I went to school and learned a lot of theory AND how to become an operatic metal singer AND composition AND audio engineering basics uwu I probably need to stop dunking on my college education in retrospect so much cos it was pretty awesome tbh
Incidentally, the "lullaby" containing the words "if I die before I wake" comes out of a time during the Middle Ages when young children commonly died from starvation, cold, infections, contagious diseases, or random violence. According to the theology of the time, if a child died in her sleep, there was no guarantee that her soul wouldn't go straight to hell, because of stuff like original sin. So praying that if you died in your sleep, God would take your soul to heaven, was a wise precaution. (And the guys in Metallica knew this, of course.)
@@purplealice/videos Maybe because Americans don't have any experience with European folklore from the Middle Ages. In Europe, no matter in which country you are, everyone has heard of scary folk stories growing up.
@Johnny Sins it was in referance to ErebosGR's comment "I'm utterly surprised 12tone didn't know this..." when the myth 12tone did not know was European middle-ages folklore while 12tone is not European (to my knowledge) of course taken on its own the statement is just common sense though.
In terms of your description of the introduction acting as a "volcano", don't forget the bass guitar droning away on the same eight-note pattern as the toms for most of the song, which **REALLY** gives it that bottomed-out tone/feeling/etc.
People take that "devil's interval" thing a lot more seriously than it was intended. It was a mnemonic, which is important because it's kind of hard to sing a tritone out of nowhere.
Although... due to that same misunderstanding, it WAS associated with the devil for a while in the 19th century, so 12Tone's statement is still correct!
@@notoriouswhitemoth yeah, maybe the commonly-felt connotation of that interval sounding mean (in some contexts, let's not get carried away) used to be a kind of music-nerd in-joke, but by the time heavy metal came around its had been solidly memeified to the point where it could be put to good use as an excuse to make sinister cackles. seasonal observation: much like a halloween mask
@@Commanber Technically, it was, but not just the tritone. Literally just the entire system of rules of music in the day. And less _lawfully_ banned, but theologically. It's an odd history piece all together.
The radio station here plays Hell's Bells by AC/DC all the time; every time I hear the bells in the intro, I find my self praying to hear the "DUHDUH DUHDUH DUHHHH" of For Whom the Bell Tolls. My prayers are not answered as often as I'd like...
@@jaywalker4821 Yeah lol it *is* a pretty integral part of the genre, even my microscopic niche uses it frequently If you'd like another example, though, there's a cool Sabbath-like song called "Saint Constantine" by Mephistofeles
Paranoid is garage rock, aside from the weird lo-fi guitar noodling it doesn't have any of the more experimental developments that defined metal. Black Sabbath invented metal, but they also played some relatively straight hard rock.
The first minute of buildup always sounded to me like someone is slowly falling asleep. It’s hypnotic and there’s lots of bass-y drums like a heartbeat. It starts sounding like something is...manifesting as this individual is falling asleep, as their eyes are rolling back in their head-like this evil is coalescing until the person finally falls completely asleep. Right when they’re totally under, the main riff (in all it’s tritone-y, evil glory) and drum beat totally explode, like the person is jolted “awake,” but they’ve woken up into the nightmare that’s been trying to manifest this entire time. From there the song is this batshit, scary journey through an evil dream the “Sandman” (who, in this song, is a Freddy Krueger-like monster) is inflicting on this person. Metallica is overrated in a lot of ways but this song has always painted such a crystal clear picture for me with its *music* rather than just telling me what’s happening through the lyrics. The lyrics are just general “nightmares amirite” rambling but the backing music really feels like it has a legit 3 act structure, like it’s taking you through an entire narrative journey. Kind of amazing to pull off something that vivid when it’s just 5 minutes of slight variations on one basic riff.
the funny thing about sandman is that whenever im playing it (on guitar) i can never remember when the main riff starts(without the drums the into feels like it should go on forever). thats why the drums are so necesary
I first heard this song in high school in the school band and while we were warming up, a classmate plugged in his electric guitar when the teacher had left the room for a minute and he and a friend played the first minute or so. I instantly fell in love with the song and it's still on of my favorite metal songs ever.
Man, 2:38 when you 'aligned' the drums with the riff to kill the anticipation broke my mind. I'm so used to the original riff, all I could do was try to understand what funky thing the drums where doing.
