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Preaching chords

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The exact origin of preaching chords being played in African American Baptist and Pentecostal churches is relatively unknown, but is mostly believed to have started in either the early or mid-20th Century, at a time when many African-American clergymen and pastors began preaching in a charismatic, musical call-and-response style. They would encourage their congregations to shout out vocal catchphrases (based on whatever they were preaching about) along with them as they preached their sermons. Church musicians began playing different soul and blues music-inspired chords, chord progressions, and musical riffs on pianos and Hammond organs. These were improvised to imitate the voices of the preachers and the calls-and-responses of the congregations because it audibly sounded almost as if the preachers and congregations were singing. This type of call-and-response preaching is also colloquially referred to by many as “whooping pronounced like ‘hooping and hollering,” or “hooting and hollering.” On October 20, 2010, CNN featured Baptist megachurch pastor E. Dewey Smith Jr., where he talked about this type of call-and-response preaching that he incorporates into his sermons and referred to it as “whooping”/“hooping,” giving an explanation of its cultural significance to African-American Christianity and gospel music, saying, “Hooping is delivering and celebrating the Gospel message of Jesus Christ in an exuberant, musical style with a call-and-response type of synergy…it’s almost like an improvisation of Jazz music meeting Gospel music with a little bit of Blues and Soul.” Today, preaching chords have become a staple part of Baptist and Pentecostal musical worship, particularly in the Black Church tradition. They have also become a staple part of Traditional black gospel music and urban contemporary gospel music in the United States, and even in other countries as well where Black Gospel music and culture is prevalent among Black Christians, such as in different countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in Europe.

Pregón

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Oral proclamations made in the street were an important form of mass communication throughout Europe and the Americas until the late 19th century, when other forms of communication emerged to replace the town criers. In Spain and Latin-America, those who read these proclamations were known as pregoneros and their speech as a pregón. Over time, the official town crier, who read public announcements sanctioned by governments, disappeared, but the street cries associated with itinerant vendors continued into the 20th century, and can still be heard in commercial marketplaces and fairs. Street vendors and their cries were known in medieval Europe. The numbers of street vendors working in urban areas increased markedly from the 17th century. These criers or street vendors filled the streets of many European cities including Paris, Bologna, Naples and Cologne. As the streets filled with hawkers, costermongers and other types of the itinerant vendor, competition between them intensified. In an effort to stand out, street vendors began to develop distinctive, melodic cries, which became a standard feature of street life. Each trade developed its own unique type of street cry; a distinctive set of words or a unique tune.

Prehistoric music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins of prehistoric instruments#

Many languages traditionally have terms for music that include dance, religion, or cult. The context in which prehistoric music took place has also become a subject of study and debate, as the sound made by music in prehistory would have been somewhat different depending on the acoustics present. Some cultures include sound mimesis within their music; often, this feature is related to shamanistic beliefs or practice. It may also serve entertainment or practical functions, for example in hunting scenarios. The oldest known Neanderthal hyoid bone with the modern human form has been dated to be 60,000 years old, predating the oldest known Paleolithic bone flute by some 20,000 years, but the true chronology may date back much further. Theoretically, music may have existed prior to the Paleolithic era. Anthropological and archaeological research suggest that music first arose when stone tools first began to be used by hominins. The noises produced by work, such as pounding seed and roots into a meal, are a likely source of rhythm created by early humans. The first rhythm instruments or percussion instruments most likely involved the clapping of hands, stones hit together, or other things that are useful to create rhythm. There are bone flutes and pipes which are unambiguously Paleolithic. Additionally, pierced phalanges (usually interpreted as “phalangeal whistles”), bullroarers, and rasps have also been discovered. The latter musical finds date back as far as the Paleolithic era, although there is some ambiguity over archaeological finds which can be variously interpreted as either musical or non-musical instruments/tools. Another possible origin of music is motherese, the vocal-gestural communication between mothers and infants. This form of communication involves melodic, rhythmic and movement patterns as well as the communication of intention and meaning, and in this sense is similar to music. Geoffrey Miller suggests musical displays play a role in “demonstrating fitness to mate.” Based on the ideas of honest signal and the handicap principle, Miller suggested that music and dancing, as energetically costly activities, demonstrated the physical and psychological prowess of the singing and dancing individual. Similarly, communal singing occurs among both sexes in cooperatively breeding songbirds of Australia and Africa, such as magpies and white-browed sparrow-weavers.

