Was a Queen a progressive rock band...?

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]FriedChicken<br><font size=1>The Almighty</font> wrote: [/QUOTENAME]"because eventually there will be no more guitar riffs that are new!"

Thats nonsense. I always like to compare notes to letters. There are 26 letters in the normal english alphabet (without the use of ö and á and accents like that). Just 26 letters. And about a quarter of the world population uses these 26 letters in lots of different languages.

Just 26 letters for soooo many words. Just imagine the possibilities. You can arrange them the way you like and form new words. And with just these 26 letters new words are made up every day!


And now... how many notes are there? Lets say there are about 90 notes you can use well (approximately the range of a piano) the special thing about these musical notes is that you can arrange them the way you want, like letters, but you can always stack them up to make chords. Now... The latin alphabet with it's 26 letters has been used for 2000 years. So there's like a million years when the possibilities run out[/QUOTE]

There could be a point in time when there are no more new guitar riffs to write, but it isn't yet. Just like there could be a time when all the words in every language were invented. (Of course the human race has been dead for billions of years before that would happen. :P )


But in fact your language analogy has opened up an entirely different line of thought:

Even though there are (practically) limitless possibilities to invent new words in every language, people have found it much better to just borrow words from the other existing languages. Sometimes people have tried to artificially create new words into existing languages, but these just haven't taken up when other languages have had better words to use. Then there is of course the question of languages which are related to each other, and use much of the same vocabulary... It isn't intentional, but it just has evolved into that from a common ancestry.

(To translate all that into musical terms)
You can create absolutely new music by combining unusual notes in a new way (modern/abstract music), but you can't force people to enjoy the product. Most people will enjoy the kind of music they are already familiar with, and artists either intentionally or subconsciously exploiting that will get more recognition from the general population.

It isn't a bad thing per se, but has led to the current type of situation where "musicians" are trying to use as much of the existing material as they possibly can to make money easier. There are possibilities of making entirely new music, but they just aren't being taken advantage of all the time. By today's standards "progressive music" is just about any music that isn't sampling a previous hit record. ;)

I like your style.
Music is a kind of language/s in the end, and people will readily understand things they've heard before. It's why so many clichéd progressions refuse to die; because even if they are 'old hat', there's still life in the things yet, different ways for it to be performed or whatever..... Bleh! I dunno.

The truth is...

Queen is too immeasureable and amazingly infinite in their music to be tied down to a genre. I mean come on, Ogre Battle is regarded as the origins of thrash metal. Stone Cold Crazy, Death on Two Legs, and possibly Flick of the Wrist are considered heavy metal. Then there's Bring back that Leroy Brown of ragtime, all those ballads like LOML,you take my breath away, and teo torriate then the rockier stuff like I want it all, and all the early fantasy songs. And the arena rock of WWRY and WATC. and arabic style mustapha.

But if you did have to pin them down and classify those virtuoso lads, then sure, why not? Let's go with prog. It's most fitting.

ROCK ON QUEEN! yeah.