Really? I've noticed that the song Loud Love has something in common with Enter Sandman, I've played both on guitar, but didn't realized that the first inspired the latter :)
Thanks for the lesson and good memories! Same here, "Enter Sandman" and "Black Album" of Metallica were my first Metal impressions when I just turned 13 :) From there I fell in love with Metallica (especially James Hatfield) and it helped me to get through my teenage and influenced me a lot as a human. I started to play guitar from trying to play Enter Sandman riff. And "Nothing Else Matters" was the first song I sang.
I think the reason the song was such a hit was because it had thrash-sounding guitar and a more normal hard rock drum beat. "Ready for radio" in a way that earlier Metallica wasn't.
"What are we bendictine monks?" My favorite line. As for teaching kids to prepare for dying in their sleep, I don't know how old this traditional prayer is but there were definitely times in human history when this was a real danger. But you're right that Metallica uses it to good effect in a 20th century where we don't have devastating plagues and we do have vaccinations and antibiotics.
@@jumpydashgaming3625 Compared to the major plagues of centuries ago, COVID (and any other 21th century epidemic) is a total joke. The difference is huge, COVID isn't even a plague by those standards. People didn't even know that microbes were a thing. Open surgeries were done with absolutely no attempt at disinfecting stuff. Post-surgery infections (and deaths from that) were of course extremely common, and people took for granted that that's just how it works. Cities were full of shit, and people had no idea that this transmitted disease.
We've traded out some tragedies for others. Things are overall more comfortable than they once were, but this has given way to inflexibility and neuroticism. Things like child abuse start to re-enter the picture due to society basically losing its mind collectively. Even for those children that do grow up in comfortable, kind circumstances, they find themselves unprepared for the tragedies of adult life all too often. They also frequently find themselves feeling judged as "privileged" by their envious peers. To me a huge part of this song is about challenging the idea of innocence in childhood. All too often, even in the modern day, it gets interrupted tragically early.
I was really hoping you'd point out Jasons part in the prechorus. I think both melodically and rhythmically it's the most interesting part of the song, in the context of how it functions beside the guitars.
Since you like Tritones and Metal, how about analyzing YYZ? There is lots of cool trivia about the song, as well as an awkward time and chord structure which could give you plenty to talk about!
You have to do the recommendations via PAtreon but it is defintely past time for some Rush on this channel. Preferably something from that super colorful era from Farewell to Kings through Moving Pictures
you need an online music school, it's crazy how fast i learn stuff from you despite how many slower and more complex videos ive watched. The visuals and delivery go a long way, you're a master of it
I was always so fascinated by the dark, demon like quality of the riff of Enter Sandman, and wondered how it was possible for a sound to create this feeling. So when I started music theory last year and finally learned about tritones, it suddenly all made sense!
Thanks for including the drums in your analysis here. I've always attributed a key factor of my love of Metallica, especially this era, to Ulrich being a key part of the melodic structure and not just a time keeper.
As long as he doesn’t point out the fact that it was actually about stolen equipment. More specifically one of James Hetfields amps being stolen that was very sentimental to him. They had to start all over.
9:20 I was watching a video by Signals Music Studio where he described the "Metallica Scale", which was a minor scale with the minor second and tri-tone added.
I love how you can do such a lovely breakdown of any genre !! Is there any place I can ask a theory question and hear your take on the answer, slash, would you consider doing a Q&A series?
It's great to hear someone who gets so nerdy and academic about music theory professing their love for metal! My mother is a classically trained soprano, my grandfather (her dad) a classically trained violinist who played with the BBC Scottish symphony orchestra. I was taught singing and violin from age 7 and passed my ABRSM grade 5 music theory . . . I forget how old I was but it was somewhere between the ages of 9 and 12. And ofcourse by 15 I'm playing the guitar (bought a Dave Mustaine signature VMNT) and listening to Slipknot, Lamb of God and Arch Enemy. :'D
If you like LoG and Arch Enemy, you should check out Revocation. Bit more death metal, but with a lot of jazz influence. It's super cool stuff. Gojira is super cool too. Or if you really want to dive into crazy metal, go check out Animals as Leaders.
That would take hours man but it would be awesome. Like each section has three freaking parts! So that's what 15 sections to analyze. Not including the solo's.
its beatiful how u can do analisis of every type of music and still use metaphors to describe the things that cant be described good job bro, keep it goin
7:48 I’m fairly certain that that when they jump to High e they have a d Ghost note hammering onto e almost like they’re revving and engine. Just a minor detail I thought was still crucial.
You saying the first metal song you heard was Enter Sandman made my joints ache like the old woman I am! (I saw them live on this tour and again for Load, if that tells you anything)
Can't remember if it was Lars or James but I remember one of them saying that for Sandman, they just wanted to get away from the complexity of AJFA, and write a simple song, that basically centers around and expands on one riff. I'd say they did a good job.
