Riff Analysis 022 - Meshuggah Catch 33 part 1

[@thekellykellestine]

The line "The struggle to free myself from restraints, becomes my very shackles," sums up the search for a unified way of counting Meshuggah, unless you're Meshuggah.

[@AlexTechNicol]

My trailer broke down and I’m stuck at the shop for three hours. Thank you for making the next 15 minutes of it awesome.

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Oh man that sucks, good luck!

[@blendernoob64]

Catch 33 is almost like a Drone metal or Stoner metal album to me because of how hypnotic and sludgy it is, Djent’s Dopesmoker, but Meshuggah being Meshuggah had to make it really mechanical and even more trippy because of the slight changes to the main riff. I love this album SO MUCH!

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Love that description!

[@devm5233]

holy shit. how have i never recognised this as a sludge record before. you are absolutely right

[@TheR00ler]

Catch 33 as best Meshuggah album is the patrician opinion. edit: Also, the breakdown at 2:05 in Dehumanization is one of the best breakdowns ever imo. I feel like the whole album builds up to that point, and then you hear Jens say: "...one syllable, one vowel." and everything comes cascading down. So awesome.

[@LiquidfireS6]

Goosebumps, everytime.

[@boarderking133]

and then the next vowel AAAAAAAAAAAA

[@supermot34]

I do think Koloss and Violent Sleep are better albums, but Catch 33 does something very special and unique, unlike anything else in music anywhere

[@Stomach_achesx]

hell yeah. first time i heard it i froze

[@beenmicrophone5817]

my thoughts exactly.

[@thebubonicj]

That's kinda how I've always seen it in my head. Like Morse code, dots and dashes

[@thekellykellestine]

Glad I'm not the only one

[@LuisSilva-ly4ni]

Yes, your thought is correct. They compose a serial rhythm, then apply it to a 4 by 4 time signature, disreagarding the compass bars, and there they go. After 4 entires bar, the cycle starts over. That creates an incredible effect.

[@leemorris4838]

Same

[@Rxbandit421]

Hell do 75 more meshuggah breakdown videos I’ll watch them all! I love your breakdown.

[@galen981]

I consider this album to be the best album they've made. And I still maintain that it has one of the best climaxes ever written on a metal album.

[@TheSquareOnes]

Very cool, this is the kind of detail that can get lost on a casual listen but still adds so much to the music.

[@Bennick323]

Catch 33 is solidly my favorite Meshuggah album. There's so many interesting things going on that I don't have the theory vocabulary to talk about. Thanks for helping me with that.

[@davh8741]

So so so glad youve decided to take this on. Catch 33 is my absolute favorite. My band's committed to covering In Death - Is Life/Death live in a month and even though I can tap out the kick patterns against a quarter note purely through memorization, I have virtually zero clue how the riffs are structured. This shit is so helpful. (Also cant wait to hear you get THAT riff from Sum.)

[@metalmusictheory5401]

That’s how I feel about idil and idid lol, I’ve memorized most of the riffs but a lot of it has no pattern (or if it does I haven’t mapped it out). Godspeed, that’s an extremely ambitious cover project! Would love to see how it turns out

[@boarderking133]

The album that made me realize meshuggah genius. One of my few "masterpiece" albums.

[@oceanmachine1906]

Catch 33 is also my favorite Meshuggah album. It's also one of the most psychedelic albums ever made.

[@dustmemory9891]

Gotta love catch 33, I feel like I discover something new everytime I listen to it

[@gabriel77196]

as much as i love your rhythmic analysis, i think it'd be interesting to see an analysis of fredrik's soloing too. He has a very nice jazz fusion style soloing at times.

[@metalmusictheory5401]

I agree! Daniel Crawford has some great videos about it!

[@FreepowerUG]

@@metalmusictheory5401

[@Feverdream7777]

I propose the term: "Rhythmic Grid Notation"

[@LuisSilva-ly4ni]

Meshuggah, especially in Catch 33 (because it's a conceptual album) uses rhythm and melodic musical motifs. This is used by all the classical/érudite composers (YES, that's why "they are what they are"). In Catch 33, the first 3 songs (and others on the album) is where they establish THAT MOTIF. It is composed of 3 chromatic notes, as you can hear on the rhythm and lead guitar. They use the same 3 notes throughout the entire album. So, we are discussing the composer method of an extreme metal band that uses western érudite musical concepts. MIndblowing, to say the least.

