AeolianWolf

why use notes?

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Thomas_Erak_Fan

Does it call for using the same note the entire song??

So let me get this straight, people on this site approve of modern bands using this riff in all of their songs with no creative insight?

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griffRG7321

Do you possess ears?

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evolucian

As has been stated before... RHYTHM. Who cares about the note, its all about the rhythm. I can swear Meshuggah has a one note song but its ok. I'm still alive so listening to it didn't kill me. Listen... guess thats what Griff be saying to you.

Thomas_Erak_Fan

Yes, I have ears. Are you saying all that matters is rhythm?

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griffRG7321

No, we're saying there's more to music than note choice.

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Nietsche

I'm kind of vague on who exactly started what and when, but the addition of chuggy rhythm-focused riffs tends to be associated pretty heavily with hardcore bands from New York starting in around the late 80's, see for example the riff that comes in at 1:20 of this:



In terms of metal I guess the most obvious early band to associate with this kind of thing would be Slayer, specifically 2:13:



Also I think the New York death metal scene is famous for 'slam' riffs like the one at about 2:50:



As to how this evolved into every post-2000 semi-popular 'metal' band and their mothers having open note breakdown riffs, they're easy to play and have proven to be effective in inciting a certain crowd of people to start moshing. Might as well ask why every dubstep track nowadays has a 'drop'.

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francesco18

Megadeth made an entire song out of that.

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z4twenny

Uh kill the king has more than one note.

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bdof

Could've fooled me, lol.

J-Dawg158

Upon stumbling across this thread and reading the OP I thought to myself, "Hmmmm, I've never really thought about it. This could make for an interesting discussion."

Imagine the dissappointment when I found out that it was just a thinly veiled bait & switch to trash genres that end in "core" for not being "metal-ly" enough for the "metal" club. Sub-genre squabbles... ew...

OT:
In addition to what's been said about it being easy to do and having come to be a defining aspect of post 2000 bands, I'd say it comes down to just trying to appeal to people. There's a reason dance, pop, rap etc. appeal to wider audiences, they have rhythm, more explicitly a rhythm you can dance to. Metalheads in a similar manner wanna headbang and it's easier to headbang to something that's more ryhthmic than melodic. I mean that's the reason why drummers concentrate primarily on the kick, snare, and hats when laying down a beat. There's no reason to go all over the kit because then the beat loses it's consistency.

As an experiment take the same rhythm of one of those breakdowns and play it using different notes everytime and see if it has the same effect.

With all that said, it still falls into the same age-old problem of "too much of a good thing is a bad thing." Any technique that get's overused on an album or string of albums gets to be stale and old quickly. Breakdowns are doing just that like harmonized leads, over the moon high vocals, solos with nothing but sweep arpeggios in them; before them.

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griffRG7321

^ This.


























































Except breakdowns are awesome.

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z4twenny

You should go get your hearing checked

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CarsonStevens

Western music sucks. It's just the same twelve notes over and over again.

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bdof

Works perfectly fine, tyvm. Mabye I should go back and listen to that boing Megadeth song again so that I can understand it's brilliance through it's simplicity........................................ ...............nope, still boring.

z4twenny

Boring is subjective, saying the song is one note isn't. Obviously if you think the song is just one note your hearing isn't "perfectly fine tyvm"

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MaggaraMarine

Actually the Megadeth song would have been very interesting if it had only had one note. But really, there's only one note in the verse. But listen to the chorus, it has many different chords.

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z4twenny

^ the verses also have a minor third and a natch second.

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bdof

I didn't know you'd be so literal

There's almost no such thing as a 1 note song. Not even the shitty AA song the TS posted