Great analysis as always! I can fill in a bit as to how the riff came about. This was the album they started to use drop tunings. This is one of the first riffs that falls under your fingers when you tune this way. I’m wondering if this is one of those last minute songs like Paranoid. “We need one more-whose got a riff?” “Anyone got any ideas?” “Well, I was putting my kid to sleep the other night.....”And it became their biggest hit.
They have the ear, but songwriters often have no clue about theory. Artists know what sounds good. Theorists then apply their theories to explain why it sounds good. A dirty secret in linguistics is that grammar works the same way. They can only describe how we communicate. They can't make rules we have to follow.
@9:46 "It's getting pretty hard to hold back the coming explosion" lol. I'm sure that's how they all felt during the writing/recording process. If you can make the audience feel the same, you've got yourself some musical gold... along with plenty of juvenile innuendos that can be made out of people who read that statement out of context (which I certainly did not) ^_*
What I think: in the intro the E is a major 7th pedal tone, and the F to Bb is actually a 1st-4th-3rd sequence in F major, but as we approach the main riff we find it becomes a modulation with an E minor tritone with Bb, so I-IV with the resolving passing note tritone and the “tag” anchoring us with the G-F#-E resolution which is clearly E minor. The chorus is actually a secondary dominant relationship, moving to B major, where F# is the dominant of B, resolving to the home key of E minor! The pre-chorus reinforces this secondary dominant of B major.
I wanted to mention that the line from the prayer in the breakdown: "If I die, before I wake", it could a reference to what the song was originally about, which was crib death. James had intended and originally written the song to be about crib death, but Lars and Bob Rock persuaded James to rewrite the song to have a different meaning behind it, because they felt that was too far dark of a topic to have a song about, while still keeping that dark-sinister feel of the instrumental. And that's how the song eventually became about nightmares. Also, DISCLAIMER: this is just a theory of mine, I just thought I'd share it because I couldn't help but make that connection knowing how Enter Sandman came to be.
That exact prayer, including the line "If I die before I wake," has been around for ages. I said those exact words every night at bedtime when I was a Catholic kid in the 70s. It's not a reference to crib death. It is, of course, a creepy thought to put into a kid's head just before bedtime! The song's theme is a child's nightmares, and that prayer fits the theme perfectly. It sure put creepy thoughts in my head that made me afraid to fall asleep, like the boy in the song. Then when I was 10, my best friend did die in his sleep. Bedtime was not a great time.
3:22 did you draw Cloud's buster blade when talking about a sense of finality and it's from Final Fantasy VII? Fade to sleep, fade to Sad but True if you're listening to the album. What about Fade to Black tho?
@hello world! Composition-wise I am definitely with you - I grew up on thrash and prog, so it's pretty much perfect for me. But I basically never listen to it anymore because the mix is so bad that I just get sad and irritated, thinking about what could have been. I've listened to one or two of the Justice for Jason fan mixes, and they're alright, but can only do so much...
Just came back to this video to add this thought in: another reason why the key change (or whatever you want to consider it) sounds fine is that the G, in the context of F# is now the flat 2. This being metal, the flat two is a perfectly normal and acceptable passing tone, easy to use to pull the song back to the tonic. A good example of the flat 2 used in this context is “Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth.
7:40 Hetfield plays all the rhythm guitars on the record, so no Hammett there. And even live Hammett plays the other part (The single drawn out E5 chord).
This video is two years old so this may have been mentioned already, but an interesting thing about the main riff is that it was originally written to be half as long, by which I mean one bar of the "body" and one bar of the "tag," and then it repeated. Kirk Hammett wrote the riff in that way in the middle of the night in a hotel room and recorded it to a tape, along with other attempts at riffs. When James and Lars were going through tapes trying to find good riffs to build on, Kirk's riff caught Lars' ear, but he had the discerning thought to have the first half of the riff repeat for 3 bars and make the 2nd half into a "tail," as he describes it. ...And just like that, Lars sends Metallica into the Stratosphere. Also, James has said in at least a couple interviews that the song is about Crib Death, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), which really makes the lyrics take on a much heavier feel than just a "dark lullaby."
a body is the main part of a riff, the head i think is the intro, and the tag is put at the end of a riff after a few repeats to break it up and give some different notes and rhythm and to make the riff loop better and not be monotonous, basically like a dessert if you want a food analogy. you need a break from the main dish, but it needs to be small and different so you have contrast between the main riff and the tag. basically, the tag is different from the riff and makes you want to listen to the riff again.
