hehe, the examples of electronic music thread actually got me thinking; maybe people who are pretty knew to electronic music since the whole EDM thing started probably might not even realize lol, but how fuuuucked up did this genre spiral into lmao...

I know alot of genres in electronic music changed extremely over the years and such but I think the one that really fucked up for me the most was prog house lol...

If there was anyone that used to listen to prog back in the day it was unlike anything now. It had a futuistic theme, atmosphere and melody to it (well most of the time at least)... im talking like late 90's early 2000's...

Now it spiralled into this chaotic super rave music with a hard and harsh sound lmao...

I'm not criticizing any sound or genre or anything like that or trying to be that 'oldskool' nostalgic guy, cuz im definately not oldskool at all... I'm just discussing with u guys because I've just had one of those lookback moments and just laughed saying to myself 'well that genre fucked up lol'...

People that used to listen to original prog would know what i mean lol...

 

Last edited: Feb 15, 2016

I hear you, might just have to do with the market though, i've noticed a similar change to the deep house scene. If you search ' Deep House ' on Youtube you get all those really shiny sounding future house mixes that don't remind me of Chicago in the 80s, but that's the progression of the scene i guess (Top search results seem to tell the truth, or not hehe).

As for the market, it's mostly college kids that are able to afford the luxury of going to festivals like Ultra Music (highly broadcasted, thus setting the standard), I personally can't stand the 'set formula ' progressive house or whatever it's called, but it brings in the $$$, and that's not a bad thing. Once the college kids start demanding a different sound, producers will cater to that.

I just wish the young producers would culture themselves more instead of immediately copy whatever is hot on Beatport ( but hey, we all learn differently, but never forget where your genre started).

I personally prefer people to experiment but if you search hard enough you can still find some really organic stuff.

COMMERCIALIZE EVERYTHING BABY!!!

PS: I didn't fully go through the post you mentioned.

Imagine being on a dancefloor and listening to this

 

hehe yeah me serching oldskool progressive house on yt brought me to this:

^^ this is how I know and remember prog to be, still prefer this sound over the trainwreck now :D

Not all tracks though, I have some sounds I still hate even in this type of progressive...


and of course this one, which I actually didn't know much about but I recognize the sound because that's what was progressive to me:

fuuck I actually wanna go back to making this sound...

 

Last edited: Feb 15, 2016

EDM must be considered as a part of pop culture today. It is not underground. You can find or hear it anytime anywhere. And the festivals today... They look like a madonna concert.
I dont want to be a nostalgic oldschool guy too, but i really cant stand this fucked up genre, and really dont understand why the hell they call it ''Progressive House'' I would like to share some of my all time favourite tunes of real progressive house.

 

The funniest thing is that 80%-90% of today's Prog House is not even house music...
The fusion of House and Trance (Trouse), the slowed down Happy Hardcore, and even the Dance-pop infused with Electro-boogie elements... that's all called by Progressive house and sometimes by Electro-house these days...

That's actually Trance music.... Yes, Sasha and Xpander were into trance at 90's... I know it's hard for newbies to distinguish between both, mainly because prog house always was a wannabe trance since the beginning...

 

that one was a sped up version though, the original was much slower although yeah it's pretty much trance...

and that's true alot of trancey elements and prog elements came together...

I guess I liked it slowed down but with the cool spacey melodies I used to love hearing in racing games, especially futuristic racing games :P

I'm not too finicky with the genres and of course the confusion is ridiculous, but Im damn sure what they call progressive house now is gone right outside the common boundary...

 

Didn't read into thread much, so not sure we are on the same path, but I guess I agree, because it's really laughable what they call progressive house these days.....
Here's some real progressive House for ya....

 

Last edited: Feb 15, 2016

Well, EDM is just an acronym of Electronic Dance Music, which is a fairly recent term thought up to commercialize dance music and make it more except-able to the masses.
I remember when House was House and Electro was Electro. And you're quite right, that all the festival music is utter shite in comparison.

 

@Aytac - Thanks for making me feel sooooooooo old!!!

some of those tunes really takes me back another era. Takes me back to the days when i was like "oooh lets go for this completly electronic music thing " what a journey it has been since then.

