The appreciation of a piece of musical work depends to some extent on a listener’s culture and upbringings. Everybody has their own “mother tongue in music”, which is also called your “traditional logic in music”. We influenced greatly by certain types of music at our young age, that kind of preference is very personal, usually technical musical analysis is not required.
If you lived in a city at your young age, contemporary/ pop music could be your mother tongue in music. If you lived in a rural town at your young age, probably you prefered country music. If you lived in an isolated area at your young age, you might know how to play and sing folk music.
When we come to genres such as Rock & Metal, their history is short, only around 40 years. You have to set aside your Traditional Logic (in music) in order to proceed to the next level. Making effort to understand the context and perceptions of the genres that you have never understood before. Trying to learn and explore different types of musical compositions, there is no mystery about it at all.
01. A BRIEF HISTORY
Rock & Metal evolved from the Blues. Elvis Presley’s Rock n’ Roll was greatly influenced by Black Blues singers. You may also say Rock & Metal evolved from the Black music which came from Southern America in the 50’s. Rock music in the 50’s, such as the songs of Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, was adored by its teenage fans but dismissed as unbearable noise by many of their parents. Country musicians were the first batch of musicians to use electric guitars and amplifier in the 50’s.
The 60’s have been dubbed the Swinging Sixties, musically the whole scene were dominated by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Until the end of the 60’s when the courses of Pop and Rock diverged. In the 70’s, some bands started playing “heavier” Rock such as Hard Rock, Heavy Blues Rock, Progressive Rock, etc., (the word “Metal” was not officially applied then) choose to put record sales a distant second to music credibility. Bands working from a Blues base came to create something more creative. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, etc., produced a balanced sound yet also offer many contrasts of tone.
In the 80’s-90’s, Metal became an official genre. Soul, Disco, R&B and Rap led the way in many popular music trends. Rock & Metal music have helped to integrate Black and White America.
02. MUSICIAN
In the 12th century, Paris was the musical centre of the western world. There were two main classes of musicians :
a) Troubadour - A cultivated travelling musician, generally of noble birth.
b) Minstrel - A professional entertainer, of more lowly birth. All these singers were both poets and composers of their own songs, for at this time very few sang other people’s music.
Today, Rock & Metal musicians’ lifestyles are very similar to ancient musicians. Many members in Rock & Metal bands are classically trained, writing and singing only their own songs. They also travel a lot in order to attend many music festivals and their own concerts in different places around the world.
03. LISTENER
What type(s) of music do you enjoy ? I think a lot of listeners could not identify themselves clearly. You should find out the answer on your own right away, as this question is so important as an obese guy asking himself, “Should I go for quality or quantity ?”. Such explorations direct you to identify your current point of view on music, so as to help you to escape from your traditional logic. You will also start looking for quality music as life is too short for bad music.
Music listeners can be divided into five categories :
1) Indifferent Listeners : Music is not meaningful to them. They don’t listen or buy music, some of them could be tone-deafs (see 04).
2) Accidental Listeners : Only listen to music in public places or making use of music to pass time as they don’t see any value in music. They like FREE music and prefer to make a copy for myself, sometimes buy only Best Buy CDs.
3) Casual Listeners : Only buy a few of their familiar artists’ albums. They are very selective as their music knowledge is scarce. They always need strong recommendations from others.
4) Strong Listeners : They always make effort to find out what is the best in the market and willing to pay. Having good acceptance to any kind of music.
5) Emotional Listeners : They find collecting full releases of an artist/ band, getting rare and limited edition copies of music CDs as a must-accomplished mission. High price is not an issue as they have their “own reasons” to support their buying behaviour.
04. TONE DEAF
Tone Deafness is also called “Amusia” or “Musical Deafness”. It has nothing to do with actual deafness. A tone-deaf can have perfect hearing like all of us. However, when it comes to music what they hear is the sound of a lump without textures. They are not able to recongnise the details of music, especially complicated musical works such as Orchestra, Grindcore, Death Metal, Black Metal, etc.
4a) AUDITORY SYSTEM
The ear hears via inner hair cells, each hair cell is tuned to a frequency band determined by its position on the membrane, sensitivity peaks in the middle of the band. The human ear hears a limited range of frequencies of sound or called - Audible Spectrum of Sound Waves, the sensory cells that detect sound in different by overlapping frequency bands.
The farther off the frequency is, the weaker and more distorted it gets until it disappears completely, no matter how strong. There is an upper and lower audible frequency limit, past which the sensitivity of the last hair cells drops to zero, and hearing ends.
The human hearing range spans 20 Hz to 20 kHz (20,000 Hz), this is a very generous range. There are actually quite a number of people could hear beyond 20 kHz.
Any vitamins and supplements help improving your hearing are available in the market ? I don’t see any. Hearing probably is only an option, people don’t expect much, excellent physical abilitiy in hearing is not required in our daily life. Definitely ears can be trained to notice details, “Golden Ears” are more about training than hearing beyond the physical ability of average mortals.
4b) MUSICAL DEAFNESS
Musically, there are people who can not be trained... forever, a tone-deaf. Tone-deaf is not often mentioned in medical report. It is a minor kind of handicape but it is not considered as an illness, as apprehension of musical works is not an option in our daily life. There are different degrees of tone deafness. To a tone-deaf, music sounds like a kind of environmental pollution. The ability to hear a pitch and sing it back is simple to us but it is not an easy task to a tone-deaf. Although the term Amusia was applied over a century ago, various amusias have not yet been systematically documented or classified, and no comprehensive study of musical deficits has been undertaken.Approximately 1 out of 20 people is believed to be an amusic from childhood. There are 4 out of 10 people can not differentiate the different between a tone and a semitone (half tone higher ot lower from a whole tone). They are not able to process pitch, and their memory in music and recognition of musical patterns are weak.
