Deathcore Vs Death Metal (@DeanLamb Interview)

you said you want me to start I'll start if you want to that's not what I was going to do but sure here we are Andrew B's house and this guy has me over to which camera should I look at I guess not the one that just has my body doesn't show your face okay so okay so this camera right here this guy invites me over to his Mansion his he has a and and I'm going to say this I'm going to say this more than once he has a house which just not is not that's not possible so no no before I introduce you fully on your own channel thank you um you invite me over to your mention and then you sit down you say okay you want to start and he just gets me to start this video as if I'm an employee of some kind I mean I get there's there's you have a staff at this house I did notice that there was a staff upstairs yeah Ser yeah number one employee no but I mean in all seriousness we're here in uh undisclosed city in the country of can Canada here and and people don't own houses and and I'm very happy to uh to be invited into this place that uh I I live in a box essentially um and uh and and I just I I'm just so excited to be dude thank you so much for introducing me on my own channel I really appreciate it anything that makes my life easier more efficient and less work always down for that before we get on to the rest of this video I just have a really quick message from the sponsor of this video pretty good branding if you're watching this video I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're in a band or a musician or a YouTuber or something like that and if so pretty good branding should definitely be on your radar if you've ever dreamed of seeing your band's logo or your company's name or anything like that printed on a massive Banner you should definitely go check out pretty good branding they are responsible for printing backdrops of some of the biggest bands in the world like ATU Asking Alexandria doy and more so whether you're looking for massive posters Sleek backdrops or 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business right now with that being said let's get back to the interview with Dean lamb this is Dean lamb if you don't know him he has an awesome YouTube channel he does lots of videos with his life his wife not his life well maybe both Claire and also plays in the band archspire speaking of archspire we are also touring together which is why we're doing this big old cross promotion thing hell yeah brother yeah so we're going to be on tour from May 31st till June 30th I believe you remember the dates I'm a professional YouTuber and we're tting archs headlining we got aborted and then ourselves in carcosa and alial it's going to be awesome I'm scared to play guitar in front of all of you people but we're going to do it anyway it's the feel bad about yourself as a guitar player tour cuz you have the dudes in aborted who are just like crushing and then you have Wes H opening it's like bro and then us who play one note yeah we're the pallet cleanser of the tour for sure but yeah if you are in North America Canada and the states we're playing more than two Canadian cities by the way because we're Canadian bands and we try to look out for our fellow Canadians I think bro we are playing Saskatoon and I haven't played SAS have you ever played Saskatoon uh one time in like 2013 maybe Winnipeg I'm going to throw you some scary information about sasun okay uh the first time we ever played SAS we may be played in front of I don't know three people nobody sounds about right oh okay we've last played there in 2019 and I remember the turnout was fine it's a smaller City in the middle of Canada and there's not really a lot going on there so we are now playing at a venue called the Cs Event Center I am terrified yeah dude uh so if you live in Saskatoon or anywhere in sascachuan please come to that show because I really don't want anybody like I don't want anybody to lose their shirts I I will take my shirt off if that's what it takes to get you to come to the show uh but yeah I mean that that show but speaking in Canada we have Vancouver we have Calgary we have Edmonton we have Quebec City we have Montreal we have Toronto uh Saskatoon we we playing uh I believe Winnipeg as well we are dude we're hitting Canada yeah we're not just hitting Toronto Montreal like most tours might and maybe a Quebec City and maybe a Vancouver and and sorry to take over your channel but I'm going to do that a lot I love it this is your third tour yeah it's our third tour ever and our first time doing that much of Canada which we're really happy about obviously as a Canadian band like we see the comments you know people are like you're Canadian and you don't even tour your own country which I understand like I feel that frustration too as like a fan of Music a lot of band skip over Canada and now being in a touring B I understand why it's hard it's difficult it's expensive but you know we're happy that we get to do that and no credit to ourselves for the routing that's all you guys I assume well it's not me I didn't do it it's our booking agent who uh who did a great job and we just show up and play guitar and hopefully don't [ __ ] up so yeah yeah well hey I'm it's going to be a great time so I'm happy to have you long hell yeah well thanks for having us speaking about aborted originally I made a video with mendle who is the ex- guitarist of aborted but we did a fun little video twice actually where we called it core versus death metal nice click baity title but really all it is is basically I want you to kind of explain your uh you know path as a guitarist starting from the very beginning to how you got to technical death metal of all things cuz that is a genre that most people do not play some might not even know about most don't like or that most don't like it exactly which I can't blame them fair enough same with death core I guess it's a little more popular I would say but uh you know still a very extreme inaccessible type of music so I think it's interesting to you know figure out how a guitarist got to where they got starting from the very beginning and then ending up on like why you play at Rings what was the first technical death metal riff you learned stuff like that so we're going to talk about all of that in this video and get you to show off some of those riffs if