Most musicians tend to wear their influences on their sleeves. Those influences make themselves known in a number of ways, be it chord choices, melodic phrasings, or rhythmic ideas (besides asking them, “Hey, what are your influences?”). If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you will certainly know that I’m no exception. Let’s face it – I’ve flat-out parodied bands in a few cases. In fact, this song is an unintentional band parody… but in this case, I kid because I love.
The band in question this time: Meshuggah. Their influence on me has crept up a few times in the past, but this song makes it clear as day. Specifically, “Destroy Erase Improve” is one of my top 20 metal albums. The method I used to create that disjointed feel was quite simple: I took some really basic rhythms and moved them so that they all start on the off-beat instead of the downbeat. Simple, yet deceptive.
Lyrically: We’ve all been there. In fact, we’re usually there on a weekly basis. Watching a game, trying to enjoy it, but the commentary and “analysis” is so wretched that it distracts us from the actual game and makes us want to mute the TV and/or stab our eardrums with a spork. Clearly, since there’s so much bad commentary out there, it must be a far tougher job than it looks. Incidentally, the bits of analysis in the verses were improvised. I have no idea how many times I said “football” during those takes…
Programming Note 1: Holy crap! This is the 100th post on this blog! How fun is that?! Thank you again for reading/listening/sticking with me.
Programming Note 2: Next week’s tune will be released on Halloween, not the following Wednesday.
Ed Makes Things 