One of the things that I was hoping to get for Christmas was a guitar tablature book for Metallica's self-titled album. I have both that (sometimes called the Black Album) and Master of Puppets, and I'm enjoying both…but I'm just trendy enough to prefer Black. And as often (i.e. almost always) happens, I want to learn how to play albums I like. For bands like Metallica, this is easy--the tablature books are available basically everywhere fine music books are sold. I did this a few years back when Stadium Arcadium was the most recent Red Hot Chili Peppers album: I bought the book, played all my favorite songs a dozen and a half times, then set it aside as other things took my attention.
With Metallica being my current musical interest, it was natural for me to ask for the tablature book, which I did not receive for Christmas. Not particularly upset--I received a lot of thoughtful presents on the Big Day--I went ahead and ordered a used copy of the book using some Christmas money that came my way. I then waited impatiently for it to arrive, because as much as I like getting stuff from Amazon, it's a weird bit of impulse buying mingled with waiting. When the book came, I strapped on my guitar, tuned up, and then fiddled around with my effects pedal to find a distortion I really liked. Once those important pieces of minutiae were done, I flipped open to the Number One Jam of Metallica, "Enter Sandman". I had dabbled with online tabs to get a basic idea of how the song worked, but I always do better with the professional version. Nevertheless, I assumed that I would be able to plug and play. I mean, I knew that Kirk Hammet's solos would kick my butt, but the rhythm guitar? Probably not very hard at all. I was…wrong. And kind of right. So, the first thing I noticed is that James Hetfield's rhythm guitars contained a lot more nuance to them than I had originally expected. Yes, they play some face-melting stuff at a high tempo, but there's often a fair amount of technicality that I wasn't expecting. Just in "Enter Sandman" I found more carefully placed chords and riffs than I heard, despite the fact the song is my four-year-old's favorite song and he requests it all of the time. Additionally, the "metal rhythm" is quite a bit different from what I'm used to playing. Again, I've listened to the album, so I know how it's supposed to sound, but there are moments in some of the songs where the timing is downright confusing. Take, for example, "Nothing Else Matters". It goes along in a 6/8 time for most of it, but breaks into a 3/8 time signature for a measure, then falls back to the 6/8. (And "Don't Tread On Me" is in 12/8 time. Like, really? I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. In case you didn't know, I'm not particularly good at tempo.) While that isn't particularly tricky, it was unexpected. And that's what I mean by there being more nuance than I had anticipated. If you listen to the album, there are a lot of songs that simply sound like three or four chords played really quickly, through heavy distortion. That's the part where I was right: There are some songs like that. But what I didn't realize was the careful orchestration of them. The song "Through The Never" opens with a pretty straightforward riff (E/F#/C#/F#/E/F#/C#/F#), but my fingers don't want to give the second F# its due. My impulse is to simply ascend, not ascend, then descend. Then, fourteen measures in, the second C# changes to a C. This half-step change, I've learned, is part of what gives Metallica its sound. In the case of "Through The Never", it's used to help explain the elevated feeling within an F# minor key when they strike an emphatic G5. In less technical terms, they aren't simply thrashing about in one key, they're specifically invoking half-steps to punctuate their music and push the song away from monotony. They do this pretty frequently: In fact, the half-step thing has become a clear aspect of almost all their songs. Many of them are in E minor (which I'll return to in a bit), but they throw in a Bь in almost every time. Since E minor doesn't normally have the Bь, it gives a particular flavor that, as I said, makes for distinctive Metallica sound. Now, whether or not they're copying other metal bands--or other metal bands copy them--I don't know. I simply haven't looked at enough other music to tell. I do know that this stuff is everywhere. "Enter Sandman" relies on it to provide its signature lick; "Holier Than Thou" uses it for its primary rhythm fill; "Wherever I May Roam" utilizes it throughout the verse. All that being said, Metallica loves E minor. (I guess it could be a G major, but they're a metal band and don't usually write songs in a major key, so…) A full half of the songs are in E minor, and two more technically would be were they not tuned down a half step. They have one song that's D minor, because they've tuned down a full step, making the song deeper and grungier. And since my guitar hates being put in anything other than standard tuning, it's almost more effort than it's worth to play that one song ("Sad But True", for those of you who were curious). The other keys are basically D or A minor, but they're in the minority (obviously). As a result, the album feels a touch samey after a while. I noticed this whilst listening to the disc itself; by the time I hit "The God That Failed", I'm usually kind of done hearing another song with heavy distortion in E minor. That being said, there's a lot of amazing pick work to soak in. Despite the fact that they play in the same key so much, they have a lot of different voicings, and the album as a whole plays with important themes whilst working within the framework. Different tempos, the strange time signatures, and the face-melting solos all contribute to a strong, exciting album to play along with. Now if I could just palm mute as well as Hetfield can, I'd be set. Seriously, I've never seen so much reliance on palm muting to give it the texture that a song needs. It's crazy. Metallica…rock on. |
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