...As
interpreted by Matthew Swagler for:
Music 11 - Brown
University - Professor Fredrics
The
State of "Corporate Modern Rock" today is a stagnant one - almost as stagnant
as the word "rock" itself has become...
...The
world of "rock music" went through phenomenal changes with the discovery
of distortion and reverb as we left the sixties. No one will dispute
the huge differences between early the Beatles albums of clean guitar pop
and the famous Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band release
and the soon to come guitar wails of Jimi Hendrix. But since that time,
the typical "rock" band has remained pretty constant: a drummer, guitar,
bass, and maybe a keyboard or some strings. Distortion is essential
of course for rhythm and lead guitar players, but comes more or less in
one style - noisy. Of course one could argue that every rock band sounds
different, because of their choice of instrumentation's, pedals, amps,
or recording equipment. For the most part, the distorted guitars are similar,
the wall of Marshall Stacks are the same, as are the fuzz, flange and wah-wah
pedals, and only a pro can tell different types of electric guitars apart.
Since America's
arrival in the grundge years the most significant differences to
be found lay in composition, loudness, tempo, and the tone quality of a
vocalist. Recently, the slew of popular rock bands: Third Eye Blind,Matchbox
20, Semisonic, Everclear, even quasi-punkers
Blink-182 and Rancid
have all caved to typical overused chord progressions sticking mainly with
their tonic, 4th, 5th and minor 6th chords to create virtually all of their
songs - so to say composition can differentiate is even hard. But these
commercially viable bands are using the same chords and amps and melodies
as the Pixies and Nirvana back at the turn of the decade,
simply sung differently, or slowed down. Even bands way before Nirvana
and the writer's remembrance: the Who,
Yes, Pink Floyd and
especially aspects of the Beatles are constantly recycled into mass
induced albums.
But outside the
corporate world, many bands have tried to keep up with time by moving on
from the past. The true "modern rock" bands are
the ones that are trying to take what technology and past musicians have
given to them to progress forward while still sticking to the loud (but
often melodic) roots of Rock. Of course these
bands approach progress in very different ways. Many have replaced drummers
with machines and computers, others have even replaced bassists and/or
guitar players to create a whole new breed of electronic rock music (KMFDM,
Tricky).
Some bands have tried to "rock" with a piano or saxophone instead of a
guitar (Ben Folds Five and Morphine respectively.) While
other bands added the horns of traditional ska to the beat and energy of
punk/rock (Mustard Plug, Voodoo GloSkulls, for example.) All of
these groups have helped in creating new, often ambiguous, genres that
have undoubtedly expanded the options for listeners of modern music.
The question this
web page is addressing is the following: How can a rock band stick with
the basics (as described before) but create a sound that somehow makes
them totally distinguishable. Many bands are good examples but I have chosen
to look in depth at too - Helium and the Autumns:
The
State of "Corporate Modern Rock" today is a stagnant one - almost as stagnant
as the word "rock" itself has become...
The question this
web page is addressing is the following: How can a rock band stick with
the basics (as described before) but create a sound that somehow makes
them totally distinguishable. Many bands are good examples but I have chosen
to look in depth at too - Helium and the Autumns: