Starting a Prog Rock Band

[Omega Monkey]

Yes, prog and 80s synth go together because prog was so huge in the 80s. Oh wait, it wasn't. Dude, you're just making yourself look more ignorant. Prog is most identified with B-3s (which weren't even MADE any more in the 80s), Moog synths, Mellotrons (a 60s invention MOST famous for a freakin Beatles song), Rhodes (a 50s invention), etc... NOT 80s synths like the DX7, PPG, Fairlight, D-50 (unless you count JMJ), M1, etc... Synths in general are HUGE right now, and a damn CS-80 which probably cost $5k in 1978 costs MORE than that now, and it weighs 150 pounds and only has 8 voices (modern keyboards have up to about 128 while weighing a 10th of that). But it sounds freakin amazing so people still lust after them (and actually yamaha just put out a sort of reissue/interpretation of it). Moog is probably selling more units now than they did in the 70s. You have NO idea what you are talking about. At all. Not to mention, keyboards in general can LITERALLY sound like anything from dubstep to motown. The limiting factor is not "coolness" at all, it's the fact that playing keys (well) is a lot of damn work. I know, because I do (and have been SINCE the 80s). So a lot of people don't put in the effort to become great at it.

Bulldog, keys are difficult to find, but not impossible. As far as gear, you can do a lot with free plug ins these days if you're on a tight budget. The Mel9 is cool, but it's not really up to the task of "replacing" a keyboard player and I'd rather just hear a guitarist making guitar sounds. I don't want to see someone playing Watcher of the Skies with a Mel9, that just wouldn't be right at all. That kind of stuff should be used sparingly. Even an average keyboard player with average gear would be better in most cases.

 

[40Hz]

I'm guessing you've heard like 3 bands that are barely prog if this is what you actually think. Go to a Yes or Dream Theater show (even these days) and you will see THOUSANDS of people getting what they want and being entertained. The "mega triplets" are mostly incidental.



This is horrible advice. Keys are irreplaceable. If you just absolutely cannot find a good player, then of course, add another guitar (or some other instrument). But in that case I would mainly stick to guitar sounds rather than trying to play hammond parts or whatever with a pedal. Those kinds of things can be good if you're in a band and need that sound on ONE song or if you're using it in an unusual way. But to have a guy basically dedicated to playing keyboard parts with keyboard sounds on guitar would just be awful.



This makes absolutely no sense. Do you think venues ask bands if they have a keyboard player before booking and if they do they say no? I find that highly unlikely.



Indeed. But you definitely have to do it for the love of the music, which doesn't mean devaluing the band and accepting playing for free, but it does mean you can't put too many expectations on popularity or money.



Those guys are so underrated. And then even a bunch of the people who know who they are talk sh... about them, completely unwarranted.

***

Anyway, I haven't gone through the whole thread yet, but wanted to comment before reading the rest.

I'm in a proggy fusiony jammy (currently) instrumental band. BTW, prog and fusion are not completely separate entities like some people seem to think. Fusion is essentially a subset of prog just like Canterbury, or Zeuhl, etc...

Anyway, we released our first album recently (). We self recorded and released it. We formed about 6 years ago, but the first 2 or 3 were not very productive. We would mostly just jam together, record it, then do the same thing the next week, and/or mess with a handful of covers. Maybe 4 years ago, actual composed songs started coming together. About 3 years ago we played our first actual gig (besides a couple house parties) and have played 1/2 a dozen total. Not to huge crowds or anything mostly (30-50 people total at most of them). But we get positive feedback from 1 or more people after every one.

A big part of gigging is networking. We've been actively networking with other bands in the area, and I actually started a FB group for prog musicians and fans in the area (has about 150 members after a year of existence). We "like" other bands' pages, post links to their stuff, etc... because we want to foster somewhat of a scene. We are more in the symphonic/old school vein than most of the other bands who are more either metal or alternative or avant garde kind of stuff for the most part, but the appeal of this kind of stuff is its diversity.

