First of all... You Might be saying ''Three in one day? You've GOTTA be un-employed!'' - I know, I've posted a stupid amount of blogs today, But the previous two I wrote a few days back and saved. I couldn't post them 'cus UG was spazzing, but The problem's sorted now, so no fuss!
Now, without further adue.... I will anounce something great and terrible (possibly just terrible, depends how you look at it).
GORECHILD Has a singer... a dark individual with a troubled past, an un-usual taste on trousers and a general dis-regard for his own well being - ME!
Sorry guys... that line was cheesier that the 80's and the 70's put together, but I just had to do it! Seriously now, I've been practicing vocals and it's one of those things that you've either got or you don't... and regardless of whether you can sing/snarl or not, you can still get make music - Look at ''lord worm'' of cryptopsy, or a more extereme example of debaucherous singing - ''britney spears''... they both sucked, but people still liked them. Hell, I ain't trying to win a popularity contest ('cus I wont!), I'm just trying to say that all it taks is the right motivation and you can do just about whatever you like.
Obviously, I'm a snarler - Don't just assume that 'cus I'm Welsh that I've got some beautiful clean voice, 'cus I don't. Singing is not what I wanted to aim for, snarling is - I know people are afraid of it, but who cares!
I've been practicing at this for years whenever I'd had a few beers and all was quiet, but I've never thought of making something serious about it. I've been practicing on random Black Metal lyrics from well established bands, and according to Spike's awe and my brothers shouts of ''Shut The Fuck Up, I'm Tryna' Sleep!'' I'm not doing too bad.
Much the same as everything in GORECHILD, nothing's clean or polished/finished yet, we're still at our very beginnings - But I have to say that I'd bet my good eye on me and Spike making one hell of a go at this band.
Undoubtably,
in the last few years many people in high and low places have been
saying that this and that is dead, from music genres to lifestyles. One
thing that I was racking my brains on was from a quote I'd seen on the
back of the prgram I got when I went to the Circus of Horrors.
The quote was on an advertisement for Whitby Goth Festival - They had
gathered a bunch of replies from music companies and random ignorant
passerbies who had commented against the festival. I thought it was a
great idea, pure irony like. There was a whole bunch of 'em - One said
''I Couldn't Tell Whether It Was A Man Or A Woman'', but the best one
was from Nazi Music Express (that's nme to you). They went and said
''Goth's Dead, Sez Us''... Can't you see somthing abit suspicious about
that?
Goth and other ''underground'' cultures are great. They yield some
fantastic people and they don't run on any inertia - they just ''Are''.
Everyone says that this and that is dead, but is any ''Scene'' truly
dead? NO - Ofcourse not. People choose their culture and live by it,
shit - There's STILL hippies in the world, there's new generations of
spaced out hendrix lovers appearing all the time.
The best thing about this issue is that if you look at the accusers
closely enough you become to realise a pattern. People like the Nazi
Music Express run on pure FAD, they need something to be making money
and to be at it's prime or they think that it's old and dead - Their
comments are purely based on anxiety, the need to feel valid through
the eyes of others. They have no culture, no spine and no sense of
taste... they're weak. Common culture and media hate subculture,
they're terrified of it. If you've ever seen a film where the bad guy
wasn't britich, a longhair or a black man, let me know - I'll be bloody
surprised!
Again, the comment strikes me as something that's truly invalid... If
Goth and other cultures are dead, can you possibly tell me when they
were alive? It was never popular or very noteable for moneymaking in
the first place!
Many say the same about Punk... I say, Go on the internet and look up
Punk bands, you'll find that there's more today than there's ever been.
It aint dead... the only people who say it is are the ones who are
likely to lose money from it! The only people who say Punk is dead are
the pussies who gave it up and came to regret it.
Though it aint my thing by far, there's still people who dress up in
victorian clothing - This is about the most extreme example of un-dead
culture, but it's proof that not even the victorians are dead (bugger!
falwed meself there abit...).
So, the next time that someone tells you that your culture doesn't
exist, kick 'em in the head and tell 'em it was me who told you to do
it.
Because
me and Spike are complete night-owls, we have alot of free time on
our hands at night. Aswell as mandatory drinking and the occaisional
game of *whispers* Warhammer we have alot of time left over to play
music...
But, if you've heard the noise even a 15w Bass amp
can crank out in the dead of night, the problem of noise pollution
and such is an inescapable one. Seeing as playing our instruments
unplugged yields little to no sound compared to levels I'm used to
working with in the daytime, I find it hard to do anything that's
entirely productive.
Realising this problem, I looked into
finding a way to keep myself musically occupied in the witching
hours, and I found that the one thing that I can do that is little
louder than a pen scribbling down on paper is to write lyrics.
Now,
I'm not claiming to be some lyrical genius, but I have had alot of
experience with writing - If anyone here is familiar with my DA page
(Unlikely at best!), I've got a whole series of short stories on
sci-fi/horror/ish stuff. I even wrote a short graphic novel a few
years back.
Though I've got experience with writing stories
(and if you've been stalking me on the forums, you'll see I have a
knack for lowering the tone in most musical arguments) It's still not
entirely easy to decide upon exactly what to do... So that's when I
thought to myself ''What Sort of Lyrical Direction Do I Want To
Take?''. Well, I'd obviously want to convey how I feel about the
world, and my stance towards common idealogy... No doubt that's a
No-Brainer, seeing as it's Black Metal and all!
But still, I
find that when people sing about themes and such that they've made up
from the top of their head, when listening to the lyrics you find it
all abit vague and confusing. I think a good place to start looking
for decent examples of heavily themed songs was by looking at Iron
Maiden's works, during the 80's. they sang about many age old
figureheads of empires and all the people that founded western
culture. Well, I think that ''Alexander The Great'' was a great song,
but singing about a prosperous and inspirational character isn't
clever enough for my liking, hence the reason why I'm turning that
ideology on it's head with the first song I'm writing -
''Attilla''.
I'm not sure whether people will be familiar with
Attilla The Hun, so I'll make this brief - He came from the eastern
steppe and he and all his horse riding mates united all of the hunic
clans and drove down onto the plains of europe, annihilating city
after city, country after country and so forth... He wielded a rusted
blade called ''The Scourge of God'' and his warriors specialised in
cavalry archery, which made them un-defeatable when they fought
against the slow moving heavy infantry armies of Europe. Though he
was seemingly unstoppable, his story ends when he meets the pope and
then sees some apparent error in his ways... Now, I know I've been
vague in describing such an essetial piece of history, but doesn't
the end of that story seem like utter BULLSHIT? I believe it was a
coverup, seeing as christians have to take a high-ground wherever
they can in history, I say that it was the pope and his dullards who
fled in fear, and when the Hunnic clans ran out of food and inertia,
they simply returned to the steppe.
Whether it was a cover-up
or not, I cannot prove it either way - Seeing as history's a murky
business that, for all we today know, could merely be a fiction. But
still, I think that honouring a warrior for his heroic deeds and not
for what he did to give me some apparently ''decent'' society
(alexader the great anyone?) is far better than glorifying any
character who apparently benefitted the west.
As for the song,
I've got a fair few of the lyrics sorted and I know that I'd like to
make it sound epic, much like the ''Battle Metal'' of europe... and
seeing as Attilla was the knife to the throat of mono-theisism, I
think that throwing in Black Metal elements would compliment the
theme well.
There's only one problem... I bet it's been done
before!
Inspiration for music is a random thing, people can get it from the most unlikely places (look at Cannibal Corpse! Love those guys...). Back in the day where I could see through both eyes and I was morally opposed to strummers, I was drumming with the band and I'd occaisionally get these skittish bursts of creativity - We'd be doing a bloody wednesday cover or something and out of the relative harmony of the band I'd whip out some ridiculous, un-articulated babble of cymbal and snare. Being spontaneous on the drums when you're comepletely useless at them is a great thing - Not only the neighbours complain, but builders five doors down listening to dance or trance or prance or whatever shite actually tell ME to keep it down... As you could imagine, I just kept on playing! At the time I was full of ideas, and even though I could make one hell of a noise, I couldn't get anything coherent down.
