= more bands albums in the defining top twenty= more interest in those bands= more diversity on the site, under the umbrella of prog of course. ------------- 
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Posted By: sircosick
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 15:25
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^ Seconded. While the sub-genres weren't ambiguously stated, IMO there's no problem for having a huge lot of them. P.S.: member_profile.asp?PF=13226&FID=2 - schizoid_man77 Prog Reviewer 
Joined: 17 April 2007 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 3922 I missed something.... surely I did Congrats for the fourth star, man! ------------- The best you can is good enough... |
Posted By: sircosick
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 15:28
I think yes...  ------------- The best you can is good enough... |
Posted By: Leningrad
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 15:36
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I mostly like it the way it is, with a few minor gripes (I think the metal divisions were unnecessary, but I don't listen to metal - go figure).
As for dividing everything, that may prove inconvenient. Take RIO/Avant for example. If we stuck to TRUE RIO bands, there'd be about eight. They're put together because RIO influenced a whole generation of avant garde bands. It wouldn't work on its own. Not to mention the endless discussions ("Is ____ psyche or space?" etc.) and complaints that would stem from it. You can't please everyone.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: December 09 2007 at 16:06
I would've offered my support if I'd seen it, it would be a great improvement. When I last suggested it, though, I seem to remember being told that the change was not currently supported by the forum software. It's what I thought might be good when I saw the Art Rock split (though wasn't sure how a master category should be handled, described or quite how it should work), and then again with Prog Metal (a simple one). I do remember some other conversations on simplifying the categories (which is when I wanted master and sub-categories). There's often an overlap of styles in the categories. I'd also like to see subcategories for ones like Prog Folk (Symphonic Folk, Acid Folk, Celtic Folk, Folk-Rock, World Folk or whatever). In fact, with something like the metal split, we could expect this at some time. Oh, and I'd be tempted to put Indo Prog/ Raga rock under folk. However it's done, it should make it easier to find music of interest... As it is now, it looks rather intimidating, sloppy, and confusing. Grouping trees would be great that show strong relations between bands (perhaps as an additional feature), and it could be designed in such a way that it indicates the confluence of styles (but that's another idea). But make the master "genres" simple. ------------- Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I have observed before. It can be much like that with music for me. |