4c) RIGHT TEMPORAL GYRUS & FRONTAL CORTICAL AREAS
Some Rock & Metal musicians focus on rhythm parts such as Progressive Rock band - Rush; some are more into melody parts such as Heavy & Power Metal band - Judas Priest, Helloween, etc. If a band tries too hard to focus on both, musically their musical composition might becomes out of focus easily. For example, Amon Amarth’s early works (their first three albums) are equally focused on Scandinavian and Death genres, they are not easy to listen to, it’s a great challenge to rookie Rock & Metal listeners. It actually requires many years of listening experiences to appreciate them.
To recognize music, “human musical memory” or “human music-related memory” is required. Musical memory refers to the ability to remember music-related information, such as melodic content and other progressions of tones or pitches. In order to process and integrate both melodic and rhythmic aspects of music, (In our brain) our Right Temporal Gyrus manages the Rhythm, and the Frontal Cortical Areas works on Melody. A lack of fine-grained pitch discrimination makes it extremely difficult for amusics to enjoy and appreciate music which consists largely of small pitch changes. They do not enjoy listening to music especially loud and fast music because of slow and weak musical recognition. Music sounds like noise and evokes a stressful response to them. They experience difficulty in discriminating variations in pitch, but they also exhibit deficits in perceiving patterns in pitch. Most sufferers of tone deafness describe music as unpleasant to them, loud and fast music is noise and find it annoying. Only 11 out of 20 (55% of population) people can recognize and understand simple to medium levels of music. Many Universities in the United States have shown that the ablitiy to hear complicated pitches are not born into us, we need to take time to appreciate complicated music.
05. MUSIC & LANGUAGE
I always heard people said: “Music is for everyone, it’s a universal language, a language that everyone in the world understands...blah, blah, blah...”. I don’t think this statement is fully correct, music is purely an artistic’s personal perception, you don’t understand it right away if it’s too “artistic”, unless it is an usual copied and pasted kind of Pop Song. There are many similarities between music and language. If you don’t learn the skills to understand it, you won’t be able to appreciate and comprehend it at all, as a result - a communication break down.Chuck Schuldiner (Death’s vocalist, guitarist & founder) once said, “ A lot of people looked down upon us. We got a lot of shit from the local band scene; all the bands from around thought we were pure shit ! We were noisy back then but we were putting out brutal death metal, and it was too much for people to comprehend ”.
As I have pointed out earlier, speaking your mother tongue could be easy to you, but it doesn’t mean that it came natural to a new comer. Everyone has to take a long period of time and even go through a tedious learning process to acheive a certain degree of recognition. When we see the word - Music, we always take it as an easy and simple thing, the misconception came from music is widely regarded as purely entertainment ! The artistic values that real musicians are looking for are widely disregarded by the average listeners. When we hear the word - Language, we instinctively branch out into races, countries and cultures, etc...without a second thought. Music deserves the same treatment.
The more we don’t know about music the higher possibliity that we would take it as a whole or the same. Usually, average listeners make good and bad comments about music without giving explainations. Basically, music can only deliver a “general outcome” to them so that they can only write a facebooking type of comments such as “I like it”, “I don’t like it”, “I hate it very very much”...
Music is the property of musicians alone, usually they don’t ask your permission before writing it, but they are willing to share it (or sell it). When I was a school boy, I only listened to one or two Metal genres that I “thought” were the “best among all”. Many years later, I realized jumping into conclusion should be the worst and last thing to do in my life.
Learning how to listen to a musical genre is similar to learning a language. It is merely a process, wheather you like it or not is not really important, what really matter is understanding how to speak the language that a musician is trying to communicate with you. Obviously, certain songs sound better on certain musical instruments and sound systems. You should listen to as many different genres as you can, because you will find that different musicians in different genres will approach the same thing in different ways. It’s exactly the same as the different expressions of languages. There is so much you can learn by just listening to albums.
When you listen to albums, listen analytically, and make sure you take in broad span of music, you should not ever limit yourself to listening to one style. If you are investing a deeper level of interest in the music, the whole listening experience becomes a part of your treasure. It produces a deeper level of satisfaction.
06. LOUDNESS
Before delving into more technical details, we need to talk about what people concern the most about Heavy Metal - Why Metal has to be loud ? Is that a must or just trying to be different from the contemporary music ?
6a) REBELLION & LOUDNESS
A lot of movies liked to show rebellious youngsters playing Heavy Metal, trying to turn up volume to the maximum and head-banging in their cars or in their rooms. Those movie directors definitely contained a certain degree of hatred towards Heavy Metal. They thought rebellious teenagers love Heavy Metal; teenagers who like listening to Lionel Richie, Celine Dion and One Republic could not be rebellious ? Have you ever seen any criminals singing Air Supply’s songs in a movie ? Those movie directors projected the idiotic logic to average audiences who are having “parallel thinking”. I don’t know if those teenagers really know anything about Heavy Metal or merely like it because they like to play loud music in order to disturb others. But there is one thing I am pretty sure about, those movie directors were certainly unethical to neglect the efforts of musicians.
Do you play music loudly at home ? Should you play it loudly ? You need to study some necessary history about “Loudness” in music scene. This study also extends to explain why most classical, rock and metal recordings downloaded are a complete waste of time because there is so much information missing, music files are reduced to just the essence of a tune.
6b) CLASSICAL & MODERN LOUDNESS
Once upon a time...Orchestra refered to a singing or dancing stage. The term was revived to become the musicians themselves since 18th century. In the 15th century, an orchestra was liked today’s band, consisted of 5-10 musicians only. In the 18th century, the size of orchestra increased to 50 musicians. By 19th century, it was not unusual to see an orchestra consisted of 100 or more musicians.