[@leemorris4838]

This album blew my mind as a teenager. Especially the first three tracks being the same riff morphing. Awesome hearing an analysis of it.

[@ewgf6667]

Yoooo I been waiting for this one!! Let's gooo catch 33 best meshuggah album by farrrr

[@codyhereford2217]

Catch 33 is also my favorite.it an album meant to be listened to in its entirety. Thanks for the vid

[@guitarplayer]

Loved this one, well done on the visuals. I mapped out this first chunk of the record in Powertabs back in the day (all in 4/4 of course) and it was always so satisfying to just let it play and see these patterns unfold.

[@whoisthedave1]

Holy shit, Powertabs. I have not heard that name in ages.

[@metalmusictheory5401]

There's definitely something soothing about seeing everything get out of step then line up! And yeah the most popular GP tab right now on UG has it all in a million different time signatures, if I tabbed it I would do it in 4/4 like you did!

[@guitarplayer]

@@whoisthedave1 Right? I thought the same thing typing it out.

[@JaMeshuggah]

Excellent way of explaining why this is so hard to play

[@awakecreate9244]

The more I watch this - the more I am convinced they just come up with an odd-sized riff loop and then simply copy/paste and trim it against 4/4 beat. The hard part then is remembering all of that to play live 🤯

[@summatsnotright]

Bruh, this is my favourite Meshuggah album. It always felt like a meditation on the concept of Meshuggas style to me, and I'm looking forward to your breakdown of this masterpiece, however sporadically released. Keep up the good work.

[@42k78]

Catch 33 was the album that made me a serious fan. I loved their earlier albums way more after this. Love this intro bit to the album and I'm happy you broke it down.

[@Big_Riff_Dawg]

All of this is brilliant. I always loved Catch 33 and I'm happy someone is putting the time in to really make it make more sense. I always appreciated its "lack of sense" and now I can really see how they were probably thinking when they wrote it. Put your balls in me and keep it up!

[@MFKitten]

Ha! Your graphic notation is exactly what I made up to explain to others in a band one of the riffs in Straws Pulled At Random that we were covering! I find that "piano roll" style notation like that is just so useful.

[@digikaininja5]

Not sure you gonna read this but if you do this is from all of us to you. Thank you for making sense of MESHUGGAH riffs using graphic notations etc. I Am 53, play bass (attempt is the right word). All-day long MESHUGGAH /Ron Jarzombek riffs/tonalities keep playing in my head. I watch your videos again and again and the other dude...Yogev.....you guys understand this music so well to even explain it. I am trying to figure out the time signatures and I am far from it but I will get there. If I knew you personally and stayed close to your vicinity, am sure you would drill the time signatures into my subconscious....I don't know where the bass notes land exactly...is it on the bass drum or snare of wheredafuq. But riffs of dissonance are epic and have given me a new way of life. If I do come up with something of a decent riff,I will send you the link. Thanx for all you do. Low-Key Bass Demon

[@TheGuywithaChannel]

I like the graphic notation you present here; it feels like a graphic representation of the kinds of spectrograms Olivia Lucas uses in her article. It's also much more visually accurate than traditional notation but still easy to read when listening/playing. Speaking of which, that article was thoroughly enjoyable too. Great work and thanks for doing what you do!

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Thanks so much!

[@JustLilGecko]

Catch 33 is one of the most beautiful albums ever made, and I can't explain that to any of my friends, even most of the ones who are otherwise into metal.

[@brandonwebley5545]

holy shit THANK YOU for doing this, i unironically only just found out about this band like 6 months ago at 30 yrs old and this album completely and utterly blew my mind, the first time since i was a teenager i found a band that got me hooked like this.. ended up spending a bunch of money on a 8 string just to try learn this

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Hell yeah, welcome to the obsession!

[@dexterdrifus3522]

Seriously the best channel on this website.

[@keflexx]

haha, the viewed commentary at the end is hilarious, keep on doing bro!