The weird thing about the guitar is that I've learned how to make mistakes, now you might be saying ''Why the hell do you have to learn THAT?'' - Well, I hadn't leanred how to cope with making mistakes on the drums, probably 'cus I was mightily self-concious at the time, and when I fucked up the beat on the drums I'd think to myself the neighbours were laughing at me or something stupid like that... It's funny to you, But it was a big problem for me! Anyways, one day me Spike and Drew were having ourselves a bit of a jam, and I'd managed to get together some nice drum riffs that were working really well - They were even cohesive! With my Rude cymbals and my Pearl JJ sig. Snare I was owning everyone with a quiet TV in the neighbourhood... and just when I thought everything was perfect, I went and made a right balls of it. We got to the bridge between the verse and the chorus, and I got the drum riff mixed up... At first, I was a little stressed, but we went back and did it again and then came the bridge, where I fucked it up again. Spike and Drew kept on playing, as if to try and pave over my rage, But it didn't work. They both stalled and we tried it from the beginning again, but this time the singnal to start again was fairly short, as they could tell I was pretty close to snapping. So again, I get through the intro and the verse in style, and I could slowly feel my rage subsiding... and as the bridge came, I had gotten it mixed up again.
This is the bit I'm truly proud of. Spike was standing opposite me with a kind of fearful look on her face, and as soon as I fucked it up - They knew I was going hostile. I slammed down one of my sticks harder than advised on my snare, denting the skin right in... The other stick got launched at the wall, and seeing as the room was fairly small, it bounced around 'til it came to rest somewhere amongst the coats. I let out a ton of abuse to everyone in the room and legged it outta there before I did any real harm. So, in my blind rage I went downstairs and into the garden to cool off. Just when I though I was getting it all together, the sound of drumming suddenly hits me - Drew was on the drums, trying to ''fix'' my little problem... So, being the level headed guy I am, I grabbed the biggest butchers knife out of the draw, walked back outside and vented my rage on my back garden's many plants.
You could try to imagine the sort of explaination I had to conjure up for this destruction when my family got back home, But you wouldn't come up with one that worked. Saying that - When they got back, I'd cooled off and got drunk with the band. They were more likely to find us all drunk singing together rather than they were to find us jamming... Good times, and many good lessons learned the hard way. Now, hopefully without flaunting anymore nostalgiac stories I can get back on to topic...
Inspiration! That's it, yes, where was I? Well, I was thinking where I got it. Back in the band, I got tons of inspiration, but It's difficult to tab a drum riff during the early hours of the morning! That's when I started playing guitar, but seeing as I wasn't totally devoted to the instrument as I am now, ideas were few and far between - So it died out.
But, not so long ago I kept on getting ideas for guitar instrumentals... You may ask ''Why Instrumentals?'' - Probably 'cus they're simply a tune that's free. To me, a good instrumental is truly letting your guitar ''Sing'' without the boundaries of verses and choruses. The tune meanders from one end of the track to another as your will commands, and, In my head I can construct these instrumentals with ease - My only problem is forgetting them before I can get them down on paper. My inspiration is a delocate thing, and if I hear any other tune, what ever was in my head is ''Taped-Over'' and I forget what I was thinking - That's a problem, but unlike the drums, If I wake up in the middle of the night after experiencing a hallucination from not sleeping or eating too much chesse (???) then I can play my guitar and note down the tune I've thought of, and seeing as I can play it quietly I can do as much as I like, whenever I like.