you remember how to play them no pressure I'll try yeah okay so what's what where do we start do we start at the very beginning like what life is where conception what like what be what is a fetus or do we start like a few years later like where do we like where where in that sort of field do we start as much as I would love to start at the very beginning with conception I think that this video might be a little too long I do have footage of my parents having sex if you need if you want that so that might help maybe not on YouTube We that later okay yeah it's fine yeah yeah but we're going to start at the very beginning of your guitar Journey so I'm always curious to know what was the first guitar riff that you remember learning and do you still remember how to play it so it can be any genre of course I'm assuming you did not start learning like necro faist or something like that maybe you did I don't know so do you remember what the first riff you learned was okay so I'm going to start I'm going to start with how I first came to play guitar so when I was eight I went to my grandparents place and they lived in the place called Logan Lake do you know where that is I think I do it's in BC right it's in BC so it's on the way to um the Cash Creek area yeah it's it's past Meritt for the Merit Mountain Music Festival which is a country Festival that has nothing to do with this video but the the um yeah they lived in this tiny little town and we would go there once a year my my my dad's parents and one time we went there and I was eight maybe nine there was an acoustic guitar sitting against the wall and I remember looking at it and I I did not play guitar I I remember looking at be like what is that like that was that was the phrase in my head I was like what is that and so I remember like a couple weeks later I talked to my mom I'm like you remember that like guitar that was there and she and she said uh uh yeah yeah I guess there was a guitar there and and I said can I have it and she's like well no I don't know whose it was so no yeah also I'm not going back to Logan L to get it I just like I was like can I have it or can I use it or I don't even know you know my thought process there sure um because I already knew I liked music I loved the music that I heard from and and you and I are similar age I'm a little bit older than you the Nintendo Entertainment System so the NES the original NES my dad used to play Final Fantasy and Wizardry and these old games and they had these classically inspired 8bit music that I just I it got stuck in my head you know and I didn't understand why or whatever I Knew music and I kind of understood what it was and I liked some bands but I didn't get to play guitar so fast forward maybe 12 years old my buddy plays guitar and it's in his basement sorry if I'm going on really long but so his parents smoked like crazy upstairs the entire house ReRe like cigarettes every time I went there but he had two guitars he had like uh two electric guitars one of them was like a what are they epone epone like a special 100 one of like the real cheap ones I was like that one and something else and I went over to his place and he's like hey you want to try this out I'm like oh okay and the very first riff I learned I learned by ear mhm that's I'm not bragging cuz it wasn't good and it was a very simple riff and I played it wrong so I'm not it's not like I'm like but you still did it but I did it and I I can't remember what Riff it is but I can tell you what band it is it was tul okay cuz I was a huge tool fan that was like my favorite band so I remember sitting there thinking like okay I'm going to play this note and then I'll play this next note and it was maybe two notes of a riff like it's nothing special and I'm sure the notes were wrong but I remember a note and being like it needs to be lower but it was an open low EAS string and I'm like it needs to be lower than this so I already understood that there was something different because two always plays in drop d right so it's like I remember there was something in my brain that started clicking immediately I don't believe in like natural Talent OR skill when it comes to being a musician nobody is born and then is a guitarist in my opinion but what I do believe is people have a certain aptitude for solving a specific puzzle and I think for me and many other mus musicians the puzzle of music is it it gels well with how they solve puzzles and what puzzles they like what things they feel fulfilled when they solve sure so I think that's what it is I don't think it's a you're a killer guitarist because of you know genetics or something but it's like just the mix of creativity and problem solving that music presents and maybe not even specifically guitar but I just maybe thought it looked cool sure so like all the things kind of coales and you know and that's how I started playing guitar um but I mean obviously when I first started playing guitar you know and me and my buddy and I'll shout him out his name is gayen um very cool guy him and I were you know really good friends when we were in uh I mean it was high school it was grade eight grade nine grade you know grade eight to 12 so uh him and I started playing battery uh I don't how do you even play a I don't even remember but that kind of that kind of thing and and I would I would struggle with the right hand yeah it's fast that shit's hard dude um him and I would Play the acoustic intro battery together would sit on his floor and play guitar um I of course learned all the C like crazy train and uh I learned like a weird version I don't know if this is even right where the hell am I that that kind of thing interesting so you played that Rift and not the Crazy Train Rift well I would play that as well maybe one of the very first Rifts I learned and I'll see if maybe you know this one I probably do you know this I feel like I do oh [ __ ] okay that's funny I didn't know it was that I was like it sounds almost like the Crazy Train R but it's really close yeah Mar man dude yeah yeah so cuz I was like a big Manson fan as well for some reason and maybe that's not something you should say now because that dude is likeable all the '90s moms were like we knew it he sucks but anyway so I was a big fan that's why I told you not to listen to yeah yeah exactly so yeah you know I was a big fan of Rob Zombie