The reason that the size of orchestras kept on growing over centuries was to create loudness. When music became more common, the size of audience became larger, orchestras need a much bigger concert hall to accomodate their audience. Needless to say they need more musicians and musical instruments to create bigger volume for a big hall as no speakers were available back then.
Today, some orchestras still remained big sizes without using speakers. A large numbers of musicians playing their musical instruments together at the same time in order to achieve a homogeneous whole and also seeking internal balance both have became another form of art.
Heavy Metal bands have some similarities to Orchestras. They focus very much on the textures and tone-colour in their musical works. Therefore, a certain degree of loudness (above average volume) is needed in order to achieve the quality of sound and also “amplify” the textures in details, otherwise, some important musical details might be neglected and the high and low textures could not be able to define accurately. The more musical instruments are involved the higher volume has to be set. Certainly not any extreme ways to blast away your player and speakers. However, Orchestra can cut down the numbers of musicians by using speakers to create loudness but many of them prefer to reserve the tradition.
Contemporary and Pop music‘s frequency is mainly based on vocals. Vocals’ frequency is narrowed by a singer’s capabilities. By and large, vocals are not possible to be higher or lower than musical instruments. On the contrary, the frequency range of Rock, Metal, Orchestra and Opera are very much wider due to the focus on vocals and musical instruments are nearly equal.
07. ART DIRECTION & MUSIC CONSISTENCY
Art direction is not only restricted to musical works alone, it is applicable to all kinds of art forms such as painting, graphic design, interior design, comics, sculpture, architectual, etc. When musicians write songs for their album, they have to set an art direction beforehand. All songs have to follow the direction set beforehand in order to create music consistency. Music consistency of an album is extremely important as it can maintain your mood in a steady condition, as a result listeners are able to feel the impressions and impact easier.
7a) CONCEPT
“Art Direction” and “Concept” are slightly different in music eventhough in other kinds of art forms they are the same, it is due to some misconceptions from the past. For example, Pop music doesn’t care much about art direction as songs picked are usually come from different composers. Commercially, if a Pop song can be at the top of the charts is more important than anything else. In Rock & Metal, concept or art direction is very important, if one album is very much focus on one subject matter, such as Judas Priest’s Nostradamus, then we may call it a “Concept Album”. Otherwise, we just refer to the subject matter as Art Direction.
7b) COMPILATION ALBUM
Serious listeners usually don’t buy compilation albums as they are lacking in consistency. All songs are selected from different studio albums, too many different pitches, keys and playing skills are involved. In times, songs sound differently as producer and sound engineer are usually replaced in order to make it more “contemporary” for “general market”.
08. MUSIC PATTERN
Rock & Metal have gone through a certain degree of changes over years, some can become very complex but changes do not directly refer to improvements. In music, I don’t believe in improvements, sound system and effect can be improved but not the way of composing music, because different kinds of music have their own uniqueness, it is more tend to be emotional rather than technical.
Naturally, as a beginner, music patterns with complex compositions such as Metal are more difficult to recognize compares to more simple types of Rock. I suggest you begin with early rock genre (as such blues rock or hard rock) as your starter-kit in order to avoid confusion. Today, a lot of new Metal bands like to mix their original genre with some elements from other genres, good tries, but it also increased difficulty in appreciating and hurdle in comprehension to beginners.
You may choose Grindcore album Terrorizer- Wall Down Fall and Death Metal album Possessed- Seven Churches as your starters. When we listen to Pop, we only memorize music patterns of the vocals. When you listen to the Metal, you need to remember the music patterns of guitar, bass, and drums, not only the vocals. They are complex and fast, a beginner needs more than 10 times of listens to get familiar with the music patterns.
I remember when I was still a teenager, I gave up listening Metal after playing these two albums as it was still a lump of noise to me even I had tried megatrillion times ! Few years later, I read a review about Terrorizer-Wall Down Fall, the review was nothing special but mentioning about the drummer Pete Sandoval’s impressive performance. Out of curiosity, I gouged out the album six feet under my bed, I tried focusing only on the parts of the drums. After a few plays, miracle happened ! I started being able to follow the musical flow. The longer you spend for a Metal album, the more you are able to get familiar with the musical patterns. The junk under my bed suddenly became my treasure.
09. MUSIC COMPOSITIONS
Creativity is not a natural process, it lives in a musician, out of sudden it could leave him/ her for good. It’s called “musician’s untold nightmare”. The usual process of composing music is to form musical patterns and apply them according to a musician’s understanding of music.
In the 1950s, the idea developed among composers was agreed as each seperate instrument should be distinctly audible while playing its individual part rather than hearing it as an entity. Apart from following the typical “recognized” musical structures, it’s good to know there are still many musicians choose to cut across pattern.
Todays, musicians have to work much more harder than before to give richness or beauty of tone colour to their music rather than using those typical musical structures.
Simple music can start in the mind, depending on your own understanding of music, it works on the sub-conscious. Sub-conscious is able to create and enhance mood, even unlocking your deep memories. People are naturally creative, unfortunately many people are inhibited by the “traditional logic” that had been developed during their childhood under the influence of the conventional culture, such as the fear of looking stupid, the habit of instant judgement, etc. If those inhibitions could be removed then it should make them more creative. I differentiate music from Traditional Logic (Easy Listening) and Perceptual Logic (Hard Listening). Definitely both are involved creative process in very much different ways.
9a) TRADITIONAL LOGIC (EASY LISTENING)
Contemporary/ Pop music tends to have lush, soothing and highly polished qualities where emphasis on melody and harmonies is accentuated. It is usually melodic enough to get a listener's attention. Like most of Pop songs tend to be written in a basic format, a verse-chorus structure, as well as the common employment of repeated choruses.
