GothExplorer

It is a subgenre of hip hop, which is typified by grim lyrical content, usually dealing with the harsh realities of urban life.

I recently read in a national newspaper about a criminal trial here in the UK in which the prosecution made something about the defendant's obsession with drill music. Drill music is all about violence, apparently - not that I'm remotely an expert. The defence counsel pointed to a song by The Beatles called Run For Your Life, which promotes a violent outlook. (It also has possibly the worst lead guitar on any Beatles song.) That got me thinking about songs which condone or appear to condone violence. They include Delilah by Tom Jones and Sister of Mercy by The Thompson Twins. I Don't Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats is about mass murder, but does not condone it. Can anyone think of any other songs which appear to condone violence?

I keep thinking that I will practice guitar more now that we are in lockdown, but somehow I still find other things to do. In other news, welcome to the forum Medley.

My tee shirt arrived yesterday, and so it turns out that I did not have to wait until April.

Welcome Dan. Maybe you will check out the other threads on this site about COVID19.

… alternative music and its history. An apostrophe is not required here. It's should only ever be used in the English language as an abbreviation for either it is or it has. Good luck with your studies, Ria, and I do mean that.

I have just noticed that my recent thread about women in metal has led to a discussion about the musical education of children. As I try to keep things on topic, I have decided to start a new thread on this subject. I am all in favour of children learning to play instruments, but this is often done either not well or not at all. When I was a child, music lessons at school tended to be utter rubbish, and I wonder if they are any better today. There is a side of me that thinks that instruments and genres are not really important here. After all, Dio learned classical trumpet as a child, and went on to become a metal legend. Then again, you can't expect children to be motivated to learn to play a musical instrument unless you either bribe them with extra pocket money or else invite them to learn an instrument and genre that actually appeals to them. I recall many years ago reading a letter in a children's comic. A boy wrote that he and his friends wanted to form a pop group, but that none of them could play any musical instruments. You might ask why they did not just learn, but it is not always that simple. Could they afford to buy instruments? Did they know anyone who could help them to learn? I try to play my part. I sometimes visit a family with two young children. I recently gave their older child a four-octave electronic keyboard, but her parents are not musical, and I wonder if she will actually learn to play it. If she does, then I don't care what genre of music she plays.

Military history with metal riffs.

The Warning will be coming to London in September 2020. This will be their first ever trip to Europe. Update: they have just postponed their USA tour because of COVID19. Whether or not this will affect the date of their London gig remains to be seen.

FA, I am honestly surprised that you have reacted to this thread in the way you have. Yes, I opened the thread by offering my own point of view, but that is normal for forums that I have been active on in the past. Sometimes people open a thread by asking a question, but sometimes they throw out their point of view as a way of inviting comment. I am grateful to Balor for offering his own point of view, but I didn’t really find him persuasive. That does not mean I was hoping or expecting to disagree with him (or indeed with anyone). You have misunderstood me about the Ed Sheeran effect. I was not thinking of sex appeal, but merely of the fact that lots of women like his music. I may be wrong, but I would be very surprised if women buying guitars has nothing to do with them liking Ed Sheeran’s music. When I see young women busking, they always seem to be playing acoustic guitars. Right now I can’t think of an exception. I may be wrong about the number of women in metal, and their tendency to be vocalists rather than instrumentalists. I admit that I have no hard data on the subject, and I am sure many people on this forum know of lots of metal bands which I know nothing about. Nevertheless, you do agree with me that women are underrepresented. I have admitted in a previous post that I was maybe stretching the point with regards to hand size, but hear me out on this. I have large hands. I can hammer on over a distance of three frets, or four frets if I go further along the fingerboard. Can someone with small hands do that? I have trouble playing barre chords beyond the tenth fret, because my fingers are large and the spaces between the frets small. Would someone with small hands find barring easier beyond the tenth fret? I completely take your point that it might seem bizarre that men with large hands play the mandolin. As it happens, I tried playing the mandolin some years back, but gave up. It was not really my instrument. Nevertheless, a lot of men (and women) play the mandolin in bluegrass bands in the USA. I stand by my comments in reply to ChainsawAkimbo. Real science is indeed based on observation, and ideally also on experiments. His ideas about our supposed caveman ancestors are merely speculation. In recent years I have donated money to or bought merchandise from Motion Device, The Warning, The Sixsters, Frozen Crown, Camille and Kennerly, and Liliac. So yes I do celebrate women in metal.

The thread was indeed intended to celebrate women in metal, but also to observe that women in metal tend not to be instrumentalists. It was intended to provoke a debate, although not quite the debate that we have actually had.

We are now completely off-topic, but that is your choice. Real science is based on observation (as a minimum) and on repeatable experiments (ideally). No one has ever observed any of our supposed caveman ancestors, and no one has ever conducted any experiments involving them. Therefore, whatever you think cavemen got up to is speculation at best. In future, please do not use the word scientific unless you use it correctly.