Marilyn Manson Lim biscuit was a big one for me sick okay I would not have expected that oh my God I was a new metal kid Big jinko Jeans big like chains on my pants and stuff like that so um uh what was the question it was what was the first RI you learned and you answered more than that which I love I was going to say uh you're the first person I think I've ever asked that question to you who started out with a drop D riff or a drop which is really cool um it seems like you might not have known that's what you were doing at the time which is fine but like for me like I started in drop C immediately which a lot of exactly that's the common reaction I get cuz most people like start an E standard which makes sense that's how most people learn I get it but like I had a similar situation to you where like I didn't have my own guitar I went to a friend's house and he had a guitar and he was the one who got me into music in the first place I never really cared or listen to it and he was into bands like uh you know slipnot system of LOL like which they were all around the like whatever drop C drop C drop B type thing so that's what I started learning immediately the first Rift that I remember learning I can never remember which one it is but it's either Lincoln Park a place for my head or System of Down Aerials oh arrow is a big one for me too the outra rof the easy part obviously um but anyways it's just funny hearing that because I don't think I've ever asked that to someone before who didn't say like yeah Metallica and you standard or whatever and it's like of course I learned that as well over time but it wasn't like the first thing so that's cool to hear yeah the dropy stuff right away uh but LMP biscuit Tunes low yeah they're like standard was dude that's about as low as you can get yeah I just did a video on that just uh you know letting people know that Lim biscuit tuned lower than muga before muga did and yes just putting that knowledge out there I think it's important to know you the Riff the main riff for Nookie and I don't know if this is on on subject or on track with the video but okay I always say writing technical music is easier than writing a banger simple rip dude you write a technical song you can write technical stuff all day it's crazy it's great it's fun it's fulfilling I love doing it but writing four notes in a row that sound cool memorable that are unique mhm like Break Stuff by Li yeah bro two notes easy it's not even it's not even the the the phrasing it's the confidence to go into the jamspace or however they wrote music and he's like bro I got I got the riff bang a rift check it out two notes exactly and everyone else goes this bro yeah and once you learn that once you'll never forget it dude it's so crushing it's like so simple but it hits really hard absolutely uh but yeah the Riff for Nookie is also sick I'm still a Lim biscuit fan and what what's happened recently is my wife has had a Resurgence of newal because she also plays guitar um plays and band and stuff so she uh has recently got really into Disturbed okay really really into really IND static everybody remembers the first time they hear that oh wow yeah yeah for sure you can't forget that yeah so she's kind of revisiting all that stuff and it gave me a little bit of the courage to be like you know what LMP biscuit wrote some Banger songs they did and they still do and they still kind I don't love all the stuff that they've written lately but there's some songs there's a couple songs where it's like that one's thaty yeah I don't remember what the song name is but one of the new ones has this like crazy whammy Rift or whammy bar Rift rather which is awesome dad something not that one that song kind of rips though I I think it was like the intro song on the new album I don't remember I didn't listen to it enough to to know the name my bad but yeah they still make cool [ __ ] for sure okay so here so here's where it took me so I I at 12 started playing some tool a little bit my favorite band getting more into kind of um alternative more uh not quite grunge but more like alternative metal golf metal that kind of stuff and then I found um opth okay okay so I took a route into death metal that I think is the opposite of what all the guys in my band took so they went the route of um Dy fetus cryptopsy um uh Morbid Angel Nile Suffocation right I didn't listen to those bands I like dying fetus now but I I didn't I listen to mtic stuff I went I went opth I Dream Theater um and then I found necro fages from there okay so I kind of took that's the one I figured was in there somewhere of of course it's pretty hard to be in my genre of music playing without being a fan of of necro just although I don't know if that's the cas now not anymore they are I mean they haven't released new music since what like 2012 or something like that 2004 oh okay even older so yeah like there's no I I wouldn't be surprised if you know newer uh technical death metal bands or even death metal bands might have never heard of them before you might not have heard of them I kind of put them in the in the category of impossible to replicate but easy to imitate so you can't it's just like animal's leaders sure yeah you can imitate them and people will go yep that's that's your that's your but to replicate the what they did and get the the I don't even know what it the composition skills behind necr agist are like bro like even if you don't like them necessarily like you can appreciate it for sure yeah especially Epitaph specifically Epitaph in my opinion onside to Pure protection is really good it's a little bit more brutal it's a little bit more raw a little bit more Rough Around the Edges is that the one that like wound is on and all that yes okay yeah do you remember what the first necro fages riff you heard was or if you learn any of them what that might have been I didn't I mean stillborn one was the song that I tried to learn when I was probably 17 M uh maybe 18 cuz we went went down and drove down to Seattle to go see them okay I saw them twice which I'm very lucky and very grateful to go see um I also saw decapitated at that time uh before uh VTEC the drummer died three or four months before he died too it was like we went down to Seattle and just saw this crazy death metal Fest and if you if you even know what I'm talking about then cool if you don't