Is Rock Really DEAD?!/Opinions are Opinions...

You say "distorted guitar music" as if that's all rock is and as if that's the only genre that uses distorted guitars.

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When people lament or cheer the death of rock, which are they more likely to be lamenting/cheering the loss of: rock that sounds like this or rock that sounds like this?

I didn't write any of that.

Those are both the same band (and I can't listen right now), so I don't see your point here...

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My point is that I know "distorted guitar music" is not synonymous with "rock", and my word choice was deliberate.

I didn't write any of that.

Uh, technically Starflyer 59 IS a Rock band, for a given value of "Rock", anyways- it's a RIDICULOUSLY diverse category, to the point of being practically useless, in all honesty... How could it not be, when "Rock" covers Rock & Roll and Rockabilly, Psychedelic Rock and Progressive Rock, all the Rootsy genres (Country Rock, Folk Rock, Blues Rock, what have you), all the myriad forms of Alternative Rock (including Indie Rock, which is a subset of it), Punk Rock (and its offshoots) and Hard Rock and Heavy Metal (which has its own long list of subgenres). So, it's a big category, is what I'm saying...

Distorted guitars first showed up in the Blues if I recall correctly, and have also been spotted on occasion in Country Music, Soul and Funk, albeit usually in the work of bands or artists with some Rock influence. They show up in Pop Music and even Electronic Music on occasion, too (but again, Rock influence)...

edited 12th Dec '14 1:02:22 AM by sharkcrap11

If at first ya don't succeed, try a bit more, then give up or cheat... ;) -Myself Nothing can stop me now! -Piggy by Nine Inch Nails

Really, when it comes right down to it...

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Really, Rock is far from dead, its just going thru a period of divergence since so many modern rock bands seem to be bringing in elements from other genres and in a way, that is how new boom periods for the genre start(I was there during the big emo/pop punk boom of the early 2000s and saw it virtually get eaten up overnight by Glam Rap and the like, possibly because the mid-late 2000s was the point where hip-hop became truly mainstream)

David Bowie 1947-2016

Considering how popular EDM is, i wonder if the next big thing in rock will be more "dance" oriented stuff (a lot of the big industrial rock/metal bands of the 90s had crossover fans who liked dance music from what i remember).

Actually, it wouldn't be the first time that happened.

If Rock music wants to do that, it must look beyond the mere label 'EDM' (which, let's face, only conjures a limited type of electronic music, considering the general perceptions/stereotypes), and towards non-Western electronic music. Because Western dance, electronic and rock crossovers have been done with some regularity already.

edited 19th Sep '15 8:07:06 AM by Quag15

I mean, not for nothing, rock 'n roll was originally considered nothing more than dance music.

And if we're gonna look at EDM-influenced rock music, Cage The Elephant admitted to taking a lot of influence from the genre on their latest album Melophobia (though, to be honest, it sounds more like Talking Heads influence to me).

edited 20th Sep '15 12:28:54 AM by Odd1

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Rock 'n' roll is dance music. Rock is not. If you understand that you'll understand anything.

I feel like a return to natural rhythm, like early rock 'n' roll had, would be preferable over EDM. It's been a damn long while since we had a dance hit that used only real instruments - we need something like that.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Rock came out of rock 'n roll, though, so it's still a necessary thing to mention.

People still make rockabilly music, so there's that. Like, Brian Setzer's stuff is like that when he's not messing around with his swing band, and Drake Bell's latest album from last year takes a lot of cues from the genre.

Honestly, I'm kinda burnt out on that kind of rock 'n roll, since all of it sounds exactly the same to me at this point. It's not bad overall and there's certainly worse you could go with, but I kind of thirst for something different. When I first heard his stuff, Chuck Berry was different to me. Buddy Holly was different to me. Hell, Little Richard even. Now that I've heard practically every rock and roll artist who stole his stuff, it all sounds pretty damn homogenous to me. Rock 'n roll was one of the most stagnant genres imaginable before people finally started branching out from it in the '60s, and to this day, people who perform that music are way too set in their ways to even try a little of something out of the ordinary. Gimme something new and different—don't just give me what you think is gonna pacify me. Even if I like it, I'll get bored of it quickly.

edited 20th Sep '15 6:14:05 AM by Odd1

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and I just started rereading the thread out of boredom and realized we literally are rehashing points we made in the first page

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Can I use an argument for why Rock music lost its relevance (which I may have used it before)?

Its fetishization of real instruments, whatever the fuck is that supposed to mean. A synth is a real instrument. You can touch it, you can program it, you play it with your fingers.

