Justice–Civilization (Fucking Champs remix)

Justice–Civilization (Fucking Champs remix)

All we can say is, wow! The Fucking Champs made this song like 100x better! Champs/Justice/Daft Punk album/world tour???

The Key to Learning Two-Handed Tapping on Guitar

I’d been trying to learn two-handed tapping on guitar due to liking bands like Don Caballero and Maps and Atlases, this great new-to-me band Adebisi Shank, Marnie Stern, Hella, etc, and of course Van Halen etc but could never figure it out. I watched this video http://www.jamplay.com/guitar-lessons/full/basics-of-tapping-111.html and it taught me what I was missing! Basically, I was missing that you can “flick” the string to play a note you’re holding down, and you can flick it at a different fret than the note you’re currently fretting, at a fret that you’ll play later–so say you’re holding down the 3rd fret on the high e string, you can flick the high e with your right hand finger at the 12th fret to play the string, it will play the note of the fret you’re holding down such as the 3rd fret, then you can hammer on the fifth fret with your left hand, then with your right hand you can press down at the 12th fret or whatever for a cool two-hand tap triplet of the 3-5-12 notes. Anyway, I had been missing that “flick” motion to play notes, I had though you were supposed to sound certain notes by just hammering on, but the “flick” while actually holding down the note actually sounds a lot better. I would try to just hammer on say a 3rd fret instead of flicking the string first and it wouldn’t sound good or wouldn’t make any noise at all!

Picture of Ian Williams from:

Jesu–Heartache (Ex-Godflesh)

Jesu–Heartache

Jesu’s a great band, with Justin Broadrick from Godflesh–somewhere between Godflesh, Swervedriver, My Bloody Valentine, and Codeine…

Metallica Copied/Were Inspired for the Intro of Sanitarium from The Yes Song Roundabout

The intros to Metallica’s Sanitarium and Yes’ Roundabout are so nearly identical you can listen to them both at the same time via YouTubeDoubler.

Also, here are the two separate videos on YouTube:

Metallica: Sanitarium

Yes: Roundabout

Now you know where Metallica got some of their great chops inspiration from, 70s prog rock like Yes and the Metallicavishnu Orchstra!

Mahavishnu Orchestra: Birds of Fire

Also see: Metallica Copied/Influenced By Christian Death’s song “First Communion” for “Battery” on Master of Puppets; Neurosis–Souls at Zero

Metallica Copied/Influenced By Christian Death’s song “First Communion” for “Battery” on Master of Puppets; Neurosis–Souls at Zero

Christian Death: Cavity–First Communion

Metallica: Battery

So Metallica totally copied (or were heavily influenced by, I think) the musical progression in the chorus and main verse of Christian Death’s song “Cavity–First Communion” off of Christian Death’s amazing “Only Theatre of Pain” album (1984) for the intro of Metallica’s song “Battery” off of their equally amazing “Master of Puppets” album (1986)…it’s like they took the progression and made it acoustic, with a few more frills…Also, the intro to Metallica’s One off of And Justice for All and Metallica’s Sanitarium, also on Master of Puppets, both echo the intro to Chrisitian Death’s Mysterium Inquitatis, also on Only Theatre of Pain, sonically…and the very beginning guitar on Sanitarium of course is nearly identical to the intro guitar of Yes’ Rounadbout, you can listen to them both at the same time, I compared them on YouTubeDoubler.

Christian Death: Mysterium Inquitatis

Metallica: One

Metallica: Sanitarium

Yes–Roundabout

Neurosis: Souls at Zero.

So I just listened to Neurosis’ Souls at Zero album for the first time in years…and it’s really, really good! It’s kind of like a mix between heavy metal like Black Sabbath and Metallica mixed with indie/experimental/postpunk like Joy Division, Drive Like Jehu, Live Skull, Sonic Youth, Killing Joke, King Crimson, and Voivod, along with ambient and folk touches (trumpets! cellos!). Experimental and prog metal has become much more prominent these days, and Neurosis are sort of like the godfathers of the whole modern experimental metal scene, way ahead of their time. Some of this sounds actually like the great Christian Death record “Only Theatre of Pain” which is a touchstone for many indie/postpunk/metal bands in their sound, mixed with Voivod and Black Sabbath.

Above is one of their really good songs, “Souls at Zero”…which even samples tie fighters!!! How cool is that! This song especially sounds like Christian Death’s Cavity–First Communion…which was copied by Metallica on the first song on Master of Puppets for the intro to the song Battery!!! Even lots of Sonic Youth and Drive Like Jehu reflect a huge influence of Christian Death’s amazing Only Theatre of Pain album…like Death Ride 69 and Step On Chameleon (that whole blood! part, the yelling, the harmonics, the octave chords, etc)…

Drive Like Jehu covered by…The Deftones????