So with the networking and now having the album out, we are slowly building our fan base, 1 person at a time. We're about to go on a promotional blitz once we have our EPK all put together. We took a bunch of high quality pictures a few weeks ago, and we'll be sending the EPK plus either download codes or a CD out to various outlets we think might dig our stuff and mention it, etc...

And from a more fundamental point of view, I would say go look up some "local" prog bands and see what kind of quality and song writing is out there. It's easy to write songs in a bubble and say "oh these are great! We're the best!" but sometimes when you see what else is out there it can give you a lot more perspective, either on what's possible or what not to do. This area is actually not half bad, so there are bands that are amazing (super shreddy stuff with good song writing, etc...) and then stuff that is called prog but is way more straight forward relatively speaking (usually more space rock/psychedelic kind of stuff). But you can kind of listen to these groups as guide posts to figure out your own place in the scene.

Nice!

But for some reason I'm more inclined to hear that as a 'fusion' rather than 'prog' piece. Must it's because of that jazzier-funkier Weather Report sorta feel.

But that's me - which just goes to show how meaningless labels really are when it comes to music. One man's definition seldom precisely matches another's.

 

[Jazz Ad]

Prog rock has vanished. You can still play it but you have to give it a different name.
Depending on your style it could be math rock, shoegaze, celtic rock or symphonic metal.
These genres have strong progressive elements and would have been called prog rock 30 years ago.

 

[Omega Monkey]

The first one is more funky/fusion stuff. If you let it keep playing, the other 3 tracks go through various different moods/vibes.

 

[40Hz]

The first one is more funky/fusion stuff. If you let it keep playing, the other 3 tracks go through various different moods/vibes.

Apologies. I was in the middle of something and had to shut it off about 3 minutes in. I'll listen to the rest first chance I get.

 

[CORBS]

1978 full concert by my heroes Gentle Giant. great quality, and you can see all the various elements of prog rock at work. insane skill and musicianship, silly costumes, multi instrumentalism, complex arrangements, and making it all work live. Man they rock a p bass on this too. the simplest bass for the least simple music.

 

[RandomBass90]

I'm still reading back through all of these pages, but I wanted to chime in myself. I was in an instrumental/experimental 3 piece rock band in my senior year of high school, 2008-9. We lasted till probably '11 or so until the guitarist/drummer both went off to college, playing maybe 6 or 7 shows over the course of those 3 years. We played math/post/alt rock I guess you could say, implementing weird time signatures and melodies, and no vocals, of course. Certainly not the music of the classic prog era, but we had a mentality of being purposefully different from what the rest of our small scene was putting out (various -core bands, some mediocre pop rock stuff, and a very respectable ska rock band), which I suppose made us progressive in spirit.

Point being, it was very, VERY hard to get involved with the other bands and shows going on in the area, given our musical style (although we had a good rapport with the ska band, which made for some weird line ups). We had to set up our own shows usually, one of which was even of the dreaded "pay to play" variety. Would I have changed anything? Absolutely not (other than the disastrous pay to play gig ). Like you, dear OP, we were in it for the love of the music and just for the fun of playing together. The drummer and I still get together and jam/write almost every weekend since he finished school, and are hoping to start recording our own new material as a "studio" 2 piece band, with no intention of playing out, so I'm still writing "prog" music today, thanks to the relationships I made during that time period. Again, we write more math rock based material than symphonic stuff, mainly because it's just the drummer and I, so we work on rhythmic/riff based music. You can definitely do it, although like others have said, the music scene at large is unlikely to support a prog band in the 70's sense, ala Yes or Genesis. At-home recording has become a very viable option for musicians, and that's the avenue that my drummer and I are taking in order to get our experimental instrumental music out there.

