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Conflating Classical and Metal Music


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When I was growing up, there was no music I wanted to listen to other than Hard Rock and ever-increasingly heavy metal, until I started to study music theory in high school. When you study it in academia, you're basically studying Bach. It's always been my argument that Heavy Metal is the closest thing to modern classical music that there is. Even Jazz doesn't resemble Classical in the way that Metal does, despite how snobby it's patrons can be about it (our own genre has it's snobs as well). Jazz theory (at least the theory that you learn if you go to a place like five towns college or Berklee) resembles pop music more than classical music; i.e. if you were going to cover a piece of music, there are plenty of substitutions for any given thing in the arrangement, other than the melody. In contrast, when making a rendition of a classical piece, any missing or changed notes in the piece are very noticeable. That having been said, think of how obvious it is when someone goes into guitar center and plays the wrong notes when playing Ozzy or Metallica. I submit a specific example; Halestorm's cover of Straight Through The Heart by Dio. When I first heard the track, I IMMEDIATELY noticed a change in the bassline and guitar for the opening riff. It's also been found in neurological studies that people who are fans of Metal have similar neurological "wiring" to classical music aficionados. Then there are bands like apocalyptica who, despite not having any guitar players, are most certainly metal. So where do some of you draw the line? obviously this is an ongoing conversation that the metal world has with itself, but when do you all personally stop calling something metal and start calling it something else? For me, it's not a defined line by any stretch. I feel that Metal, at least at this point in history, presents itself as "very loud, technical music, regardless of instrumentation." I even find myself listening to some electronic music and saying, "... the only thing seperating this from metal is instrumentation and the audience that is accepting it."

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  • 2 weeks later...

It should come as no surprise though. Among its many influences metal was heavily inspired by classical music, particularly the darker side of classical i.e. Wagner, metal is truly a unique genre unlike anything else out there. As for where the line is drawn? It's difficult to explain but when you listen to any sub-genre of metal it's immediately identifiable as 'metal'. Funeral doom, tech-death, viking metal, all completely different but all are easily identified as metal.

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It's true that metal and classical are both heavily scripted (though Pyrrhon, an NYC band, is putting free improv sections into their songs...!). I'd say classical is more cerebral by a long shot - the underlying theory is more deeply understood, the available structures have been more thoroughly explored. And a much higher caliber of musicianship is required to play the stuff. Metal tends to be less cohesive, less centrally planned, and more intuitive; it often defaults to "verse-chorus-bridge-etc" pop structure, and some bands wind up mining the same boring melodic veins for years. At its best, its intuitive nature is a strength - classical composition can be so sterile. The success or failure of crossover acts depends on their sensitivity to the nuances of arranging for the instruments they're playing. That goes both ways; if the person doing the arrangement doesn't have a deep familiarity with the potential of the instruments they're writing for (or if they're just lazy), the piece will be lifeless. That's how I feel about Apocalyptica. I can't stand them. To the question of where one "draws the line" - I'd rather not. After my experiences of the past few months, I think it's a better approach to consider a piece on its own terms. That's vitally important when writing a crossover piece (and I'd say the same holds true for the genre-blending within metal, too). Very easy to wind up with unexplored potential, or a cheesy, predictable piece that's the worst of both worlds. The successes, though, can be transcendental. Earlier this year I did death metal vocals with a string quartet at a few shows in and around the city, and my take on mixing these genres is very much influenced by that association. They're all excellent musicians and playing with them has inspired me to take my own writing further. Here's a video, which I've posted to the forum before: https://vimeo.com/115837284

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As for where the line is drawn? It's difficult to explain but when you listen to any sub-genre of metal it's immediately identifiable as 'metal'. Funeral doom, tech-death, viking metal, all completely different but all are easily identified as metal.
If this was true, we wouldn't constantly be fielding questions about whether or not something is really "metal".
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We don't really field those questions anyway. Sure BAN points out when the root of a particular sound is not metal (and rightly so). Where the basis of a sound is metal' date=' however, that fact is self-evident to most of us.[/quote'] I don't think that's true. I often agree with BAN, but not always; I usually think it's a fruitless discussion; and I'm not comfortable with that kind of essentialist discontinuity.
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There are certainly more interesting discussions to be had and the over-simplified 'is this metal or not' debate misses the point. That being said without a semi-strict interpretation of musical genres it would take a great deal more time to seek out bands of a similar style. The line between what is and is not metal exists in an odd way: for some it's concrete and impassable, for others abstract and ever-changing, that's one of the many unique qualities metal possesses wouldn't you say?

