Fake Shredders

[Drew]

In all honesty, all Tech death bores me to hell and back.

Preach.

I'm with you. I like my players to sound human.

 

[Eptaceros]

Holy shit dude, PtH is legitimately one of my favorite bands of all time, I'm not telling them off for it. It's a discussion point since the nuances after the fact are different but composition wise they used their tools to write music outside of their scope in the same way I some of these modern guys are but they are being disingenuous in their presentation of their product. The orchestra thought was nice to begin with but also a terrible comparison since generally flashy and fast musical pieces aren't associated with Orchestra compositions (although they can be).

It just seems like you missed my point, clearly Charles is writing music and riffs/leads he can't cleanly play but by metric is it ever acceptable?

This was my point a few pages ago, consistency in an argument matters and some of the people responding are 100% against the use of any technology to facilitate writing. And in this discussion being about Berried Alive most people here aren't really invested or longtime fans, so no loss and mostly everyone couldn't give a shit about it. You throw a more beloved band in the mix and there's suddenly more leniency and flexibility in the argument, it's just not consistent and THAT was my point in bringing up PtH. They did nothing wrong, but they BEGAN doing the same thing I'm sure Charles is doing. People can be against tool assisted musical performances, but if you're not against all of it then the argument falls flat IMO. Lying after the fact and being deceptive does not go hand in hand with someone writing overly complex music and using different tricks and methods in the studio to perform/record their tracks.

This discussion was never about composition, it was about execution and a lack of transparency regarding the execution. I don't see the two as comparable by any means. One is conceptual and one is pragmatic. The whole point of this thread is not "why are people writing such cRaZy music??" It's "Why are people blatantly lying to the public about their physical actions?" Compositional tools and genuinely playing your instrument are not at all related on any ethical grounds. And your whole "argument" is based on that parallel....The fact that you keep equating the facilitation of writing and the facilitation of playing makes me think that YOU are the one that's missing the entire point of this discussion.

Just because you don't associate flashy music with orchestral/classical pieces, doesn't make my comparison "terrible". People were shredding their asses off before electricity was invented, dude. Listen to this (skip to 13:20 for the 3rd suite which is the one with most shredding):



This piece was written by Ravel, but he never performed it. The guy probably wrote this out on paper with an ink jar and quill, without the intention of ever playing it personally. Does that make him a hack in your eyes? The blatant answer is no. Because there's a total fundamental difference between composing and playing.

You keep saying PtH was doing what Charles is doing, but....they never did this hyper-edited quantized garbage. They did what 99% of musicians from all history did: they wrote music, they practiced it, and then they recorded it. And the fact that they're butchering those songs live now means that they're taking full responsibility of at least trying to play it for real. No backing track crutches, etc. Just pure human mistakes, which I'll take any day over a band that tours with backing tracks in place of members.

 

[Jonathan20022]

This discussion was never about composition, it was about execution and a lack of transparency regarding the execution. I don't see the two as comparable by any means. One is conceptual and one is pragmatic. The whole point of this thread is not "why are people writing such cRaZy music??" It's "Why are people blatantly lying to the public about their physical actions?" Compositional tools and genuinely playing your instrument are not at all related on any ethical grounds. And your whole "argument" is based on that parallel....The fact that you keep equating the facilitation of writing and the facilitation of playing makes me think that YOU are the one that's missing the entire point of this discussion.

Alright, no just no. You joined the conversation directly responding to my comment, you want to bring the discussion back to questioning why all this wacky technical metal is being produced nowadays be my guest. But the discussion has taken turns in the last 15 pages and so has the specific talking points as others chime in, and you came in on page 15 on my comment ABOUT composition and the use of tools to write music/writing music out of your technical scope. So the current conversation I'm personally having is about those specific talking points which does fall under the umbrella of the thread.

The whole point of bringing my comment on PtH is to evoke a response from people who would generally denounce the use of of tools and composition that you, at moment of writing cannot play cleanly. That band is beloved by many, and it sparked conversation because the truth is the boys in PtH could NOT play Kezia cleanly until later in their careers. If you're going to be consistent then someone who is against presenting yourself disingenuously (And note my wording) CAN make the argument that writing an album that insane and performing it poorly in a live context is also disingenuous but FAR less heinous. But in general people will give a pass to artists they have a larger connection to their tastes.

Conceptually what PtH and Charles did had the same purpose with perhaps a different intent, Kezia was a beautiful album and you can hear passion behind it. Charles COULD have written his music with the intent of displaying skills that he did not quite have, but we don't know that for sure although it's a reasonable deducation.

Hope that clears that up.

