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-- How was "old" progressive house produced?
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jbj, don't know if you remember, but do you still have that link to the youtube you posted of those trance producers filmed in their studios in the 90's, with the full mixing consoles and oldschool trackers?

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Originally posted by jupiterone jbj, don't know if you remember, but do you still have that link to the youtube you posted of those trance producers filmed in their studios in the 90's, with the full mixing consoles and oldschool trackers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfhVbHj4mPs

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Originally posted by Eric J Below is an interview with Sasha's production crew. These guys helped out Sasha create Involver. These are also a lot of the same guys that were instrumental in creating that 90's progressive house sound. Anyway, there is a part of this interview where Charlie May and Duncan Forbes talk about trying to do everything with software and then deciding to go back to "the way we used to do it". For them, this meant digging out old analogue gear and sampling the shit out of it, running stuff through guitar pedals, just basically f**king shit up as much as possible. They talk about just hitting record and tweaking, then going back and picking out the "magic" moments. They talk about literally going through hours of audio looking for stuff. I imagine this was pretty much par for the course back then. When I first started producing back in the mid 90's, all I had was a JV-1080, Proteus 2000 and a Virus B. Softsynths were basically a joke back then, so most of my first tracks were made by using this outboard hardware. MIDI it all up and play everything live. Multimbrality was pretty important back then, because each unit had to perform multiple parts. http://www.solid-state-logic.com/users/all/sasha.asp

Good info, thanks :-)

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Those are from 2000s, not the '90s.

Yes, but the OP did say from the mid 90's to around 2002. You guys probably missed that. lol Granted that Terry Grant song is from 2004-2005, but the Chilling Moments is from 2002. lol

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Who does prog have now that can compare to Breeder, Bedrock, Tilt, Quivver, Oliver Lieb? Eric Prydz? Uh huh. Right.

nothing wrong with eric, my number one favorit track is remixed by him (original producer Oliver Lieb of course).

Smoked - Metropolis

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Who does prog have now that can compare to Breeder, Bedrock, Tilt, Quivver, Oliver Lieb? Eric Prydz? Uh huh. Right.

Eh... Sasha and Digweed are still around. And Breeder, Oliver Lieb and Tilt were not even remotely progressive house, they were basically trance producers. Not the force-fed epic trance sound of the time - hence why they were on the "Global Underground" labels - but the slightly older classic trance sound.

Prog today would be the likes of Steve Angello, Gui Boratto, Robert Babicz, Nic Fanciulli, Luke Fair... some of Danny Howells and Joris Voorn's stuff.

Lesser known producers - Soliquid, Nick Bugayev, Lindstrom, Chymera, etc.

And some of the DJs themselves do some great prog edits - Jody Wisternoff and Ricky Ryan to name two.

In my opinion, all every bit as good as those old-school producers (even though it's effectively a different genre). I really don't know how you can say what you just said with a straight face.

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Originally posted by DigiNut Eh... Sasha and Digweed are still around. And Breeder, Oliver Lieb and Tilt were not even remotely progressive house, they were basically trance producers. Not the force-fed epic trance sound of the time - hence why they were on the "Global Underground" labels - but the slightly older classic trance sound.

I said "prog," not just prog house. Those guys made prog trance, which always shaded into prog house anyway in the late 1990s. Played by the same DJs as well.

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In my opinion, all every bit as good as those old-school producers (even though it's effectively a different genre). I really don't know how you can say what you just said with a straight face.

Maybe I'm just going on a nostalgia trip, or the newer stuff is simply not to my taste. Don't get me wrong, I like the guys you listed, but to my ears they are definitely a step down.

Here is a brand new track that S&D played at some castle party. Sounds just like something you'd find on Communicate or one of the GU mixes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsOaxdu7QVU

That sounds more like the techno-inflected prog being produced of late than the '90s stuff. Still a nice track, though.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I said "prog," not just prog house. Those guys made prog trance, which always shaded into prog house anyway in the late 1990s. Played by the same DJs as well.

You're confusing terms. And they are confusing, so I don't blame you, but "progressive trance" has nothing to do with "progressive house", and "prog" is a short form for "progressive", which is essentially downtempo/minimal/ambient progressive house.

I wish I were making this up, honestly, but it's the truth, so you're comparing apples and oranges here. "Progressive" or "prog" is not an umbrella term that encompasses every genre with the word "progressive" in it - that wouldn't make any sense, they are all so different. Nobody called trance "prog" during those days, in fact, nobody even called it "progressive trance", that term was coined in the very late '90s IIRC.

At the end of the day, the only really definitive thing one can say about "progressive" is that it's a bullshit buzzword that artists and labels have constantly misused to promote whatever music they wanted people to buy. Today, "progressive" usually means electronic music set somewhere around 120-130 BPM that isn't funky enough to sound like house.

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Maybe I'm just going on a nostalgia trip, or the newer stuff is simply not to my taste. Don't get me wrong, I like the guys you listed, but to my ears they are definitely a step down.

Again, comparing apples and oranges. Compared to the dark, repetitive, boring, and generally horrible prog of the early '00s, I'd say that what we have today is not just a step up, it's a few stories up.

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Originally posted by DigiNut "prog" is a short form for "progressive", which is essentially downtempo/minimal/ambient progressive house.

Says who? I have never even heard this before.

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I wish I were making this up, honestly, but it's the truth, so you're comparing apples and oranges here. "Progressive" or "prog" is not an umbrella term that encompasses every genre with the word "progressive" in it - that wouldn't make any sense, they are all so different.