However, it is not all about it, in order to “play safe” and made you understand Contemporary/ Pop music even more easily. Musicians and producers would distinguish the vocals and accompanying music with the volume. Vocals are set in the foreground which is louder, accompanying music is placed in the background, usually it is very much softer especially when vocals come along in order to avoid a clash with keyboards, as a result an easy listening type of music is created.
If you were influenced by traditional and comtemporary music too much, then you are not possible to get use to Metal in a short period of time as you have got used to slow and simple music. There is always strong resistance there as your belief system was set within your inner self. Contemporary music is consisted of two layers, which are vocals and accompanying music. Accompanying music is usually created by Synthesizers (all in one keyboards) mainly because it is easier to create atmosphere.
9b) PERCEPTUAL LOGIC (HARD LISTENING)
Rock & Metal, especially Metal is definately not an easy listening type of music. They are perceptive, atmospheric, sometimes even abstract. It is often written by highly skilled and specialized individuals, therefore it can be both difficult to play and demanding to listen to. Amateur performers and listeners might instead take refuge in more accessible works from contemporary or pop music. There are four to five distinctive layers in Rock & Metal, namely Drums, Bass, Guitar and Vocals, some band comes with additional keyboards. Usually these musicians perform at loud volume.
The most amazing part is those different musical sounds should not clash with each others. Four to five musical layers must be distinctly audible or else it would become a lump of musical work. Lumpy music is generally considered as lacking in skills, good musicians do not write their music that way. However, Entombed’s first two albums were purposely made in that way, it increased listening difficulty. It took me a while to recognise the musical patterns, I really liked their spirit of deviation, these two albums are the major landmarks in metal scene.
You need to identify the tempos and recognise the musical patterns (this’s extremely important) as quickly as possible because the paces of Metal are extremely fast and furious. Normally it’s 2-5 seconds per pattern. An average drummer usually can produce 5-10 beats per second. Sometimes I wondered if listening to Metal is a medical solution for Parkinson’s disease.
10. TEMPO
“Keeping Time” is not an easy task for musicians. There’re still many musicians around us always out of tempo eventhough they have been playing their musical instrument for years. A good musician has to know how to control the speed and loudness whenever he has to be fast, slow, loud and soft. It sounds simple but it is a ‘big thing’ in music. I don’t know if it can be learned, to me it is a gift, more like an instinct.
Tempo simply refers to speed or pace. How fast and slow is the speed from one note to another or one musical pattern to another. The world's fastest drummer competition’s record holder Mike Mallais played 17 beats per second ! Although “extremely fast” tempo is not necessary a must, but slow drumming is definitely not considered impressive in Metal.
Contemporary music almost uses a same range of tempo throughout a song, this is not applicable to Metal. Metal musicians make use of extreme distortions and musical contrast to create musical climax. Different degrees in tempos are essential for them to deliver emotions through a song. Although tempos of a song are already set by composer, however musicians do not have to perform 100% accordingly like a machine. Different musicians always play with slightly different tempos depending on their own music understanding and emotional expressions; that’s why some musicians could be better than others. Musician‘s sensitivity of delivering emotions through a good sense of tempo is a crucial part of their value in music scene.
11. MELODIC & RHYTHMIC
Once again, I have to make use of Contemporary & Pop music to explain how Rock & Metal work. The reason is simple, Contemporary and pop music is our “mother tongue” in music, we recognized them since we were little.
Contemporary and pop only highlight melody lines through vocals. Background or accompanying music has been always ignored all the time, it’s not important at all to most of the average listeners. In fact, the background or accompanying music is the key factor to decide if a song is good enough to qualify as a classic song.
In Rock & Metal scene, some bands are more into creating melodic music, album such as Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard Of Ozz. Whereas, some musicians may prefer writing rhythmic music, album such as Rush - Snakes & Arrows. Both types of music have their own difficulties in composition. In my opinion, rhythmic music is slightly harder to write and produce (in recording studio) compares to melodic music.
Whether a song is Melodic or Rhythmic, it does not completely affect the projection of the music atmosphere that a musician wanted to create. The musical-key used is an important part to decide the mood and atmosphere of a song. Music in a Major Key tends to sound happy and positive, whereas music in Minor Key often sounds sad, serious and dramatic.
Most of the Rock & Metal bands like to write complex music to flaunt their proficiency and also it is the way to distinguish themselves from contemporary and alternative bands. Although some pop rock bands such as Coldplay, Maroon 5, Green Day come with drummer, guitarist and bassist but usually they only perform very simple slow-medium rhythms through out a song.
12. TREBLE & MELODY
A lot of websites and magazines tend to mislead listeners in many ways. Probably they didn’t do it intentionally but trying a short-cut to convey a complex concept to general readers. Sometimes it was too simple and it became a big confusion eventually.
If you explain “melody” superficially, it is all about pitch range, tone, tune, rhythm, etc. These are actually elements of sound but not melody. To explain music in a more professional way, I have to break it down into two parts - Treble & Melody and Bass & Rhythm.
Treble refers to tones in high notes, it always associate with melody in a song. Melody and treble can find expression through the guitar, Keyboard (Synthesizer) and Vocals. But, in Death Metal treble does not express through vocals as the vocalists make use of their Ultra Bass vocals to create melody and rhythm at the same time. Sounds perceptive ? you need to take time to experience it.
12a) GUITARIST
Rock & Metal songs are mainly written by using guitar. Naturally the song-writter duties would be bore by the guitarist in a band. That’s why 70% of band founders are the guitarists. Guitarist writes the main vocal melody, guitar melody lines, riffs and his own guitar solo. Although it is a big part in music composition, but you can not overlook the importancy of a drummer and bassist (see Drummer and Bassist below).
