Originally posted by thrashmetal78
I fell in love with their piano arrangements throughout the songs, especially the intro to The Day I Return. Could you guys reference some more material similar to that? It doesn't have to be just Novembers Doom, or even doom METAL. I'm not really looking for classical arrangements, as I would like it to have a sort of doomy feel to it, whether metal, rock, etc.
Wow, thanks. No one really ever mentions the piano things. As far as stuff on ND albums, there's the one at the beginning of Day I Return and at the end of Aura Blue- those two songs were originally intended to be one long-ass piece, but in rehearsing it, we decided it'd probably be better separated into two tracks on the disc. But obviously, the end of Aura Blue is the same as the beginning of DIR, so it's still sort of wrapped all together. The piano parts were meant to bookend the two tracks and make them seem like more of a whole (in my mind at least).
Don't know if you have it, but there's a similar type piece on To Welcome the Fade called Dreams to Follow, right before the last track (Dark Fields). It's really similar in nature/scope to the ones on the Knowing. I had originally wanted to add some really light background textures to it & do it on an old, semi-out of tune piano to give it a creepier feel, but there really wasn't time. Side story: i never titled any of the piano stuff- paul did. But in the studio, we didn't know what to call it- so we called it Periwinkle, for the color of the clipboard paper Neil was using for the track assignments. I guess Paul didn't like that name, since it's different now lol.
As for other piano type stuff, I'm not real sure what to mention as far as metal/rock-oriented stuff. Most of the stuff i played while taking piano lessons growing up & in college was classical, so that's where the majority of my influence came from. I'm definitely not a good piano player- it takes a lot of patience to practice/play a piece correctly, and I'm afraid I don't have that- i just like playing whatever.
Most of the stuff I liked to play was in the 19th/20th centuries vein- composers like Sibelius, Debussy, Khachaturian, Bartok, Kabalevsky, Rachmaninov, etc. There's plenty of really doomy-type piano/symphonic stuff out there that a lot of people into doom metal would dig, it's just hard figuring out what to try- I definitely get overwhelmed unless I'm looking for something in particular.
sorry for the long-winded answer.