Just because you don't associate flashy music with orchestral/classical pieces, doesn't make my comparison "terrible". People were shredding their asses off before electricity was invented, dude. Listen to this (skip to 13:20 for the 3rd suite which is the one with most shredding):



This piece was written by Ravel, but he never performed it. The guy probably wrote this out on paper with an ink jar and quill, without the intention of ever playing it personally. Does that make him a hack in your eyes? The blatant answer is no. Because there's a total fundamental difference between composing and playing.

a terrible comparison since generally flashy and fast musical pieces aren't associated with Orchestra compositions (although they can be).

I wasn't born yesterday, and I thought I made my point very clear but apparently not

I'm not a classical buff, and I never said I was. Showing me a complex piece and saying that technical composition existed before is anecdotal and not really addressing any point I mentioned, just trying to educate me that something obviously exists. (Listening to it while I respond to this, pretty wild)

You keep saying PtH was doing what Charles is doing, but....they never did this hyper-edited quantized garbage. They did what 99% of musicians from all history did: they wrote music, they practiced it, and then they recorded it. And the fact that they're butchering those songs live now means that they're taking full responsibility of at least trying to play it for real. No backing track crutches, etc. Just pure human mistakes, which I'll take any day over a band that tours with backing tracks in place of members.

They did nothing wrong, but they BEGAN doing the same thing I'm sure Charles is doing. People can be against tool assisted musical performances, but if you're not against all of it then the argument falls flat IMO. Lying after the fact and being deceptive does not go hand in hand with someone writing overly complex music and using different tricks and methods in the studio to perform/record their tracks.

I never said Protest did anything deceptive, in fact I acknowledged that you can technically make that claim from their own statements and early shows to back it up but it's a MILD instance of it at best and easily overlooked because it's an incredible album and they quickly pulled up to their own raised bars. I don't think you realize we actually have similar stances, because I'm not a fan of robotic compositions, I just don't let it disgruntle me or stifle my own progress and time spent on my own skillset.

Your point of most musicians might be true, but every guitarist I've personally jammed with the exception of two guys have ever taken the approach of compose and play later. Most guitarists I've seen will noodle and produce riffs/leads while playing which uses their current skills, If I can't alternate pick at I don't try to alternate pick at 200+bpm and immediately default to composing a riff that contains those aspects and try to learn it afterwards. I rely on my playing as it is now to produce music that I can play at that point in time. Same as most of the musicians I've personally run into.

 

[Lorcan Ward]

Something I thought about last night, what are people's takes on Protest the Hero?

It took them a LONG time to get their live show up to good enough level to play songs from Fortress live. They openly admit it was beyond their abilities to play those songs live. Rody and Luke mostly and since then they've toned the vocals down and wrote guitars more suited to a live setting. I got to show Luke some covers I had on my phone and he said he can't play some of those parts live and has to simplify them.

It's common for musicians to do this. Joe Satriani says he struggled playing The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing live. Paul Gilbert used a looper one time I saw him because he couldn't play some some patterns he wrote in sequence without messing up. Alexi Laiho even in his prime couldn't nail all his solos live. Dragonforce's live show fell apart with Inhuman Rampage and was a lesson in using studio tricks to create ridiculous guitar parts.....and also playing blind drunk is a bad idea. I can think of countless singers who are pushed to their limits live trying to sing their earlier material.


I don't mind what you do in the studio as long as it sounds good. Example the Haarp Machine album sounds great but Rings of Saturn's new album sounds awful. Both surgically edited to the microsecond but very different sounding results in my opinion. On the other hand something like Polyphia works so much better having several guitar lines to play one guitarist's part, having all the layers means other notes get to ring out and cut off as needed., I get pretty much everyone is doing this in the studio so it should be ok for Charles or anyone else to do something similar to create the music they are writing. I've no problem with him making the music he wants to and its really cool he's built such a fanbase for it. You really have to do something ridiculous nowadays to get above the oversaturated average content on social media.

It's when you are creating guitar videos to show off your "guitar chops" that I draw a line at. Perfect example is here, the guy is miming to a guitar pro file. This is rampant across Instagram and Facebook.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BzOPGrLnOUz/

 

[jco5055]

It's funny, I noticed a thing that follows this discussion in that when I was a teenager and obsessed with "being the best guitarist in the world", I would practice stuff like Michael Romeo string skipping tapping and like never progress beyond like 40bpm or something because I needed to have no string noise at all to consider myself able to play it, but since I've actually practiced not nearly as obsessively thanks to life/job/other hobbies I think I've gotten better because now I know that 99% of these pros would use a string dampener for recordings and then live accept some string noise here and there. So I'm fairly certain I would have gotten better/learned more licks/songs/solos if I had this less than perfect mindset because I didn't realize that even the pros "cheated" (though i don't think of it as cheating when recording especially if it's not the one note at a time this main discussion is about).