[@LiamGaughan]

Peak male performance at the end!! Agree with your comments re: playing it. Well done!

[@Rxbandit421]

Thank you scientists (something off Terraformer maybe?) or the Mars Volta breakdowns would be super sick. From what I’ve heard I’m loving satyr never heard them before.

[@andeesrecordcollectionoilp2757]

Thanks for diving into this album! This was and still is my favorite compositon period.

[@MassiveSpunge]

This is the best album (or sickest atleast) humanity has ever crafted. It is alien and unbelievable thought through.

[@VafaMottahedin]

Crazy that the album used DFH. Never heard any other 'real' professional bands record with DFH that sounds as good as this one does. I always thought the riff on this album was something special. Now I know why!

[@lamondsutherland4581]

That graphic notation is really neat! It kind of looks like the 'square notation' (sorry don't know what else to call it) you use to program beats in older drum machine software, which I guess is really fitting for Meshuggah. And does your tshirt say Satre? If so, this video just became a whole lot more highbrow than it already was.

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Lol shirt is Satyr! Great band from Atlanta. And yeah definitely looks like MIDI, but I guess not to scale-though maybe that would have been the easier way to make those diagrams lol, didn't think about that similarity and could have saved myself a lot of time probably haha

[@roseredflechette-vidya]

The first 3 tracks of C33 are criminally underappreciated. There's so much nuance people just set on fire and chuck out the window.

[@youngtayne6471]

You and I have very similar tastes. That said, these videos are amazing, man. Keep it up.

[@flyingsteaks]

Look, a madman right here

[@KGTv123]

Awesome video. Great explanation and I love the graphical way of learning their material

[@masterchain3335]

Whoa, spooky. Just the other day I was wondering if you were ever going to cover circular permutations, and here you are... talking about circular permutations.

[@progwog6403]

This is incredible, I love your videos so much please keep working on them!

[@peaceindarkness.darknessis3494]

This man is a legend!your analysis vids have become as important to me as daily shuggah intake

[@ashtionstone]

Love you content. Always look forward to you breaking down some great fucking music. With meshuggah back in the studio I hope to see your take on new material in the future.

[@raphaelpujalte3001]

can't wait for the explanation of in death is death and sum ;)

[@CJ-hn1vr]

Fantastic analysis of my favorite Meshuggah record.

[@timberfinn]

Thank you lol this always tripped me up no matter how much I thought I’d figured it out

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Exactly how I felt

[@GothCthulhu]

Love this vid. Gonna watch it again and again until I nail the whole album. :P

[@jaumepp1975]

Absolutely brilliant.

[@liamfine444]

Definitaly subscribed!! Jesus christ, I cant imagine how many dozens of hours you put in to making these types of videos. Awesome explanation bro, now its time for me to binge watch your other vids

[@metalmusictheory5401]

haha too many. Thanks so much!

[@trialbyicecream]

I’ve never really thought about visualizing their riffs. Reminds me a little of car bomb and w^w^^w^w

[@genericname9875]

are you talking about the sentinel gif with the w^w^^w^w pattern

[@trialbyicecream]

I think that’s the name of the album, but it’s tied to the sentinel

[@genericname9875]

@@trialbyicecream kzbin.info/www/bejne/iXjVYmmehM2YnLc I was talking about this

[@ObeseChess]

@@genericname9875 NEAT

[@nikopack7571]

One thing I'd like to point out from my own analysis of this: The "backbeat" you're talking about that happens from 0:00-1:04 in Autonomy and 0:00-0:32 in Imprint isn't actually a backbeat in the standard "snare on beat 3" sense. It's doing some really weird stuff that I can't really seem to figure out. I dunno if I can put it in context of a YT comment, but here's my best shot: snare hits on beats 1, 3, + of 5, 7, 9, a of 10, 12, + of 14, and 16, with an extra snare hit on the a of 16 on all repeats except for the very last.

[@yellowsaurus4895]

Man this is so cool! Ive been watching some of your vids lately and i can honestly say that they've really helped open up my eyes to the ideas behind these wonky riffs. Keep em coming. Also that Satyr shirt is dope! 🤘

[@YavorArseniev]

Fantastic work, as always!