Prelude (music)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The first preludes to be notated were organ pieces that were played to introduce church music, the earliest surviving examples being five brief praeambula in the Ileborgh Tablature of 1448. These were closely followed by freely composed preludes in an extemporary style for the lute and other Renaissance string instruments, which were originally used for warming up the fingers and checking the instrument’s tuning and sound quality, as in a group of pieces by Joan Ambrosio Dalza published in 1508 under the heading (in Italian, literally, “testing of the strings”). Keyboard preludes started appearing in the 17th century in France: unmeasured preludes, in which the duration of each note is left to the performer, were used as introductory movements in harpsichord suites. Louis Couperin (c.1626–1661) was the first composer to embrace the genre, and harpsichord preludes were used until the first half of the 18th century by numerous composers including Jean-Henri d’Anglebert (1629–1691), Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665–1729), François Couperin (1668–1733), and Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764), whose very first printed piece (1706) was in this form. The last unmeasured preludes for harpsichord date from the 1720s. The development of the prelude in 17th-century Germany led to a sectional form similar to keyboard toccatas by Johann Jakob Froberger or Girolamo Frescobaldi. Preludes by northern German composers such as Dieterich Buxtehude (c.1637–1707) and Nikolaus Bruhns (c.1665–1697) combined sections of free improvised passages with parts in strict contrapuntal writing (usually brief fugues). Outside Germany, Abraham van den Kerckhoven (c.1618–c.1701), one of the most important Dutch composers of the period, used this model for some of his preludes. Southern and central German composers did not follow the sectional model and their preludes remained improvisational in character with little or no strict counterpoint. During the second half of the 17th century, German composers started pairing preludes (or sometimes toccatas) with fugues in the same key; Johann Pachelbel (c.1653–1706) was one of the first to do so, although the “prelude and fugue” pieces of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) are much more numerous and well-known today. Bach’s organ preludes are quite diverse, drawing on both southern and northern German influences. Most of Bach’s preludes were written in the theme and variation form, using the same theme motif with imitation, inversion, modulation, or retrogression of the theme as well as other techniques involved in this Baroque form. Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer was one of the first German composers to bring the late 17th-century French style to German harpsichord music, replacing the standard French ouverture with an unmeasured prelude. Fischer’s Ariadne musica is a cycle of keyboard music which consists of pairs of preludes and fugues; the preludes are quite varied and do not conform to any particular model. Ariadne musica served as a precursor to Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, two books of 24 “prelude and fugue” pairs each. Bach’s preludes were also varied, some akin to Baroque dances, others being two- and three-part contrapuntal works not unlike his Inventions and Sinfonias. Bach also composed preludes to introduce each of his English Suites. The Well-Tempered Clavier influenced many composers in the coming centuries, some of whom wrote preludes in sets of 12 or 24, sometimes with the intention of utilizing all 24 major and minor keys as Bach had done. Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) wrote a set of 24 preludes, Op. 28, often composed in a simple ternary form, which liberated the prelude from its original introductory purpose and allowed it to serve as an independent concert piece. While other pianist-composers, including Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and Ignaz Moscheles, had previously published collections of preludes for the benefit of pianists unskilled at improvisatory preluding, Chopin’s set renewed the genre. Chopin’s set served as a model for other collections of 24 or 25 piano preludes in the major and minor keys, including those by Charles-Valentin Alkan (Op. 31 for piano or organ), Ferruccio Busoni (Op. 37, BV 181), César Cui (Op. 64), Stephen Heller (Op. 81), and Alexander Scriabin (Op. 11). Claude Debussy (1862–1918) wrote two books of impressionistic piano preludes which, unusually in this genre, carry descriptive titles. Chopin’s conception of the prelude as an unattached character piece expressing a mood rather than a specific musical programme extended into the 20th century with works by composers such as George Antheil, George Gershwin, Alberto Ginastera, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Bohuslav Martinů, Olivier Messiaen, Sergei Rachmaninoff (who also completed an entire set), Giacinto Scelsi, and Karol Szymanowski. Preludes were also incorporated by some 20th-century composers into Baroque-inspired suites: such “attached” preludes include Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914/17) and Arnold Schoenberg’s Suite for piano, Op. 25 (1921/23), both of which begin with an introductory prelude (Schoenberg’s choral introduction to the Genesis Suite is a rare case of an attached prelude written in the 20th century without any neobaroque intent ). As well as a series of unattached piano preludes (Op. 34), Dmitri Shostakovich composed a set of 24 Preludes and Fugues in the tradition of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, though arranged by key not chromatically, like Bach’s, but using the circle of fifths, as Chopin had done. Some avant-garde composers have also produced unattached preludes. John Cage’s brief Prelude for Meditation is written for prepared piano, while François-Bernard Mâche’s Prélude (1959) and Branimir Sakač’s Aleatory Prelude (1961) call on electronic resources and aleatoric techniques.

