Riff Analysis 039 - Thantifaxath "Ocean of Screaming Spheres"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ธ.ค. 2024
- Oops there's a mistake in the diagram on the screen at 9:40, what I say and the concept is right but I didn't change the numbers!
That more nuanced source on consonance and dissonance is Alexander Rehding's chapter "Consonance and Dissonance" in the Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory.
This album (which isn't on Spotify): darkdescentrec...
Patreon, where you can support the channel, get exclusive videos, your name in the credits, all the diagrams and transcriptions I make for these, and input for my rapid fire riff videos: www.patreon.com/metalmusictheory
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My website, which has all my videos and academic work nicely organized: www.calderhannan.com
Thank you so much for addressing the whole "dissonant/atonal" discussion in this video. That's something that's been bugging me for a long time. I see so many bands get compared to Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega, Portal and the other usual suspects just because they all sound "dissonant" and to me that's a lazy cop-out. You would never hear someone say that Chopin sounds just like Haydn or Schubert just because they're all "harmonious" or "tonally centered", but in metal these surface-level comparisons are not just accepted, but the norm. Not to mention that most metal bands labelled as "atonal" actually aren't atonal at all - they are in a single key signature, are largely diatonic, use tonic chords or have a tonal center, but like you said, that's usually too much to unpack all at once.
>in metal these surface-level comparisons are not just accepted, but the norm
What do you expect, people are dumb and like to throw around musical terms they don't understand like they are your regular descriptive adjectives.
>Not to mention that most metal bands labelled as "atonal" actually aren't atonal at all - they are in a single key signature, are largely diatonic, use tonic chords or have a tonal center, but like you said, that's usually too much to unpack all at once.
Gorguts are one of the most common victims of this kind of mislabeling. (I also find it incredibly annoying that people often use terms "atonal" and "dissonant" in regards to Gorguts in an attempt to either praise them or bash them, lol.)
@@icipher6730 That's probably because most people, including fans of so-called "progressive/avant-garde" music, are largely used to very limited expressions of tonality, so that when they hear music that is tonally different, they assume that it must be atonal. I see this happen a lot with microtonal classical music or modal jazz that uses non-functional harmony. With a band like Gorguts, it's probably due to their, let's say, "exotic" sounding voicings, melodies, harmonies, etc. But I can't recall a single Gorguts song that is atonal.
For sure! Though I think it's also tough with the terms that we have-there isn't much very well-established vocabulary for stuff like Gorguts that's mostly (as far as I've analyzed) in this hazy world between free atonality, symmetrical scale collections, and guitar fretboard shapes. There's definitely a lot more tonal metal than I think most people realize, but there's also a lot of stuff that doesn't fit that neatly into categories (at least the ones that have made their way out of academic articles).
I also think the "dissonant" label is interesting, because it seems to have taken on a life of its own as part of the booming "dissonant death metal" subgenre-I always find it's interesting to try to track how the meanings of words can kind of shift, and mean different things to different people who think they're talking about the same thing, etc.
But I'm glad these things are interesting to people other than me!
@@metalmusictheory5401 What do you think would be a more accurate genre descriptor for bands along that vibe?
@@terminalglimmer I'm not sure accuracy is the most important thing there, because genre names are always much more of a social thing than a music theory thing. I'm just pointing out that "dissonant" means something different in a strict music theory sense than it does when labelling genres.
Sick song. The way you played the riff gives it a real haunting and sad feel.
You’re doing god’s work, I hope you know that.
neat how the rhythmic device of chopping off or adding an 8th note to move from one pattern to the next is mirrored in the chord changes all being done by half step movements in one direction or another. for a band that can appear very chaotic on the "surface" this riff is surprisingly orderly in its own way!
Nice, love that connection!
That "space" Ibanez model is so sick man
Thanks! Just a cheap-ish RG that I painted in high school lol, but I'm very fond of it!
Yes, Thantifaxath analysis is a dream come true!!
This man is a living treasure. Please don't stop with your work ever!
I love this song; thank you for covering it. Your approach toward explaining the riff and watching you play it makes me want to explore the concepts you covered further.
thanks for making me familiar with this amazing band. been listening to them the entire week and love their work. amazing musicianship!
