Another great one! Though I'm sure most of us feel like we are barely keeping up with the concepts, this is the kind of breakdown I love to see. "Why is this so weird and funky and satisfying?" Then giving us a smorgesborg of reasons why. Getting through the progression and feeling that "Creep" like IV to iv and then that odd jump back to the beginning of the progressions! I vicariously got the zest of why you wanted to break this thing down. Excellent. Also, Krallice was great here in Philly! Hope you enjoyed it up there. Just two hours of pure brilliance! I ran into Jamie from Horrendous afterwards. We both felt like it was our weird non-religious version of church.

So glad you brought them up, I use to say Bjørk is meeting metal ;-). I love that record, you can here it very much without being tired, cause of the many (in that time it was made) "strange" ryth/riifs

Meshuggahntastic!! \m/

Reddit sent me. This video has been hyped up a lot for me. So lets see how it goes, im stoked!

Protest The Hero is definitely 100% music, they're my favourite band. Everything from Kezia to present is incredible. I always describe the band as "whimsical" because they're so quirky and fun but in the heaviest way. I feel like Scurrilous was peak whimsy. Great video, though I'm not the most educated on music theory so there were some new concepts introduced to me here. XD

Hell ya, this is a juuuiicy riff

This is actually one of my favorite sections in all of prog metal!

The moment I saw "Gardenias" I was like 'It better be THAT riff' Hell yeah!

Filing away "hyperbeat" for future use against people that are just trying to get through the day, thanks again.

You explain music in the best way I have seen in this platform. It's always a joy to watch your videos! Hope there's some early-era Kayo Dot analysis at some point (I just noticed I wasnt subbed with this account, here goes a sub)

Sounds very "salsa", like some of Atheist's parts

I'm a little late to the party, but I love all your BTBAM content. Any plans to do some analysis on Colors II?

Great video as usual. Some extra info to chime in, this section is essentially a rushed son montuno in 7/8. Why: You're getting the tumbao feel plus the typical accent on the last beat. Tonal ambiguity between the iv and I as the tonic is prevalent in Latin American music in general. The chord progression is built around the Andalusian cadence. Flat tonal keys are very typical in the style, as they accommodate the brass section's transpositions. All of those are what one could call basic building blocks of the genre.

Totally irrelevant information: "schema" is also the Swedish word for "schedule" (specifically referring to "school timetable").

Functional harmony! Love it! Glad you're going to be looking at more harmony related stuff in the next few videos. Quick comment about that last Ab7. I agree it's kind of a mislead, where the typical secondary dominant motion would bring us to Db (V). But I think there are some other good ways you could look at this functionally. If we treat the Ebm as the tonic, then the overall progression has the feel of IV / V / i, which is non-diatonic, but also typical of the melodic minor setting which is often used to reflect a strong/leading melodic contour from C to D to Eb (in this key). Another option is that since you're expecting the Ab7 to be the V7 of V, you could actually think of this as the bVII7 of V instead. This bears a strong resemblance to the 'backdoor progression' relative to a tonic Bb... you have Gb (mediant substitution of iv) / Ab7 (bVII7) / Bb (I). And then from there the labile Bb becomes a V and you embrace the original key once again.

Nice!!!!

First video I watched, instantly subbed

I'm a simple man: I see Protest the Hero, I press like

I remember listening to PTH back when only Kezia was out and just remember thinking how could guys so young create such complicated music. Then Fortress came out and that solidified my status as a fan. Every album they've made is fantastic.

Hi love this channel

"Figure it out" is this how metal nerds say "git gud"? Great to see you back.

God this channel rules in every sense of the word! Also the baroque version at the end via harpsichord is literally what I needed

Yes!

those first 4 bars of the bass riff are gonna be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. jesus

Another great one!

Stop don't hug me virtually I'm going to develop a parasocial father-son relationship with you nooooo

First!!!!!!!!

We are so back

Would you say that Origin's riffs are usually based on a particular mode? Sounds modal, always resolving at the same pedal tone (by way of the flat 2), little harmonic movement (i.e., any kind of chord progressions - forgive my amateur understanding!)