Process music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Although today often used synonymously with minimalism, the term predates the appearance of this style by at least twenty years. Elliott Carter, for example, used the word “process” to describe the complex compositional shapes he began using around 1944, with works like the Piano Sonata and First String Quartet, and continued to use throughout his life. Carter came to his conception of music as process from Alfred North Whitehead’s “principle of organism”, and particularly from his 1929 book, Process and Reality. Michael Nyman has stated that “the origins of this minimal process music lie in serialism”. Kyle Gann also sees many similarities between serialism and minimalism, and Herman Sabbe has demonstrated how process music functions in the early serial works of the Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts, especially in his electronic compositions Nr. 4, met dode tonen with dead tones (1952) and Nr. 5, met zuivere tonen with pure tones (1953). Elsewhere, Sabbe makes a similar demonstration for Kreuzspiel (1951) by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Beginning in the early 1960s, Stockhausen composed several instrumental works which he called “process compositions”, in which symbols including plus, minus, and equal signs are used to indicate successive transformations of sounds which are unspecified or unforeseeable by the composer. They specify “how sounds are to be changed or imitated rather than what they are to be”. In these compositions, “structure is a system of invariants; these invariants are not substances but relations. … Stockhausen’s Process Planning is structural analysis in reversed time-direction. Composition as abstraction, as generalization. Analysis of reality before its entry into existence”. These works include Plus-Minus (1963), Prozession (1967), Kurzwellen, and Spiral (both 1968), and led to the verbally described processes of the intuitive music compositions in the cycles Aus den sieben Tagen (1968) and Für kommende Zeiten (1968–70).) The term Process Music (in the minimalist sense) was coined by composer Steve Reich in his 1968 manifesto entitled “Music as a Gradual Process” in which he very carefully yet briefly described the entire concept including such definitions as phasing and the use of phrases in composing or creating this music, as well as his ideas as to its purpose and a brief history of his discovery of it. For Steve Reich it was important that the processes be audible: “I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music. … What I’m interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing”. This has not necessarily been the case for other composers, however. Reich himself points to John Cage as an example of a composer who used compositional processes that could not be heard when the piece was performed. The postminimalist David Lang is another composer who does not want people to hear the process he uses to build a piece of music.

Production music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Unlike popular and classical music publishers, who typically own less than 50 percent of the copyright in a composition, production music libraries own all of the copyrights of their music. Thus, it can be licensed without the composer’s permission, as is necessary in licensing music from normal publishers. This is because virtually all music created for music libraries is done on a work-for-hire basis. Production music is a convenient solution for media producers—they are able to license any piece of music in the library at a reasonable rate, whereas a specially commissioned work could be prohibitively expensive. Similarly, licensing a well-known piece of popular music could cost anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the prominence of the performer(s). The first production music library was set up by De Wolfe Music in 1927 with the advent of sound in film. The company originally scored music for use in silent film. Production music libraries typically offer a broad range of musical styles and genres, enabling producers and editors to find a wide variety of music within the same library. Music libraries vary in size from a few hundred tracks up to many thousands. Production music is frequently used as theme or background music in radio, film and television. Well-known examples of British TV series with theme songs sourced from library catalogs include Ski Sunday (“Pop Looks Bach” by Sam Fonteyn), Dave Allen At Large (“Studio 69”, sometimes known as “Blarney’s Stoned”, by Alan Hawkshaw), Mastermind (“Approaching Menace” by Neil Richardson), the original theme for the BBC’s Grandstand (“News Scoop” by Len Stevens), Crimewatch (“Rescue Helicopter” by John Cameron) and Grange Hill (“Chicken Man” by Alan Hawkshaw). The Christmas hit single based on the character Mr Blobby uses excerpts from “Mr Jellybun” by Paul Shaw and David Rogers. Arthur Wood’s “Barwick Green”, written in 1924, still serves as the theme for long-running BBC Radio soap The Archers. TV comedy series such as The Benny Hill Show and Monty Python’s Flying Circus also made extensive use of production library cues (many sourced from the De Wolfe catalogue) as background or incidental music. American TV has also utilized production music, most notably with the themes for Monday Night Football (“Heavy Action” by Johnny Pearson) and The People’s Court (“The Big One” by Alan Tew). Other notable examples are the Nickelodeon animated series The Ren and Stimpy Show and SpongeBob SquarePants, which use well-known classical music excerpts and a wide range of pre-1960s production music cues, some of which were composed by Emil Cadkin—including many pieces familiar from their use in earlier cartoons—which were chosen for their ironic, suspenseful, patriotic and humorous effect. Production music composers and session performers typically work anonymously and have rarely become known outside their professional circle. In recent years some veteran composer-performers in this field such as Alan Hawkshaw, John Cameron and Keith Mansfield have achieved attention and popularity as a result of a new interest in production music of the 1960s and 1970s, notably the ‘beat’ and electronica cues recorded for KPM and other labels, which have been widely sampled by DJs and record producers. In recent years, some of these British musicians have given public performances of their classic compositions under the group name KPM Allstars.

