Adam Heath - Blog

I’m back somehow for a third consecutive week of talking about some of my favourite music at the moment. I’ve been listening to a lot of the same stuff recently so I’m gonna try and focus on some different styles/artists next week, but some more familiar stuff this week, most of which is fairly heavy, corresponding with the music I’ve been writing this week

The first song of the week is Before I Forget by Slipknot:

There’s a lot of good things about this song. The drums, bass and guitars in the verses are very tight, but with some great tonal separation to help identify each of the parts. My favourite elements of the song however are in the pre-chorus and chorus. The pre-chorus incorporates some pinch-harmonics on the guitars, which have different harmonics in each speaker, and varying amounts of vibrato on them. This is a technique which Slipknot use a lot and really helps those harmonics to sound thick, rather than weaker than the riffs.

In the chorus, the full band stabs at the start of each line are ever so slightly held back, just emphasising them that bit more and keeping the chorus super-heavy, this is especially impactful when considering the complete stops that precede them. The bridge has some create elements too, the multi-tracked vocals have a great sound to them, and the slightly looser doubles in the vocals really help the chorus sound tight and punchy following it, as well as this being helped by the breathiness of the vocals.

The double kick drum usage in the final chorus is awesome too.

Another heavy song I really like is Raise Your Horns by Amon Amarth.

Probably my favourite aspect of Raise Your Horns is the very start of the song, an already big and powerful sounding riff is made to feel huge by a massive, dense reverb; something I haven’t often notice on heavy riffy guitars. The scooped tone allows this reverb to play out and be really audible in the mix too.

This is a great example of distorted vocals, especially when the backing vocals come in at the start of each line in the verse, again these are thickened by a shorter, but still dense and great sounding reverb. The bass is very bright and prominent, especially in this part of the song and really fills out the guitar sound.

The other really great part of this song in my opinion is in the chorus, where the vocal melody is doubled on guitar, it just gives it much more of a melodic, chorus-like feel and helps to bring out that melody which can sometimes be hard to really hear clearly on this type of heavy vocal.

The bridge has a great dark-gospel like feel in the vocals and becomes anthemic as the guitar returns with the chorus melody, and the drummer rides the low tom, introducing a crash as the vocals reappear before hearing the full power of the chorus, where the guitar melody is slightly varied, just keeping the listener fully engaged towards the end of the song.

The finishing chord is awesome too.

Coming Home by Alter Bridge is this weeks final song.

It opens with a great chordal guitar part, which is swiftly torn apart by the heavy chugging rhythm section playing in a 6/8 feel. Once the full band comes in, the combination of riffs and melodic lines in the guitars is really something to behold, and as usual an outstanding vocal performance from Myles Kennedy, a highlight of which is the lo-fi backing vocals which move from ear to hear when listening in stereo. The vocals have a great double on them too.

In the chorus, the guitar chords moving syllable by syllable with the vocals is very powerful and gives the song a feel slightly different to the rest of the album (all of which is outstanding by the way). The riffs building into the chorus with those lo-fi vocals before the big hits really give the song a feeling of arrival, matching the lyrics.

Finally, I’d Just like to mention I’m adding all the songs from this into a Spotify playlist, which you can see below.

Thanks for reading.

This is the second edition of the weekly music post – I have been mostly listening to the same stuff this week but a few songs I haven’t heard in a while which were great to hear again, as well as a song I wasn’t familiar with before, which I’ll start with.

I’ve been watching a lot of Rick Beato on YouTube this week, and he does a great series called “What Makes this Song Great?” You can find his channel here. The first song I would like to mention is “Clocks” by Coldplay.

Beato’s video on this is fascinating and highlights lots of aspects of the song, including the clock-like consistency of the bass and drums which really provides a great foundation for the song, and something I’ll look into improving in my music in the future. Additionally, he talks about the chord progression, and how it doesn’t really change throughout the song, yet the song changes key in terms of feel, sometimes simply due to the register that the bass is playing in, which is fascinating.

One of the most interesting parts of the song is the vocal harmonies and how they add to the songs atmosphere, especially when they go into slightly dissonant-sounding thirds but eventually resolve themselves to essentially being a double track.

The second Beato video I watched was on a song I know very well, “The Pretender” by Foo Fighters.

One of the best features of this song is the vocals. They have an extremely tight double track, creating a great chorus effect, especially in the intro before the bass and drums come in. In the final chorus, the three vocal parts, along with the bass, make an inversion of the same chord that the guitar is playing, which puts great emphasis and feel into the chorus.

