Progressive House

HISTORY
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Progressive house has its origins in Great Britain in the early 1990s, with the output of Guerrilla Records and Leftfield's first singles (particularly "Song of Life". Mixmag editor Dom Phillips coined the term to describe this type of music. In 1992, the dance club Renaissance opened in Mansfield. Its DJs - particularly Sasha and John Digweed - were instrumental in popularizing its early sound. The music itself consisted of the 4-to-4 beat of house music with deeper, dub-influenced basslines and a more melancholic, emotional edge. Often, it featured elements from many different genres mixed together.

There have been many shifts in style in progressive house. For instance, many of the genre's subsequent records featured an ethereal, melodic style. As trance became more popular and melodic, progressive house darkened and acted as an underground counterpoint.

Progressive trance is a popular sub-genre in trance music and contains elements of house, techno, and ambient music. Trance became more focused on the anthemic qualities and melodies, moving away from arpeggiated analog synth patterns. Acoustic elements and spacey pads became popular with compositions leaned towards incremental changes à la progressive structures. Progressive trance contains distinctive sounds in many tracks, such as unusual basslines or original synthesized sounds, which generally makes it more "catchy". Phrases are usually a power of two number of bars in most typical progressive trance tracks. Phrases usually begin with the introduction of a new or different melody or rhythm.

Compared to trance, the progressive wing is usually deeper and more abstract, featuring a lower average bpm (around 125-135) and a recurrent melodic structure. This structure is intuitively described as consisting of three major structural elements: (1) build-up; (2) climax; (3) break-down. These three structural elements are expressed either temporally or in their intensity, if not both. A 'build-up' sequence can sometimes last up to 3 or even 4 minutes. Subtle incremental/decremental acoustic variations (i.e., gradual addition/subtraction of instruments) anticipate the transition to each subsequent structural element of the track. The initial build-up and the final break-down are generally very similar, adding a feel of symmetry to the general structure of the melody. Furthermore, a progressive trance track is usually longer than a regular trance track, ranging in length from 5-6 to even 12-13 minutes.

Although there is a general and increasing tendency to associate progressive trance with progressive house (or vice-versa), virtually rendering these two sub-genres identical, there are however distinctive characteristics apart from the strong similitudes between them: progressive trance inherits from its parent genre (trance) a wider melodic flexibility, while progressive house is usually darker and more minimal.

I could have said that in one sentence.

R

old skool

One sentence then no more comments? Go on then Rob.

Progressive house is dance music which intended to push ahead constantly and was historically influenced by futuristic sounds which often included elements similar to trance but with the crapness removed.

R

Yeah, I didn't write that stuff, but, after seeing Anthony Pappa in the weekend (which few would call progressive admittedly) I was thinking about how alot of stuff coming out now being called progressive is a bit to wussie and medlodic. It's not really danceable either, nor is it that 'underground' whether it is suppose to be either of these is another issue. Pappa played some massive massive deep trancy emotional melodic tunes, but they retained the energy and were deancable but still a but dark and brooding.

Long and short, I'v gone off 'progressive house' (at the moment) for the reasons above.

Of course, the lines are blurred between genres blah blah. Was an interesting few paragraphs and a decent description anyways.

From what I'm seeing at the moment half of the "tech house" coming out today would have been labeled as prog 3 or 4 years ago. Whatever, not really paying a lot of attention to what genres tunes are being filed under anymore nowadays. In a lot of ways the beatport age seems to have nullified the need for them.

I agree. Plenty of what guys like F Sonik etc - especially the Easern European guys - are making sounds like a techier version of 2003 prog. The arrangements especially are starting to be less Detroit/German in style too.

R

You also have to factor in that Beatport is an American business. What Americans have always called 'prog' is completely different to hat Pappa/Sasha etc play. They call Victor Calderone, DJ Vibe, Chus/Ceballos-type stuff prog whereas in Europe it is something else.

R

Tru Tru - I still like searching by genre rather than just by label or artist. The weekly new releases emails are quite good. I just wish they'd drill down further and use more descriptive genere tags. Im sure they would sell more tunes that way. But as yoy say people will label things different styles.