[@BentDoorFrame]

Nice catch 33 is top 3 meshuggah album for me too

[@Blackerer]

This is one of the reasons I never listen to Meshuggah at work. They induce almost a vertigo-like state, where it is really hard to tell where you are at, but you definitely know there are differences, because otherwise, it would be much easier to just casually follow along with your mouth (td dnnn td dn :D). Im really looking forward to the latter half of the tracks. I just love when they loosen up and there are more riffs with longer notes in the upper range (for them), compared to the previous sections. Tension and release. I suppose this is going to be in 4 parts?

[@metalmusictheory5401]

It's all so good! And yeah I guess 4 parts, maybe 5-I might have to split In Death Is Death up. Thanks for watching and describing what it's like to listen to them so well!

[@Blackerer]

@@metalmusictheory5401 Youre welcome. I dont know how worthwhile is that for a music theory specialist like you, but if it is at least a bit, then good :D. Splitting the album might be a problem. I always felt like Mind's Mirrors work like an intro to the In Death Is Life and that as an intro to In Death Is Death. Then it plunges into the final section from Shed onward.

[@mattdubya1037]

“no resets 2” is my favorite part of this riff 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 they really should remaster this album with actual drums recorded, or even do a live studio one-take version

[@fdre3wsd]

nice work on the notation/graphics, dude

[@coveryourears3851]

Hi, I love your videos. How do you like that Strandberg? Really considering getting one to match my Dingwall

[@metalmusictheory5401]

I like it a lot! The only 8-strings I've played are this and the like cheapest Ibanez one, but this one makes playing an 8-string about as easy as I think it can be!

[@UncleRJ]

I will admit, most of the stuff you had just shown had flown over my head and I am beginning to question my IQ. That does not mean I did not enjoy the video though! Can't wait for the next part.

[@sou1daddy503]

That comment you posted at the end... "Scientific evidence" (ha!) which they definitely did not make up 10 seconds earlier so they could make a dopey comment to a community of cerebral metalheads!

[@sui604]

tee-da ta dada tee da dada tee-da

[@BentDoorFrame]

Hey now

[@FreepowerUG]

Loving this!

[@FreepowerUG]

Full playthrough at the end is such a baller move. You going to do it for the leviathan tracks like in death?

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Thanks so much! And yeah I think so! Will be so much harder haha but now that you've suggested it I guess I've gotta do it!

[@FreepowerUG]

@@metalmusictheory5401Take my energy! ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

[@Stomach_achesx]

damn, tme to strap in for this insane album O_O

[@ThePuertoricanBeastJonathan]

Any books you'd recommend? Not necessarily guitar books, more like theory or ones that would tackle complex rhythms.

[@metalmusictheory5401]

I've been checking out Gavin Harrison's books (Rhythmic Illusions and Rhythmic Perspectives) recently and they're super cool and cover a lot of this stuff-they're drum books a lot of the stuff is general. Jan Rivera's book (Advanced Rhythmic Concepts for Guitar) is also good. For the more theory heavy stuff about metal I'd recommend Olivia Lucas's article, Johnathan Pieslak's article ("Re-Casting Metal..." in Music Theory Spectrum) Gregory McCandless's article ("Metal as a Gradual Process..."), and Stephen Hudson's Metal In Theory blog.

[@r.c.christian1198]

your shirt is a play on the words "rotation within a rotation" tehe niice

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Haha didn't notice that nice

[@Ragnarockalypse]

Two suggestions for future videos: 1. The middle section of Nebulous by Meshuggah. On the records, it's very difficult to hear the "real" pulse of the song. Conversely, on this live recording the pulse is strong and the groove is real. kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZqshntqj5Wcb5o 2. Fractalize

[@metalmusictheory5401]

That "Nebulous" section has been haunting me for like the last five years haha, I wrote about it in my undergrad thesis, went back to turn it into a Metal in Theory blog post, found out I had made mistakes analyzing it that no one had caught, and haven't had the time/or a reason to go back and figure things out. Looking at the live version is a great idea, I hadn't done that for the analysis and it might be enough to finally do that section justice!

[@Ragnarockalypse]

​@@metalmusictheory5401 With the strong pulse of the live version, it's much easier to hear the pattern. At its core it's really a quite simple 3/4 over 4/4 pattern, similar (in principle) to the solo section of Clockworks.