The song also has a very interesting drum part, with some great fills and changing parts throughout, keeping the song fresh. The drums go into a half-time kind of groove at one point building to a chorus and this allows the chorus to hit harder. The idea of emphasising the 4th beat in a bar isn’t really something I’ve explored before but definitely will do after noticing the great effect it has in this song.

Again, the rhythm section in this is brilliantly tight, and allows the harmonies mentioned above to really shine through the mix, really proving the belief that capturing a great performance is more important than anything you can do in post production.

The third song for this week is “Blackbird” by Alter Bridge.

As always, the guitar work from Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy is extremely powerful, with great tone and amazing performance, and the clean guitar especially, with the swells behind it really conveys a great feeling of the performance in my opinion. The guitar solo is wonderful, a perfect example of showing how playing fewer notes can really say a lot more, whereas the second half contrasts this, as the band gets heavier and the solo becomes more technically complex, but loses no fluency in the playing it serves the song perfectly.

Although the instrumental work on this song is brilliant, I feel that the real highlight is the vocal performance. You can tell the confidence Myles Kennedy has in his ability, in the loud, full sounding chorus, with some great, strong high notes and really beautiful vibrato. This is one of the songs I think of when it comes to emotional vocal performances – there are lots of different vocal sounds across the song, and the quieter, almost whisper-y sound where you can really hear the breaths in the voice is one of my personal favourites.

Please do check out these songs and let me know what you think 🙂

This is the start of what I hope to be something I can write weekly to document what I’ve been listening to in terms of taking inspiration from songs and just learning more about music. I’m gonna start with 3 songs per week then see where it evolves from there. Hopefully this will be the sort of thing where readers can learn about new artists/songs they haven’t heard before and over time I hope to have suggestions coming in so please comment or tweet me with any suggestions of music to listen to. If people are interested, I might review some music too.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Shinedown’s album Threat to Survival. It’s always been an album I’ve enjoyed since I first heard it around early 2016 I think.

One of the best tracks from the album is Oblivion:

This is a song which starts with a sort of gospel feel with the piano intro, but quickly evolves into a hard hitting rock song, with an impressive smoothness that says a lot for the band’s songwriting skills. Although the change is sudden, it feels right, and the pulsating rhythm of the guitars in the verse is brilliantly composed with the muted notes and the energy in the chords. I’m trying to work on these sorts of transitions in my own music, and taking notes from both that change and the build into the chorus in this song is proving very helpful.

On a side note, the drum sound on this track is incredible

One of my favourite bands ever is Queen’s of the Stone Age, and although nothing in their discography really challenges to Songs for the Deaf, there is still some amazing songs (which just shows the lengths of how good their most iconic album is really). One I’ve been listening to recently is Make It Wit Chu:

There’s a lot to take note of in this song. It’s always impressive when a song can remain engaging al the way through while maintaining the same chords. at 4:50, and keeping the C, A, E chord progression the whole way through, Make It Wit Chu is a great example of this. It keeps a relaxed, almost lazy feel throughout, and the slightly crunchy lead guitar sitting just below the vocals in the verses does a lot for this, as well as the subtle addition of piano helps to create a great atmosphere. This has inspired me to experiment with instrumentation in my own music to change or create the feel of a song, and I think it’s taken a lot of my composition to a new level above where it was, when I would only ever consider guitar bass and drums. It also led me to think more about the drum parts, rather than just keep it consistent, adding small changes every now and then just to keep the listener engaged.

I think Mark Tremonti is one of the best guitar players currently making music. His technique is outstanding and his solos are always interesting and I enjoy him both in Alter Bridge and as a frontman in Tremonti.

One of his Tremonti songs, Throw Them to the Lions is an outstanding guitar performance.

There are two specific things I really like about his playing in this track. The first is in the choruses. He plays in a way in which I feel serves the song really well, especially in the first two choruses. It has a feel of the guitar and the vocal taking turns, this may be due to the nature of him performing both the lead vocals and lead guitar in the band but it’s done in a way that just sounds slightly different to how most people do it. I the emphasis seems to comfortably flow back and forth between the band and the vocals and I feel it just lifts the energy of the chorus overall.

Secondly, the guitar part in the second verse is brilliant. It’s very dynamic and the way it changes twice during the chorus of the verse helps build anticipation for the chorus. I’m going to try and implement this style of changing guitar parts mid-section more into my playing.

This concludes the first of these (hopefully) weekly posts and I hope you’ve found it worthwhile. If you want to , do get in touch via twitter or other social medias and suggest to me some music you’ve found inspiring. 

Cheers