all good I mean like it every year that goes by kind of you know it's like am I even able to relate to anybody now with death I don't even know how do you do fellow kids yeah yeah exactly but but those bands are all crushing so I mean if you don't know them check it out if if you're a younger music fan for sure but uh yeah the still one is the only one that I could play uh because it was the easiest one to play love to hear that yeah so I was like well I can I can do this one kind of I could play the song just the intro but so yeah so I went uh op tul opth Dream Theater uh necris the faceless uh and then I got into uh more kind of techy stuff I got to say that one of the most important bands to me is blotted science okay I've heard of them maybe a song or two but I'm not as familiar they have an album called machinations of dementia that is uh instrumental death metal and it's one of the grooviest most amazing death metal albums ever produced in my opinion it's from 2009 and it crushes it crushes um so yeah so uh but anyway so that's kind of my path towards death metal sweet yeah okay so uh one of the cool things about uh blotted science this is one of the most important bands to me in my life it's it's my most Listen to album I think ever on Spotify M and they play in drop a and it's the first time I ever messed with drop a tuning love drop a so we put out an album my band put an album in 2021 called bleed the future and if you haven't checked it out that's fine it's probably it's not great so uh so uh in that album we did drop a tuning for the first time and the reason why is because of that because of machinations machinations of dementia it's kind of weird [Music] um that kind of thing uh oh my God I haven't played that for a while it's all good that's a really weird riff and that's one of those things where it's like you need pinky strength I don't remember exactly where it is it's it's somewhere in that range um that kind of thing is real weird but that those weird kind of stretches uh and and and strange kind of Pinky sliding things that stuff just makes its way into your playing oh Absol you know I remember there was like when when we first started the band there was a guy that I want to go hang out with he played in this van Vancouver band but he was weird he was like hey do you want to like record all the guitars on my album and I'm like well I'm really broke so yes so I went to his house and it was just like very clearly he's a drug dealer very very clearly so just like any other thinker musician for the most part yeah he was he was at home in in the middle of the day on a Thursday today is Thursday so um yeah so I'm a YouTuber yeah yeah yeah um so he was like yeah I play my riffs or whatever cuz he didn't want to track I didn't really understand but he showed me this technique he called hyper grinding now that sounds bad that's not he didn't grind on me or anything but it was the whole idea was like this kind of thing doing these big kind of like so that kind of I I spent like maybe a I never did the project um I didn't need money that badly um but so something I did learn something yeah and I that kind of stuff even after a day of learning I'm like that's kind of cool that made its way into tons of our Rifts so you just like you just pick apart things and you get them I've always been a fan of learning a part of a song and not giving a [ __ ] about learning the entire song because I'm not auditioning for the band I'm not performing the song Live who cares I'm just trying to get my favorite thing out of the song sure and uh that's cool yeah so that's kind of how I got yeah how I kind of pick up kind of weird techniques sometimes cool I mean it's similar for me but I guess a little different cuz I started doing everything from the perspective of like a YouTuber or content creator whatever first so for me it was like I always learned the full song for the purpose of doing a cover or something like that cuz I mean nowadays it probably be different with like Instagram reals and whatever where it actually makes more sense to do only portions of the song yes but back you know 10 years ago the way to make videos that people would watch was to do cover songs so for me like that's how I learned a lot of the stuff that uh you know one way or the other ended up in my playing is cuz I just learned like hundreds of songs from all different bands and you know some of them I like learned once played it once and forgot it forever but when you learn that many songs there's inevitably like a few that you like so much that you find yourself like when you pick up a Guitar you just play that riff naturally you know like you have your kind of go-to warm-up riff or whatever and as you learn more or as I learned more things it was like those warmup Rifts changed or became different things and that's like there's like a a death core Rift from um Chelsea Grin that to this day I still play like almost every time I pick up a Guitar it's like the intro Rift to their song My damnation I play it all the time or like recreant same band um and stuff like that it's very interesting cuz you're like I didn't really learn this with the intention of it influencing my playing for me like I learned it because I thought it was a cool riff and then now that you know caros is writing music and whatnot when I listen back to stuff we write I'm like wow that's very clearly you know influenced by whatever band so does that does that pose an issue like I don't know how you guys write sure but does that pose an issue when you're at the your equivalent of the jam space if that if that's how you're right where you're like here's a riff oh here okay here's a riff and everybody goes bro that's this band this song [ __ ] all the time okay sometimes it doesn't really matter and we do it anyways but there's definitely been a few times where I've written a song and showed it to like Johnny or Cooper and they're like oh that's literally uh this exact song and I'm like fu all right well I guess never mind scrap this project let's try again that happens all the time um usually it's only like a riff or two and it's like okay this is cool but this is like way too close to this song that we all like so let's kind of you know at least try to change it up a bit um but it depends too like there's been Rifts where again one of our our biggest songs is