Topic: Prog Genres

So which prog genres would be worth having as distinct tags rather than combinations of simpler tags? There's the Progarchives genres of course, but some of these are several genres lumped together, or "bags" to manage music that does not fit in anywhere else.

Here's the meaningful prog genre tags as I see them:

Already available:

• Canterbury Scene
• Indo/Raga-Prog
• Krautrock
• RIO
• Zeuhl

Currently implemented as combinations:

• Post Rock
• Post Metal
• Neo-Prog
• Space Rock
• Avant-Prog
• RPI

Some are already available here, obviously. Should we add more? Which ones are you missing the most?

sorry, I can't get your approach concerning this in its entirety.

When I'm switching between 'Progressive' and 'Not Progressive' the subgenres and other musical attributes always were the same. In some cases that's okay, in others not. For example Krautrock might be progressive, but also not. Progressive Skiffle however is unrealistic. Canterbury on the other hand is a distinct Prog subgenre. Definitely a difficult task of course.

but picking up your initial post: Neo Prog or Space Rock are combinations of what?

Neo is not a subgenre, but a modifier? And Symphonic is not a subgenre, but a style? I somehow don't see the stringency.

anyway, it never was a problem for me, as long as I'm able to assemble a proper Tags Badge in some way

^ It's complicated, and I'm not really sure of what I want to do, so your confusion is totally understandable. It's currently not clearly defined what a "modifier" is compared to a "style", to start with.

Generally my approach for the tags badge is simple: In order to populate it I am taking the top tags from a bunch of tag categories. There's of course genre/subgenre that is the starting point. For example:

"Rock"

Next I add the progressiveness. So:

"Prog Rock" or "Non-Prog Rock"

after that it gets more complicated - what to add next? I ended up with a group of tags that I call "genre modifiers" because they are located next to the genre (some also right before the "prog" part). Example:

"Neo Prog Rock" or "Prog Art Rock"

After that the tags badge basically just gets longer - for example we could add a style and a mood:

"Calm Melodic Neo Prog Rock"

And then of course there could be a second genre:

"Calm Melodic Neo Prog Rock/Pop"

I'm simply wondering how we could possibly simplify the process, especially for some typical prog genres like they are defined on Progarchives. But maybe it would be wise not to do it and live with the fact that some PA users will never accept other ways of thinking about genres ...

Only today I got some harsh criticism in the forum there for how the new Subsignal album is tagged. That's of course not a good reason to change anything on its own (some people there just hate this website), but it always gets me thinking about possible improvements.

Two genre modifiers which definitely cause problems: "Modern" and "Neo", the latter when used outside of the "Neo-Prog" meaning. Some people's heads just explode when they are confronted with something like "Neo Prog Metal", it just does not compute for them. We might scrap these tags simply because they are not that useful, and adding a "Neo-Prog" sub genre of Rock might be best. Or we ignore the critics and just think about making it easier to assign these combinations of tags, like in the old website where you could assign PA genres to a release, and under the hood I would translate that to "proper" tags.

first and foremost, do not rely on forum members that are very present on progarchives, they often enough are self-exposer, out of touch with the real Prog world

Yes, I know what you mean. I'll do what I think is best, and I'm considering information from various angles, including those on PA, but also the genres on RYM. In the end we need to do our own unique thing here, that is not found anywhere else :-)

Hi, Mike! We don't add post-rock acts that aren't proggy anyhow, thus I'd like to propose replacing the term "post-rock" with "post-progressive". In my opinion, the genres "jazz-rock" and "math-rock" ought to be included as well.

p.s. Btw, where is my avatar picture?

^ Your avatar is empty because you are neither listening to nor rating any releases. :-)

p.p.s. The tags "progressive jazz" and "experimental rock" should also be included.

Oh, I didn't know that the avatar picture has to be earned... However, when I add a band, I don't see on that page where I can rate albums.

p.s. Btw, how do you think that I "didn't listen" albums?

^ The ratings are available in the editor, where it says "Ratings". Should be even easier to find than genres and tags, but maybe I need to add big info texts for new users.

Svetonio, if you look at my avatar picture you'll notice that it says "recently played & liked". The system simply picks one of the albums that you recently played (put on your playlist) and gave a high rating.

Perhaps you were unaware of the feature, I guess I'll need to add info texts there as well :-)

Of course I know that you are listening to releases all the time. The problem is that this website is not monitoring all your audio equipment all the time, so for it to know what you've been listening to, you'll need to add playlist entries.

p.p.s. Mike, honestly, you've complicated things with this new site. And not only that. As soon as I, for one, learn where what is, you change things, and I don't know where what is again.

p.p.p.s. Everything is now so intricate that this website needs a user manual, hehe.

I'm trying to improve things - and I know that I'm sometimes changing things too quickly. I'm sorry if that annoys you, you're welcome to leave at any time. As far as ratings are concerned, you have never submitted any, except for one release a few months ago which you rated when I asked you about favorites.

BTW: I don't really understand what you mean regarding the genres. So instead of "post rock" we should say "post progressive"? And what should we say instead of "math rock"?

p.p.p.p.s. But I have to praise you for something. Good thing you added the Bandcamp bot. Now I don't have to tag.