 

[Eptaceros]

@Jonathan20022 You pretty much ignored most of my last post. The only reason I brought up the classical shred is to follow up on your "compositional tool" argument. Yet, you literally just took it at face value and thought I shared it in order to say that "technical composition existed before". I don't know how else to elaborate on this subject, so here's my final attempt:

writing music that you can't play and then working really hard to play it well = trying.
writing music that you can't play and then punching in notes/layering with MIDI/recording in half speed, and then lying about the process = not trying.

It has nothing to do with preferring one artist over the other, PtH falls into the first category, Berried Alive falls in the other. They're not similar, in fact, they're opposites. If you don't see that, then we're going to be talking in circles about this over and over, and I'd rather just end it here rather than beat a dead horse.

Regarding how your friends write music. Writing music that you struggle to play is literally how you make yourself a better player, unless you resort to studio trickery. The way your friends write music does not dictate how it happens on a larger scale. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Any genre of music that tends to feature instrumental acrobatics and fast playing, be it jazz/metal/fusion/whatever, I guarantee you most players try to push their limits when writing. I recommend you and your friends try it.

 

[tedtan]

writing music that you can't play and then working really hard to play it well = trying.
writing music that you can't play and then punching in notes/layering with MIDI/recording in half speed, and then lying about the process = not trying.

It has nothing to do with preferring one artist over the other, PtH falls into the first category, Berried Alive falls in the other. They're not similar, in fact, they're opposites. If you don't see that, then we're going to be talking in circles about this over and over, and I'd rather just end it here rathen than beat a dead horse.

That's the same point that he's been making, though.

 

[GunpointMetal]

That's the same point that he's been making, though.

Originally the point was "oh its fine when a band you like does it, but no when these guys do it." then it turned into "I guess they don't do it AS much, so maybe its not the same thing" and now its "how is not being the same mean its not the same?". At least with my limited reading comprehension skills, anyways.

 

[Cynicanal]

I would practice stuff like Michael Romeo string skipping tapping and like never progress beyond like 40bpm or something because I needed to have no string noise at all to consider myself able to play it

If I could go back in time, I'd find the guy who said "mAkE sUrE yOu CaN pLaY iT sLoW bEfOrE sPeEdInG iT uP~~~" and slap him across the face. Playing "beyond" your comfortable speed is a super-critical part of practicing to be able to play better, playing fast engages the muscles differently than super-slow clean, and just trying to stay in super-clean slow zone will stunt development like crazy until you start going faster.

 

[Eptaceros]

That's the same point that he's been making, though.

Was it? Cause that's not what Jonathan's first post sounded like:

Something I thought about last night, what are people's takes on Protest the Hero?
Specifically Kezia, because although that's a beloved album by anyone who really digs that band, they openly admitted to writing stuff that was above their paygrade and practiced until they got it tight. That album might not have existed without tools for tabbing to lay out their creative minds down and write what they truly wanted to write, at worst they probably played a few months worth of shoddy live renditions of the songs and by the time it came to record they were most of the way there. It's far more mild obviously, but curious what folks think considering how binary some people's thoughts on the topic are.

Yeah, how is openly admitting something the same as blatantly lying about it? What is this, opposite day? And most of my posts after that have also tried to dispell this weird notion that compositional tools are somehow to be looked down upon, as if people hadn't been writing music that exceeds their physical limitations since the beginning of time. Reading through this thread honestly has me feeling like:

What most likely happened with PtH is they recorded their songs riff by riff and took the best takes and used those. And that's fine! I understand studio time costs a lot of money, and at the end of the day, they just want to put out their music. It doesn't sound like there's any quantization/MIDI syncing/etc., and that's where people should draw the line, IMO. Because that kind of editing fundamentally changes the sound (literally the aural physics) of what you're hearing. IMO, at that point, people should just hang up their guitars and use synths/midi to create their music if they're going to edit their guitars to the point of not sounding like real guitars.

 

[Mathemagician]

Some creators admit they can’t play it live, and others lie their asses off. Either way it doesn’t detract from your art.

Trends come and go and fans aren’t zero-sum.

 

[Lrrrr]

If I could go back in time, I'd find the guy who said "mAkE sUrE yOu CaN pLaY iT sLoW bEfOrE sPeEdInG iT uP~~~" and slap him across the face. Playing "beyond" your comfortable speed is a super-critical part of practicing to be able to play better, playing fast engages the muscles differently than super-slow clean, and just trying to stay in super-clean slow zone will stunt development like crazy until you start going faster.