It was a different world back then.
back

 

"They" call it progressive house because of Beatport. That shop hugely messed up the styles and influenced lots of people, public and DJ's alike.

But I have something else to add:

These elements mentioned above are not what defines the progressive genre. Progressive is not about being futuristic. It's actually about the structure - the way that elements progressively blend in and out one to the other. The only thing progressive tracks have in common is length: 8 minutes or more. You can have a progressive house track, progressive trance, progressive techno ... still progressive. And there is progressive now days, without the sound of the early 2000s:

Later update: Progressive in electronic music started aroudn early 1990s (I remember a track from The Chemical Bros). That style with long delays is specific of 2000s but is not the beginning nor the end of progressive.

 

I would definitely put this one in minimal house or whatever minimal category.

 

yeah you're completely right, I guess the stuff I was exposed to just had this atmosphere that was more a slowed down trance that was still in a progressive category...

but yeah I've listened to alot of progressive tracks without the futuristic themes and more about the structure and different melodies that was more about the club and dance rhythms, but fuck I always felt there was some common scope in terms of the bass and melodies being much more relaxed rather than blasting with chords... fucks my brain...

also, I guess looking deeper the progressive that I listened to the most was more with a mix of the slowed down psy music, di.fm calls it progressive psy lol, idk... genres...

 

Seriously, don't.

This one is close to minimal but is pretty maximal by German minimal's standards.

 

I like Ariana Grande...

naked

 

dats very relevant jhagen thank you.

 

It is exactly what happens with DrumNBass and Dubstep.
Take a look at Noisia. DnB at first, and now some ppl call this band "dubstep", just because they make some slower tempo songs...what the fuck ?

...
That's why i think real DnB is coming back. ppl like me are bored by slow tempo.
And real prog house is probably going to come back. ppl are going bored by this "minimal"/pseudo prog sh*t.
Same way with industrial (metal/rock/goth...).
Commercial things raise, because learn the formula to gain money. And after public get bored, like going everyday to the same fast food.

Keep hope ! Trends always fade. And real music always win in the long term ;)

PS : as a side note, i have a fast way to find witch soundbank MAY please me :
i trash everything with "House", "EDM", "Dubstep", "Big Room"... in the name. It is faster than listening to all those crap soundbanks, all sounding the same. At the end, you get 10% of potential keepers. And real keepers are 1/10 of that...witch mean 1% :D

 