I am a huge Drive Like Jehu fan…surprisingly, the Deftones (I always think of them as some nu-metal band I wouldn’t like) have come out with what I think is a pretty good cover of the Drive Like Jehu song Caress!!! I mean, I wish Rick Froberg and John Reis would rock out like this still! Part of the key is, they never, ever had another band with a drummer as colossally good as Mark Trombino…

Superb Technical Metal: Pegataur–The Falcon Priest

Pegataur–The Falcon Priest.  Wow, Eric the guitarist is amazing and the drummer kicks ass!  Check out the non-stop pinch harmonics!  It’s like the Fucking Champs with 1/3 less members but just as good!  In these tough economic times there’s not much money to feed band members so if you can cut it down to two members and still make a racket like Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Sir Lord Baltimore, all the better!  I think they’re breaking like some musician’s union rules though by skimping out on that third band member

It’s quite zen or something how Pegataur is so economically powered–Pegataur is truly leading the “green revolution” in terms of economical packaging, minimizing consumption and cutting waste.  It’s like Bain and Co or McKinsey analyzed their business processes and said, “Okay, any more members would only be redundant and wasteful so we’re laying them off to rightsize your musical organization–your input and output flows are optimized and peak operational capabilties are achieved at two members with respective core metal competencies of guitar and drums.”

Bela Bartok, Godfather of Prog Rock, Math Rock, Prog Metal, Technical Metal, etc

Bela Bartok is one of my favorite musicians ever.  His music sounds like: King Crimson, Magma, Gentle Giant, Captain Beefheart, Yes, Meshuggah, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bastro, Don Caballero, the Fucking Champs, Sonic Youth, Drive Like Jehu, Necrophagist, Metallica, Slint, Hella, Stravinsky, Rush, Pink Floyd, etc.  It is truly the precursor to prog rock, math rock, prog metal, math metal, technical metal, etc.  Angular, robotic, dissonant, heavy, dramatic, virtuostic, spooky, and thoroughly  progtacular.

Check out his amazing string quartets, which sound in parts like Don Caballero mixed with Voivod and Metallica and Meshuggah and the rest of the bands listed above, and his awesome “how to learn piano” series Mikrokosmos, which he wrote for his son to learn piano,  Amazing!  The Contrasts album with Benny Goodman on clarinet, Bartok on piano, and Joseph Szigeti on violin sounds like Voivod with clarinet!

I think it would be great to have kids who learn like the Suzuki method to be slipped sheets of Mikrokosmos sheet music instead, that would breed a new generation of interesting piano players for sure.

Check out especially:

• String Quartet No.4, Sz. 91 – 5. Allegro molto(MP3) and
• String Quartet No.5, Sz. 102 – 1. Allegro (MP3)

Albums:

Bela Barok: String Quartets 1-6 (Emerson String Quartet) (MP3s on Amazon)

Bela Bartok: Mikrokosmos (Jeno Jando) (MP3s on Amazon)

Bela Bartok, Joseph Szigeti, Benny Goodman: Contrasts (Amazon)

The string quartets by another set of performers:

Bela Barok: String Quartets 1-6 (Rubin Quartet) (MP3s on Amazon)

Here are some good interviews/articles:

Bela Bartok: Finding a Voice Through Folk Music (NPR)

Bartok: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2. (National Review)

Benny Goodman: An Interview With the King of Swing (American Heritage.com)

Also totally awesome and Bartokian:
Shostakovich String Quartet #8 in c, Op 110–Emerson String Quartet. DG 459670-2.

Rick Rubin on Metallica’s Death Magnetic

Wow, so the new Metallica album “Death Magnetic” is pretty good! Here’s what I think the music consultancy of Rick Rubin told Metallica, “It’s really simple to make a good Metallica record again. It’s not rocket science. Just do what you used to do. To wit, don’t do anything that sucks.” I.e.: don’t have awful Hetfield singing, just have straightforward metal barking like before. Don’t have dumb pop choruses–just have normal metal riffs like you used to. Don’t have solos where you use the wah pedal the whole time (well, maybe one, if it’s not too cheesy). It’s easy. Also make sure there are like 100 parts to each of your songs with virtuoustic playing to keep things interesting.  Etc. I’ve always dreamed of people having good music consulting businesses, like there are huge markets for management consultants in businesses. Guns and Roses sure could use one. I mean, bands could even outsource it, crowdsource it. The fans usually know what bands do best–producers, I mean consultants like Rick Rubin probably are just good at cutting the crap and steering bands towards what they’re good at, oh yeah, their “core competencies” in management lingo, and towards what their fans really want.

Michael Jackson could really use a musical consultant too.

Anata — Better Grieved than Fooled

Some more technical metal in the vein of Necrophagist, Martyr, etc.