Do you play an instrument / in a band?

[SeeEm]

progressive or technical deathmetal.

They are not!

And go Youtube 'Honor Thy Father' by Dream Theater, then get back to me. :P

[Tommy]

I meant prog metal and tech death metal separately. But I'll check that song. I'm always willing to be proven wrong! I just don't think I am. :P

[jwktje]

I play keys in a coverband! I also make some music of my own wich i record with my laptop.
Mainly just software synthersizers hooked up to my keyboard :P..

The band is too shoddy to mention. I play a fair bit off keys, and the drums, lead guitar and singer are brilliant. But the bass and 2'th guitar are awwfull! And a bad bassplayer can mess up everything!

Isn't the bass suposed to be like the melodic spine of a band?

[chinchilla]

every band should have 3 drumkits- one with about 130 drums (that one should work upside down)...the other two should consist at least partially of 'trash-cans' and at least one should be spring-mounted.

[Tommy]

Lars Ulrich used trash cans on St Anger.

:|

[jwktje]

The spring mounted one would be operated with a footswitch? Firing at people shouting trough their performance?

[chinchilla]

Lars Ulrich used trash cans on St Anger.

:|

..you have to play them with a baseball bat really, otherwise you lose a lot of the textual honesty in the sound

[randomtom]

i for one loved lars drum sound on st anger. i also think its their best album since puppets.
anyway back to the drum size topic. having more drums is a good laugh, most drummers would agree with that i think, its fun and music without fun is pointless. guitarists have so many different notes at their disposal which allows them to make 1000's of sounds. drummers however have a relatively limited scope for sounds and notes, if more drums allows them to make different and exciting music then whats the big deal. its like a guitarist having 24 frets opposed to 22, or a 8 or 8 string to a 6 stringer.

[it's_a_foodage]

I just wanna chip in that I think St Anger is an underrated album and I can't stand prog metal for the most part. Also lol @ "textual honesty".

[Scorched]

I play guitar badly, sing not as badly and play piano fairly averagely.

[ike]

It's no more pointlessly extravagant than guitarists who play double-necked guitars and stuff.

Again though, double necked guitars often have one neck as a 6-string and on as a 12-string, and usually are only used in songs which require it.

Yeah, I was kinda referring to something more like this;


Or even this..


....

Nah, it's just my opinion. I mean, Dream Theater came up and that's the type of music I just can't stand; progressive or technical death metal. I love metal, but a band just showing off how good they are technically for 8 minutes at a time does nothing for me and shouldn't even be considered music, in my opinion. They're not songs, they're just pointless displays of ability. Which are fine when not in the context of a song, i.e, I'll listen to a drum solo where the guy shows off his ability, but I don't want that in a song. Does that make any sense?

Not really, no. Each individual member of Dream Theater is awesome at what they do, particually Petrucci (guitar), Portnoy (drums) and Rudess (keyboard) - Most of their songs are multi-layered so you can really hear what each individual person is doing more than a lot of bands. It's hard to explain and make sense, just listen to something off their 'Images and Words' album before jumping to crazy assumptions. :P
[Edit - Actually I just remembered you like Metallica so you may prefer something off their Train of Thought album, that's probably their most "metal" album where as Images and Words is more "prog" - I'd recommend 'As I Am' or 'Endless Sacrifice' from that album)

I just wanna chip in that I think St Anger is an underrated album

Kind of agree. I didn't hate it at the time, but it was more a disapointment than anything, after being hyped up so much it was never going to live up to expectations. However on it's own without comparison to anything else they've done, it's not a bad album, I found it went on a bit too long and the album felt too rushed and unfinished. If they'd tidied it up a bit more, improved the snare sound, included a couple of fuckin' guitar solos then it would've been fine - People are always just quick to jump on the band wagon. I truly think they redeemed themselves with Death Magnetic, but I also wouldn't complain if they slip the occasonaly St Anger song in a live set.

[ike]

But anyway.. Going back to topic:
I got my drum kit on Saturday. Lovin' it already. I'm really gonna try an effort to stick with this one and try to learn a few songs.

There's a jam night at the pub on the first Thursday of the month so I've set myself the goal of learning to coherently play a song by the 4th June, if I'm confident enough with myself by then I'll get up and give it a go in front of the crowd.

[randomtom]

good work!!!

[Webbage]

I just put out a new song :)
www.myspace.com/jamieh29

I don't normally do upbeat stuff but this one came naturally! :)

[ike]

But anyway.. Going back to topic:
I got my drum kit on Saturday. Lovin' it already. I'm really gonna try an effort to stick with this one and try to learn a few songs.

There's a jam night at the pub on the first Thursday of the month so I've set myself the goal of learning to coherently play a song by the 4th June, if I'm confident enough with myself by then I'll get up and give it a go in front of the crowd.

So.. Yeah, after having drums for a couple of weeks I decided to actually lose my "playing live" virginity and get up and join the band on the jam night tonight. Played two songs; Enter Sandman by Metallica and Overkill by Motörhead.
Naturally there were quite a few expected cock-ups since I've only really had a chance to practice on a few occasions since I got the drums, but meh, I think it went alright for my first time. (Also, the overall layout of the kit I was playing is different to what I'd previously been practicing on so it took a little while into the song to get used to where everything was...)

Somebody actually bothered to make a couple of incredibly poor quality videos and upload 'em to Youtube, if anyone's interested. This is the first song I've ever played live, Enter Sandman;