@ jayxflash "Progressive is not about being futuristic. It's actually about the structure" - it sure is, for the most part i agree. Wikipedia would agree too btw. But going back to the late 80s early 90s and the complete house genre even back to the late 70s early 80s and disco music you can see, hear and comprehend a repeating pattern of dance music that involves long builds leading to breakdowns and drops (sic lol) and then back up again. Creating anticipation and rewarding the listener with a huge blast of whatever impressive sounds afterwards is what has driven dancefloors berserk for decades. The Progressive branch of house music was nothing but an exaggeration of this simple cause and effect methodology producers and djs use -each with their own way- to make their crowd ecstatic. But perhaps you will agree with me each and everyone of these "categorized as prog house" artists were as futuristic as their background/society status and personal goals allowed them to be. It wasn't just the structure that made the difference when compared to normal vocal house and garage/deep house. It was the whole deal starting from the presentation and the record covers and videos (if present,very few at the time had the means to make a video clip, most of it was indie prods) down to the various acts' clothes fashion. Even the clubs and venues had their own design mentality to progressive house. A bigger industry grew around what many (including yours truly) would call the "marriage of house and trance" that was the early prog house. Technically it included "distilled" trance ecstatic moments without being as hard or as fast, making it more appealing to a vaster (mainly white) audience that would include people who listen to pop radio and were not clubbers as well. For many of my younger friends prog house is what got them into the clubbing scene in the first place. So whether we like it or not, in a way, they wanted prog house to be futuristic, each for their own agenda be it unintentional or biased etc, they marketed it as such and surely they were successful, because at about '97-'98 everybody one way or the other had jumped on the "progressive house" bandwagon.
So what led to the decline and demystification down to being pop music now called EDM ( like this means something specific lol ) ?
Success will surely be copied and pasted a zillion times 'til its worn out, just like your favorite teenage t-shirt that you never wear but still don't want to put in the garbage can. As humans, we are creatures of habit. So if you get a commercial break as a prog house remixer, you wouldn't want your "golden goose to run off" by doing something more futuristic or just different, would you ? Many would agree that it is the role of the artist to always strive for new territory, but the market was already there and established. What was new and (yes it was too) futuristic, it then ended up in the hands of commercial radios and Djs and conglomerate industry sharks. By 2k, now Grammy award winner Tiesto and his brand of uplifting trance (sic) and prog house along with a bunch of others were storming the clubs all over the globe. Listening to their offerings with an unbiased ear (as much as contradictory this sounds) they had nothing original back then nor they do now. Their sound resembles more the commercial Eurobeat/Pop Dance scene of the early to mid 90s, and much less if not at all the underground progressive (or trance/nu nrg) dance scene. The chord progressions and melodies are as cheesy and obvious as pop music can be. What was innovation gave way to exploitation and with all major labels trying to cover this field each with their own in-stable artists. Now don't get me wrong. I find nothing bad about mindless dance music made to entertain. I made enough of it myself. But surely there should be a depth to this somewhere. Sadly, i find none whatsoever in the aforementioned musical offerings of Tiesto, Ferry Corsten etc. Back in the day i thought it was harmless. I thought no way could Tiesto's (and the rest of them) cheesy display of tasteless, funkless, unimaginative music can dethrone the established house menagerie. Boy was i wrong heheh. Because as everything else that's being over-exposed and mass media backed up, they made their way to the rich and famous of the global society's infrastructure and right now being hailed as "pioneers" of the electronic pop monstrosity that is now called EDM. Surely in this totally generic term there are some electronic gems but the majority, as it was always with pop music, is products made to be consumed with a short expiration date. I find it very difficult to define which are the modern day classics, because apart from a handful of artists the rest sound like clones of each other. I find the global economic crisis and the music industry decline are both significant reasons for this as well and are "mirrored" right in this musical "degeneration" of sorts. Having said that, hope dies last. And as such i long and patiently wait for better, more creative days and ways, free from norms that subside to income alone but lean to art as well.
Thank you for your patience

 

Last edited: Feb 15, 2016

I'm 100% with you, @( . ) ( . ) . True progressive (house) is really something different, like you still can hear from John Digweed or the like.
What's called EDM today is what we called fun fair techno 20 years ago. Moronic crap. Plus, EDM is a registered trademark. Yuck!

 

Absolutely, YES.
Progressive house is a house music made of a house beat with interweaving textures, melodies. Where is a house beat in any of those two clips? It's minimal blips and blobs, does it drives your heart to dance to it? or does it sedate you or in my case annoys? House music is dance music influenced by disco in the range of 120-130bpm ( approx), progressive house is progressive interweaving textures melodies driven by a house beat, blips and blobs is not a house beat.
House music, beat, reference to my posted clips above to see a progressive house having the same driving beat (not literally the same).

EDM is a failed attempt by noobs to make house music and labels negligence (at first it was), now just simply disrespect to house and to make quick money from noobs generation, to allow such garbage to be released in the first place and pollute the airwaves...

 

@Adrianus Antonius, well you can make house beats with "blips and blobs" as you call them. It is the AME- Rej example which is not a good one as it is more of a minimal tech-house tune closer to trance, rather than a progressive tune at all. Prog tunes always have a huge build up and and a long breakdown with an "ecstatic" or euphoric rebuild. Rej has none of these elements its a static dance techno tune mostly. For the people who want to find the origins of progressive house you need not look far. Both these tracks i paste, re-defined the house genre as a whole not only progressive. 1989 French kiss' structure and layout is definitely one of the first if not the very first true progressive house tune. Amazing how it stands out after all these years imho.
1992's Plastic Dreams although its mainly a jam with no huge buildup and breakdown still carries an unmatched trance atmosphere while the beat is totally funked up, hence its one of the most original displays of "trance meets house" that again defined the prog house era later.