called the plague which is very influenced Again by Chelsea Green with their song hostage and like once you kind of listen to them back to back I think it's pretty obvious that they're that we were influenced by them but luckily for us like we know the guys in chelse you're now and they're like yeah we don't care like that's fine so I think like that also helped me kind of get over that as well cuz I used to be really scared of being like accused of copying or whatever but now that you know we're you know actually meeting these other bands we're realizing like oh nobody really cares like we all kind of copy and borrow from each other anyways and as long as it isn't like a blatant ripoff they don't usually don't really give a [ __ ] or at least as long as you credit them be like yeah this song was influenced by arire then you'd probably be like that's cool I would probably be that the song sucks don't do maybe you're just like I disagree completely I would sue the [ __ ] out of this no I no I've actually I've had bands uh I've had people that are like yeah my band is uh influenced actually I'm haunted Shores I was hanging out with the guys in periphery and Mark was like we listen to a lot of arch spire and try to write Arch Spire kind of songs for this album like the stuff you wrote is way harder than the stuff that we play it is mind bantly insane dude it's here's how I've gotten around sort of borrowing from other bands without it being too obvious I don't borrow from other bands as much now I really tried not to instead I borrow from old movie scores right okay so I recently going back to those NES games that you're talking the beginning of this video NES yes uh but John Williams M and he uh we recently watch uh rewatch Schindler's List mhm okay the soundtrack for Schindler's List It has the two qualifiers if I'm turning into a riff that I would write the two qualifiers that I want my music to be fast and sad fast and sad fair enough those two things it's got to be real fast and sad and and and you'll have some happiness pop out or some dissonance or some uh ambiguity or whatever but a real fast real sad riff crushes yeah dude yeah so I took the theme song for shino's list recently and I wrote a riff based on the chord changes for it interesting okay dude it's like oh this is a this is a hack I should have been doing the entire time we've always been ripping off Mozart and uh and Bach and stuff like that doing this is a little it's a little different it's it's more contemporary it's I mean it's an old it's an old movie now but yeah there's just something in there and I mean borrowing from somebody like John Williams is like that bro is the best yeah Han Zimmer's great uh Clint menel is really good uh James James Herer from Troy he's really good um who's the other guy that we really like uh Howard Shore all really good but John Williams John Williams is the best yeah he did like so just to make sure I'm thinking of the right person is is he the one who also did like the Star Wars movies and stuff like that okay cool Harry Potter Jaws he's done everything it's crazy I I read an interview with somebody saying I used to study with John Williams and I brought my score to him uh to for him to check it out and and I said it's too bad you don't have a piano here otherwise you could hear my score and he's like I don't need a piano he just hears it he's got Perfect Pitch so he just read it and he's like and he could sing all the Melodies wow beyond my comprehension dude you're like wow me too dude I don't get that that's insane yeah it's pretty nuts but yeah borrowing from them is uh pretty sweet yeah that's sick that's how I do it yeah I mean like I feel like a lot of metal artists do maybe not exactly that but they definitely borrow from genres that are not metal as well which is something that I'm pretty bad with I technically I don't technically but I tend to definitely borrow more from bands within our scene which is is useful for sure and helpful but I think that a lot of the songs or artists that I like the most ironically say something similar where they're like well I don't borrow from with in our genre I listen to uh video games movie whatever um or just completely different genres like I know especially with death core there are a lot of uh you know Deathcore artists who borrow heavily from like hip-hop or trap or stuff like that which which we also we also do okay cool yeah it's not really like a a a you know a common line that the average person might think but once somebody says that then you can totally hear it you know it's cool I mean the the vocalist in our band uh he's oh yeah that makes total sense he's a wannabe rapper yeah so we'll have we'll have like the chorus of a song and it's like a it it like that's a trap Rhythm yeah sure you know or like we well been big fans of Tech9 because he's he's a very musical rapper that has songs that have Harmony and Melody very striking and then very Dynamic switches and stuff um and he'll he'll harmonize his his flows as well and so his music is so and I mean there's some cringey lyrics or whatever but his flows and his hooks are very writing a catchy rhythm is really hard yeah it's you have one note and you got to write a catchy Rhythm bro spars of Madness by decapitated it's like did it did it like how do you write a catchy Rhythm yeah or like anything muga does anything muga does exactly you know like even I've often thought like the song bleed is so simple of an idea they took a cool rudiment and like let's just do that whole song and seven minutes so cool and that's like I mean I would say probably they a song oh yeah easily and it's the simplest idea that they've ever had mhm I mean that's I mean not simple to play but simp but yeah but the concept and I was watching a video the other day about and I'm I'm on a composition kick right now cuz we're writing a new album so I'm like just thinking about composition pretty much entirely but I was thinking about something watching a video the other day and uh they were saying you have to have a concept for the song before you even start what is your concept for what are you trying to say it's not necessarily lyrically but it's like like if if you had to describe the Sounds in words that you want to create what is it you know and and it's something that I'm trying to approach music more with now but I know