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Two objections: A) classical doesn't equal classical, and B) metal doesn't equal metal. Of course, there's the obvious like Malmsteen or Rhoads or Emperor or much of melodic death metal who remind you of Bach or Vivaldi or Beethoven. Clearly that sort of heavy metal is closer related to classical music than any non-heavy metal modern music. Then there's the pathos and flamboyance of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden or Manowar, heroes with swords and dragons and shit. That's pretty much Wagner. I think Manowar mentioned Wagner as the first heavy metaller. But then for example, there's thrash metal and grindcore. I find it difficult to relate Slayer or Sodom or Napalm Death to anything classical, and I don't believe they are too well-versed in classical music anyway. Black Sabbath doesn't remind me much of classical music either. And then, there's "classical" music that goes far beyond classic classical music. Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, my favourite classical piece, is thoroughly composed savagery. It's about a human sacrifice no less, it's much heavier and more brutal than most metal, and perhaps it's no coincidence that it debuted one year before WW1 where "civilised" Europe collapsed and met its savage end. ooi7eomsTuc Funny enough, the only stuff I can think of that comes close is apocalyptic black metal like Mayhem or Blut aus Nord. Maybe there's the full circle. 7EVM3u8QsuI

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Rebuttal: It is certainly true that Wagner and other composers had a heavy sound to their compositions. However those works were still based in classical composition and feature all the hallmarks of that musical style. Such music has inspired many a musician through the years granted but that does not mean such artists are playing classical music. Malmsteen and Rhoads are/were classically trained musicians so it is hardly surprising that knowledge translates into their guitar playing. Does that mean they are playing classical music? No because the calling cards of that style are largely missing. There is crossover between genres of course, music as powerful and beautiful as Vivaldi, Tchiakovsky, Bach and their contemporaries will always inspire the truly appreciative music fan. However where one's inspiration comes from and what one actually crafts are still capable of being seperate and unique entities.

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  • 4 months later...

For me musical styles form a circle with progressive metal touching on classical music and thus closing the full circle.

Some of the classical composers, if they had distroted guitars and kick drums may have done metal even back then. But I draw the line. Metal is a MUSIC genre for me and as such heavily dominated by actual sounds. Metal without kick drum or guitars is not metal for me. And if you do classical music with metal instruments you get metal. If you play metal using classical intruments you get classical music. For me - it's as simple as that. Because metal is something that influences how I feel. And even if Carmina Burana may be kick ass it will never make me feel like Symphony X.

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  • 6 months later...

Well, it's a fact that some well known metal performers listened and were inspired by classical music. I found one great example. Check this:

 

Melody in this part of Paganini piece:
 

 

Is exactly the same as riff of Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell (Sabbath's version just has faster tempo):
 

 

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  • 4 months later...

One of the features of extreme metal composition is that it's often motif based beyond being "merely" riff based (though being riff based itself seems to lend a certain baroque/classical quality to it).  The same ideas are repeated through a song or an album with minor variations (melodic or structural) relative to what's happened earlier on in the song/album... That's what makes it feel more tied together than a lot of other rock music which can be just licks thrown together without an ear for consistency or development.  Classical is practically just motif development to a great degree, so that might be where a lot of the similarity lies.

Most of what people call "classical music" is through composed, whereas most metal is based on phrase repetition (like pop music).  However, you do get an awful lot of classical music (esp. Baroque and Classical eras) which features phrase repetition in melodic structure even if keys modulate through the piece.. Thinking very much of Bach, Mozart, and I guess some Beethoven here.  That's the stuff which usually reminds me of metal in terms of the structure of the music, if not the specifics of composition and intent.  Wagner is where a lot of the feeling and "gravitas" of metal can be found.

Metal is also clearly a folk form, though.  Most metal musicians for a long time learned riffs by ear, they weren't necessarily taught to play their instruments, they had a feel for the sound and went from there.  That's why early metal can have diverse riff styles and sounds but still have a sense of being tied together somehow... Thinking also of bands like Hellhammer and Bathory who did certain things that other musicians then picked up on later and worked on, esp. Darkthrone, Burzum etc.  The whole of death metal and black metal were based on musicians playing similar sounding things without having been "taught" any standard pieces (or any theory at all) - seems more like folk than classical at that point (I'm using "folk" in quite a loose sense, here).

I never found tabs or anything for songs I liked, I used to listen really hard to the music itself and work it out on a guitar.  That's one of the differences between "classical" music and world music (incl. folk and country), in my experience - while the former is taught in quite a structured way, the latter is more about picking it up and learning as you go.  Metal for me is healthily within the two bounds - there are aspects that clearly mimic classical structure and style, and there are aspects which are rooted in a folk tradition (namely "heavy metal," being its very own tradition!).

I could emphasise the origin in Blues, but I think that's overstated a lot... Black Sabbath really jumped out of that whole game in their first few albums, and as soon as NWOBHM hit the scene, metal was clearly its very own beast.

 

Edit: long story short, I think that structurally metal can come close to classical, historically it's a lot like its own kind of folk tradition, it's basically just its own thing as far as these two extremes go!

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  • 1 year later...

I find this an interesting topic, as I play both metal and classical guitar (the latter much longer than the former).

My objection to conflating the two would be that metal is an umbrella term applied to a wide array of musical styles and sounds (as is classical music).  Thus, while some subgenres/bands have classical influences or sounds, others do not (take Darkthrone).

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