Single note set pattern is known as a riff. The pattern (as riff) which lasted for 5 to 20 seconds can be set in anywhere in a song. For example, Europe - Final Countdown, the renowned riffs in the begining of the song are strong and melodic, it has been widely recognised by everyone in the world, we can name the song’s title in just few seconds by recognizing the riffs.
Guitarists like to play solo to show off their proficiency in playing their musical instrument. Most solos fall in the middle of a song, to give the singer a break and change the momentum. Many listeners are interested in them because they break the rigid flow of a song.
Guitar is easy to learn but difficult to master, especially those can play really fast as speed of fingerwork is what impresses the fans, not many guitarists have the gift for fast playing anyway. Playing fast is considered a very special gifted skill, eventhough it is an additional credit that can be added to a good guitarist however it is not everything, as there are still many factors involved in deciding the performance of a guitarist.
Keyboards can transpose song from one Key to another easily, the only difference you will hear is in the pitch. Whereas it could be difficult for guitar to do so, as the Key can make a drastic difference to a guitar, even could be out of tune. The sound of the guitar changes according to where on the neck it is played and whether strings are open or fretted. A line that is easy to play in one Key by a Keyboards can be nearly impossible in guitar.
12b) VOCALIST
In the past few centuries, singers were poet-composers who sang their own songs. Today, many vocalists also play musical instrument and write songs for their band. Some vocalists prefer stick to their own profession and left those to be handled by other band-mates. We always learned that when a band suffered a decline in popularity or sale for a period of time, their first move was to remove their vocalist. Many amateur music critics and listeners liked to use the word ‘fire’. May be it could create a “dramatic effect” or indirectly implied vocalist was the most important role in the band, and he was fully responsible for any negative impact.
I agree. if a band has fallen out of listener‘s favor, vocalist is not to blame but he has to be replaced. In a band it is often the vocalist who dictates which Key a song is played in. All songs have to be ‘custom-made’ for the vocalist. Even an accomplished singer will find that he can’t sing more easily or more expressively in a certain Key.
Vocalists in Rock & Metal bands are also competing with one another’s vocal capabilities. So don’t be surprise if you find marvelous vocalist such as Bobby Ellsworth (Overkill) can not handle all the songs in their cover album, Coverkill. Impeccable singer Andi Deris (Helloween) messed up all the songs in their cover album, Metal Jukebox. There is nothing about superiority but more about suitability.
Ronnie James Dio left Black Sabbath after the album Mob Rules. Mob Rules is very different from Heaven & Hell. Those songs in the album are hard to sing, the frequencies are extreme and switching fast, Ronnie always has to stress and drag his voices in many parts of melody lines. It indeed exerts Ronnie’s vocals to the fullest. Ronnie had a hard time to cope with this album, thanks to Black Sabbath’s founder and guitarist Tony Iommi, he is no doubt an extremely good “music stylist”, as all guitarists always did, he always “designed” different forms of music that he deemed fit to different vocalists according to many variations in their capabilities.
Many vocalists in modern times have sought to use the voice as an instrument in new and unusual ways, such as Death Metal and Black Metal bands. The style is called “Sprechgesang” which falls between singing and speaking. Death Metal, Black Metal and other hardcore types of vocalists usually follow the dynamics of speech rather than of the melody. In another words, their vocals are Rhythmic but not Melodic which is very much different from Hard Rock and Heavy Metal bands. You have to treat Death Metal and Black Metal vocals as a musical instrument that creates musical effects but not voices. They mostly use their vocals to express their anger towards wars, discriminations, politic views, criminal mind, hostility and the cruety of the real world. Therefore, their vocals tend to be low-pitched, such as Bass and Ultra Bass vocals.
13. BASS & RHYTHM
Bass refers to tones in low range of frequency. Rhythm came before melody, the most primitive muisc was the rhythm created by clapping hands and stamping feet.
Drummer and bassist make use of their musical instruments to highlight, define and harmonize melody. In a simple way to explain this, drummer uses different kinds of beats to create many musical patterns and contrast from the begining until the end of a song. Hard Rock and Metal bands usually like to create complex and many different musical patterns of rhythm in a song. The contrast could be strong vs weak, longer vs short, begin vs stop, fast vs slow, etc. Pop/ Contemporary/ Alternative Rock bands usually create only a few repeating beats in identical sequence and play it again and again through-out a song.
13a) DRUMMER
Percussion instruments such as drums, cymbals, shakers and jingles are probably the world’s oldest musical instruments. Drums provide a backbone for a song, drummer acts like a music conductor in a band. When a band is playing a song, guitarist, bassist and vocalist have to follow the pace that set by the drummer. Creative rhythm and tempo (speed) can produce a dramatic climax to a musical work by a drummer.
Metal band members always like to modify their musical instruments in order to create their own unique sound. Drummer is not exceptional, there are many small parts in a drum set that can be modified. All drummers trust only their own drum set and seldom change the sound of it. For instance, after Drum-god Pete Sandoval permanantly left his 30 years old band Morbid Angel due to the back injuries, he was replaced by Tim Yeung. Tim played his own way, he did not compromise with playing Pete’s way of drumming. Chris Reifert (Autopsy) has been playing his unique sounded drum set for nearly 35 years.
By large, how good (technically) is a Metal band usually is decided by how good is the drummer. Metal band’s drummer plays very fast and complex drumming, the irregular rhythms highlight the rapidly changing pitch. If any band mate is not competitive enough then he could bring down the overall performance of a band.