We are now in danger of getting seriously off topic, and I am also aware of the site rules on civil discourse. Nevertheless, I am astonished that anyone buys into this nonsense about humans today having caveman ancestors. Yes, some people used to live in caves in times past, and some people in some parts of the world still live in caves today. But guess what - they are not primitive.. In fact, some of them have flat screen television. It stands to reason that very few people have ever lived in caves at any point in the past, because there are not that many caves out there for people to live in. Be honest - which one of us knows of a habitable cave within a twenty mile radius of where they are right now. I certainly don't.

I did not say that. I said that there must be some difference in the way that they play. Frankly I am astonished that you read my post in the way you did. Balor, I accept your point that guitars come in different sizes, but women do not tend to buy smaller guitars - or at least not that I've noticed. Let me take an example. Lots of women choose telecasters. So do lots of men. The guitar is the same size, but the woman has small hands, whereas the man has large hands. That has to make some things easier for the woman than for the man, and vice versa. Maybe I am stretching the point here ... But to keep the discussion on track - it seems to me that women in pop and rock genres are far more Iikely to be singers than instrumentalists. I have just watched a clip from a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the men appear to outnumber the women by at least three to one.

I am not saying that there is nothing in that, but you have also said that you welcome women instrumentalists in the bands if they are talented. It occurs to me also that there must be some difference in the way women and men play guitar. Women have smaller hands than men, which has to make a difference in how they play.

I will not floccipend any of the above choices.

In which case it is interesting that women who can sing are more likely to be in metal bands than women who play instruments. It also occurs to me that there are not a huge number of women instrumentalists in rock or pop music generally. Think of a girl group, and you are probably thinking of a vocal harmony group. Girl groups like the Bangles and Fuzzbox and The Go-gos - where most or all members play an instrument - are not that common.

I am not sure that is a valid point. We seem to agree that women in metal are more likely to be singers than instrumentalists. I accept your point that women tend to sound different from men when singing, and they tend to sing higher. If you are in a symphonic metal band, then you might want a singer who can hit soaring high notes. For that reason you might prefer a soprano to a tenor. Nevertheless you would presumably not object to a woman in your band playing guitar, bass guitar, drums, etc. If you have a choice between recruiting a man or a woman to play bass guitar in your band, then presumably you would want the one who was musically the best fit, regardless of gender. I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that the main reason there are not many women instrumentalists in metal bands is because there are not many women who are interested in playing musical instruments - or at least not ones associated with rock bands. It was reported here in the UK a couple of years ago that as many women are now buying guitars as men. I suspected then, and still do, that this was part of an Ed Sheeran effect. A woman who plays Ed Sheeran songs on an acoustic guitar is perhaps unlikely to find her way into a metal band.

Dear OP, I am frankly ashamed - although not at all surprised - that you are a student at a British university. Please find something else to write about for your dissertation, or else quit university and get a job.

Today is International Women’s Day, and I am thinking about women in metal. Let’s face it, they tend to be singers. Of course, I can compile a list of women in metal bands who play instruments. Thalia from Frozen Crown plays guitar, as does Dany from The Warning. Ale from The Warning plays bass, as do Andrea from Motion Device and Melody from Liliac. Abi from Liliac plays drums, as does Pau from The Warning. Camille and Kennerly both play the harp. The list could go on. Nevertheless, women in metal tend to be vocalists. Can anyone think of a reason for this?

A few years ago, I was in a doctor's waiting room, and I flicked through a magazine about blues music. It contained a feature on Glenn Hughes, who was about to release his latest album - presumably blues. For those who do not know, Glenn Hughes has previously been the bass player with Deep Purple, the lead singer for Gary Moore, the lead singer of Black Sabbath, and even the lead singer of the KLF. If you like your techno to err on the side of metal, then check out America: What Time Is Love.. I could not help but wonder whether he was actually going to make any money from his new album. A year or two later I went to see Glenn Hughes in concert. To my surprise he played to more than a thousand fans, and it 's great to see that there is still a market for mid-70s Deep Purple. Between songs, Hughes said that he had decided to give up on recording because his proper place was on stage, not in the studio. I couldn't help but wonder if he just got fed up of recording music which did not earn him much money.

Older than 40; traditional, folk, symphonic; online; no; no; final two questions not applicable.

Continuing where Rush left off.

I suppose that this thread is a reflection on my earlier post about record labels. The most successful bands are signed to labels. I know however that the music industry is largely fools’ gold. Just ask all of those talent show winners turned one hit wonders. On the one hand, I am pleased that a lot of young bands are forging a career without record labels, but I am also aware that those bands are not well known, and may never be sufficiently well known to allow them to make serious money – ie the money they need to move out of their parental homes. And so I find myself reluctantly wondering if the future does not in fact lie with bands signed to labels. The trouble is that I cannot think of any young metal bands which are well known. Young bands I know of are inspired by Metallica and Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple and the like. Imagine if Metallica and Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple had never been well known in the first place. Where would we be now?