"I went to school to become a metal singer."
Me: *nods understandingly* As one does.
I went to school and learned a lot of theory AND how to become an operatic metal singer AND composition AND audio engineering basics uwu
I probably need to stop dunking on my college education in retrospect so much cos it was pretty awesome tbh
I thought he said he went to music school to learn how to do video game music in another video?
@@endi3386 could've changed majors a couple times? It's not uncommon at all to cycle through a few over your college career.
Said no metal singer ever
I took choir in highschool to become a metal singer so i completely understand
Metal: M E Tritone A L
You're right, it's impossible to spell metal without tritone
Santiago Siso
METAL is an Acronym of Many Evil Tritones and Angry Lyrics.
and for rock
R - rock
O
C
K
Minor second
Evil
Tritone
Angry
Locrian
@@johncenaplayingstarcraft9580
Rock
Ock
Ck
K
I remember my 8th grade music teacher talking about old composers catching heat for using “the devil’s tone”.
Incidentally, the "lullaby" containing the words "if I die before I wake" comes out of a time during the Middle Ages when young children commonly died from starvation, cold, infections, contagious diseases, or random violence. According to the theology of the time, if a child died in her sleep, there was no guarantee that her soul wouldn't go straight to hell, because of stuff like original sin. So praying that if you died in your sleep, God would take your soul to heaven, was a wise precaution. (And the guys in Metallica knew this, of course.)
I'm utterly surprised 12tone didn't know this...
@@ErebosGR His field is music theory, not folk theology.
@@purplealice/videos Maybe because Americans don't have any experience with European folklore from the Middle Ages. In Europe, no matter in which country you are, everyone has heard of scary folk stories growing up.
ErebosGR yeah, most americans and canadians know more about the local legends and myths than european ones in my experience
@Johnny Sins it was in referance to ErebosGR's comment "I'm utterly surprised 12tone didn't know this..." when the myth 12tone did not know was European middle-ages folklore while 12tone is not European (to my knowledge) of course taken on its own the statement is just common sense though.
In terms of your description of the introduction acting as a "volcano", don't forget the bass guitar droning away on the same eight-note pattern as the toms for most of the song, which **REALLY** gives it that bottomed-out tone/feeling/etc.
Ok
People take that "devil's interval" thing a lot more seriously than it was intended. It was a mnemonic, which is important because it's kind of hard to sing a tritone out of nowhere.
Although... due to that same misunderstanding, it WAS associated with the devil for a while in the 19th century, so 12Tone's statement is still correct!
@@a52productions I don't think I said he was incorrect, I just meant it gets blown out of proportion
@@notoriouswhitemoth yeah, maybe the commonly-felt connotation of that interval sounding mean (in some contexts, let's not get carried away) used to be a kind of music-nerd in-joke, but by the time heavy metal came around its had been solidly memeified to the point where it could be put to good use as an excuse to make sinister cackles. seasonal observation: much like a halloween mask
Yeah, Adam Neely has a video on that. In it there's the guitarist of Cannibal Corpse who thinks the tritone was literally banned in medieval times.
@@Commanber Technically, it was, but not just the tritone. Literally just the entire system of rules of music in the day. And less _lawfully_ banned, but theologically.
It's an odd history piece all together.
Enter Sandman, bring me a dream
Make it the worst that I’ve ever seen
@@feuerfawkes Enter Sandman, I wanna go
To where the devil and his demons roam
nnnnnyyyyeeeesssss???
@@michaelweiske702 Horrors I can scarcely bear,
Enter Sandman, bring me nightmares!
that gives me an idea.......analize any blind guardian song!!!!!!!!
Kirk Hammett: I just thought it sounded good.
Yeah all musicians say that, but they do know at least basic music theory.
IIIRattleHeadIII Well yes, but my comment was meant to be facetious.
Lol
cept it sucked
Because he'd been listening to all the famous metal bands that came before him all his life.
Tritones, Metal and left handed writing. Truly evil!
Ohohohooohahahahaaaa
@@tajbirsingh5205 Was that an evil laugh?
@@ryanp7782 more evil than a flat fifth.
@@tajbirsingh5205 OOooooooh that is pure evil
Very Sinister.
I was waiting for something like this, For Whom The Bell Tolls next plz
@Ozzy Osbourne trolls*
XD
The radio station here plays Hell's Bells by AC/DC all the time; every time I hear the bells in the intro, I find my self praying to hear the "DUHDUH DUHDUH DUHHHH" of For Whom the Bell Tolls. My prayers are not answered as often as I'd like...