13b) BASSIST
Normally, 4-piece band is the most common combination. If you are forming a 3-piece band, which post are you going to eliminate ? The answer is - The Guitarist. A band can not go on without a rhythm, that‘s why drummer has to be there. Drummer can not perform without a bassist’s harmonisation with the vocalist. As for the melody part, vocalist can create melody on his own without being helped by a guitarist. If you are going for pure instrumental then you definitely can exclude vocalist, if vocals and lyrics are the must then a band can still go on without having a guitarist.
Bassist is vey often to supply a rhythmic pulse and an underlying melodic guilde. The Bass and Drums, collectively known as the rhythm section, collaboating the tempos of the drumming, as this is the foundation on which the music is built. Busy bassline could elevate the power and punch in Rock & Metal.
Bassist’s role is very complex. You can also call them as :
(i) Power Generator & Time Keeper -
Needless to say, Rock & Metal typically uses strong basic rhythm. Bassist is the Power Generator in a band as bass delivers necessary heavy punch especially in Metal. Don’t think that bassist’s job is easy as they only need to learn the Bass Clef. He also shares the responsibility as a Time-Keeper with the drummer to look after the tempos (speed or pace).
(ii) Post-Composer -
After bassist received melody lines and lyrics from other member(s). Bassist and drummer have to produce the rhythmic part. They have to follow the original concept of the album and provide a ‘link’ in between melodic lines (guitar and lyric) and rhythmic lines (drum) to all songs.
(iii) Music Effect Director -
Bassist has to hear more detail in a musical sound compares to other members. A bassist needs to create contrast to sound and also make texture in a song by playing different kinds of variations such as stop (silence) vs start, soft vs heavy, etc. A good bassist has to achieve not only good rhythm, also good dynamics (punch) and emotion (groove). The difficulty comes from being able to convey everything mentioned above technically and emotionally in a creative way, also adding in many creative bass lines ‘objectively’. In another words, good base lines must be creative and also fit the style and mood of a song.
Learning a musical instrument is a lot more complex process than what you can imagine, it takes a lot of your time and effort. Learning music for fun kind of attitude is not going to work eventually, especially learning Bass could be boring. You must be a creative person that can withstand the boredom - Yes, sounds weird !
Getting creative rhythm and good time-keeping skills involves a lot of repetitive practise. Accuracy and consistency are vital in playing Metal. A good bassist can make a song become a classic song by injecting some creative elements into it.
14. 3 STEPS TO METAL
When we listen to contemporary music, we always imagine a vocalist is singing and facing to us, other musical instruments are in the background. When you listen to the Metal, you don’t listen it in that way. You have to imagine you are sitting beside a band, facing to their side-way (similar to audience are watching a fashion show, they usually sit on the side-ways of the stage). Drummer is on your right, vocalist is on your left, bassist and guitarist are in the middle, but bassist is slightly standing closer to the drummer and the guitarist is more closer to the vocalist. Trying to divide bassist and drummer as one group, and vacalist and guitarist as another.
Always listen the music instruments from right to left, Drum-Bass-Guitar-Vocals In sequence. Of course all musical instruments play together at the same time, as a beginner you don’t listen to them at the same time as you might hear lumpy music. It is a learning process that help you listening to the drums first. Do not worry about missing the vocals because your subconscious mind will pick up the vocals by itself, it is a part of a human instinct.
14a) STEP 1
Ignore the guitar and vocals. Focusing on the drums with your right ear, and let your subconcious to pick up the vocals by itself by your left ears. This practice helps you to recognize the types of patterns that drums can produce. After a period of time, whenever drums change its tempo and patterns, you could recognise them right away. As I mentioned earlier, drums are the backbone of Metal, you can’t understand Rock & Metal without understanding drums’ patterns.
You are supposed to listen to drums and bass together, but it might be difficult for a beginner. That‘s why I suggest beginners to focus on drums first.
14b) STEP 2
You still have to keep on doing Step 1, at the same time, trying to listen to guitar together with vocals with your left ears as they belong to one group and keep on listening to drums’ rhythm with your right ears. This step is difficult, especially when vocals are loud and drums are soft, such as Hard Rock. Theoretically speaking, electric guitar always has a clash with vocals, their pitches are close, furthermore the electric guitarist creates a lot of distortions to disturb the vocals. That’s why when Metal guitarists go for solo project they do not sing like Country singers. As Country singers use acoustic guitar which does not produce much distortion. However, they have to use falsetto to blend their vocals and music become harmonious. If they sing in normal tone then their vocals would clash with the guitar and hardly bring out the contrast in their music. This is the main reason for their ‘strange voices’. I don’t expect Metal vocalists sing in that way, therefore it is the duty of a bassist to come in for ‘reconciliation’.
14c) STEP 3
The last step. Looking for the bass and put it in the middle. You are not focusing the bass with your full attention but recognise it and place it in the middle (in between your left and right ears). Bassist is a reconciliator, his duty is to harmonize the rhythm from the right ear and the melody from the left ear.
After weeks of practice, you should be able to find out a lot of wonderful techniques among so many great bands. You may use the same techniques to explore other genres. A lot of people claimed themselves fond of Contemporary & Pop but dislike Rock & Metal, actually they are ‘hearing’ more than listening to music. If you are able to use this same method applying to Contemporary & Pop, I guess you will definitely find their hasty comments sound silly.
15. TREBLE & BASS (Sound System)
Rock & Metal come with extreme frequency (very high and low frequency) as a package. In order to acheive the full musical pitch range, you have to get an accurate playback device - a Hifi system.
If you are on a tight budget, then you may consider an Integrated Hifi (mostly are Japanese brands) with “Treble & Bass” adjusting knobs. Eventhough I think Integrated Hifi‘s sound effects are harsh and rough but it’s still better than ipod and labtop as they’re not possible to create the “spacious atmosphere”.