I think that It's best to work with the full potential of the ideas that I get for now, rather than simply dumbing them down into paramaters that would make it easier for a singer to rule the roost. In a couple of years from now I'm not going to have the same musical freedom, seeing as I'll mostlikely be working with other musicians who don't share the same whacky auditory hallucinations that I can conjure up and spurt out in the form of song. I think that my sources of inspiration are too varied to note upon, but I know they'll take me far. At the moment, I'm only going to be working on instrumentals, seeing as making tracks consisting of only Guitar and Bass with typical lyrical derived structure would not sound very interesting.
So, I'll keep at my work and I'll keep churning out ideas 'til I can get 'em recorded. Simple...
Even though I can plan in detail what I'm doing with myself musically, I can never figure out exactly where I get my inspiration. Sometimes I get it when I'm on a bike ride, other times when I'm in the bog. Annoyingly, it comes to me best when I'm not with my guitar at hand - But wherever I am, I can never see where my idea are coming from, and I think that's weird. As an old skool Black+Thrash metal fan, I know that a dark direction is one I want to pursue, and I know that when it comes down to it, I could probably churn out lyrics and vocals myself - Which would give me more autocratic status in a band. Seeing as I was previously a drummer, the idea of having people follow my direction is an intriguing one, and seeing as I am pretty experienced at nearly every role in a band, I think it'd be good to fill the final gap and take up the mic. In time, that is... for now I've got a ton of guitaring to worry about!
As well as recovereing from a mystery stomach illness, I've been working on some progressive dark metal riffs with Spike... Hence the reason why all's been quiet on here for a while!
I found an awesome setting on my Boss HM-2 Effects Pedal a few days back and I got some heavy use out of it, but unfortunately the batteries keep running out every couple of hours, so I couldn't get a decent metal sound out of my Marshall... This has been seriously frustrating me, seeing as pedals tend to go through batteries so damn fast. My first solution in mind to this was to get a proper power supply (as I've heard that the knock-offs don't power the pedal correctly, and make it sound terrible). But, when I wa sout looking out for a decent power supply, I found something which I thought I wouldn't be bothered about simply 'cus of the price - A Boss GT-8 multiple effects pedal.
As ridiculously complicated as it looks to me, I've heard some decent opinions of this and they all say that figuring it out is simply down to preference and time - Both of which are things that I have in abundance. Now, I am considerably skeptical of some pedal functions, seeing as they can be used to make you sound like a better player than you actually are by drowning what you're doing in too many effects, but that's not the sort of function I'm aiming for. I think it'd be cool to diversify the sounds which my guitar can produce, and seeing as I've been developing my alternate picking and alternating strumming, I'm sure I'll get plenty of use out of it.
The best bit that I've seen listed amongst the functions is the way that it senses how hard you are strumming, and changes between pre-set functions by sensing whether you're strumming hard or soft. that to me has got to be the best bit - It almost completely invalidates the purpose of having a pedal on the board! The expressive pedal looks pretty whacky, too.
No doubt, alot of these functions are advanced and aren't usually used by intermediate novices like myself, but I'm always trying to try something new with my guitar (don't take that the wrong way...).
So I'll be deciding if I'm getting this over the next few days, as well as working on yet more riffs with Spike.
Establishing your own style is the fevered dream of a madman if you cannot choose how to tune your guitar... So It's A Good Job I'm Not Doing Anything Hugely Decisive Yet!
I've been testing out all sorts of tuning today, I started by tuning my Warbeast back up to E standard and I realised why I downtuned it in the first place, 'cus it SUCKS in E standard! A B.C. Rich made of basswood was not designed to play anything soft or light, and I don't own an ''A.B.C Rich'' as you may have been mislead into thinking 'cus of the bad beginnings of this sentence.
Enough stupidity! Back onto topic - I tried some of the drop-tuning, such as drop D and drop C. I didn't like those settings as they just sounded abit naff to me, so I went and tuned it to two steps down (C Standard, is it?).
