What is the difference between Experimental and Avant-garde music?
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Music is subjective, and quite often the labels applied seem incorrect to different people, so to answer your question as best I can, the difference is the person listening to the music. One band that springs to mind that highlights this for me would be Kraftwerk. They were, in the early 70s exploring completely new avenues in music and got variously labelled with experimental and avant garde, electronica. To me, it was just great music.
This doesn’t only apply to the experimental/modern/avante garde genres, you often see debates as to whether a piece of music is doom rock or goth, hard rock or heavy metal (something Lemmy of Motorhead was particularly vocal about) and so on.
As far as I’m aware there’s no significant difference. Usually you’ll see the two next to each other. At most, I think I’ve seen avant garde used for more academically inclined, more produced, maybe more complicated music theory nerd stuff, while experimental has a connotation of DIY and edginess. However, again, as far as I’ve ever seen, the two terms are used mostly interchangeably.
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