One thing we need to understand before we get into the whole topic of rock music is the big misunderstanding of what we use to call “genres” in music. It’s not the same thing to talk about genre and ‘musical forms’. Musical forms come off genres; for example: the opera is a form that comes off the dramatic genre. Rock music is also a form; it just takes a few moments to read trough rock music history to see where it comes from and how it has evolved in order to create more forms coming from it.
Rock music as a musical form has many other ramifications, now that we understand this let’s get into the real deal about progressive rock, “prog rock” or just ‘prog’ as some people call it.
Progressive rock was born between the 60’s and 70’s with “The Beatles” being the precursors by adding non western instruments in their arrangements, this at the same time led to a new form derived from rock to rise; “Art rock” which was mostly philosophical and mainly conceptual just for the sake of giving credibility to rock music. Besides using non western instruments they also employed instruments that were not common in rock music this new trend would later pass to other emerging bands as King Crimson.
To achieve this “new sound” some academic elements were introduced into this musical form, elements raging from classical music, orchestrations, and jazz to give rock music a more refined and sophisticated sound. The interesting thing about this matter is that none of these new characteristics and/or arrangements was new to some people. It is also known that rock music has its roots on jazz, so one thing we must ask ourselves and people in general: was there something actually new, when what musicians were doing back then was actually coming back to their basics? This is an interesting matter to be discussed.
Another characteristic that progressive rock possesses is the abandonment of the simple and compact structure that pop music has. There was no more verse-choir-verse-choir-bridge-choir structure; instead it was a bigger and longer composition to make place for the new arrangements that would include these academicist features so they would be appreciated by the listeners. The tracks would now contain a lot more of instrumental and no vocal parts decorated with orchestrations of small format and jazzy-like interludes. This in the classical period was known as the form of ‘suite’ which consists on several but brief instrumental movements.
Again, nothing new was being made; it was simply a big mixture of musical forms being performed inside the rock format.
Once this information is understood, there’s not much to say about it, but there’s some questioning to do, indeed.
Is it really necessary to generate another category for rock music just because some “new” elements were introduced in it? As it was said before, there was nothing new in these new arrangements they all already existed not just decades, but centuries ago.
Secondly, the main reason this form is called “progressive” it’s mostly because the tracks are longer, they tend to exceed the 8 minutes play so we must ask: Just because the length of the play time was extended this is not just rock music anymore? If the elements of rock music are still there and you just get to hear a brief orchestration of any format (classical or jazz) why is it necessary to classify it in a different category from rock music? Is it really necessary to even tag it?
Third and finally, we should consider the discursive part in the name of this musical form “Progressive” means something going forward, something that’s chasing vanguards purposes, and as we already saw there are more anachronisms in progressive rock, but this doesn’t make it a bad thing to be heard, it’s still enjoyable a there’s a lot of appreciation to do when it comes to this specific form. What seems to be highly unnecessary is creating and inventing these classifications for already existing musical form that are just being mixed with each other.