Progg

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Alternative bands began to form in the late 1960s, but the movement emerged in full in the summer of 1970. A big alternative music festival was held at the field Gärdet in Stockholm between June 12 and June 14. The festival was illegal, as a permission for it had not been obtained. The new independent record company Silence released a compilation record with music from the festival as their first record, and signed some of the bands that played, including Träd, Gräs och Stenar and Gudibrallan. In 1971 MNW was formed. During this decade the progg movement had a strong position in the musical landscape of Sweden. At the end of the 1970s, however, the movement started to decline, as many of the bands disintegrated and the music forums were closed. The left-wing ideals became less dominant among young people, and the rock and folk music also became less popular than new genres such as hard rock and electronic music.

Program music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

16th and 17th centuries#

Composers of the Renaissance wrote a fair amount of program music, especially for the harpsichord, including works such as Martin Peerson’s The Fall of the Leafe and William Byrd’s The Battell. For the latter work, the composer provided this written description of the sections: “Souldiers sommons, marche of footemen, marche of horsmen, trumpetts, Irishe marche, bagpipe and the drone, flute and the droome, marche to the fighte, the battels be joyned, retreat, galliarde for the victorie.”

Progressive country

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definitions and characteristics#

Progressive country is variously considered a movement, a genre or a radio format. This movement was variously marketed under the names “Cosmic Cowboy music”, “twang core”, KOKE-FM, a radio station in Austin, Texas, was a key proponent of progressive country. In the 1980s and ’90s, progressive country evolved into alternative country, Progressive country drew equally from the Bakersfield sound, classic honky-tonk country, the works of contemporary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, and rock and roll, Another important influence on progressive country was Roger Miller, who, in blending country with jazz, blues, and pop, “utilized unusual harmonic and rhythmic devices in his sophisticated songcraft”. Tommy Caldwell of the Marshall Tucker Band suggested that progressive country combined country music structures and riffs with jazz improvisation upon which more complex structures could be built from the country music foundation. The Marshall Tucker Band’s use of instruments like flutes and saxophones, as well as their fusion of rock instrumentation and country melodies, set them apart from other Southern rock bands. Marty Stuart, who stated influence from “cosmic country” on his 2023 album Altitude, defined “cosmic country” as “a state of mind. It’s a term that never got fully defined or explored or completed. My idea of cosmic country is the music that the Byrds made in an experimental fashion or the Flying Burrito Brothers.” Some progressive country singers were also influenced by the progressive politics of the 1960s counterculture.

Progressive folk

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins of the term#

The original meaning of progressive folk came from its links to the progressive politics of the American folk revival of the 1930s, particularly through the work of musicologist Charles Seeger. Key figures in the development of progressive folk in America were Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, who influenced figures such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in the 1960s. All mixed progressive political messages with traditional folk music tunes and themes. In Britain, one of the major strands that emerged from the short-lived skiffle craze of 1956–9 were acoustic artists who performed American progressive material. Vital in the development of progressive folk was the emergence of the American counterculture and British underground scenes of the mid-1960s. The term progressive began to be used by radio stations to describe psychedelic music, including pop, rock and folk, that emerged from this scene.

Progressive house

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

In the context of popular music the word “progressive” was first used widely in the 1970s to differentiate experimental forms of rock music from mainstream styles. Such music attempted to explore alternate approaches to rock music production. Some acts also attempted to elevate the aesthetic values of rock music by incorporating features associated with classical instrumental music. This led to a style of music called progressive rock, which has been described as “the most self-consciously arty branch of rock.” According to DJ and producer Carl Craig, the term “progressive” was used in Detroit in the early 1980s in reference to Italo disco. The music was dubbed “progressive” because it drew upon the influence of Giorgio Moroder’s Euro disco rather than the disco inspired by the symphonic sound of Philadelphia soul. In the late 1980s, UK music journalist Simon Reynolds introduced the term “progressive dance” to describe acts such as 808 State, The Orb, Bomb the Bass and The Shamen. Between 1990 and 1992, the term “progressive” referred to the short-form buzz word for the house music subgenre “progressive house”.

Progressive metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Metal Hammer describes progressive metal as “a genre with way fewer boundaries than the rest of the heavy metal family tree, meaning that each year will always bring fresh sounds from unexpected places.” The publication stated that in the 1980s, “metal took on the DNA of progressive rock,” that gave way to “a mutant strain of music that married volume and aggression with brain-melting complexity, far-reaching ambition and barking mad concepts.” According to AllMusic, the genre’s earliest acts such as Fates Warning and Queensrÿche developed their sounds by “merg ing their love of Yes and Rush with their admiration for Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.” Most bands labeled under the genre have considerably different musical influences when compared to each other. Bands such as Dream Theater, Planet X and Puya have a jazz influence, with extended solo sections that often feature “trading solos”. Some progressive metal bands incorporate ballads and acoustic music into their arrangements. Loudwire stated that the genre is “unaffected by trends.” Lyrics in progressive metal draw influence from fantasy and literature, similar to the progressive rock of the 1970s. Themes may also include outer space and anti-capitalism.

