Metalheads, smart! (sometimes)

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British research has confirmed something I have known all along ... alas, they could have just asked me ...

Yo!

 

I can identify with that article...

 

Heavy Metal is still in the 'stone age' of the age of electronic musical manipulation, however. It is sonically primative. You can only play a guitar with a guitar, and you can only play the drums with the drums. More intelligent music has evolved, but if you like it then good on you. Everyone needs a kind of music to identify with. My personal musical tastes are probably not to everyone heres liking, but its ok. Diversity is all good. I feel however that the above article and study could apply to anyone and any form of music, even rap...ok, maybe not...I dunno...

 

Heavy Metal? Try hard rock. Except Slipknot. They're crap

But no, seriously, it is true, metal is very relaxing for me. It is actually easier for me to fall asleep to than soft rock or classical music. (It's not boring, just soothing).

And I disagree that it is sonically primitive. Listen to any death metal (especially melodic death metal) or progressive metal and tell me it is primitive.

 

I find metal extremely stress-relieving; blasting it over the speakers after a mentally exhausting day is rather common for me, but that's not to say I don't enjoy other forms of music.

Nataraja, what makes one form of music more intelligent than another? If a vocalist sings a beautiful song with only a piano to compliment her voice, does that make this form of music less intelligent than say, that of a symphony just based on the evolution of instruments used to create the music?

A guitar, after all, is the product of the evolution of stringed instruments.

 

I agree wholeheartedly. Nothing gets stress out of my mind like blasting The Berzerker, Gânglå or Mnemic on my stereo.
Although I'm not a true metalhead per see I appreciate the genre. It's probably due to the fact that all of my friends listen to metal and I guess that it has rubbed off.

Yes the same could definitely apply even to rap. Conscious artists like Common, Nas, 2Pac and Immortal Technique are proof of that.

[ March 22, 2007, 19:50: Message edited by: theGodless ]

 

Haha...I read that article in today's paper and man, I felt so vindicated!!

I'm not mentally unstable for listening to Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath after all!

 

Folks who think metal is primitive should take the time and listen to a really good band with a decent headset. It's often very skillfully played and quite complex.

That said, I enjoy classical music a lot, too.

 

@Nataraja, what are you talking about? As a composer/guitarist I can say heavy metal or hard rock isn't primitive at all.

Making one song can take years to compose, and then there's the recording part. The top bands use truckloads of money to get the sound they want, so don't say anything about the sound quality. It's a complex way to make music, so no wonder smart guys listen to it.
This fully computer made music... *I* can make an OK sounding piece in less than an hour. But it doesn't have the heart, the energy, you get from real musicians and instruments.

But still, I usually listen to prog rock. Metal's reserved for drinking purposes only .

 

I listen to Tool!! I am gifted!!

 

I don't know about "sonically primitive". Any type of electronic garbage that requires you to thrash like ADHD zombies while high on substances to enjoy, and lacks any form of soul or creative improvisation can hardly be called advanced.

 

Actually, some of the lyrics in heavy metal music is well thought out and more than just fluff. Also, the degree of training that many of them have in their chosen instrument is phenomenal.

Natarja: Just because you can make the music with just the instruments doesn't make it inferior to the more technologically demanding stuff. Could it not be argued that the simplicity of making the music lets the artise have more freedom to creat quality music?

 

Sonically primitive?? Nataraja, mate, go listen to Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden...there's 3 different guitars playing different stuff simultaneously to produce a VERY rich and fast sound. Not many people can do that.

And besides, its way easier to muck around with samples in Fruit Loops than it is to perform good metal live.

Edit: And these are a couple of paragraphs from Iron Maiden's "For the Greater Good of God"...they performed this live in Bangalore only last Saturday!!

Primitive?? I don't think so...

 

"Run to the Hills" is another good example, but I don't have the lyrics handy...

Some old Black Sabbath and Metallica songs also have great lyrics like that too.

 

No kidding. Most people seem to try and lump all metal into one simple, easily-defined group, when in reality there are more shades of gray in metal than there are mp3s on my computer

@Nataraja

A word of advice, don't assume that what you hear on the radio is all that's out there. If you took the time to look beneath the surface, I'm sure you'd find that you can't dismiss an entire genre based solely on the clowns that you hear on the radio.

I do agree, however, that this article could apply to any and all music, or anything for that matter. Anything that provides a means of escape from a hostile environment seems logical, no matter how smart you are.

 

I don't think the idea of this article was to claim that metal is the smartest or the most complicated music out there, anyway. I thought the point was that it's not the kind of low-brow nonsense some folks like to think it is.

This whole thing of what's more complicated than what is silly. Who's got the biggest cojones and all that. You're always going to find some stuff that the other guy's poor little mind can comprehend even less than the previous stuff. Going down that road is like trying to find the fastest guitar player in the world - you stop looking for what is actually good, you're just competing for prestige or whatever.

Jazz is more complicated than metal. So what. I like metal.

What are you supposed to be able to play the guitar with, if not with a guitar? I mean, of course you can synthesize the sounds, but how is that better, if what you're going for is the sound of a guitar? Besides, you can get a lot of variety with different guitars even before applying effects and studio technology.

In any case, I don't think the "complexity" of a given type of music comes so much from the array of different sounds available (or how weird they are ), it has more to do with the composition of the piece itself. Which is a moot point, if you just simply don't like the piece.

 

With your keyboard of course!
http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/uv/fretsonfire/

 

Well duh. Read the rest of the paragraph.

 

It's a bit sad that one of the bands the supposedly intelligent teenagers are listening to is Slipknot...

Saber: Tool really don't strike me as 'hard rock'. 'Hard rock' makes me think of AC/DC. If I had to throw Tool in a genre I'd call them progressive metal.

Anyway - yay for metal. I only wish I could stand the vast majority of it (which seems to involve a guy roaring ferociously for the entire album with an incredibly complex and headache inducing clash of instruments going on in the background - I think I'll just stick to the gothic side with occasional forays into doom, prog, and symphonic...)

 

@Susipaisti
You've obviously haven't tried the game. The link was a joke since the game is sort of a guitar hero version for PC and does not in any way come close to playing a real guitar...