that um it's a very abstract thought yeah for sure I I know that uh our vocalist Johnny does who's a great guitar player yeah he's amazing guitarist so he does everything right I would say he probably writes the majority of our music as well where's he yeah I know he's on tour right now with this other band um but yeah so I think for him I I would wouldn't be surprised if he does something similar because when he's writing he has all the pieces in mind all the time cuz he's like well I want to have lyrics vocals everything so when he's writing the guitar parts he already knows maybe not what the lyrics will be but he's like this is the vocal pattern I imagine over this guitar riff which is really cool uh but for me I'm like I don't think that way at all and I like working with other people like that like Johnny and Cooper because what I often do is I'll write like two riffs and I'm like here's a a minute of something uh do you guys like it and if they say yes then it's like cool let's take it apart change things and like develop it into a full song together but that's how I've always written stuff uh I find it really hard to write a song from like point A to point B and if I do it's usually going to be like 2 minutes long like as short as possible so I've always much preferred writing an idea and then being like this is an idea what do you guys think like it let's do some role playing right now not weird role playing but like okay I'm uh Cooper right okay so I'm Co so I'm a little shorter right okay a little a little smaller uh but I still play the same amount of strings right okay cool so you can imagine what it be like you bring me a riff and it's a minute long and you say what do you think and I look at you and I say I like this part and this part but I think the part in the middle is bad mhm what do you say I honestly sometimes I'm definitely like [ __ ] you but but for the most part say that to him in the camera real yeah yeah for the most part I try to cuz it happens right yeah of course and like same for for them the other way around cuz Johnny's like this too where he always comes with a full song and then I'm like this full song is cool but I think it needs to be shorter and it's the opposite cuz I have to like convince him to alter his full concept which I think is a much harder to sell whereas for me I'm like it's just a bunch of random ideas anyway so I don't really mind if things are changed or at least I try to be maybe they would say differently maybe they're like no he's difficult to work with well I asked them so I have their responses here my know yeah it you need all kinds collaborative songwriting I think is the in my opinion the best way to do it writing all nobody has 100% good idea and the first draft of everything sucks so if you combine those two things and you don't have any outside expectation or outside uh validation with all this stuff and you have one dude writing everything I find it takes a very specific individual to be able to write and record stuff that's good consistently or at least like 50% good cuz I mean you know you listen to your favorite songs and you go that riff slaps the next rof is fine right yeah not every rof not every rof can be amazing and not every r should be amazing there room for everything else you need the room for everything else in the song you cannot have Banger Banger bang Banger cuz then it's like it just Waters it all down you need to have an emphasis it's sort of like I guess this is a composition thing now but it's sort of like um you know a great movie often times starts with a cold open goes crazy dips back down in intensity builds back up crazy fireworks at the end with the conclusion of the movie go through all the acts the acts have they have segments I mean songs are very similar for sure you know it's it's sort of like uh an album would be I guess a bunch of short stories or maybe you think about an album like an entire movie although that is really hard to do yeah concept album basically quite the same it's almost like you know uh huge Peaks and valleys all over the place um but hey if you can do that that's cool more like maybe like a TV series I guess to be a better comparison well TV serieses now are basically like uh in my opinion and I find it hard to watch a lot of new TV now it's like boring boring little look of something boring crazy ending and then back to the next episode it's like bro with the hooks at the end I've had enough dude I've had enough dude especially with the attention span of the average person now it's like you have to you have to I mean I'm one of those people if something doesn't interest me in the first like 20 minutes of a show for example or or even a movie sometimes like I usually honestly will just turn it off because I I just don't have the [ __ ] patience you imagine reading a book I literally can't does that all the time and I'm just like oh my god um you have to use my imagination okay yeah two more questions nice and easy okay the first one uh once in college and the second one yes but it's way too expensive for you you couldn't afford it fair enough so the next question I had was do you remember what the first eight string guitar riff you heard was or the first eight string guitar riff that you learned maybe they the same thing cuz I know for me I have a very specific instance where I was already playing guitar and then I heard this song which is after the burial Berserker and I had never heard a guitar do that low of a note ever before I was just like wa like what the [ __ ] was that and how did they do that and how can I do that which is why I play H strings now even though I definitely don't use all eight strings back in the day that was the only way I could think of to go low and now I'm stuck here so I was curious if you had an experience like that or if you remember like why you started to play eight string guitar over like a six string or whatever here's the reason why it's not a satisfying reason okay I had an ianz 7 string an s7320 same and I didn't like it okay and so I was like um this I was working at a music store in in the town I grew up in and a dude brought in a guitar and he's like yeah I want to trade this in and it was an eth string the ianz rg2228 mhm the classic which is the first production model eth string Y and so I was like o I should buy that not because it had eight