There are, however, some modern prog bands out there who are having some success at the whole "retro" prog style. Some bands of that nature sound derivative, like many Neo-Prog acts of today. There are 3 bands though that come to mind who incorporate the spirit of those old prog bands in a new, modern light, which are:

Ampledeed.



Farmhouse Odyssey.



The Tea Club.




These guys are all doing what it sounds like you'd like to aspire to, so don't give up man. There are niche's to be filled out there.

 

[CORBS]

My experience in local bands in Cleveland has taught me that your genre is largely inconsequential to your booking. I've played shows with bands all across the spectrum of style and skill. Networking with other bands is usually pretty easy. Everyone wants to play, but there aren't many bands that will be right up the same alley as us. So we played with punk bands, ska bands, lots and lots of metal bands, jam bands, harder-to-classify jamish bands with great music but I'll be damned if I could place what they are, and we did well at some and not so well at others. Playing with another prog band usually meant playing with a cover band. Even that worked pretty well a lot of times. Don't bash opening for cover bands! It's not that bad a deal. People come to hear their favorites, and beforehand they get a taste of something else. An appetizer if you will. It works, and has worked well for us.

Don't judge too harshly, but this is one of our last shows. It wasn't our tightest performance. I don't know if you'd consider it prog or not, maybe more psychadellic. We did.

 

[EddiePlaysBass]

So did that prog band ever happen, OP?

Zombie thread resurrection, sorry

 

[Feral Feline]

I missed this thread last year, so I'm glad it's resurrected.

How has the OP's prog progressed?

1978 full concert by my heroes Gentle Giant. great quality, and you can see all the various elements of prog rock at work. insane skill and musicianship, silly costumes, multi instrumentalism, complex arrangements, and making it all work live. Man they rock a p bass on this too. the simplest bass for the least simple music.

Honestly, there are zero (∅), zip, nada, rien, ziltch "silly costumes" in the vid posted. At least not intentionally silly — that's simply what people wore back then (I know, I was there for the stripey shirts & overalls, coveralls, flares, platforms, pantsuits, wide lapels and collar-wings...).

Seriously, the Gentle Giants are wearing everyday clothes you'd see people wearing in the street back then and nobody would think, at the time, they were "silly costumes."

Thanks for posting the clip (dig the cello!), brang Gentle Giant into closer orbit on my listening roster.

 

[EddiePlaysBass]

I missed this thread last year, so I'm glad it's resurrected.
How has the OP's prog progressed?

Likewise! I bought Beardfish' "Mammoth" album over the weekend (cos I liked the name and the cover, and it's on InsideOut so I knew it would be more than halfway decent), and I learned Uriah Heep's "We Got We". While the latter is probably not considered progressive rock, the combination of both did get me interested in doing something in a prog-rock vein. Not the Dream Theater progmetal style, mind you.

I do disagree with the general sentiment that prog would not attract women/ladies. Went to see Rhinos Are People Too and BRNS (pronounced Brains, not Burns) this summer. Neither is classified as being prog (Rhinos describe themselves as "circling the roundabout where shoegaze, noise pop and indie meet" while BRNS states: "Sprawling slow-burner from Belgian multi-instrumentalists, BRNS (are) lying somewhere between post-punk and electronic soundscape") but in essence it's just prog. And loads of chicks were there, dancing and buying albums (vinyl and cassette tapes ...) afterwards.

 

[sean_on_bass]

I think it largely depends on the "type" of prog rock you are playing. I consider Coheed and Cambria pretty much prog rock, but they have so many common elements of metal and even pop punk that they got into the mainstream and the ladies flock. Probably still more men there though. A prog band like Beardfish/Spock's Beard is going to be a sausagefest. I know because i've been to a gig, lol. Dream Theater was a sausage fest too, but the occasional lady shows up.

 

[sean_on_bass]

Also every true prog rock startup in my area has failed. They just can't seem to garner an audience. They need to further cut the prog with something in the jam rock/fusion/hard rock space to make it work. They usually have really bad vocalists too. Just keep it instrumental!