As the penultimate tune on Synchronized Seasoning, I wanted this one to have a bit of ‘tude. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if a goofy metal guy made country music, here you go.
Travis Orbin drummed on this tune as one might expect, and I requested he throw in a little drum solo, which ended up kicking ass, as you can tell from my subtle (?) commentary throughout.
This tune is now available along with the rest on bandcamp, YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
The intro of the tune (after the chromatic-ish pre-intro) has this kind of chicken-picked hammered-on sort of lick, which was the first little idea that popped up years and years ago. I assumed I’d do some sort of heavy palm muting thing with the guitar’s lowest power chord over it, but left writing the rhythm for that until much later (I think 2020 or so).
So I had to come up with some sort of pattern. I’m not sure how I landed on
2-1-1-2-2-1-1-4
but after programming it into the scratch drums it seemed to work.
For the outro, I had also come up with a chicken/hybrid picked groups of two string, four note arpeggios that seemed kind of cool, but lacked a rhythmic pattern to fit them into. I decided that since I was always punishing Travis with silly polymeter parts, this time I would instead punish myself and distribute those arpeggios oddly throughout some other pattern.
In comes the 2-1-1-2-2-1-1-4 chuggity chug pattern to the rescue. I kept that low power chord pattern part as the backbone, using a kind of generic “Djent” aesthetic, but mixed the arpeggios in between. I ended up having to record the arpeggio chunks one bit at a time, slice them up in Reaper, and intersperse them between the chugs because my brain could not work the pattern out otherwise.
Then I had to learn how to play it. Since I’m not very good at counting things out while playing (and don’t find it to be very fun), I just kept trying to play along until I could do it by feel, and that worked nicely.
Is there a name for this sort of thing? It’s not really a polymeter or polyrhythm as far as I can tell. It’s sort of like a poly-riff—two riffs with non-uniform length segments and different numbers of segments woven together. The part sounds like it’s continuously changing, but isn’t hard to follow after a few listens.
Ow, got put under extreme heat
Evaporating tears of defeat
Could not get up so got down
Sounds
Melt the crown
Who’s the clown now?
Suffered in rain
and high tailed it out of townSure hurts to be burned
But gently quenched and tempered
Incidentally centered
Time must not misspend it
Gotta go hard if you wanna be hard
Some day this life is going to endNo, it’s not a fucking game now
Nothing to a name
Can’t stop the train
It’s rockin’ well and rolls good
Sparse neighborhood
Think you misunderstood
Put in a place to do damage as it shouldBasically slime
Mold a mountain from molecule
Time to scarify
Permanence lie
I say don’t need to be hard if you wanna go hard
Stop taking oneself
SeriouslyC
Devastated daily
Need to be freeYou’re free now
Rockwell
RockwellRound and round
It coils and then it rebounds
In time
Reacts to everything
Cut the line
And wait to hear feedback from the grave
Think of the kind of road
You would like to paveC
Motivated rightly
Disregarding signals
Fixed on setpoint yeahAll scrap anyway
Over thinking
You’re all scrap anywayCould be one hard son of a bitch
Now all scrap anyway
Yeah yeahAll scrap anyway
Could be one hard son of a bitch
Now all scrap anywayOver thinking
You’re all scrap anywayCould be one hard son of a bitch
Now all scrap anyway yeah[Fuck this shit up]
You’ll be lonely
On the Rockwell C
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