I am using it to talk about prog house and prog trance at the same time, that's it. This usage is not unusual or unique to me, it's very common, at least on this board, GU Board, and other dance music boards I have visited. Maybe you should visit MD some time?

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Again, comparing apples and oranges. Compared to the dark, repetitive, boring, and generally horrible prog of the early '00s, I'd say that what we have today is not just a step up, it's a few stories up.

Well, we agree, early 2000s prog house, the dark chugging style of Lawler and Digweed of the time, was not my favorite either.

Also, LOL at the idea that prog house and prog trance have "nothing to do" with one another. Is that why huge prog house producers like Sasha, Spooky, Way Out West, and Bedrock went straight into producing prog trance when it blew up in the late '90s?

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I am using it to talk about prog house and prog trance at the same time, that's it. This usage is not unusual or unique to me, it's very common, at least on this board, GU Board, and other dance music boards I have visited.

I believe that it's a common usage, but it's also a usage that makes no sense. Progressive trance predates progressive house by at least 5 years, and the single-word "progressive" came a few years after that.

The two genres (if you can call them that) have completely different histories, different influences, different sounds, different structures, different styles, different audiences... there's just nothing common to both of them that warrants them being mixed in the same jug. We might as well generalize the whole discussion to being about "electronic music" which also includes techno and a good amount of old-school hip-hop.

If you're going to say that some particular type of music doesn't sound as good as it did 10 years ago, then it ought to be the same type of music. Progressive trance didn't evolve into progressive house and get worse; progressive trance disappeared completely and progressive house started gaining traction several years later. Saying that the old-school progressive trance was better than today's prog house is like saying that the original Xbox was better for gaming than the iPhone 3G. Um... what?

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Also, LOL at the idea that prog house and prog trance have "nothing to do" with one another. Is that why huge prog house producers like Sasha, Spooky, Way Out West, and Bedrock went straight into producing prog trance when it blew up in the late '90s?

indeed. Prog house came out AFTER prog trance, so what you just said doesn't make any sense. In any case, commercial producers usually tend to produce whatever is most popular at the time.

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Originally posted by DigiNut I believe that it's a common usage, but it's also a usage that makes no sense. Progressive trance predates progressive house by at least 5 years, and the single-word "progressive" came a few years after that.

No. If anything, prog house came first. Here is a prog house classic, Bedrock's "For What You Dream Of," released in 1993:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvgfZ5Y9hlA

Here is Sasha - "Magic" (Pob Seismix), released in 1994:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_qe_KxZ9GQ

And here is the progressive house album, Spooky's Gargantuan, released in 1993:

http://www.discogs.com/release/194366

[Edit: also note that prog house giant Leftfield was producing even before this.]

When do you date the start of prog trance? I would say 1993 at the earliest. Admittedly at that early time the two genres were separate, but my point is that in the late 1990s they started to overlap when many big DJs were placing them alongside each other in the same sets.

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The two genres (if you can call them that) have completely different histories, different influences, different sounds, different structures, different styles, different audiences... there's just nothing common to both of them that warrants them being mixed in the same jug.

Yes, there is, listen to the tracks I just linked and tell me with a straight face that those sorts of sounds and patterns would be inappropriate to trance. They wouldn't, not in the least, which is why I like to talk about the two genres together.

I�m with MrJiveBoJingles here...

Progressive house:
Stylistic origins:, House, Trance, Tech house, Hard house, Hi-NRG
Cultural origins: Early 1990s, UK, Europe

Progressive trance:
Stylistic origins: Progressive house, Trance, Dream house, Minimal techno
Cultural origins: mid 1990s, UK, United States, Europe

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progre...nic_dance_music

Getting a bit far afield here. I want to know more about the equipment!

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Originally posted by DigiNut I believe that it's a common usage, but it's also a usage that makes no sense. Progressive trance predates progressive house by at least 5 years, and the single-word "progressive" came a few years after that.

You're completely wrong. The term "progressive house" was coined in a 1992 Mixmag article. You can read it here: http://www.djhistory.com/features/trance-mission-1992. Show me a single usage of the term "progressive trance" from 1992 or earlier, please. Good luck, because you won't find one.

Progressive house, as the article indicates, was essentially the British answer to Germany's trance in the early 90s. It started at the same time - around 1990. I can give you many, many examples of the music press using the term "progressive house" in the early 90s if you want to challenge history.

It should be noted that the "old" progressive being discussed in the OP was actually the second or even third wave of progressive house.

Yeah I was about to say, wasnt progressive house the name of trance before it was actually called trance?

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Originally posted by Nightshift Yeah I was about to say, wasnt progressive house the name of trance before it was actually called trance?

Not really, they developed alongside each other around roughly the same time. Prog house in England and trance (mostly) in Germany.

Well they certainly have had heavy influences on one another thats for sure.

Yes.

Who cares? In the end it's all just techno, amirite?

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Originally posted by DigiNut Compared to the dark, repetitive, boring, and generally horrible prog of the early '00s, I'd say that what we have today is not just a step up, it's a few stories up.[/COLOR][/FONT]

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Well, we agree, early 2000s prog house, the dark chugging style of Lawler and Digweed of the time, was not my favorite either.

my ears, BLASPHEMY!

Yeah the chunky prog of the early 00's I love.. Chab, Quivver, Breeder, all good stuff

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