@@rylestknuckles I mean both are great songs but yeah that would get frusturating after a while.
@@rylestknuckles ON GOD
"You can't spell metal without the tritone"
_Paranoid starts playing_
Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath plays over paranoid. Interval restored
@@jaywalker4821 Yeah lol it *is* a pretty integral part of the genre, even my microscopic niche uses it frequently
If you'd like another example, though, there's a cool Sabbath-like song called "Saint Constantine" by Mephistofeles
j'accuse I’ll give it a listen pal
Hi, fellow anarchist/musician
Paranoid is garage rock, aside from the weird lo-fi guitar noodling it doesn't have any of the more experimental developments that defined metal. Black Sabbath invented metal, but they also played some relatively straight hard rock.
The first minute of buildup always sounded to me like someone is slowly falling asleep. It’s hypnotic and there’s lots of bass-y drums like a heartbeat. It starts sounding like something is...manifesting as this individual is falling asleep, as their eyes are rolling back in their head-like this evil is coalescing until the person finally falls completely asleep.
Right when they’re totally under, the main riff (in all it’s tritone-y, evil glory) and drum beat totally explode, like the person is jolted “awake,” but they’ve woken up into the nightmare that’s been trying to manifest this entire time. From there the song is this batshit, scary journey through an evil dream the “Sandman” (who, in this song, is a Freddy Krueger-like monster) is inflicting on this person.
Metallica is overrated in a lot of ways but this song has always painted such a crystal clear picture for me with its *music* rather than just telling me what’s happening through the lyrics. The lyrics are just general “nightmares amirite” rambling but the backing music really feels like it has a legit 3 act structure, like it’s taking you through an entire narrative journey.
Kind of amazing to pull off something that vivid when it’s just 5 minutes of slight variations on one basic riff.
When it comes to Metallica, it's not just the band that ignores the bass!
Lmfao
*cries in bassist*
@@cursedcliff7562 It’s not the instrument that people ignore - it’s the player
*cries in Cliff*
People care about cliff more than most other bassists
"Generically dissonant"
*draws a leg of ham with a top hat*
I was trying to genuinely pay attention to what he was saying but then the ham in a top hat showed up and now I’m laughing out loud.
I want a full version of that “dance metal” version.
the funny thing about sandman is that whenever im playing it (on guitar) i can never remember when the main riff starts(without the drums the into feels like it should go on forever). thats why the drums are so necesary
I like how he drew Cloud's Buster Sword when he said "sense of finality"
IKR!
I saw that go and almost lost my shit
"...the first metal song I ever heard." Dude, way to make me feel old!
i don't know my first metal song, been a metalhead my whole life
@@billrobertjoe Same but mine was most likely the DOOM soundtrack :D
@@Bozebo mine was probably something on the radio
Ride the lightning was mine
Mine was rockstar by nickelback 🤘🤘
"And then we make the ultimate sacrifice and remove the tritone"
I first heard this song in high school in the school band and while we were warming up, a classmate plugged in his electric guitar when the teacher had left the room for a minute and he and a friend played the first minute or so. I instantly fell in love with the song and it's still on of my favorite metal songs ever.
Man, 2:38 when you 'aligned' the drums with the riff to kill the anticipation broke my mind. I'm so used to the original riff, all I could do was try to understand what funky thing the drums where doing.
I love that Kirk has said that Soundgarden's "Louder Than Love" album inspired the main riff.
did not know and that is fucking cool! thanks for sharing :)
Really? I've noticed that the song Loud Love has something in common with Enter Sandman, I've played both on guitar, but didn't realized that the first inspired the latter :)
ua-cam.com/video/YWrHOgVRZfQ/v-deo.html
Thanks for the lesson and good memories!
Same here, "Enter Sandman" and "Black Album" of Metallica were my first Metal impressions when I just turned 13 :)
From there I fell in love with Metallica (especially James Hatfield) and it helped me to get through my teenage and influenced me a lot as a human.
I started to play guitar from trying to play Enter Sandman riff.
And "Nothing Else Matters" was the first song I sang.
I love how you break down the riff, knowing that kirk had no actual idea of what he was doing when he wrote this, he just thought it was catchy
I think the reason the song was such a hit was because it had thrash-sounding guitar and a more normal hard rock drum beat. "Ready for radio" in a way that earlier Metallica wasn't.
"What are we bendictine monks?" My favorite line. As for teaching kids to prepare for dying in their sleep, I don't know how old this traditional prayer is but there were definitely times in human history when this was a real danger. But you're right that Metallica uses it to good effect in a 20th century where we don't have devastating plagues and we do have vaccinations and antibiotics.