[@tsnowsill]

Yes! That section is undoubtedly one of the best things meshuggah has ever done

[@bassheadjazz2708]

What is that part at 13:05? The version i have doesn't have that section of the song on it.

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Yeah a couple other people have said that-not sure what the details of different versions are, I got mine from iTunes in the US probably about 12 years ago? Maybe a regional thing? Or a CD vs digital vs vinyl thing?

[@bassheadjazz2708]

@@metalmusictheory5401 got mine on iTunes around the same time, 2008 maybe?

[@daverowley7093]

Dude thank you so much for this shit.

[@LuisSilva-ly4ni]

It is especially complicated to put it in tradiotinal sheet music. And my friends with classical formation have great difficuly undestanding the method. They tend to be more "square" in looking at music, and Meshuggah are not defintly not a "square band". They are free within tempo, and have a cyclic aproach to their sound. The Indian Music, and some African tribes have the same aproach ;)

[@rajeshhkkapoor8549]

Dude, I have subscribed. So am a noob at 53. Play bass Just getting into DAW, audio digital interface and deciphering Meshuggah and put my take on it. You n yogev r the only guys and a few rare, know Meshuggah inside out. My request is to show us Meshuggah for noobs. So please take any scale.. minor, phrygian, diminished in any key and do a meshuggah using it... Please

[@imbroglio970]

Satyr is so stupid fkn good. Brody is a MACHINE

[@8man943]

Would love to see your analysis on some blotted science songs

[@migest4451]

Solid

[@stcmattb]

VERY BIG. Dead 🤣

[@ImmortallySpawned]

You should do a video on Immolation, maybe something off ‘Here In After’

[@roseredflechette-vidya]