Progressive metalcore

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Progressive metalcore evolved from progressive metal and metalcore in the 90s. According to the digital ticketing corporation AXS, “After The Burial play progressive metalcore and have been a key contributor to the sound of djent.” Erra has been referred to as “the spearhead of the whole modern/progressive metalcore movement” and noted for their “balance between involved riffs, beautiful clean moments and tasty solos.” They were formed in 2009 and express their unique version of “progressive technical metalcore” by utilizing “precise stop-and-start arrangements.” According to Metal Insider in 2010, “progressive metalcore bands are now appearing all over the place.” I, the Breather “weren’t exactly the first” to perform “technical metalcore,” but are noted for their “well constructed” instrumentation; they have influenced the style alongside For Today and Born of Osiris, who have been referred to as “the bastions of modern technical metalcore” for their 2013 release Tomorrow We Die Alive. Carcer City is a progressive metalcore band that showcases “technical riffs amid more prominent atmospheric sections.” They have been described as “ambient metalcore.” According to Corey Deiterman of the Houston Press, Northlane is a primary contributor of the style, and is “making waves with their particular brand of progressive metalcore, which features … interesting use of space and ambiance.” Invent Animate is a progressive metalcore band that formed in Texas in 2011. They have been compared with Northlane and Erra. Volumes is a djent-influenced progressive metalcore band that has received critical acclaim for their “career-defining” song “Edge Of The Earth,” and their 2017 release, Different Animals.

Progressive music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Jazz#

Progressive jazz is a form of big band that is more complex or experimental. It originated in the 1940s with arrangers who drew from modernist composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith. Its “progressive” features were replete with dissonance, atonality, and brash effects. Progressive jazz was most popularized by the bandleader Stan Kenton during the 1940s. Critics were initially wary of the idiom. Dizzy Gillespie wrote in his autobiography: “They tried to make Stan Kenton a ‘white hope’, called modern jazz and my music ‘progressive’, then tried to tell me I played ‘progressive’ music. I said, ‘You’re full of shit!’ ‘Stan Kenton? There ain’t nothing in my music that’s cold, cold like his.” Progressive big band is a style of big band or swing music that was made for listening, with denser, more modernist arrangements and more room to improvise. The online music guide AllMusic states that, along with Kenton, musicians like Gil Evans, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Cal Massey, Frank Foster, Carla Bley, George Gruntz, David Amram, Sun Ra, and Duke Ellington were major proponents of the style.

Progressive pop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

The term “progressive” refers to the wide range of attempts to break with standard pop music formulas through methods such as extended instrumentation, personalized lyrics, and individual improvisation. Treblezines Ryan Reed acknowledged that the genre “sounds like an oxymoron” and is difficult to discern from other genres “without squinting”. He explained that such “elusiveness is what makes ‘prog-pop’ a slippery term”, although the genre is definable to a set of characteristics which follow: Similar to rock and roll, the tonal structure of progressive pop overthrows harmony as its basic organizing structure. However, unlike rock and roll, progressive pop inverts received conventions, playing with them ironically, disrupting them, or producing shadows of them in new and unexpected forms. Some stylistic features include changes in key and rhythm or experiments with larger forms. Electronic techniques such as echo, feedback, stereo, loudness, and distortion may be used to give the music the impression of space and lateral extension.

Progressive rap

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Themes and characteristics#

Progressive rap music is defined by its critical themes around societal concerns such as structural inequalities and political responsibility. According to Lincoln University professor and author Emery Petchaur, artists in the genre frequently analyze “structural, systematic, and reproduced” sources of oppression and inequality in the world, Petchaur, drawing from her experiences teaching high school, adds that the music frequently makes connections to critical consciousness that can variously shape the intellectual sensibilities of young students who are “deeply invested in hip hop”. In the context of other rap forms, progressive hip-hop is identified as a thematic subset alongside “status rap”, which expresses concerns about social status and mobility, and gangsta rap, which examines similar existential crises and contradictions as progressive rap. In a corollary analysis, fellow scholar Evelyn L. Parker says that progressive rap “seeks to transform systems of injustice by transforming the perspective of their victims” while demonstrating “the clear prophetic voice reflecting the rage caused by the dehumanizing injustices that African Americans experience”. Noting its presence on the outside of the mainstream, Fort Worth Star-Telegram journalist Cary Darling writes that this form of hip-hop has been “alternately labeled ‘progressive,’ ‘alternative,’ ‘underground’ or ‘conscious, while essentializing them collectively as a return to the creative spirit of hip-hop’s golden era:

