Limitations of metal

nyarlothothep

One thing I've always wondered is why so many riffs in metal invovle the semi tonal progression, you know the progression which Jaws is based on, or the tri tone, although admittedly that is cooler being banned by the church and sounding so evil. But in any case I just wonder why this progression is so crucial, I don't know if other genres have their equivalents, or perhaps they're not as noticeable.

ride-the-spiral

It's because the end that alot metal tries to achieve depends on the dissonance of the minor 2nd and diminished 5th to get the sound that they want. It does exist in other music, it's just that other music doesn't want to portray the same feeling that metal does as often.

But that said, the dissonance can have different effects. Whereas black metal and dark ambient uses the dissonance to create dark soundscapes, bands like Meshuggah use it to remove conventional consonance from the music and therefore removing the dissonance, so that the use of usually dissonant intervals does not sound so.

But metal is a diverse group of genres, relying on these dissonant modes but it seems that most of it is based on the minor key, and a small amount on the major keys.

bnt

Re the tritone, I think you kinda answered your own question there: it sounds nasty and the church didn't like it, which sounded like just the thing for early Black Sabbath. It's even the main riff in the song Black Sabbath, one of the first things they did in 1969:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BkhtJM8CqE

King Crimson bordered on Metal at times, while bringing in some avant-garde Classical influences such as Bartók and Holst. They did Holst's Mars in concert (plenty of tritone), and even wrote a piece to specifically exploit tritones, called The Devil's Triangle. I don't think there's an original video of it, but here's Anekdoten doing a good cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4ypnLO57iY

One way of looking at is the "outside" positions of those notes. The dim. 2nd (1 semitone) and dim. 5th (tritone) don't belong in the usual Major or Minor modes at all, and those are the basis for most popular music. Using them is a way of signalling that you're really out*there, man! For example, Steely Dan would use some bizarre chord voicings (add 2, dim 6 etc.), but even they didn't go near the tritone as far as I know.

Mr. CooL ICE

Every genre has its own characteristics with musical structure. Blues has the 12-bar chord progression which features in the majority of blues music, but is not a mandatory feature.

I'm currently learning drums, and even though jazz supposedly has very little boundaries and is heavily dependant on improvisation, the right hand plays the same dotted note beat pretty much all the time.

Like ride has said above, this reliance on the tritone is one of many characteristics of metal and almost every other genre has its own charecteristic in some form or other, be it structure, chord progression or rhythm.

Two genres which spring to mind which don't have any common characteristic to speak of or classical and progressive music, but not having a common characteristic is probably these genre's main features.




After re-reading this post, my brain has started to melt a little bit. I don't even know if it makes much sense

BostonB

Man watching Iommi's fingers in that vid makes me wince...