Perhaps I should work on a new “super” heavy metal? I call it “super duper,” thanks for asking, lol.
[editors note: This is yet another one of them unpublished blog entries.. it’s a long one.. that never real gets to what it aims to get to be about.. this idea for a “new super metal.” Think of it as part one, or like a fragment of a larger idea. ]
My process, at the moment.. at least in some areas, is more about thinking then doing… and at the moment this involves an awful lot of research related to sound studio tools. As wee speak, in fact, I find myself gong through about 4 or 5 years worth of Sound On Sound magazines.. SOS being a music production orientated mag… and um.. checking out various web sites and just.. doing a lot of poking around.. and I suppose in all of this I’ve only started to do my research.
It’s probably not a good idea to dream too much about what you could do with a tool.. till you actually have the tool.. as.. well dreams and realities in this area can be two very different things.. but none the less, one of the things I’m dreaming about is the notion of creating a new “super metal.” Allow me to try and explain this.
I make a kind of experimental electronic music. At this point in the story of this, I’m interested in exploring different sorts of processes as a part of my productions… That said.. there are certain processes that are sorta like foundational elements of how I work. I call them foundational because.. its as if when ever you do anything.. you develop muscles by which you can do that thing better.. perhaps more efficiently.. perhaps whatever..
In my production process, one of the strongest muscles I have has to do with programing the performances of various instruments and effects… indeed the mix to. This muscle is very very strong.. but also very limited in the scope of what it can do. A part of exploring new processes is about broadening the scope of this muscle.
It’s looking to me like Melodyne will fit into this process in a rather exquisite sorta way… Allow me to speak of this.
For starters… when the new version comes out.. it looks like you’ll be able to sequence audio in more or less the same way I do with MIDI now…. err, kinda sorta. But to put it simply.. if you can change the pitches, and where the notes fit time wise.. well, I can build guitar performances the same way I can build any other sorta performance.. for any other sort of instrument.
The history of MIDI as a part of the electronic music production environment is one that is dominated by keyboards as you’re controller.. Most people will play a keyboard into there computer, edit there performance.. and that will be how they work. I, on the other hand, program from scratch. While I’d love to work in a process that starts with a keyboard performance.. the truth is that I’m not much of a keyboard player. One can be not much of a keyboard player, and still use ones keyboard playing as the basis of a production.. and so rather effectively.. but this is a process I have yet to really explore.
Now.. if you can take a guitar performance and basically edit it the same as you would a MIDI performance.. well, exploring the possibilities of using my guitar playing as the basis of a production.. starts to make a lot of sense. Further, because you can convert the audio to MIDI, to then control various instruments.. well now we are entering a world where.. in a lot of ways, working this way might make a lot of sense.
As a guitarist I’m.. I have very good technical chops. Indeed I could be a regular guitar hero.. accept that I’m not really a “whole guitar player.” What I mean by this is.. basically I have other things to do then play guitar all the time.. so my guitar playing has a lot of flawed areas, never mind that it’s perhaps not growing as much as I’d like. But the thing is.. if I can compensate via sequencing type editing of my guitar performances? Well now we’ve got some really interesting possibilities.
The commercial issues of metal versus my experimental electronic music
From my point of view there is the issue of commercial potential. The kind of electronic music I made is, basically, a kind of “serious electronic music” which doesn’t fit into a popular form too terribly well. I can imagine it being popular.. but it does carry a lot of challenges with it. A significant part of those challenges is simply that.. it doesn’t fit into any known genera which really complicates marketing…
Heavy metal, on the other hand, is one of the most popular music forms going.. It’s a much larger market, and it’s a much easier market to reach.
Another interesting element is.. I don’t really know that much about the electronic music market, electronic music genres, the history of it.. or anything really… So I’m at a real disadvantage. Metal, on the other hand, is something I know very well… even if I’m not totally up on what’s new in Metal.
What I’d do with Metal
One of the things that’s really important to me is that my music have a lot of integrity.. The notion of moving to metal because the commercial potential is better might sound a little like selling out…. but there’s no reason that that has to be the case…
Another interesting point is that my interest in electronic music.. started out with a notion of exploring things that might have metal type applications… It was as if there was a certain metal aesthetic behind how I was thinking about electronic music. This was more then 10 years ago.. and I certainly have evolved but… there is this strange way where the structural thinking of my stuff has certain metal kinds of things behind it. How about some examples…
What I want you to take note of in this is.. The way its a kind of heavy metal roller coaster ride.. the technical sophistication / demands of the music.. It might also be worth noting that we see harmonic minor modalism going on in here… both the roller coaster and the harmonic minor modalism I take to further extremes in my music… you could think of my stuff as almost like megadeth on steriods in a certain sense:
Not that I’m the biggest Metalica fan at this point.. but here’s Metallica at a similar stage.. Note the changes.. again roller coaster ish metal
Of course… what I’m thinking of doing is a little more candy coated…
[editors note: Matt wishes you could hear the line “just who’s mystic am I anyway” a little better.. sorta fits into the conceptual continuity of the blog, ya know?]
Of course, I plan to be “a little” more creepy… as unlike Manson, I shall be presenting serious philosophical challenges to civilization as we know it. Err, and did I mention I want to be explicit about corrupting you’re children? (too complex a topic to go into here.) The other thing to make me more creepy is I tend to indentify more with God.. which is a hell of a lot more scary then Satan!
Another type of Candy:
So what do you think, to much compression in there production style? I’ve always thought these fellows where a little too candy coated:
Ok.. so lets cut the BS, ha? Lets see something much closer to where I’m coming from… how about this? (No one does slayer like these guys!)
I think there’s a lot to the Metal genera to be critical of.. cliché’s up the ying yang.. a kind of stupid pose.. A way the form often has more to do with low budget commercial conceptions then anything like “art” or creative possibilities.
I suppose the metal quality to my work might be something like.. a surface glaze?
Much Latter:
Ok, well lets talk about my metal, lets see if we can get to it.. cause I’ve been working on the design for.. geeze, a good 15 years or so?
There’s a kind of starting point.. and then there’s how it stretches out into abstraction. See, as you no doubt know, metal starts in rock, and rock starts in blues and… well metal also starts in Jazz.. but…
So I start out in minor chord progressions.. the “minor” quality and abstract into synthetic scales.. which is sorta.. well welcome guitar geek-dom, right? Well music theory geek-dom anyway. I’ve mention in the above Megadeth track.. that there was “harmonic minor modalism” going on.. modalism is probably most often associated with Miles Davis.. and harmonic minor comes from classical.. It’s what gives the Megadeth it’s middle eastern flavor.
Modalism, really, is a kind of.. lets call it “a tactical response to the challenges of improvisation.”
[editors note: So Matt sorta stopped writing around this point, which is probably where things would have likely gotten interesting.. *sigh* and then there was this other fragment that he was going to try to integrate into the flow latter on.. well, lets have the fragment]
Well it starts with Ozzy actually. When I was first starting to listen to music / explore music.. Ozzy was one the first bit of music I found that was like.. I’d listen to endlessly… and it was also some of the first stuff I started playing on the guitar.
[editors note: And that’s where it ends, just like that.]