Progressive rock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The term “progressive rock” is related to and sometimes considered synonymous with “art rock”, “classical rock” (not to be confused with classic rock), and “symphonic rock”. Historically, “art rock” has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music. The first is progressive rock as it is generally understood, while the second usage refers to experimental rock groups who rejected psychedelia and the hippie counterculture in favour of a modernist, avant-garde approach. Similarities between the two terms are that they both describe a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility. However, art rock is more likely to have experimental or avant-garde influences. “Prog” was devised in the 1990s as a shorthand term, but later became a transferable adjective, also suggesting a wider palette than that drawn on by the most popular 1970s bands. Progressive rock is varied and is based on fusions of styles, approaches, and genres, tapping into broader cultural resonances that connect to avant-garde art, classical music and folk music, performance and the moving image. Although a unidirectional English “progressive” style emerged in the late 1960s, by 1967, progressive rock had come to constitute a diversity of loosely associated style codes. When the “progressive” label arrived, the music was dubbed “progressive pop” before it was called “progressive rock”, with the term “progressive” referring to the wide range of attempts to break with standard pop music formula. A number of additional factors contributed to the acquired “progressive” label: lyrics were more poetic; technology was harnessed for new sounds; music approached the condition of “art”; some harmonic language was imported from jazz and 19th-century classical music; the album format overtook singles; and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening, not dancing. Critics of the genre often limit its scope to a stereotype of long solos, overlong albums, fantasy lyrics, grandiose stage sets and costumes, and an obsessive dedication to technical skill. While progressive rock is often cited for its merging of high culture and low culture, few artists incorporated literal classical themes in their work to any great degree, and only a handful of groups purposely emulated or referenced classical music. Writer Emily Robinson says that the narrowed definition of “progressive rock” was a measure against the term’s loose application in the late 1960s, when it was “applied to everyone from Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones”. Debate over the genre’s criterion continued to the 2010s, particularly on Internet forums dedicated to prog. According to musicologists Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell, Bill Martin and Edward Macan authored major books about progressive rock while “effectively accept ing the characterization of progressive rock offered by its critics. … they each do so largely unconsciously.” Academic John S. Cotner contests Macan’s view that progressive rock cannot exist without the continuous and overt assimilation of classical music into rock. Author Kevin Holm-Hudson agrees that “progressive rock is a style far more diverse than what is heard from its mainstream groups and what is implied by unsympathetic critics.”

Progressive soul

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins in early R&B and rock#

By the mid-1950s, rhythm and blues was transitioning from its blues and big band-based jazz origins toward the musical forms that would be known more broadly as rock music. This trend was expedited by the exposure of young white listeners and musicians to African-American music played by ambitious disc jockeys on radio stations in the Northern United States. However, partly in response to jealousy among veteran performers and prejudice in general, recording acts in the early rock era generally gravitated toward either one of the three stylistic influences from which the genre had primarily originated – R&B, country, and pop. In the mid-1960s, several new musical forms arose that diversified rock. Among them was the Motown sound of Detroit-based Motown Records, which released more refined and slick productions distinct from other R&B-leaning rock. The music academic Bill Martin traces the origins of progressive soul to Motown as well as Ray Charles and James Brown, whose recordings altogether span as early as the 1950s, while the jazz writer Rob Backus cites an early example in the Impressions’ 1964 song “Keep On Pushing”. Progressive rock, another emerging subgenre, utilized an eclectic range of elements such as exotic instrumentation from classical and folk, along with highly developed lyrical concepts composed across album-length works. This trend emphasized the album format over the single and reached mainstream culture with the Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Concurrently, psychedelic rock utilized electronic innovations with a harder sound primarily intended to induce or enhance the listener’s consciousness rather than for relaxation, dance, or analytical listening. In the late 1960s, the structural and stylistic boundaries of African-American music were pushed further by the psychedelic experimentation of black rock acts like Jimi Hendrix, Arthur Lee’s Love, and the Chambers Brothers. The jazz trumpeter-bandleader Miles Davis also made an impact with his wide-ranging fusion experiments, which incorporated elements from rock, electronic, avant-garde, and Eastern music. As with folk rock earlier in the decade, jazz fusion was another emerging subform to concede rock influences in a parent genre that had otherwise been exclusive to a cultural elite. These events inspired greater musical sophistication and diversity of influences, ambitious lyricism, and conceptual album-oriented approaches in black popular music, leading to the development of progressive soul.

Proibidão

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Prokeimenon

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Use#

Prokeimena are not selected based on the personal preference of the priest, reader, or choir director. Rather, the Sunday and weekday prokeimena are taken from the Octoechos, using the particular tone of the day. Many feasts also have their own prokeimena. The basic pattern of a prokeimenon is for the reader to chant a single verse of the psalm or canticle (often announcing the tone as well). This is repeated as a refrain by the choir, as the Reader chants additional verses (exactly how many depends on local practice), followed by the choir singing the first verse in response. The Reader concludes the prokeimenon by chanting the first half of the first verse, and the choir then sings the second half. Alternately, if a feast is being celebrated together with a Sunday liturgy, a verse of that feast’s prokeimenon will often replace the final verse of the Sunday prokeimenon. In some traditions where a plain chant format is used, the prokeimenon may be chanted by a cantor. In this practice, the cantor will sing the refrained verse in the prescribed tone for the Sunday or Feastday along with the accompanying additional verses. This is usually done in alternation (refrain – verse – refrain – verse – refrain).