strings and this is me being this is me being in the band in archb we just basically like had all gotten together not quite everybody was in the band yet but it was like early days and uh so I was in the band but I was playing a seven string and I was like that's enough but I was like well the iban as E string it's just it's a Prestige and it's and it's nicer I didn't care that it had e strings that's so inter I didn't care I was like no that's not important to me what's important is that it is a prestige guitar and the one that I had was Indonesian made and so I was like it's neck is better it's just a better guitar um it's kind of it's kind of how I've always thought about eight string guitars interesting kind of always been like I think about it like a six string guitar with two extra strings that I use for uh you know oh I want to make this R cooler okay I still use the same cord shapes I mean like I taught guitar for 10 years you know I on six string guitar so yeah I still think about it like six string guitar it doesn't really change me too much interesting um but the first riff that I ever heard was probably rational gays Yeah by muga I don't think I ever learned it I mean it's you could probably learn it I could probably learn it yeah yeah um but the funny thing about that song uh I won't attempt to butcher it here but the funny thing about that song is when I did hear it I was probably I don't even know 18 17 something like that uh yeah probably 16 or 17 and I remember hearing the solo the solo would come up song and you know the solo pretty well right and I remember and I've had this feeling before with other bands and other music and you hear it once you go I hate that yeah that sucks why do I want to listen to it again and then a couple hours later you're like I want to check that out again just so I make sure so dumb I have to hear it again so bad and then you hear it again you're like kind of like it I'm kind of embarrassed the fact that I like it and then you hear like no I like this and it's real weird I feel like all of my favorite bands started out that way where the first time I heard them I'm like man this is annoying yes or or like with vocalists especially I find that um like not to throw him under the bus but a great example is roie from Protest the Hero the first time I heard Protest the Hero that I was like this music is amazing but holy [ __ ] the singer is annoying and then the more I listen to it I'm like I kind of like it actually and it's very unique and it grows on you there's tons of bands like that I usually find that for singers but anyways go on no I mean hey Dream Theater is the same way for me fair enough yeah like damn I love this band this vocals suck I like that one part well I guess I like that other part like I think I like all of it actually yeah but that's a that one's a tough sell because he is very nasly in the high end like Dream Theater and it's like it just rubs people the wrong way M but I love it and it's at the point where you're like I can't imagine any other vocalist on this uh music you know what I mean no no absolutely not yeah so I mean like that that's kind of how I got to E string was just out of like not even like wanting to play eight string I just kind of was convenience and I took I I probably had five other guitars at the time and long and quick the store that I worked at a Canadian music music store chain um they had a trade-in policy where you could trade in guitars and so I took every single guitar that I own I traded in to buy that eight guitar CU I had Zer and the prestiges in Canada for reference are super expensive uh well this one is a tradein for I think it was $1,200 Canadian wow that's a really good deal you would never find that guitar again for that price I couldn't scrape up $1,200 myself I couldn't do it so I had to sell all the stuff that I had just to be able to like sort of afford it yeah the first I had the exact same guitar and I got it at Tomley which is the competitor long not anymore though not really really took over yeah but in the day they were yeah they had like the the white version of the 222a same guitar and it was one of those ones where it sat at the store for like 5 10 years because it's an a string and back then nobody wanted an aring cuz it was still this weird new thing and there wasn't a lot of aring players especially in Canada where we're from but liked eight strings and I was like I can't [ __ ] afford that it's like $2,500 or whatever and then one day on like boxing day or whatever which is like our Black Friday um they blew it out for like $1,200 which is crazy for uh I mean it had' been sitting around but like a new guar wait Tomley and van Vancouver downtown Vancouver this was in Siri actually okay cuz downtown Vancouver also had a white one oh okay cool yeah and those were also a Canadian exclusive I didn't even know that oh um the white ones but anyways yeah so that's that's funny that you mention I love I loved that guitar I still have basically the same thing but I refinished it in green um great guitar I like this one more because it has like a normal bridge I hate the 2228 well that sell bridge bridge is pretty sweet I don't like it I do like that bridge something about it although I we did our first uh European tour in 2012 and I went through five pinch block they just kept breaking I don't know what it was it was like the humidity cuz it's like a softer metal in there it's like a I don't know what it is but they just kept breaking kept yeah I have I still have my first ever H ring which was not the prestige one it was the rg8 which was like the budget version I still have that in my hallway it's now my wedding book which is signed by saw that on the way all the people and I had the same thing where like if you can see this bridge I've talked about it before on this channel but it's really really weird there's like tons of parts for kind of no reason it's basically like having definitely no reason all the inconveniences of a Floyd rose without it doing the thing so it's like it's heavy it's a big metal and only ivanz makes this so if any part breaks it's like you have to go on a mission to like find this one part or just buy an entire new bridge for like $400 it's absurd this back screw for the rga8 kept getting stripped and it would strip on a lot of the guitars the one in the hallway