5:46 I just learned something - ready to have your mind blown (if you're a nerd and have no life)? Those niggling shoe-horned borderline-accidental-feeling 5 consecutive open low Fs that I've probably lost actual sleep over? Those are not there to smooth the repetition. They're there, or so I'm convinced, because Imprint of the Unsaved is not a 5/8 forward rotation of Autonomy Lost, but rather a 2/8 forward rotation of Disenchantment, the track that comes AFTER IT. No, really. That's _EXACTLY_ where that otherwise senseless rhythmic fill of Fs comes from. THE FUTURE. They have no reason to exist within the riff as it has been established up until this point on the album, unless hypothetically they were produced by the truncation at the 4/4 reset concatenating 2 ending Fs with the 3 leading Fs on the next repetition... and that's exactly where this comes from. Just... on a track you wouldn't have heard yet. I feel like there's compelling, mounting evidence that half of this album was written backwards. I had to do a LOT of writing stuff out and aligning things all over the place to figure this out as it really only becomes clear when you see the *hypermeasures (not just the 9/8 cells) on repeat,* and line them up from all 3 tracks. Its not easy to see even with the graphical notation in the video (well, it will be for anyone that reads this after reading it). Those 5 Fs bothered me so much until I realized that because Disenchantment's version of the riff starts at the 3rd F out of 4 in the cell, and then truncates after the 2nd F out of 4 in a later cell, when concatenated with the repeat you get the _exact_ same string of 5 low Fs, same rhythm, everything. I first realized this when I noticed that Imprint's change to the high pitch accent pattern isn't actually a reversal of the last two terms (I mean, you could argue that it is, but its unlike Meshuggah to be so arbitrary in a riff this simple - the simpler the riff, the harder it is to obscure stuff like that, and they've admitted that they like doing stuff just to see if people notice, or for the love of doing it even if no one does, and that 5 low-F fill is _NOTICEABLE_ - ugh), but rather, its actually lifting the hypermetric sequence from Autonomy - phasing, concatenation, and all - and then rotating that. Autonomy starts with two F#'s - F# F#, and ends on an F#; if you lift that up and rotate it, it looks like there's 3 F#'s in the middle of the riff. Instead of rotating the contents of a 9/8 cell, or sequentially rotating all of them relative to the hypermetric boundary, that boundary and the truncation/phasing that comes with is etched in stone as part of the riff and then all of it is rotated. *So "starting in the middle" explains how the riff begins, but not how it ends.* The 3 main hints towards this are kinda neat in and of themselves, even if the first two aren't really hints but more just establishing permutational tricks. 1) The 32/8 hypermeasure in Autonomy has 4 1/16th note rests throughout, while it only has 3 in Imprint/Disenchantment. The rests are fewer in number than any other rhythmic/sequential landmark, and so they're the most likely to get cut off, and it establishes a link between the latter two tracks not shared by the former. 2) While obscure, the way Imprint does a hypermetric, out-of-context copy-paste of Autonomy's high pitch accent pattern along with its phasing and then uses that as its own pattern, with its own alignment with the shifted backbeat is a big tip-off, since it fundamentally differs from the kind of conveyor-belt phasing of cells that are on a perfect repeat loop until the 4/4 (or 32/8) boundary. While far less chronologically obvious (I can't get over this literal time-traveling riff construction wtf), the way the rhythmic pattern is copy-pasted from there is highly reminiscent of how the pitch sequence was lifted from Autonomy. Granted the pitch rhythm doesn't play nice with any of this really, but we've already established its a pretty clear isorhythm, so it doesn't need to. 3) And this is the big one. So big I'm giving it a line break: Contextual rotation amounts and contextual rebarring/time signatures. If we set the 9/8 cell in stone as starting with a high accent, and a 5/8 sub-cell followed by 4/8 (with a 1/16 rest always in the 5/8 section)... Autonomy Lost goes like this: _9/8 + 9/8 + 9/8 + 5/8_ ...the other two, however, get a LOT messier... Imprint of the Unsaved: _4/8 + 9/8 + 9/8 + 10/8_ Disenchantment: _6/8 + 9/8 + 9/8 + 8/8_ When you line up all the riffs with eachother based on single-hypermeter rhythmic alignment, it looks like this (2=high F#, 1=high E, 0=low F, -=rest): Autonomy Lost...............{2 0 -0 002 00 001 0 -0 002 00 002 0 -0 001 00 002 0 -0 00}..................... Imprint of the Unsaved..................{2 00 002 0 -0 001 00 002 0 -0 002 00 002 0 -0 001 00 0 00}..... Disenchantment.....................{0 002 00 002 0 -0 001 00 002 0 -0 002 00 001 0 -0 002 00 }............. See anything interesting? Anything I haven't pointed out yet? If we disregard hypermetric boundaries and pitches for a second and just look a the 9/8 cells again, Disenchantment is a much less drastic rotation forward than Imprint is. It is by nature suggestive of an alternate ordering, and wouldn't you know it, the only place that alternate order is relevant (navel gazing over these riffs) is the exact place where you'd find it! I also see a distinct, sequential "upper -> lower -> middle" ratio in these degrees of rotation which (and yes, I _am_ reaching and no, I don't care. its fun) just happens to coincidentally resemble the upper -> lower -> middle motion of the F# -> E -> F leitmotif that is heard in various forms literally everywhere all over the album. So yeah, anyway. Meshuggah's use of meter, ph(r)asing, permutation, and riff re-sequencing literally transcends time and Catch 33's own track listing. WTF. This band.

[@digikaininja5]

Can you kindly do a tutorial using binary numbers, meshuggah style For dummies like me. Low-key Bass Demon

[@CheddarGetter]

The whole album is kinda just a bunch of iterations on that same riff. Also I've always seem the riffs as "open" and "closed" notes. The high notes would be open, the low notes are closed.

[@metalmusictheory5401]

For sure! I've always had the same impression, I'm looking forward to digging in and finding all the little similarities and differences between the riffs. And I like that open/closed metaphor, that's a cool way of thinking about it!

[@idontneedhelp4055]

bro breaks down breakdowns.

[@Ragnarockalypse]

2:33 St Ang33r

[@dzanci1]

Please do something from Ulcerate!

[@metalmusictheory5401]

All in good time

[@tjmore09]

I spy a Satyr t-shirt

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Hell yeah!

[@raygetard1896]

Ulcerate!

[@faselblaDer3te]

2:36 my boi gotta work on muting them strings! ;-*

[@juicebaux]

Meshuggah breakdowns by a dude In a satyr shirt.....subbed