We still have plagues
@@jumpydashgaming3625 Compared to the major plagues of centuries ago, COVID (and any other 21th century epidemic) is a total joke. The difference is huge, COVID isn't even a plague by those standards.
People didn't even know that microbes were a thing. Open surgeries were done with absolutely no attempt at disinfecting stuff. Post-surgery infections (and deaths from that) were of course extremely common, and people took for granted that that's just how it works. Cities were full of shit, and people had no idea that this transmitted disease.
We've traded out some tragedies for others. Things are overall more comfortable than they once were, but this has given way to inflexibility and neuroticism. Things like child abuse start to re-enter the picture due to society basically losing its mind collectively. Even for those children that do grow up in comfortable, kind circumstances, they find themselves unprepared for the tragedies of adult life all too often. They also frequently find themselves feeling judged as "privileged" by their envious peers.
To me a huge part of this song is about challenging the idea of innocence in childhood. All too often, even in the modern day, it gets interrupted tragically early.
Metal
Every
Tritones
Available
Lads
When you shifted the rift or drums they both made the song have that secret agent/spy sound. You could imagine syncopated jazz horns over it.
You're analyzing and dissecting metal so thoroughly that you could be a member of the Dillinger Escape Plan.
omg i literally decided to give Metallica a try a few days a go and this was the first song i listened too and loved it!
Same way I began listening to them. Enter Sandman was the first.
Welcome to metal.
Welcome to the rabbit hole. Go to their 80's stuff if you want to get a glimpse of how deep the hole goes.
just noticed that there's whispering when he sings "we're off to never ever land"
never ever noticed it before
I was really hoping you'd point out Jasons part in the prechorus.
I think both melodically and rhythmically it's the most interesting part of the song, in the context of how it functions beside the guitars.
Since you like Tritones and Metal, how about analyzing YYZ? There is lots of cool trivia about the song, as well as an awkward time and chord structure which could give you plenty to talk about!
You have to do the recommendations via PAtreon but it is defintely past time for some Rush on this channel. Preferably something from that super colorful era from Farewell to Kings through Moving Pictures
I love these videos because it not only explains the songs but it shows what to use to get a similar affect when writing your own music
you need an online music school, it's crazy how fast i learn stuff from you despite how many slower and more complex videos ive watched. The visuals and delivery go a long way, you're a master of it
This video style is so cool :0
I was always so fascinated by the dark, demon like quality of the riff of Enter Sandman, and wondered how it was possible for a sound to create this feeling. So when I started music theory last year and finally learned about tritones, it suddenly all made sense!
Been listening and playing it all my life, never noticed that it utilizes anticipation.
Enter Sandman with the offbest hi-hats is something
Before even starting to watch, I literally wondered whether you had done this one already! Stoked!
Hearing somebody explain chugs makes me laugh. Cheers
Thanks for including the drums in your analysis here. I've always attributed a key factor of my love of Metallica, especially this era, to Ulrich being a key part of the melodic structure and not just a time keeper.
"Took a single riff and manipulated it in several ways"
While drawing a finch. Clever man.
such a simple melody done so well.
Fade to black, would be great for you to dissect...
As long as he doesn’t point out the fact that it was actually about stolen equipment. More specifically one of James Hetfields amps being stolen that was very sentimental to him. They had to start all over.
"A punch to the ear" is the most metal way to describe metal ever
9:20 I was watching a video by Signals Music Studio where he described the "Metallica Scale", which was a minor scale with the minor second and tri-tone added.
I love how you can do such a lovely breakdown of any genre !!
Is there any place I can ask a theory question and hear your take on the answer, slash, would you consider doing a Q&A series?
It's great to hear someone who gets so nerdy and academic about music theory professing their love for metal!
My mother is a classically trained soprano, my grandfather (her dad) a classically trained violinist who played with the BBC Scottish symphony orchestra.
I was taught singing and violin from age 7 and passed my ABRSM grade 5 music theory . . . I forget how old I was but it was somewhere between the ages of 9 and 12.
And ofcourse by 15 I'm playing the guitar (bought a Dave Mustaine signature VMNT) and listening to Slipknot, Lamb of God and Arch Enemy. :'D
If you like LoG and Arch Enemy, you should check out Revocation. Bit more death metal, but with a lot of jazz influence. It's super cool stuff. Gojira is super cool too.
Or if you really want to dive into crazy metal, go check out Animals as Leaders.
it has been years since I have practiced music theory. Thanks for reminding me of its beauty
These videos are, seriously, just incredible. Fascinating. I'm not even a metal fan and I couldn't look away.
