The Focused Collaboration Of Music and other Wild Thoughts
Playing in a band requires tremendous focus and discipline. Especially when playing in a dynamic heavy metal band. If you listen closely the music is basically electrified classical music. Listen to Mozart and imagine those sound amplified. Some of the terminology is the same. The difference is the consistent drumming that establishes a strong tempo.
This post is a challenge to see if your mind can weave through the musical layers which exists in most music.
To do this you must first see beyond the genre of hard rock, or thrash metal. That is important. The song in the video below is a perfect, and short, example of the musical layering.
listen to this song by the band Megadeth. It is called “Train of Consequences” and the mid-song guitar layering is exquisite! The band is a four piece and in this song you can hear the lead guitar solo move to the “front” and the rhythm guitar move to the back to blend with the bass and drums.
Fast forward the song to 1:51. Listen closely to this rhythm guitar section. At 1:58 the lead guitar solo becomes the prominent layer. As a listener, your mind naturally follows “the lead.” However, when playing in a band you have to “ignore” the lead chorus and press on with the rhythm section. In rock music this can be very challenging. Try the challenge below.
Listen from 1:51 to 2:27 in its entirety first. Then go back to 1:51 and listen from 1:51 to 1:58. Try to memorize that riff section. Now, start at 1:51 and listen all the way through to 2:27 but this time follow the rhythm guitar in the background. It is extremely difficult to do. The key is to continue to “see” the music as since the lead guitar obstructs it with its frontal arrangement. You must continue to hear the rhythm section through the “noise” of the lead guitar. This requires you to sort of listen selectively.
Try it again. As a drummer, this is tough especially if the song is a good one and you enjoy the solo but must play your role and be disciplined. For me, I would turn my head to the side and tilt forward to retain focus. That is like a “concentration stance.” At that position I can “see” what I need to “see.” Also, from the drummers perspective, the drums are always at the “front” due to the immense volume, so turning to the side, gritting the teeth, and hunkering down is a way to get through the section without going down the wrong “path” and following Other instruments or the lead during a solo.
Now try to imagine the intense focus of the rhythm guitarist. When you see the guitarists gritting teeth with wild head movements, or gestures, many times that is not all show. It’s almost a diversionary tactic to “trick” your mind to ignore the sound that is most prominent and concentrating on the rhythm section. That’s the way it works for me.
It can be tough for the bass player as well. But the bass player is always in that middle mode in a way. The deep frequency of the bass is always low and in the background and he/she meshes with the drummer, hence the reason why they are sometimes close to one another. Drummers and bass players speak the same language. The drummer sets the tempo and the bass establishes the mid for the guitars to stream over with the top end.
It is interesting to see how the band instruments control each other. I’ve played in some loose improvisational bands and we would go off on these 20 minute free jam session. That is f****** living man! (Excuse me!). During these sessions we would be going in some direction and I’m hearing it and can see that the other band mates are searching and the sound isn’t clicking, I wait for the opportunity and hit the cymbals real hard, boom! It’s like a reset and it shakes up the band. It is amazing to witness this from behind the kit. I’m thinking “this ain’t right.” Then, BAM! Then the music might begin to flow and I’ll follow with a nice softer cymbal crash to keep everyone in a calm, then repeat the beat over and over. Then the other players get it and each has a moment to go on their way. Everyone is like “yeah! This is it right here!” Let’s stay here for a while.. like thirty minutes!!
Music changes when you begin to see things in this way. I listen to some songs thousands and thousands of times to see all the various layers and isolate the instruments in my mind. You will begin to have a greater appreciation for musicians and the dynamism of musical structure when you can practice instrumental segregation.
The other instrument, which is the most prominent, but not for this challenge: the vocalist. The human voice can be the most beautiful instrument and add so much depth to the overall sound. It is an instrument that has the best ability to capture your heart and soul. The human voice can take you somewhere you want to go or have never been. The human voice, through song, is a powerful social instrument that can guide us. Maybe the problems we have in the world are derived from music, a lack of quality music, or too much music in general.
Listen to electronic music or a blast beat type of “death metal.” In my mind, it lacks a lot of the depth and can make one feel robotic. Society begins to look and feel that way. Groups of people are all hearing different things and we can relate. We don’t get that “band mesh.” The problem is that there is too much music and everyone now has access to the power of organizing sounds in home studios. I’m part of the problem if that is the case.
Through history the human relationship with music has been extremely important. If we look at life and music in those terms we can get a glimpse into the future. With that said, and I know this will sound totally crazy, (and possibly the largest digression in history), it could be that music is a critical component to human time travel. Ok, ok, I know the koo-koo clock just busted a string, but be patient and think about it with the terms below.
I always say that improvisational musicians are already living in a type of future state. When I play a drum solo, my mind creates those patterns of sound, then generates the movements to make the sounds. It is a compound activity but there is a delay from the time my mind “sees” the music to the moment my body makes the movements to play the note. It can be seen as a type of sequential and chronological neuro-potential transition to kinetic energy. So my mind is in this future state manufacturing sounds that do not yet exist.
When I play drums or guitar on an improvisational solo, my mind is not thinking of the actual music; the notes just sort of “arrive.” I guess I’m seeing the sound first. Now that I think about it, that action is like an interstitial sector of my mind that is not yet conscious but not subconscious either. I know it’s there mentally, I can see it, but it is not yet musical. Maybe I can see the sound that I am going to make. It is really difficult to explain but I am making an attempt even at the cost of appearing a bit insane. I guess what I’m expressing is what people call the “zone.” With music, I can enter this zone anytime I want. If I sit at the drums and tap around I’m still here, but once I elevate it to another level, something else takes over and I am in total exertion and have access to this immense stream of pure human power. In some ways, I am willingly giving in to this sonic fluidity, or zone, but it is more like an internal feeling. It is like a feeling that I am striving to achieve and that power resides in a place where a person is most vulnerable. It sounds strange but that’s how I describe it. Maybe, I allow the performance pressure to consume me and I become it; the pressures is the zone like piercing a bubble and then your inside it and can access anything, like any idea ever created in the universe. You have to resist you own insistence on resisting it! You let go. I must say it is a level of pure freedom. After so many years of playing I can access the free spirit all the time. It is definitely a habit that anyone can obtain.
It’s crazy to think about sound as a visual form, but not a graphic picture. It is a type of dynamic mental construct that flows in some way. That flow varies in its viscosity and your skill and mental state push you through these various thicknesses of sound: like water and lava. Eventually, you begin to understand these fluid states and harness them for use.
When playing, I am not hearing it in my mind, but I’m not seeing it either. I presume that it is more of a concept or idea, even a suggestion or algorithm that organizes a combination of notes and movements in boxes on a mental shelf that I mentally gather up as I go along. If I’m playing a complex drum beat, like a triplet, that consumes a lot of “bandwidth” and the shelf needs to be replenished. That is why musicians are taught to think about the importance of the silence between the notes as well as the notes themselves. So I place in selected pauses that last for a fraction of a second and my mind replenishes the shelf.
So if I’m already crazy and we are thinking about the differential of time and action, then quite possibly time travel is interconnected to music in some way. (Koi-koo!!) Maybe it has something to do with the manipulation of frequencies and understanding how those layers interact when viewed sequentially AND chronologically, then able to carry a three dimensional form and disseminate it elsewhere. Through music maybe we have been silent time travelers all along but didn’t even know it. The key is understanding that delay in time from the mind to body, it all resides there. The next key is creating the ability to extend that delay and storing solid material in a field of energy.
Yes, sort of like the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure but without the phone booth!! WILD STALLYNS!! PARTY ON DUDES!!