If I remember correctly his name is John Petrucci. Regardless of who it actually is, I've never agreed with something so much on this website. Eff that guy.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

I always took the "make sure you can play it slow" thing as meaning, "If you try playing it fast or faster than you're comfortable with and it's not precise enough, then slow it down to work on it." Maybe not what was meant, but that's always how I've done it.

 

[HungryGuitarStudent]

If I could go back in time, I'd find the guy who said "mAkE sUrE yOu CaN pLaY iT sLoW bEfOrE sPeEdInG iT uP~~~" and slap him across the face. Playing "beyond" your comfortable speed is a super-critical part of practicing to be able to play better, playing fast engages the muscles differently than super-slow clean, and just trying to stay in super-clean slow zone will stunt development like crazy until you start going faster.

My 2 cents:

1. Starting slow helps getting the intonation, string muting and hand synchronisation down.

2. Increasing tempo gradually helps your brain get used to all the info in point 1.

3. Playing at the limit of your abilities (i.e. near the threshold where things fall apart) helps progress.

In my technically oriented practice sessions, I try to cover all these points and not stick to point 1 exclusively, i.e. it’s kinda dumb not to try to see where your limit is and not to practice near it, which I think is your point.

That being said, shit intonation, crap string noise muting and bad hand sync at slow speed will obviously carry over to higher speeds.

 

[tedtan]

If I could go back in time, I'd find the guy who said "mAkE sUrE yOu CaN pLaY iT sLoW bEfOrE sPeEdInG iT uP~~~" and slap him across the face. Playing "beyond" your comfortable speed is a super-critical part of practicing to be able to play better, playing fast engages the muscles differently than super-slow clean, and just trying to stay in super-clean slow zone will stunt development like crazy until you start going faster.

This has been my experience, too. I never got very fast (16th notes at 130 bpm) trying to play slow and clean when picking across the strings. In order to get to the higher speeds, I had to work at playing faster than I could cleanly, then slowing it down a bit to work on cleanliness, then repeating the process, ratcheting up the speed along the way.

If I remember correctly his name is John Petrucci. Regardless of who it actually is, I've never agreed with something so much on this website. Eff that guy.

Actually, I think Petrucci was the first person I'd seen say that you had to push past the point of playing cleanly in order to develop speed in his Rock Discipline video.

 

[tedtan]

Was it? Cause that's not what Jonathan's first post sounded like:



Yeah, how is openly admitting something the same as blatantly lying about it?

It's not, but then he didn't claim it was. His point was that PtH used the available tools to compose and play their music beyond their abilities, but then went practiced it in order to be able to play it.

That's not the same thing as what we see in the OP, where the BA guy is pretending to play something he can't actually play, hoping to pass it off as having actually played it.

 

[Fenriswolf]

My 2 cents:

1. Starting slow helps getting the intonation, string muting and hand synchronisation down.

2. Increasing tempo gradually helps your brain get used to all the info in point 1.

3. Playing at the limit of your abilities (i.e. near the threshold where things fall apart) helps progress.

In my technically oriented practice sessions, I try to cover all these points and not stick to point 1 exclusively, i.e. it’s kinda dumb not to try to see where your limit is and not to practice near it, which I think is your point.

That being said, shit intonation, crap string noise muting and bad hand sync at slow speed will obviously carry over to higher speeds.

That's what I've been working on. I used to always slow stuff down to half speed in Guitar Pro, and just slowly ratchet up the speed 5 bpm at a time. I'd always get to a certain point and get finger tied, but it seems like going back and forth between practicing slow to clean it up and as fast as I can without completely butchering it is working a lot better for me.

Also, the string noise muting seems, at least to me, a byproduct of how in modern metal everyone uses so much gain you have to use a gate. I've noticed since I went back to just running my guitar straight into the amp with no pedals, my playing has gotten a lot cleaner because it had to.

 

[will_shred]

I think this is a great video and reminds me of that one awful "band" that was posted on here a year or two back. Faking your guitar abilities is pretty lame, and I'd much rather listen to a "messier" solo like Friedman's at the end of the video than some perfect solo that sounds bland, soulless, and fake. The sad thing is that even guitarists in the 80s were doing this, and I'm sure most of you can name one right off the top of your heads.

I don't think "fake" solos are prevalent enough to justify 15 pages of discussion.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

I don't think "fake" solos are prevalent enough to justify 15 pages of discussion.

Well apparently it is.

 

[c7spheres]

Posers suck, but only if they admit they're posers. If they don't then they are assholes and really suck. This has been your 15 pg. summary of this thread. Have a nice day. : )