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| quote: | The ultimate destination if you love music will be Classical. You won't agree with me but I bet you in 20-30 years time some of you will be heavily into Wagner, Beethoven etc. Simply because it's the most complex and sophisticated music out there.
Classical music lovers look down on EVERYBODY else.
Perhaps quite rightly. |
A few months ago - as I started to get into classical music - I would have agreed with you. But I think that just because classical music is more "pure" in a musical sense - that is, it relies more heavily on strict musical theory - it doesn't necessarily make it more sophisticated.
Firstly, you have to listen to different types of music in different ways. The way I listen to progressive is different from the way I listen to trance, which in turn is different from the way I listen to classical music. Each of these musical styles approach music from a different angle, so to compare them - in a way - is quite silly.
I'll start with classical music.
I'll take classical music at its most broad definition - that is, sheet music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and modern periods. As I said before, it relies very heavily on strict musical guidelines. If you "deconstruct" classical music, you can break it down into a combination of tonality, time signature and emphasis. How these three techniques are integrated determines how the piece "feels". Now, for this reason, it is impossible just to sit down and listen to classical music and appreciate it properly - part of the deal with classical music is to examine how these different elements are integrated. The tone or key signature the piece is played at, the instruments that are used (which can effect tonality), the speeed and rhythm the notes of the instruments are played at, and the emphasis given to each of them, is essentially what makes a classical piece what it is. If you do not understand these concepts, then it's probably going to be pretty hard to understand or appreciate classical music.
Still, there are two ways to listen to classical music: the first is much as I described before. To sit there and appreciate the interplay of all these musical elements. The other way to listen to classical music is to go one step beyond this "deconstructionalism" and to listen to the piece on a more superficial level - thus, the emphasis on listening here would be more on the melody of the piece, rather than the "noises" made by the individual elements. Thus, in this second way, you no longer have to concentrate on the music and examine the sound, you can now afford to sit back and just take in the melody, or the final result of the interplay between these sounds. The beauty of classical music is, really, that in can be appreciated on both levels.
Now getting back to the progressive/trance debate, the differences really arise because of the way we listen to the different types of music. With trance, the emphasis is on the overall feel of the track, rather than its individual elements. The majority of time - I would suspect - in producing a trance track, is to make sure that the melody, and the way the melody is structured and presented, feels and sounds right. The individual elements are forgone to allow for a more powerful impact on the listener. When listening to trance, you have to sit back and let the track come to you - the track can be appreciated most when you feel the music rather than when you hear it (if that doesn't sound too naff). If you try and concentrate on the individual elements that make up the track - as per the first method of listening to classical music - then you will miss the point. It will sound course and simple, as little time is spent on perfecting the individual sounds (or elements) of the track, in favour of ensuring that the "whole" sounds and feels right.
With progressive, however, the emphasis is very much on the individual sounds rather than the overall feel. So much care is placed into getting all the individual sounds to sound right, and to make sure that they all interact with each other properly, rather than on the overall "superficial" feel of the track. Thus, to appreciate progressive music, you have to stop listening to it at this superficial level (melody, direction etc.) and listen to it at its most basic level, and appreciate the sounds that go into the production. It takes practice and time to learn how to listen to music like this. From the earliest age, we are taught to listen more to the more superficial layers of music as we sing nursery rhymes and so on, which rely entirely on melody rather than sound. Pop music has a similar sound, with the emphasis on a melody you can hum to, rather than the production. Pop music sounds the same on either a crap transistor radio or on the most massive of sound systems, quite simply because no emphasis is placed on production, or the sounds that go into it. So long as the melody sounds nice and boppy, production (in the case of electronic music) and technique (classical music) get thrown out the window. So this is why pop music, rock music and rap music are so popular, because they can be put on in the background and you still "hear" them for what they really are, without having to listen to them. You can listen to rap in the car, in a club, while cooking dinner or any other way, and it still sounds the same, simply because the emphasis is on the overall feel rather than the musical elements.
With progressive music though (and to a lesser extent classical) it simply cannot be appreciated this way. I used to listen to progressive in the car - on my shit stereo system while I'm concentrating on driving and I'll agree: when listening to progressive this way, it is boring. When you simply hear progressive music - which means that you're only experiencing it at its most superficial level - it does sound monotonous, flat, repetitive and seems to develop very slowly. But this is because of the way it's been produced - if the emphasis is on the individual, base elements of the track and the way they've been produced, if you listen to it on a sub-standard system while you're concentrating on other things (like writing obscenely long posts on TA for instance  ) then there is no way known you can appreciate them. Even if you are focussing on the music, and have it on a decent system where these subtle sounds are audible, you still have to unlearn the way you listen to most other forms of music (at the more superficial, higher "melody" level) and focus on the individual sounds.
Now I'm not saying that progressive is necessarily a higher form of music or anything, but I will say that there is a skill to listening to it, that needs to be developed before you can appreciate it. Some may never acquire it, but it doesn't mean that they're dumb "n00bs" or anything, it's just that they listen to music in a way that is completely incompatible with the things that progressive emphasises.
My tip though, if you want to learn to appreciate progressive music, then do this: turn off the lights, crank up the stereo, close your eyes and concentrate. You can't just bop along to it, or wait for the music to grab you in the same way that trance does, because that's not the way that progressive works. You have to proactively concentrate on and appreciate all the individual elements, otherwise you'll completely miss the point. No-one's born liking progressive, but once you do, it's hard to go back. Eventually you'll hear a track and appreciate the production, and find the sound interesting (even if you don't necessarily like it). For me, it was Timo Maas - who took everything dark and dubby when everyone was getting rich off euro-trance - who taught me how to appreciate the value of production, and how to focus on the bare elements of the music. Rather than hearing the music, I began to listen to the sounds, and I think that's where appreciation for progressive begins.
I'm not saying it's a higher form of music, but appreciating it (and techno music actually, I agree with Acid Junkie) is a skill that will take a while to acquire.
Apologies for the long post. :-/
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