Keep up the great work, proud of you
I love how book stack checks out.
Awesome vid, thanks!
Sacred White Noise has always been my favorite of theirs, but this video makes me want to revisit Void Masquerading as Matter. Good stuff
So good. Cursed Numbers slams
aww man and it's not on spotify :( at least it's on youtube =)
Some day I will watch one of these videos and fully understand everything. Also sad to say I've been guilty of misusing atonal and dissonant terms, but glad to learn something new!
Haha I hope it's entertaining even when I get way too deep in the theory and semantics weeds!
I just came here to cop a tab…but…ok…nice.
Awesome breakdown!
This channel is going to become a classic!
Those spooky tonal bones just in time for Halloween! 👻
I don't know how you come up with your interjections like "tonal bones" but please keep doing them
Killer content as usual , keep it up .
Cheers from Michigan
Great video
I really enjoy your videos (and occasionally find new bands) even though I understand almost nothing.
dissonance in music is prob my favourite topic and man you know your dissonance
sheesh I missed some episodes! Gotta watch em back now :D
So awesome, I love the bands you introduce and the TShirt Game is still strong. ;D
YO thantifaxath!? YES!
Inspiring videos
TONAL BONES(tm)
t o n a l b o n e s
I feel like your videos justify that the music I'm listening to isn't just "noise". I can never articulate to people why I like the music I like sometimes and how I think the song writing is actually really well thought out and unique. Thantifaxath's music is so interesting and I find them to be a great inspiration when I write stuff in the realm of Black Metal.
If you see this, would you consider taking a look into a Kayo Dot song? The main introductory riff of "Brethren of the Cross" is mostly emphasized with the bass but it uses really interesting scales, harmony, and timing. The riff is also pretty long, took me a while to figure out. Plus, honestly, I think you'd like them based of what I've seen you cover.
Will definitely do some Kayo Dot at some point, been a fan for a while! Been listening to the new album a lot lately.
Our boy so big he’s getting ads now! Lfg baby keep it up. Tonal bones ☠️☠️
As someone that can follow a lot of your rhythmic analyses due to being a drummer/percussionist with a good bit of experience and a decent bit of academic training, but I can't follow most harmonic analysis other than "yes i know those notes and I know a major chord and minor chord sound different", it is still fun for me to see some harmonic analysis. Harmony is something that has really started fascinate me and I've become more interested in, but I don't have a lot of vocabulary to describe what I like, I just know what sounds good to me. It's the least explored area in extreme metal in general and I think there's a lot of untapped potential there. Still, it is nice to have a counterbalancing force to most of the music theory channels which are much more interested in harmony than anything else.
On the subject of dissonance it is definitely an interesting discussion and I think Hazardous Jazzgasm brought up some good points. I'm sure I've mislabeled and misconstrued some bands as dissonant or atonal when really they're just using a lot of weird phrasing and tons of distortion which can make it unclear if if it's dissonant or not.
I think one of my favorite "dissonant" (I'm pretty sure I'm using it right this time!) albums would probably be False Highs, True Lows by Plebeian Grandstand. They really make use of a lot of ugly dissonance and disjointed rhythms and time signatures that seem ripe for your kind of analysis. For a good song to look at, although all of the songs on that album have interesting things to look at would be Eros Culture th-cam.com/video/opbmzhbLIT4/w-d-xo.html The last two minutes just repeating the same dissonant arpeggio while slowly building up until it harmonizes on that chord in an even more dissonant way to bridge into the final section where a hyperblast kicks in with almost spoken word vocals layered on top is while the instrumentals become more and more distorted until the song just stops. It's great stuff.
Love that album and haven't listened in a while, thanks for the reminder! And yeah rhythm is definitely normally the more interesting thing for me (because it's so tied up to how you move to this music), and I'm normally trying to correct for the harmony bias that music theory has in general (if you learn in any formal setting, you probably spend 90% of your time on harmony and form). But like you said extreme metal harmony is also pretty weird and very often misrepresented and I'm trying to slowly get more into talking about that. Thanks for the kind words!
the Neo-Riemannian stuff is very interesting, that's kind of how i've intuitively thought about chord progressions, as the individual parts shifting relative to each other.