14:10 those chords are used in Orion, another Metallica song. Could you do a video on it too?
I video on Orion would be amazing.
I immediately thought of Orion when I heard that, that would be an amazing video
That would be a long ass video
I also heard that immediately. Jumped right out at me
I love this. I was just thinking how Nothing else Matters is a waltz.
so does the interlude in Orion
The Unforgiven Part Three as well.
Love how these videos take what seems to be a relatively simple song and points out the complexity in them.
If I remember the story correctly this was one of the first songs my mom and dad danced together to.
Still waiting for Rush.
if love a take on 2112, but since that won't ever happen I'll take any Rush song.
That would take hours man but it would be awesome. Like each section has three freaking parts! So that's what 15 sections to analyze. Not including the solo's.
@@elias9746 YYZ
passage to bankok tbh
METAL
M- Mad
E- Energy
T- Tritone
A- Atmosphere
L- Lamentation
its beatiful how u can do analisis of every type of music and still use metaphors to describe the things that cant be described
good job bro, keep it goin
WAS THAT A REFERENCE TO GALAPAGOS FINCHES OH MAN YOU MADE THIS BIOLOGIST'S DAY
7:48
I’m fairly certain that that when they jump to High e they have a d Ghost note hammering onto e almost like they’re revving and engine.
Just a minor detail I thought was still crucial.
This is an awesome video. I am absolutely amazed at how talented at 3 skills you are.
I would love to see you do one of these for Tool, maybe with a song like Lateralus or Schism from them.
I'm really interested in the idea of proximate harmony used to analyze riffs, but I found nothing online.
Maybe some dashingly handsome music theorist should do a whole video on it....
Great channel and commentary/analysis! Thanks!
When you realigned the drums with the first riff it sounded so cursed to me. Love the analysis.
You saying the first metal song you heard was Enter Sandman made my joints ache like the old woman I am! (I saw them live on this tour and again for Load, if that tells you anything)
Can't remember if it was Lars or James but I remember one of them saying that for Sandman, they just wanted to get away from the complexity of AJFA, and write a simple song, that basically centers around and expands on one riff. I'd say they did a good job.
I love that you drew a Darwin’s finch when you said “manipulation”
Thanks, 9th grade biology for making me understand that reference
Great analysis as always! I can fill in a bit as to how the riff came about. This was the album they started to use drop tunings. This is one of the first riffs that falls under your fingers when you tune this way.
I’m wondering if this is one of those last minute songs like Paranoid. “We need one more-whose got a riff?” “Anyone got any ideas?” “Well, I was putting my kid to sleep the other night.....”And it became their biggest hit.
"What are we, Benedictine Monks?" I actually LOL'd
Everybody says “oh the artist just thought it sounded good” but they have the ear to know that it sounds good because it fits the vibe and message
They have the ear, but songwriters often have no clue about theory. Artists know what sounds good. Theorists then apply their theories to explain why it sounds good. A dirty secret in linguistics is that grammar works the same way. They can only describe how we communicate. They can't make rules we have to follow.
This was really good, never really looked at Enter Sandman this way.
@9:46 "It's getting pretty hard to hold back the coming explosion" lol. I'm sure that's how they all felt during the writing/recording process. If you can make the audience feel the same, you've got yourself some musical gold... along with plenty of juvenile innuendos that can be made out of people who read that statement out of context (which I certainly did not) ^_*
3:37
"With the possible exception of the minor 2nd"
*Proceeds to play Airbag by Radiohead*
What I think: in the intro the E is a major 7th pedal tone, and the F to Bb is actually a 1st-4th-3rd sequence in F major, but as we approach the main riff we find it becomes a modulation with an E minor tritone with Bb, so I-IV with the resolving passing note tritone and the “tag” anchoring us with the G-F#-E resolution which is clearly E minor. The chorus is actually a secondary dominant relationship, moving to B major, where F# is the dominant of B, resolving to the home key of E minor! The pre-chorus reinforces this secondary dominant of B major.
I have no fucking clue what tf is he talking about and I don't understant a single word but since it is about Enter Sandman I'm dropping like
@8:38 my favorite 12tone moment ever XD, 12tone letting his angst talk hehe
So will we be seeing some more obscure metal analyses coming up? Would love to hear your thoughts on, for example, Angra's "Spread Your Fire".