Fuck the elitism of instrumentation. I'd rather have a band making quality music using synths, vocaloids and trash cans rather than a common guitar-bass-drums band making bland music.

By real, a lot of people tend to mean 'the music I like, not the crappy stuff', which is an ultra-subjective moment.

edited 20th Sep '15 6:34:24 AM by Quag15

By that logic, though, so too has orchestral music lost its relevance, as well as other forms of classical music, jazz, folk...there are so many forms of music out there that can be performed in so many different ways. Let's not lose sight of that. Furthermore, just because a genre isn't what's tearing up the pop charts, that doesn't at all mean it's not "relevant."

And I don't think anyone complaining about non-organic instrumentation really cares about keyboard-based synths anymore, not since, like, the '80s at least.

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Key emphasis on fetishization (and I should've added 'against all other kinds of electronic instrumentation'). I was referring more to the attitude of the people in rock and classical backgrounds, rather than the way genres were/are played, btw.

Yes, synths are not the big target anymore. Now, it's laptops (and, if vocaloids were really popular in the West, they too would become a target). In spite of how rich composing software will become in the next few years.

edited 20th Sep '15 7:32:24 AM by Quag15

@262: Practically every pop genre before rock 'n' roll was stagnant in the same way - you could say the same about swing, jazz, ragtime, even higher-browed music, because what much can you do with the rhythms, instruments and whatever-else at your disposal?

They have a pretty damned good reason for it, though. Real instruments have something to them that you just can't replicate with anything else.

There are programs out there now that can really replicate the sounds of real instruments. I have one, and I've managed to do stuff that sounds vaguely like an orchestra, a 20s dance band, a rock band, what have you, but these things don't really have the same kind of power that the real versions do. There's something missing, but I'm not sure what...

edited 20th Sep '15 7:38:04 AM by Aldo930

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Most people fail when trying to replicate non-electronic instruments with electonic instruments (and I could argue that people should try to make modern sounds, not rehash traditional sounds). Then you have a few who can bring plenty of power into it:

In any case, as software keep improving, the distance of power will become reduced or even non-existent (especially if cyborg-enhanced music becomes a visible force in the future).

edited 20th Sep '15 7:39:18 AM by Quag15

In about fifty years, you'll probably have a program that can replicate any instrument flawlessly, but I don't know if they'll solve the problem of rhythm and emotion in the music.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

The problem of rhythm has actually been almost solved (at least when it comes to Western rhythms). You can pretty much replicate any rhythm (apart from rhythms in certain parts of the world, but only due to lack of knowledge and a deep catalogue of sounds), and, most of all, modify it in powerful, architectural ways. And there are DJ's who record the traditional sounds first, before tinkering with them.

As for emotion: well, that will be up to the music makers. You can bring plenty of emotion into electronic music (e.g. Kraftwerk, Björk, Aphex Twin, Burial, to name a few - emotion in electronic music has been going since at least the late-60's). There won't be a shortage of emotional content.

edited 20th Sep '15 7:46:13 AM by Quag15

For me, it's less about live-performed music having more "soul" or "emotion" or whatever inherently objective quality. It's more about the whole spontaneity, or at least the perception of potential spontaneity. There's a reason bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish are so popular, and that reason is drugs but that's not the point.

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That being said, I embrace more or less all genres of music—I just go with what I feel in the moment.

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While someone like, say, David Guetta (to pick an example I'm not fond of) has no spontaneity at all (he's more of a radio playlist player, imo), I'd argue that, when it comes to electronic music, the key thing is how the composition is interpreted (Kraftwerk had a classical music background, which reflects in the way they do their live shows - they're ok with prolonguing certain sections, but they do not enter into 'jams'. It has to be precise (hey, they're German after all).

Though I'd still argue that I have no major problems with lack of spontaneity. It will depend on the artist/DJ/musician and the type of venue he/she is in.

You embrace Tuvan throat music, schlager and forró? Brave man!

edited 20th Sep '15 8:00:25 AM by Quag15

Look, all I'm saying is that when I'm in the mood for didgeridoos, I need some fuckin' didgeridoos!

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OK you can pretty much replicate the sound of basically anything with a sampler like Kontakt or some shit.

Secondly, I know pop punk's on the rise again, with bands like The Wonder Years, Knuckle Puck, Title Fight, State Champs, Such Gold, and that other stupid band that got all big off One Direction or some shit I dunno. So yeah, Rock isn't really dead at all.