is like that too that's why I never ended up restraining it cuz I'm like even if I fix this like I can't like I would need to anyways um I don't know what they were thinking but I love it for some reason I play that guitar a lot and all the muga guitars still have this bridge cuz they I guess are just so used to it that they're like we'll just keep it whereas this is like you know the modern version of that where obviously it's like any other like hip shot style right it it makes way more sense yeah and this is so inconvenient like playing live it's like [ __ ] you have to like yeah yeah anyways I thought that was interesting but yeah I found that that's really interesting that you play an a string guitar not really because you heard an a string and we're like I want to learn that or I have to play like that you were just like oh it's just more convenient than playing the guitar I have which is very interesting I could say it was because I liked Animals As Leaders but I hadn't even heard them yet yeah of course well cuz this was back what 2008 is it was 2009 so it was it was like I think that tosen had put up some videos of him playing right at his like at his place or something like that before they released their first album probably and I and I'm I think my buddy showed me one of toan's videos then and I was like well this guy's really good you already had the guitar yes okay yeah I think once I had already played E string I was like okay yeah so but that being said the only I started playing eight string because of uh convenience but uh I kept playing eight string because tosen Frederick from muga like amazing guitar players and and realizing like the breadth that you can actually like achieve the dynamic range that you get with an instrument that stuff propelled me to study more and kind of understand the instrument more but the reason that I played is just because I I was broke that is definitely not an answer I would have expected that's really cool I've never heard that answer before um yeah it this leads me to my final question is do you ever have people ask you why do you play an eight string or like why not just play a baritone six string or something like that I feel like you probably don't because in your case you actually use all eight strings all the time I get asked that all the time because I'm like fair enough I play like the bottom four strings 99% of the time and the top two are for ambient noises so I was curious if you get asked that question at all and I figured you probably don't but I was curious I'll tell you the thing that I hear a lot is uh well eight strings I can't even play six yeah of course and to my to my respon is neither can I no one can no one can master six strings except for Guri gin sure that's that dude did that's about it everybody else is still working on it so uh you know I have some people that are pretty close but you know and I say that in joking obviously otherg can get better somehow I don't understand how but um but yeah I mean I can't play six string uh I'm not I haven't mastered it so what that shouldn't prevent me from moving up to play whatever the [ __ ] I want honestly I always thought that was a silly argument or it's like or or other one that I hear all the time is like uh like if it's not heavy on a six string it's not a heavy riff at all or like you're like relying on it being on eight string Riff to make it heavy which I'm like I don't think it matters like if it sounds cool who cares it's tough man because you like when I'm sitting I I do writing days on Saturday so every Saturday I I mean most of the days I have my guitar at my house trying to write music but Saturday all day I'm like let's write music let's try to do something and I don't program drums so I have to make a rift that sounds cool by itself oh interesting and that is a really hard thing to do I don't think I've ever done that it's really hard yeah because if it sounds sick without drums it's going to crush with drum and that's a really high standard to set yeah but um it's just how I kind of work and I'm really slow at it and maybe I should learn how to program drums and I know how to I just I don't think like a drummer so I have some recordings of drums that sometimes I copy paste but it never fits the groove packs or whatever well it's just actually just the stems from our albums just copy paste and move oh interesting wow that's really weird way to do that but okay so that's pretty much going to do it for this video like I mentioned at the beginning we are going to be touring together May and June very exciting stuff again if you're in North America Canada or the states please come see us we'd really appreciate it some of those rooms are massive like you were saying and they're a little intimidating they are the biggest venues that we've ever headlined dude I can't believe we're playing the Vogue in Vancouver hell yeah that's like a dream venue let's sell it up yeah absolutely dude I mean if you're in Vancouver we have not played an all ages show in a long time just we don't generally play a lot of them at least in Canada in the US you get some you know all AG venues but I don't think we've ever played a HomeTown all agis show I don't think cuz our our second show ever was with you guys and I think that right second and and third yes yeah right cuz you play two two round shows um but anyways yeah if you're in United States or Canada please come to a show we'd really appreciate it obviously go check out Dean's Channel he does awesome metal things and he's an amazing guitarist and also he has a video on his channel called four levels of metal it's a series he does with his wife and they did one on yours truly kosis if you want to get a little bit more familiar with carcosa riffs and hear them played probably better than I can play them go check out that video on Dean's Channel and I think that it pretty much covers it unless there's anything you wanted to add at the very end here uh I'm I'm not bald by choice I'm bald by circumstance so that maybe that's just just I'll leave that with everybody here and that's a great place to end the video

Channel: Andrew Baena

Views: 23,595

Keywords: djent, metal, metalcore, cover, djent cover, metal cover, andrew baena, baena, djent metal

Id: 7mc3wdeT9DE

Length: 46min 24sec (2784 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024