C,F,A#,D#,G,C is no doubt as wacky as a wacky Russian playing wack a mole - But that doesn't mean it doesn't sound awesome. Just to take the piss, I played some of ''Come As You Are'' by Nirvana, but I just had to stop after a couple of seconds 'cus it was so horrific - Good 'ol Kurdt was spinning in his grave. But aside from grossly insulting the dead, such low tuning gives off evil sounds that, if played in the vicinity of a graveyard, would most likely bring the dead back to life... I'm referring to the bass that this beast can give if in low tunings. I've currently got it set up with 12-56 gauge Ernie Ball titanium crazy strings, which complement low tunings well (not to mention invalidating bassists in your midst).
Big, heavy chords sound fantastic. They roar away and scare the hell out of the local wildlife, but such a low, booming sound comes with a price - Lead patterns don't work at all. Even black metal lead patterns sound far too low! This problem is something that I'll simply have to endure, as chording away in this setting sounds too good to throw away. Lead patterns aren't all that common in Horror/Punk or Horror/Metal, and seeing as it'd be Spike who's in charge of solos, I think I'll try and make what I can of such a low setting for now.
Anything less than evil styles will sound terrible in this tuning, hence the reason why I'll probably use my brothers Stagg L-320 for classic rock/grunge riffs when the mood takes me. because I've got the Stagg to fall back on my Warbeast's keeping it's new evil voice, and considering I've got a week off coming up, I'm gonna play around with this new sound 'til I injure my hands again!
I've been doing a fair bit of reading on music theory lately, and seeing as I'm on a couple days of easing-off jamming so much, I think it's a great time to make a start on the gargantuan(ish) task of learning the language of music.
Mostly, I've been reading articles on UG that simplify the jargon consisting of italian and other musician talk. I tried to understand the more complex theory from some of my books at home, but considering how quickly I tried and failed, I think it's best to keep things simple for now (this is where people come in and start patting me on the head...).
At first I was entirely skeptical about music theory when considering it's complexity and it's boundaries, but after reading decent opinions of musicians who had learned it, I found that it was not as ''Concrete'' as I had first expected. As far as I see, musical theory is not a strait jacket to govern you with rules, it is a tool that can further your expressive ability. Brilliant, no doubt - and also a bugger to learn!
But, in time I'll have taken from theory what I need and from that I can develop my writing further. It's great to find out that the governings of music are in fact, mere guidelines.
As for the writing, I'm still hoping to go in a Horror/Metal direction alongside Spike, and then when we can demonstrate our musical crudentials, the task of recruiting a drummer will be much easier. I'd say that our recordings could appear on My Band's (or duo's...) profile anywhere between 6 weeks from now to 6 months from now. For those of you who are a little sketchy on what to expect, well... That's a tricky one! Horror/Metal is fairly non-existant, and is essentially a re-vamp of Horror/Punk styles such as ''The Misfits'' and ''Frankenstein Drag Queens from Planet 13'' and fusing it together with Metal... Still following?
I chose Horror Metal because It's not quite so slack-jawed as Punk and not as advanced as Metal, but lies somewhere in between. It shouldn't be too difficult to develop as it usually consists of simple combinations of Rhythm/Lead guitaring that I can manage on ''me bill'' is we say in Britain, and pumped along by strong, fast driving bassing that keeps the sound spooky, but not melodramatic. You could possibly look at it as simplified Black Metal.
Horror Metal is driven along by the Bassist in my experiences, ''Maniac Spider-Trash'' is the best example of the style and my source of inspiration - The Bassist has a very important place in the band, driving along simple but flareful lead/rhythm guitar patterns - So another reason why this direction is favourable is because Spike is such a strong bassist. She's been playing her Bass for four years, wheras I have only been playing the guitar for 5 weeks. This way, Spike gets to play in her Black Metal style, wheras I get to gradually progress to her level. Hell, I doubt anyone else could have thought of another plan that would have suited us both as well.
So, with all the direction, gear and support I have, I'm sure that in no time you'll be hearing more from us.
When first trying to take inspiration from music, I didn't think it would really matter where you got it - As long as you followed your instincts you'd do fine. Well, I've been following my instincts and they've lead to a whacky conclusion.