Prostopinije

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

By the end of the 18th century, the first attempt to systematize and write down the body of Prostopinije melodies was undertaken by cantor John Juhasevich (1741–1814). In 1793, a Preparatory School for Cantors and Teachers was established in Uzhhorod by Bishop Andrew Bachinskyj. After some of the Rusyn parishes converted from Byzantine Catholicism to the Russian Orthodox Church in America, inspired by Father Alexis Toth, the use of Prostopinije was discriminated against by Russian leaders, who replaced it with the Obikhod. Since the early 21st century, however, a gradual revival of this traditional singing has taken place, just as ancient chants have been reintroduced in other churches and denominations.

Protein music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Theory#

The idea that genes and music exhibit similarities was noted even earlier than the scientific publications in the area by Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach. Hofstadter even proposes that meaning is constructed in protein and in music. The ideas that supports the possibility of creating harmonic musics using this method are: * The repetition process governs both the musical composition and the DNA sequence construction. * The conformations and energetics of the protein secondary and tertiary structures at the atomic level. See also for full compositions made using this concept. * Pink noise (the correlation structure “1/f spectra”) have been found in both musical signals and DNA sequences. * Models with duplication and mutation operations, such as the “expansion-modification model” are able to generate sequences with 1/f spectra. * When DNA sequences are converted to music, it sounds musical. * Human Genome Project has revealed similar genetic themes not only between species, but also between proteins. Musical renditions of DNA and proteins is not only a music composition method, but also a technique for studying genetic sequences. Music is a way of representing sequential relationships in a type of informational string to which the human ear is keenly attuned. The analytic and educational potential of using music to represent genetic patterns has been recognized from secondary school to university level.

Protest song

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Types#

The sociologist R. Serge Denisoff saw protest songs rather narrowly in terms of their function, as forms of persuasion or propaganda. Denisoff saw the protest song tradition as originating in the “psalms” or songs of grassroots Protestant religious revival movements, terming these hymns “protest-propaganda”, as well. Denisoff subdivided protest songs as either “magnetic” or “rhetorical”. “Magnetic” protest songs were aimed at attracting people to the movement and promoting group solidarity and commitment – for example, “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” and “We Shall Overcome”. “Rhetorical” protest songs, on the other hand, are often characterized by individual indignation and offer a straightforward political message designed to change political opinion. Denisoff argued that although “rhetorical” songs often are not overtly connected to building a larger movement, they should nevertheless be considered as “protest-propaganda”. Examples include Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” (which contains the lines “I hope that you die / And your death’ll come soon”) and “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye. Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, in Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Tradition in the Twentieth Century (1998), take issue with what they consider Denisoff’s reductive approach to the history and function of song (and particularly traditional song) in social movements. They point out that Denisoff had paid little attention to the song tunes of protest music, considered them strictly subordinate to the texts, a means to the message. It is true that in the highly text-oriented western European song tradition, tunes can be subordinate, interchangeable, and even limited in number (as in Portuguese fado, which only has 64 tunes), nevertheless, Eyerman and Jamison point out that some of the most effective protest songs gain power through their appropriation of tunes that are bearers of strong cultural traditions. They also note that: There is more to music and movements than can be captured within a functional perspective, such as Denisoff’s, which focuses on the use made of music within already-existing movements. Music, and song, we suggest, can maintain a movement even when it no longer has a visible presence in the form of organizations, leaders, and demonstrations, and can be a vital force in preparing the emergence of a new movement. Here the role and place of music needs to be interpreted through a broader framework in which tradition and ritual are understood as processes of identity and identification, as encoded and embodied forms of collective meaning and memory. Martin Luther King Jr. described the freedom songs this way: “They invigorate the movement in a most significant way… these freedom songs serve to give unity to a movement.”

