The Tech/Extreme Prog metal appreciation

Plankowner wrote: Wish I caught them in a small venue.  I really don't know how Mastodon escaped me for so long.  Yeah, and I noticed the post recommending thing you do k, Scale the Summit is up after In Mourning and Into Eternity.  They only have one album?  Monument?

Man, I wished we could see as many bands as you guys can. I've only seen Iron Maiden, Dream Theater and of course Between The Buried And Me, which I think stole the show

Check DAATH .....

I just put together my concert list tonight in fact for the next 3 months.

The T wrote: burritounit wrote: The T wrote: burritounit wrote: Plankowner wrote: hehe, well Sebastian I pay attention to what people play and I remember you posting it in the What Are You Listening To Now thread, hehe.... and your comment about them.  What are the vocals like? wow. thats good David, cause I have really short term memory Well they sound pretty harsh, and often somewhat described as emo, I guess. I suck at describing bands, maybe you should check their myspace and have a listen at their samples from their NOCTURNE album.   The Human Abstract combines the good elements of Protest the Hero (which in my opinion aren't many... too much caffeine) with metalcore, psychedelia here and there and emo... yes, emo. A few tracks sound quite MTV-ready ... But they have good melodies... I gave it three stars in my review... Pretty promising band, way better than Protest The Hero... Well I heard their new song from their upcoming album and it doesn't sound that promising. But better wait till they release the album to judge it properly   They're coming with a second album? That's good.. I'm commenting on "nocturne" of course.... Maybe the second one will achive a greater status.. or will ruin them...

I'm not sure if it will, but their new song didn't sounded that promising it sounded very EMO IMHO, and yes Nocturne is a good one


Edited by burritounit - July 11 2008 at 03:00

The T wrote: Check DAATH .....   (that was a detailed advice...)

Plankowner wrote: The T wrote: Check DAATH .....   (that was a detailed advice...)   the hinderers album?

Scale the Summit

BaldFriede wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: certainly playing slower is less technical. But if you play a piece much slower than usual it becomes more difficult to get the timing right. What confuses me though about your example is that at the end you switch from "technical" to "expression", which is an entirely different subject. And about this the tech/extreme genre in general: Let me emphasize once again that this isn't just about speed. Those bands don't play fast all the time. They also don't play technically demanding stuff all the time, without any pauses/breathing spaces. Mike, it seems you either don't want to get the point deliberately or don't have much of an idea of playing an instrument. Even on the piano there are some techniques which only take effect when playing slowly. On the guitar this is even more so. Creating the tone of an instrument is highly important too, and some of the techniques only work when playing slowly. Listen to Steve Hackett playing acoustic guitar; you can learn a lot of things from that. Steve Howe, on the other hand, is definitely not an acoustic guitar player; his tone is bland compared to that of Hackett, who as a much richer spectrum of sounds. I don't deny that playing fast is an important aspect of technique, but your statement is plain wrong. Some notes take time to build up; if you play fast then they can't.

I assure you that I'm a skilled player ... currently on the guitar, but also on keyboards. So please don't treat me like a total idiot. It's you who are constantly confusing technique with feeling/emotion/expression. These two aspects are largely independent of each other. There may be players who have great technique, but no feeling in their playing. There may be highly emotive players with limited technical ability. And there may be highly technical players who also have great feeling. And the latter may be able to play fast and remain to be expressive.

Let me try to be more specific about this statement of mine that you mentioned:

"If you play the same piece of music at a reduced speed, it becomes easier to play". *EVERY* musician will confirm that this rule of thumb is true, except - like I said above - that if you extremely reduce the speed it becomes more difficult to get the timing right, at least without a metronome. (or musicians may fall asleep between notes)

BaldFriede wrote: Jean and I also never said that these so-called "tech" bands play fast all the time. They are, however, called so for playing very fast, and we wanted to point out that there is a lot more to technique than that. That's all.

They are *not* called Tech because of the speed. However, as shown by my rule of thumb, technical pieces tend to contain more fast parts than non-technical pieces. Technical implies hard to play, and the parts which are hard to play almost always contain fast parts ... which doesn't mean that the song itself is fast. Of course there are other aspects than speed which can increase the level of difficulty ... you may need to stretch fingers more than usual (big intervals), on the guitar there may be difficult chords (barre chords etc) or chord changes which are difficult to memorize, multi finger tapping, pinch harmonics which depend on the exact position of the plectrum, parts which require you to silence strings with parts of your left hand while it is playing something, whammy bar acrobatics, difficult bends, jumps across the fretboard ... the list is endless.

The point is: All these techniques may be difficult in themselves, but they all become more difficult to play if you increase speed. None of them becomes more difficult to play if you reduce speed.



Edited by MikeEnRegalia - July 11 2008 at 08:43

^ "technique" is a very broad term. There are some techniques which were specifically designed to convey emotion ... vibrato for example. In any case, what we call "tech" here is music which contains advanced techniques and/or a great number of them.

I know what you mean by "less is often more" ... but you say it yourself: "often" ... not always. Sometimes speed can add to a piece of music, especially if there are frequent breaks and/or interludes. Indeed many ultra-fast songs feature extended half-time feel bridges.

BaldJean wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ "technique" is a very broad term. There are some techniques which were specifically designed to convey emotion ... vibrato for example. In any case, what we call "tech" here is music which contains advanced techniques and/or a great number of them. I know what you mean by "less is often more" ... but you say it yourself: "often" ... not always. Sometimes speed can add to a piece of music, especially if there are frequent breaks and/or interludes. Indeed many ultra-fast songs feature extended half-time feel bridges. I never denied speed can add to the music. however, technicality is still a lot more than mere speed. I vividly remember Mrs. Jenkins, my first piano teacher, tell me: "you hit the right notes, girl, but you don't make them sound". she was right, of course! exactly what I said. you can make your guitar sound in many different ways, and some of the techniques for it are highly advanced. if your guitar teacher did not tell you that he was not worth his salt. exactly what I said. Am I posting in Chinese? the faster you play though the less possibilities you have to manipulate the sound (I am speaking of an acoustic guitar here). and making the guitar sound in different ways is a technical aspect; you can exactly describe what you have to do for it. This is a bit like the rule of thumb I posted above ... a good rule, but there are exceptions. Some techniques are only available at high speed ... a prime example on the guitar would be tremolo picking. Or sweep picking for that matter. and since you mentioned vibrato: I think we both agree that a vibrato is totally lost on a note when playing at high speed; the whole idea of the vibrato is that slight "ow-wow" sound (in lack of a better description of it). I once saw a video though in which a guitar player seriously explained how he could put a vibrato on a note at high speed. you had as much of a chance to hear that vibrato though as you have of hearing a triangle pianissimo when the whole orchestra is playing fortissimo Of course. Vibrato is a technique which doesn't scale well with speed ... feedback would be another example, it simply needs its time to develop (except for crazy amp settings that for example noise artists use). However, other techniques scale quite well ... legato licks are a good example and string bending are good examples. Also, even while playing fast licks you can use techniques like vibrato. Often "flurry" fast licks end with a long note with tasteful vibrato.