Contemporary & Pop do not require a lot of adjustments in Treble & Bass as their frequency range is small. Whereas, if you don’t adjust Treble & Bass for Rock & Metal you might receive a terrible result. A masterpiece could become a nightmare to you. When I was still new in Rock & Metal, I had thrown away a lot of masterpeices out of disappointments and angriness due to my ignorance of the simple rules above mentioned.
15a) PRE-DETERMINED LEVEL
In general, only Hifi, integrated Hifi and car audio system come with Treble & Bass adjusting features. Forget about i-Pod, labtop, CD portable player and radio station, I don’t think they’re workable to serious music listeners, because they applied their own signal processing, the functions are less impressive due to their frequency range are set to a pre-determined levels by the manufacturers in order to fulfill ‘one-for-all’ standard. Dynamic and loudness range are greatly reduced regardless of the original recordings.
15b) BASS KILLS
Bass kills Rock & Metal ! Bass is meant for movie more than music. A lot of music ignorants like to increase heavy bass to any kind of music as rumour said “More Bass More Quality”. It‘s a myth and it is definitely a wrong setting if you add extra bass to Rock & Metal. Whereas, if you add bass to Contemporary & Pop which can indeed create “fake fullness” to songs. Please bear in mind the fake fullness at the same time reduces the dynamics, textures and flexibilities of vocals.
In Rock & Metal, the bassist is capable enough to handle his part perfectly, we don’t have to worry about put on additional Bass. In fact, we should lower the bass everytime when we play Rock & Metal. Professional producers do not believe in the theory of creating “fullness” by making use of the bass, or else they should have increased the bass in recording studios so that listeners do not have to take trouble to increase the bass ratio.
15c) RATIO
Don’t be surprised if you were asked to adjust Treble & Bass everytime you listen to Rock & Metal (you have to do the same thing to orchestras). It is important as adjusting your musical instrument “in tune”
General settings for Contemporary/Pop is Treble 4 : Bass 2 or both at the same ratios such as 3:3, 4:4, 5:5, etc. If you like the ”fake fullness”, you could try Treble 2 : Bass 4. In Rock & Metal, it could be different, always take the sounds of drum as the criteria, the Bass Drum (The biggest drum that rest on the floor) has to be 10%-15% heavier than other musical instruments. The Snare Drums must sound crispy and not heavier than the bass drum.
The golden rules for beginners as follows - Treble 4 : Bass 2 (or T4:B1, T5:B2, T5:B1, etc). Always keep the bass as low as possible as you need ‘The Vast’ feeling in Rock & Metal, but be careful don‘t go beyond that. If you cross the border you might get the Emptiness Effect. You don’t have to set the ratios base on vocals and other instruments once the drum’s setting is correct.
There are few examples for your reference :
1) Venom’s albums tend to be low-fi, the settings could be Treble 6 : Bass 1, Treble 5 : Bass 0 or Treble 5 : Bass 1. If you set it at high bass ratio such as Treble 2 : Bass 4, I think any masterpiece come from Venom would end up in your garbage bin.
2) Most all of the Judas Priest’s albums have been remastered. The sounds were incredibly good when you play it with HiFi (In fact, they are too good, I really felt that they were overproduced). Those remastered and 24 bit albums are not meant for your i-Pod, Labtop and other low profile devices. Cheap playback devices are meant for simple music such as Contemporary & Pop as they are not able to accept the extreme frequencies produced by Rock & Metal. What you can listen is a lumpy and muddy music.
3) Swallow The Sun’s The Morning Never Come is full of detailed textures, you have to let the high pitch shown. Treble 4 : Bass 1 is a good setting. If you set the ratio at Treble 4 : Bass 2, the Vast feeling will be gone.
Different sound systems produce different results, that’s why Hifi manufacturers always strive for accuracy in sounds. After you have got the best ratio, remember to write it on a small strip of paper and slip into the CD case, so that the next time you don’t need to adjust it over again.
16. OVERRATED & UNDERRATED ALBUMS
There are many overrated and underrated albums throughout these 40 years (1968-2013)- the complete Rock & Metal history. I would say underrated albums are always more than overrated albums over the years. More and more albums are selling in the market, a lot of back catalogue masterpieces are not possible to gain the same market attention as music labels have to make more room for new releases every month. Apart from this, there are still many factors causing such a bad situation.
16a) COMMERCIAL FACTORS
i) MAGAZINES
As we knew it all along, magazine publishers rely on advertisment spaces in their magazines to earn profit in order to survive. Saying something good about albums is always the golden rule and right direction to gain more business.
ii) ADVERTISING & PROMOTION
Listeners gain their first hand information about new releases from advertising and promotion campaigns conducted by music labels. The public is always vulnerable to the bombard of advertisements. They always have the mindset of - The product must be popular or else the advertisements would not be so frequent. I am so sorry to say that actually it is always the other way round. This is exactly the illusion that the advertisers wanted to create and project to you guys.
iii) TV & RADIO STATIONS
Music labels love TV and radio stations. Out of sudden, a DJ play a ‘Hit Song’ to impress audience which can create a very good effect. That‘s why people called it Pop songs (a song pop out in sudden). A Hit song is considered a teaser (like a movie teaser), it generates a false impression that the whole album must be as good as the Hit song. That’s why music labels like Hit song so much, if a musician has 1 Hit song 9 rubbish, the probability of an artist getting signed by a music label is 10 times higher than a musician has 10 good songs !
(note: A Hit song is not necessary defined as a good song, Hit song refers to a song that is easy to sing and easy to remember in order to give an instant impression to the listeners.)
16b) EMOTIONAL FACTORS
i) BILLBOARD 200
A lot of listeners follow the rankings of Billboard 200 and use it as their buying guide. I would say Billboard 200 is the least accurate guild in music industry. It is based on the weekly sales of albums in the United States but not the artistic value. The weekly chart begins on Monday and ends on Sunday due to new albums are usually released to the American market on Tuesdays.