Came for the Thantifaxath content, stayed for the Yellow Eyes t shirt
could you do riff analysis for the intro of " Where I end and the hemlock begins" by Thantifaxath
Bro. Can we be friends? If yes, follow-up question: can I borrow your sick Yellow Eyes shirt when I go on dates?
Jokes aside, I want your brain. I’ve been into black metal for 20 years, but you’re shining a brilliant light on artists that I labeled as “genius” based on instinct alone. Now I revisit them in this grotesquely cerebral context and am blown away all over again. Thank you for your important work
Noice. Fave Thantifaxath is Cursed Numbers. Love the dotted 8th effect they use.
Never having heard this song (or band) before, the overall rhythmic structure of this is super cronchy! There's nothing I'm used to in order to grab a footing, like a typical hypermetric boundary (18 measures summing to 53 beats), or any repeated harmonic rhythm to give structure (holding for bars of 3,2,2,3,1,2,3,2) or any expectation for which measures will get a beat added/removed (below). You point out that the chord changes whenever the measure isn't 3/4, which sets up the expectation on the longer measures, but really knocks me off for the short measures. Shifty indeed!
Setting 3/4 as Medium, 5/8 as Short, and 7/8 as Long, it's:
MMS (C#-)
ML (A-)
MS (F-)
MMS (C#-)
L (E-)
Nice, and definitely agree! Very angular, lots of that feeling you get when you step thinking there's one more stair than there actually is. That's basically the sort of visual I made when I was learning this-helps to lay out the patterns. Also kind of like this thing I've talked about with Liturgy and Stravinsky where it's kind of random, and it feels like you get a feel for some sort of rule but then they subtly change the rules.
Video is great as usual and great analysis bringing the NRT to a riff analysis video! Bravo!
I would alternatively explain the passage from A°7 to G#, considering the A°7 as an "inverted" (I don't know the english term of the inverted chords, in italy we say "rivolto") D#dim7, going to G# through its dominant role, because that passage particularly has that Bach-ian taste, but the NRT explain that very well too.
Cheers!
Definitely! There are a few ways to explain this motion, and definitely something that goes pretty deep in tonal harmony from Bach to Romantic music to jazz! Thanks for the kind words!
Wow Thantifaxath without distortion sounds kinda like Mare
metal
I thought my picking was good but man is it hard to pick parts of chord accurately at that speed lol, respect!
I re-transcribed part of the intro in tabs, do you mind if I upload it to Songsterr? I'd love to have more of their tabs made public
Thanks! And yeah go for it!
Casey Kasem never used any of these terms to describe the "weekly top 40" songs.
Analyze Encenathrakh!!!
a Gargoyl riff would be cool
since we own the same copy of the Bhagavad Gita, perhaps you could recommend me some books on music that you think would be structurally useful to learning more theory, or approach? not sure if I was subbed before, but you did talk about *Inter Arma*'s _The Cavern_ at one point, which I will be covering front to back on my channel sometime soon. Cheers
You can also email me articles/generate further discussion, if you feel like, at my side email
avantgarden707@gmail
also, also, it is clear to me you must have gone to school of some type, which puts me quite a bit out of league with most of what you have to say, but I am particularly fascinated by your analyses on other songs I'm a big fan of, and this could be a really good way to get me involved with learning about these things naturally by interest alone.
Using my obligatory algorithm comment of the day to concur that the outro song does indeed slap. I know about Florid Ekstasis but do you release stuff like the outro anywhere under another name? Bleeps and bloops being used to make theory wank "would be tech if a human played it" metal and rock is unironically one of my favorite genres but it's so hard to find for some strange reason.
Haha thank you, these have been a fun little challenge for the last few videos. Haven't released them anywhere but I'm thinking about trying to turn some of them into actual songs-in the early stages of an unnamed prog neo-soul type band with some friends and that's probably where they'll end up, if anywhere
@@metalmusictheory5401 Awesome, can't wait to hear whatever that turns out to be haha.
that quick transition at the end of the bar is not a "technique " the guy forgot what bar is next and just jumped his hand to it and then said yea Johnny, drop it, nobody will notice it with the shitton of distortion anyway !
Wow your video only has a thumbs down option.