Nice analysis bro. Defeated Sanity are excellent song writers; brutal and intelligent riffing without ever degrading into an incoherent riff salad like so many within the genre.

Deathspell Omega really know how to utilize bends to create broader soundscapes and give a more unique sound to their music.

Gorguts analysis! The fathers of dissonant death metal!

Just saw them last friday. Truly remarkable performance. Never seen anything like it really.

160 bpm...but double time 😈

6:25 oh hey sounds like Meshuggah! Wait no that’s Panasonic Youth

As a drummer tryna learn this song, this guitar video is super helpful

1:53 2:01 2:05 2:08 2:11 2:15 2:18 4:25 7:29 7:39

Dude never skipped neck day

This is, honestly, one of my keast favorite Meshuggah songs. Don't get me wrong, it's incredible, and I've seen it live, which is another level of technicality, but it is vastly overshadowed by so many ither great Meshuggah songs, I skip over it more than any other

One of the best albums ever. Thanks for breaking it, down. Love the shirt

im going to read into it, i love interviews. congratulations on finishing it

"I automate my right hand to move as fast as it can without reference to the beat, while my left hand has to hear with the slower beat" now I feel less bad about not being able to tremolo pick riffs like that at 250+ quarter notes pm sixteenth notes. although some people can. i blame it on being left handed

I remember watching one of your videos, maybe end of 2022, where you said you’re taking a hiatus from making videos due to your dissertation. I was bummed but totally understand life goals getting in the way of KZbin. I searched for your page today to see if there was anything posted and to my surprise, plenty to run through! Thanks for coming back. I love the theory. Congratulations on finishing your dissertation!

Here's hoping you still check the comments. Regarding transcriptions of the fast section of Prancer, this is my understanding of your arguments: 1. These kinds of sections are not aligned to any grid. 1a. Existing transcriptions are wildly conflicting with each other and neither right, nor wrong. 1b. By visualizing the section electronically and counting the differences in time, we can see that the rhythms are not repeating. 1c. DEP themselves do not perform the rhythms consistently live. An additional point of discussion is that Ben Weinman himself commented on the video. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but my interpretation of Weinman's comment is that he confirmed that these sections do not rigidly adhere to a grid, and that future performances were about trying to recreate the feeling of the initial demos. Again these are my words and not Weinman's. This video, combined with Weinman's comments should be enough to close the door on these fast sections, but a part of me still feels like they can be represented math. I have two additional nuggets to contribute to the discussion: 1. You can find a videos of Billy Rymer performing Prancer here on youtube to the studio recording. In these videos, he performs these fast sections accurately enough that the live kick and snare hits sound as one with the recording. To me, the fact that the live snare hits do not sound like they're making a flam with the recording indicates that Rymer is recreating these rhythms with a very consistent level of accuracy. 2. There's another video on KZbin by Signals Music Studio where someone visualized the rhythm of Master of Puppets, and using some division concluded that the odd time bar in the verse is actually a bar of 21/32. The author of the video however, doubts that Metallica intended to have a bar of 21/32, and would have an extremely hard time counting 21/32 at tempo, and thus probably think of the bar as "bah dum dum". I bring up this example however, because even if Metallica and teenagers at Guitar Center think of that bar as "bah dum dum", this bar is actually on a grid, even if the individual subdivisions of the grid (32nd notes at roughly 212 bpm) are too fast for people to perceive. Basically, I think that the fast sections of DEP might be still be on a grid, even if thinking of that grid is actually detrimental to performing the music. Also, the human ability to recreate a rhythm by feel allows us to access rhythms far, far, more sophisticated than anything we can feel/conceive of. Love the video, sorry this comment was so long.

the link is broken :(

Every now and again I’ll get this riff stuck in my head and scramble through my death metal playlist trying to find out which song has it

Very cool analysis. I was always drawn to this particular riff as well and recently figured it out for violin.

Phenomenal ❤ I can't wait to set aside some time and really dig into the dissertation... And steal every idea I possibly can 🙌

Congrats! Is the dissertation up somewhere else? I don't have access to downloads on the Columbia site.

I still dont understand exactly what you were studying.