If one album is not released on Tuesdays, it will lose quite a number of points and might not be able to have a good ranking. Furthermore, Imported albums are not eligible to the chart. They aim for their weekly profit more than providing listeners a good direction in music. In order to be ahead of all magazines, Billboard 200 also publishes a weekly magazine, it is purely a commercial tool to influence listeners emotionally.
ii) MUSIC CHARTS
I categorized Music Charts as an emotional factor but not a commercial factor as I do not have concrete proofs to show that any music label pay for the rankings. There are a lot of charts available in the world which are based on different ranking criterias, such as sales of albums, single’s popularity, readers or listeners’ poll, airplay, DJ recommendations, genre, etc. It is hard to be familiar with their rating systems and it is also hard to say if they are ‘commercially motivated’ by any musician or music label.
iii) PURISTS & FANS
Fans are the most influencial personalities in the music industry, especially when the fans become Purists. They are powerful as they don‘t explore much in music, they are extremely emotional, they can stick to one to two artists or bands for years. They buy all the releases of the musicians they like, regardless it is good or bad (of course to them all releases from their favorite artists/ bands are good). Their acceptance in new genre is low, to them any musical style must not be changed. They will not support any band that tries to explore new musical genre eventhough it is his/her favorite band. That’s why we called them “Purists”.
Fans usually play a role as music ambassadors for their favorite bands. They create a certain degree of promotion purpose and effect through ‘word of mouth’ in their circle. If your friends’ opinions on music are good for you are mainly decided by how well you have recognized their music taste.
iv) THE HISTORY
iv/a) Vocalist
Vocalist plays an important role in the sales of album. Most of the Rock & Metal beginners and average listeners only listen to the vocals. They are not yet able to merge the vocals with the sounds of musical instruments. When a famous vocalist leaves for another band, some fans will follow regardless his new musical works are good or not. Undoubtedly, if the sale of the his/her album is good, he/she will get more attention from the public, the second wave of music mob will follow. That particular album is very likely to become a ‘popular overrated’ album.
Whereas such situation is restricted to a band which is having a short history (says less than 10 years). For example, Kai Hansen left Helloween and form his own band Gamma Ray in 1990. With full support of great numbers of his fans, Gamma Ray’s debut album - Heading For Tomorrow was successful, it was considered a classic album by a lot of his fans eventhough to me it was only an average album.
On the other hand, If a band is having a longer history in music scene, their fans would tend to be more mature and sensible. The ‘phenomenon’ above mentioned is not likely to happen. For example, Rob Halford left Judas Priest in 1992 for his own band Fight, Fight failed to achieve a prominent recognition despite Rob Halford was “deified” as Metal God in Metal scene.
iv/b) Past Successful Release
If a band’s latest release is a masterpiece, their following album is very likely to be overrated. For example, when Metallica released their masterpiece album - Ride The Lightning in 1984, the sales was considered moderate in the fist few months as they were still considered a new band then. The album started gaining a very good popularity later, at that period of time, the band gathered a huge numbers of fans. When they released their next album - Master Of Puppet in 1986, without a second thought their fans rush for this album, this album became top-seller in the first two week, following weeks and months, new music mob follow the trend, Master Of Puppet became an iconic ‘overrated’ album in the past two decades.
iv/c) Geographic
Western music originated from the Europe. Most of the great musicians were europeans, UK produced least famous musicians in the past centuries. However U.K and U.S make music became commercial in the end of 20th century, U.S is currently the biggest music market in the world.
Naturally almost all musicians from every part of the world wants to make their name in the U.S, however it has not been an easy task. Most of the European heavy metal musicians are classically trained, they are fast learners, creative and always deliver music with depth. Unfortunately, they are mostly overlooked due to the aggresive competiotions in the U.S market. Certain degree of discrimination, lacked of promotion, ill-managed distributorship and restricted financial resources also contributed to this difficult situation in many ways.
16c) MUSIC CRITICS
Frankly speaking, music critics/reviews are not important to average listeners and it is always not an official post. The post was normally handled by the editor, senior employees or freelancer with music study background in publishing companies. Most of the music reviews in magazines and newspapers are actually fillers, they did not form the main part of the central objectives of a publication.
I have never seen many listeners read them seriously. To a serious listener, music reviews are extremely important as it creates resonance in between themselves and the music. Music dictionary defines “Music Criticism” as - The activity of judgments on the value of musical works. Yes, the artistic value has to be emphasized. However a lot of profit-orientated magazines, websites and newspapers have taken Music Journalistic Report as Music Critic which further decreased the value of it.
During the 70’s and 80’s music critics were conservative and unwilling to accept new musical genres. Many of the music critics even openly expressed their dislike of many new musical genres and extreme preference of particular music genres resulted many underrated albums at that period of time. They were actually having the same attitude as music purists and performed a lot of “massacre” in music scene.
The music critics in the early 90’s are the best among all. They were more impartial and less willing to be “motivated financially”. In the end of 90’s nobody was taking music criticism seriously anymore. Everybody can be a music critic on the internet (even a 12 year old kid), the dividing line between nonsense and good review is vague. Online music bloggers are to some degree displacing newspaper and magazine-based music critics. Some established websites have more than 100 freelance music critics (most of them are bloggers and students) write in everyday. You definitely have to use your own judgement to assess if it is a music review or just a music report.
Every music critic judges music based on their own criterias and preferences. Smaller websites also have hundreds of students filled in the voluntary posts. In order to survive, music critics in music magazines are getting more and more “friendlier” to albums resulted more and more overrated albums in the market. Ironically, it didn’t encourage buying interest in the market. To believe or not to believe ? Be selective.
