I’ve been listening to instrumental rock for the most part as of late. I’d bought every Explosions in the Sky album I could find, and have generally played them to death. I then used Pandora internet radio, basing a station on Explosions in the Sky. Through this, I’ve heard a lot of Mogwai, a band that got my attention back in 2006 or so, and I’ve since picked up several more of their albums. Also via Pandora, I’ve heard Russian Circles, and now I own two of their albums. I’ve almost circled back to Trans Am, a band that I’ve always liked.

I’m not sure what to call this genre. It’s often called “post rock”, which seems to imply it’s beyond rock, or after rock. Names aside, there are some attributes I like in it. First, it’s based in rock, in the sense that guitar and drum set are the foundations. I’m also looking for some harmonic complexity, and expressiveness in terms of contrasts – loud/soft, major/minor, space/texture, dissonance/harmony. It’s not so much I have a problem with vocals, it’s more that I don’t like the constains that standard lyrics impose on things.

I’m not sure how Pandora actually makes it’s play list, but it tends to map in sad or busy piano playing, and a fair amount of quasi-orchestral bits. I don’t mind, and even enjoy the strings at times, but the piano has got to go. So for what it’s worth, I thought I’d pick one song from each of these three bands, plus my favourite album of theirs that I own.

Explosions in the Sky – The Only Moment We Were Alone
From the album The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. It starts pretty soft, but they rock out at the end. I guess that’s what I like about it.

Mogwai – Killing all the Flies

Kind of a rough live version, but you get the idea. This is from Happy Songs for Happy People, which is my favourite, though they just came out with a new album, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. I like this a lot so far, but I’ve yet to get completely though it. Mogwai tends to have quite a range, and plenty of interesting sounds.

Russian Circles – Micah

Russian circles is more rock that the other two, particularly the drumming. Micah is from Enter, and I’m not sure I like it more, or less than Station, the other album I own. They can trip up a bit on metal cliche’, and some of their compositions seem to wander to nowhere in particular. But they have their moments, and I especially like some of them in Micah. I’d like to see them replace the guitarists’ looping with another instrumentalist.

Given the state of my left thumb, guitar playing is out for the next few months. I thought I would try to do something with MIDI and soft synthesis. I picked up an M-Audio Axiom 25 MIDI/USB Controller. I had intended to use it with Garage Band, which it does reasonably well, but it came with Abletron Live LE, a de-featured version of Live. Since I want to figure out how to do more loop-based composition and/or performance, it seems to be the way to go.

The learning curve on Live looks pretty steep. Unlike Garage Band, it’s a tool that assumes you’re going to spend some time with it to learn. At first, I had no idea how to even get started. Then I found that it’s got integrated tutorials, and I was off and running. The Axiom works nicely with it, giving physical controls that will make using the gear creatively much more natural. Somehow, having to grab a mouse, find a virtual control, and mess with it’s pixels clears most if not all creative musical ideas from my brain. Having physical transport controls is a huge gain all by itself.

The keys on the Axiom are really nice – in fact, hard to believe given the price of the thing. I almost wish I’d gotten the bigger 49 or 61 key version, but there’s no run on my desk for that, and I’m not a real keyboard player anyways.

The Axiom is also pretty complicated. I’ve not done MIDI years, and the jargon and conceptual model has changed a lot, particularly with integrated digital audio and software synthesis. I’m looking forward to getting back up to speed.

Here’s a quick idea. Guitar is in drop-D, 146 bpm with a quarter-note echo. I tuned the base down there also. The canned drums are from Garage band.

sled

Seems like a verse to something.

I’ve been catching up on Metal lately, mostly due to my daughter’s interests in a few different bands, and to some extent, followng Mike Patton backwards to Faith No More. This effort has landed me in the early 90′s. When I was back there, I was listening to a lot of 80′s punk, though I had seen Jawbreaker live, and was moving on to a bit of Hardcore, and some of the NYC noise bands of the day, such as Live Skull.

As I remember it back then, Metal seemed like a dead end, and as a guitarist, I avoiding playing anything like it. In hindsight, there was a lot going on, with some bands adopting some of the aspects of Metal, while adding other influences and styles. As a result, I find myself catching up on what happened on that branch hat would lead to speed metal, death metal, and thrash, as well as popularizers like System of a Down, Korn, etc.

This look backwards has brought me to Helmet, and I’ve picked up their Unsung: The Best of Helmet 1991-1997 CD . Helmet is really a cross-over between more classic metal, hardcore, and punk. The guitars are often in drop tunings, yet have some of the disonant ringing of the NYC noise bands, Vocals can vary from punk, to Black Sabbath, to hardcore. The production is rougher and warmer than we’re used to hearing these days.

Here are a few examples:

Unsung
Bad Mood
Wilma’s Rainbow