I wanted to mention that the line from the prayer in the breakdown: "If I die, before I wake", it could a reference to what the song was originally about, which was crib death. James had intended and originally written the song to be about crib death, but Lars and Bob Rock persuaded James to rewrite the song to have a different meaning behind it, because they felt that was too far dark of a topic to have a song about, while still keeping that dark-sinister feel of the instrumental. And that's how the song eventually became about nightmares. Also, DISCLAIMER: this is just a theory of mine, I just thought I'd share it because I couldn't help but make that connection knowing how Enter Sandman came to be.
That exact prayer, including the line "If I die before I wake," has been around for ages. I said those exact words every night at bedtime when I was a Catholic kid in the 70s. It's not a reference to crib death. It is, of course, a creepy thought to put into a kid's head just before bedtime! The song's theme is a child's nightmares, and that prayer fits the theme perfectly. It sure put creepy thoughts in my head that made me afraid to fall asleep, like the boy in the song. Then when I was 10, my best friend did die in his sleep. Bedtime was not a great time.
I really love your videos.
Life lesson: "Context affects perception."
one of the greatest songs of all time
Hearing the tone at 3:33 immediately reminded me of Frayed Ends of Sanity
Yeah, 12Tone! #StayMetal 🤘
Finally, another metalhead who is fascinated by music theory!!🤘🤘🤘
3:22 did you draw Cloud's buster blade when talking about a sense of finality and it's from Final Fantasy VII?
Fade to sleep, fade to Sad but True if you're listening to the album. What about Fade to Black tho?
Can you break down the evolution of metal to 2008 metal core to what metal is today?
idk if that's the right channel for that, there are probably other videos on the topic
... This is completely f*cking amazing
Thank you so much!
Great points: the drum beat 1:30, the anticipation in the riff 1:45, why shifting the drum beat would be a failure 2:17
7:40 Correction, in the studio, james played all rthythm parts, kirk only did the solos, and live james plays this.
Would be really cool to see you talk about Death (the band lmao). Specifically Individual Thought Patterns or Symbolic would be really interesting :)
Love it. Now it'd be something to see how you break down Meshuggah...
TBH it's not my sort of music, but the fact that they call themselves Meshuggah makes me kvell
Ahhh, memories. Some say Master of Puppets, but I’ll always love the Black album
For me ride the lightning and black is nice same with kill em all and puppets, but ride the lightning is just bam.
Conrad Nickelson well said!
@hello world! Composition-wise I am definitely with you - I grew up on thrash and prog, so it's pretty much perfect for me.
But I basically never listen to it anymore because the mix is so bad that I just get sad and irritated, thinking about what could have been. I've listened to one or two of the Justice for Jason fan mixes, and they're alright, but can only do so much...
Loved this video! Since you like metal, I would be interested in a breakdown of one Tool's math-y songs, like Lateralus, Parabola, or Forty-Six and 2.
Just came back to this video to add this thought in: another reason why the key change (or whatever you want to consider it) sounds fine is that the G, in the context of F# is now the flat 2.
This being metal, the flat two is a perfectly normal and acceptable passing tone, easy to use to pull the song back to the tonic.
A good example of the flat 2 used in this context is “Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth.
You should do some videos on Tool. They’ve got tons of crazy musical themes and structures
7:40 Hetfield plays all the rhythm guitars on the record, so no Hammett there. And even live Hammett plays the other part (The single drawn out E5 chord).
This shit made a lot of sense. Good video dude
I'd love an analysis of their first tune, Hit the Lights!
This video is two years old so this may have been mentioned already, but an interesting thing about the main riff is that it was originally written to be half as long, by which I mean one bar of the "body" and one bar of the "tag," and then it repeated.
Kirk Hammett wrote the riff in that way in the middle of the night in a hotel room and recorded it to a tape, along with other attempts at riffs. When James and Lars were going through tapes trying to find good riffs to build on, Kirk's riff caught Lars' ear, but he had the discerning thought to have the first half of the riff repeat for 3 bars and make the 2nd half into a "tail," as he describes it.
...And just like that, Lars sends Metallica into the Stratosphere.
Also, James has said in at least a couple interviews that the song is about Crib Death, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), which really makes the lyrics take on a much heavier feel than just a "dark lullaby."
at 6:58 you mention "tag". what is a tag refer to?
a body is the main part of a riff, the head i think is the intro, and the tag is put at the end of a riff after a few repeats to break it up and give some different notes and rhythm and to make the riff loop better and not be monotonous, basically like a dessert if you want a food analogy. you need a break from the main dish, but it needs to be small and different so you have contrast between the main riff and the tag. basically, the tag is different from the riff and makes you want to listen to the riff again.