Protest songs in the United States

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nineteenth century#

19th-century protest songs dealt, for the most part, with three key issues: war, and the Civil War in particular (such as “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”); the abolition of slavery (“Song of the Abolitionist” “No More Auction Block for Me”, “Oh Freedom”, and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”, among others); and women’s suffrage, both for and against in both Britain and the U.S. Hutchinson Family Singers were one of the protest voices in America at the time. From 1839, the Hutchinson Family Singers became well known for their songs supporting abolition. They sang at the White House for President John Tyler, and befriended Abraham Lincoln. Their subject matter touched on relevant social issues such as abolition, the temperance movement, politics, war and women’s suffrage. Much of their music focused on idealism, social reform, equal rights, moral improvement, community activism and patriotism. The Hutchinsons’ career spanned the major social and political events of the mid-19th century, including the Civil War. The Hutchinson Family Singers established an impressive musical legacy and are considered to be the forerunners of the great protest singer-songwriters and folk groups of the 1950s and 60s, such as Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Many Negro spirituals have been interpreted as thinly veiled expressions of protest against slavery and oppression. For example, “Oh, Freedom” and “Go Down Moses” draw implicit comparisons between the plight of enslaved African Americans and that of enslaved Hebrews in the Bible. These spiritual songs antedated the Civil War but were collected and widely disseminated only after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. The first collection of African-American spirituals appeared in Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s book Army Life in a Black Regiment, which was published in 1870, but collected in 1862–64 while Higginson was serving as a colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first regiment recruited from former slaves for the Federal service. (Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton required that black regiments be commanded by white officers.) A fervent abolitionist, Transcendentalist critic, and poetry lover, who was a friend and enthusiastic champion of American poet Emily Dickinson, Higginson had been deeply impressed by the beauty of the devotional songs he heard the soldiers singing around the regiment’s campfires. Higginson wrote down the texts, in dialect, as he heard them, but failed to provide tunes. The second influential book about African-American spirituals was the 1872 collection Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, by Thomas F. Steward, comprising songs sung by students of Fisk University on their fund-raising tours throughout the county, arranged and harmonized according to 19th-century classical music conventions. One of the most well known African-American spirituals is the anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. Originally written as a poem by African-American novelist and composer James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), it was set to music in 1900 by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1900 and first performed in Jacksonville, Florida as part of a celebration of Lincoln’s birthday on February 12, 1900, by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal. In 1919, the NAACP adopted the song as “The Negro National Anthem”. This song contained strong appeals to the ideals of justice and equality, and singing it could be interpreted as an act of grass-roots self-assertion by people who were officially still barred from speaking out too overtly against Jim Crow and the resurgence of Ku Klux Klan activity in the 1920s. A topical parlor song that is arguably a precursor of environmental movements is an 1837 musical setting of “Woodman, Spare That Tree!” The text is from a poem by George Pope Morris, founder of the New York Mirror and published in that paper, set to music composed by British-born composer Henry Russell. Verses include: “That old familiar tree, / Whose glory and renown / Are spread o’er land and sea / And wouldst thou hack it down? / Woodman, forbear thy stroke! / Cut not its earth, bound ties; / Oh! spare that ag-ed oak / Now towering to the skies!” This song has never caught on as a movement song, however

Proto-prog

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definition#

Although a unidirectional English “progressive” style emerged in the late 1960s, by 1967, progressive rock had come to constitute a diversity of loosely associated style codes. When the “progressive” label arrived, the music was dubbed “progressive pop” before it was called “progressive rock”, with the term “progressive” referring to the wide range of attempts to break with standard pop music formula. Music writer Doyle Greene believes that the “proto-prog” label can stretch to “the later Beatles and Frank Zappa”, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, and United States of America. Edward Macan, an author of progressive rock books, says that psychedelic bands like the Nice, the Moody Blues, and Pink Floyd represent a proto-progressive style and the first wave of English progressive rock. Conversely, academics Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell identify the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Doors, the Pretty Things, the Zombies, the Byrds, the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd “not merely as precursors of prog but as essential developments of progressiveness in its early days”. At the time, critics generally assumed King Crimson’s album In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) to be the logical extension and development of late 1960s proto-progressive rock exemplified by the Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles. According to Macan, the album may be the most influential to progressive rock for crystallizing the music of earlier “proto-progressive bands … into a distinctive, immediately recognizable style”. He distinguishes 1970s “classic” prog from late 1960s proto-prog by the conscious rejection of psychedelic rock elements, which proto-progressive bands continued to support.

Proto-punk

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The term proto-punk has been defined differently by several writers and publications. In his essay Protopunk: the Garage Bands, music critic Lester Bangs applied the term to 1960s garage rock acts as well as Ritchie Valens’ 1958 cover of “La Bamba”. The book further states that “Although largely an American phenomenon, proto-punk can also be found in Britain. In Britain, however, it went under different names, and it is commonly referred to as either glam rock or pub rock”.

PR on Music Theory Print

Preaching chords

History#

Pregón

Background#

Prehistoric music

Origins of prehistoric instruments#

Prelude (music)

History#

Process music

History#

Production music

Background#

Progg

History#

Program music

16th and 17th centuries#

Progressive country

Definitions and characteristics#

Progressive folk

Origins of the term#

Progressive house

Etymology#

Progressive metal

Characteristics#

Progressive metalcore

History#

Progressive music

Jazz#

Progressive pop

Characteristics#

Progressive rap

Themes and characteristics#

Progressive rock

Scope and related terms#

Progressive soul

Origins in early R&B and rock#

Proibidão

Prokeimenon

Use#

Prostopinije

History#

Protein music

Theory#

Protest song

Types#

Protest songs in the United States

Nineteenth century#

Proto-prog

Definition#

Proto-punk

Etymology#