When I looked at other musicians that took inspiration from the same places as I did, I realised it may be a bad thing to do, considering that I don't like the state of modern music for the moment. I find that all genres are incredibly un-original... trivium, anyone? They took (among other things...) inspiration from metallica, and they ended up being the most generic, un-original metal band on the planet. Obviously, they didn't do it by accident because they were obviously in it for the money - and each to their own. Still, I didn't want to end up sounding exactly like other people, seeing as my previous band was practically a tribute band it was so Wednesday-13 orientated.
When I look at many modern rock/metal groups that formed after the 80's, I see that unless they did something that was entirely new (Turisas, Rob Zombie...) then they ended up sounding like an bit 80's tribute with a contemporary twist on their predecessors original music (such as heavy effects or screaming more often). Considering that I'm not very fond of post 2000 music, I've decided to go back to my roots for abit and start listeneing to ''The Doors'', ''Jimi Hendrix'' and ''Pink Floyd'' again. Though they are all entirely unique, the people who they influenced still hand a unique sound and an un-deniable flare that's still evident to this day.
I think that much older music is much less scene-obsessed and much more pure in it's makings. No doubt, pre-80's rock&roll is a goldmine of inspiration that deserves to be explored.
After some pretty intensive practicing over the last 5 weeks, my hands are seriously starting to feel the strain. Playing any full riff I've recently written is becoming a tremendously painful task, and trying to concentrate on the music I'm playing is hard enough without the distraction of my hands seizing up on me.
Though my guitaring hands are feeling the strain, my typing hands are overworked - Seeing as I've just set up the UG band page for ''GORECHILD'', my new band - Sexy little name, innit?
It's a little bit devoid of activity for the moment, I'm currently working on getting the money together for some basic home recording equipment. Though me and Spike are only a Duo for the moment, we can sure as hell shake and wake the neighbours! I do enjoy playing music with my band (even if it is somewhat shorthanded...) and I'm sure anyone who hears our music will enjoy it, too - Hence the reason why we're writing all we can now, so as soon as we acquire our recording equipment we can get our music on the internet.
Also, with Spike's NT 5-String B.C. Rich Zombie Bass on the way from the states, we've got alot to look forward to at the moment. We've also figured out a little known way of tuning the 5 string bass that encompasses 2-step down tuning that starts on a G... Whacky? No doubt, but worth a try!
Providing I haven't been put away for killing everyone who lives in the surrounding area with a wall of solid noise, 'til next time...
The technique I've just discovered no doubt has some big fancy-fied italian name for it, and the armies of horse-toothed billionaire 15 years olds are no doubt going to blitzkrieg over my little blogs for giving it a different name, but for those of you who know the value of a dollar, please hear me out!
Now, I had a problem when jamming alongside my bassist and in trying to create new riffs for us both, because when do you really listen to a guitar and a bassist in a duo? There's allways drums, vocals and other guitarists to consider, and no matter whether I played rhythm or lead, our music sounded flat and fairly dull.
But, I think I've found a way to fix this problem. I was trying to play some Slayer riffs when I realised that some of their individual guitar riffs contained two or more rhythm sets, even though there was only one guitar playing the riff. Through combining open rhythm sustains with agressive lead patterns, you end up with two set of rhythm in one riff, that a lone guitarist such as myself can play with ease... Such as this :-
{--3-}{--3----4---5-} {--3-}{--3----4---5-} {00-0}{00-000-000-0} ...Alternate picking between the open and the double notes gives a single riff a ''layered'' feel, combining rhythmic open notes with teethy doubles. This playing pattern no doubt comes in handy to bands that are abit short-handed with only one guitarist on board.
No doubt, many people will allready know of this, but as a fairly new guitarist I'm pretty chuffed that I discovered this technique without official tutoring - Kudos to Kerry King and all his big angry mates from Slayer!
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decayingdave's blogs, last updated : March 10, 2009
