In depth analysis of Mikael's songwriting and other aspects

[Opethian666]

I was wondering if there are any people on this forum with both extensive knowledge of music theory, and a love for rational and in-depth analysis. I have always felt that Mikael's music is quite unique, especially in the way that he is able to constantly come up with such a variety of atmospheres that both have an immense emotional impact, and are often original and contain much detail. Especially the way he can make transitions beautiful in their own right, not just use them as a tool to make one great part flow into another is something that I have never heard matched in other music (of course, I have only heard an incredibly tiny amount of the music that has been created on this planet).

My problem is that, while I "feel" what I just described, I cannot rationally explain it and thus philosophise about it, because of my lack of knowledge on music theory. That's why I made this thread for anyone on this forum that wants to share his or her insight on what the musical basis might be for the most interesting aspects of Opeth songs, preferrably as detailed as possible and not restricting yourself by trying to make it understandable for everybody, even if they don't know anything about music theory, since that'll inevitably make the analysis lose detail and value. There's wikipedia and google, so looking up terminology that I and others might not have heard of, used in an analysis, should be the least of efforts.

In essence, you share with us a "non-dumbed down" analysis, and thus a limited amount of research to do for ignorami like me to be able to understand it, since obviously only a small amount of elements of music theory will be important for the most interesting aspects of Opeth's music, and we do the rest (or in the case of other knowledgable people, you don't have to and can just discuss with the others).

Anyway, I thought this might be a fun idea, so let's see.

 

[flebbie]

huh?

 

[Luann]

hahahah
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/opeth/389251-opeth-music-style-compositions.html
maybe I will start to analyze the drapery falls

 

[TomiR]

Well, as a songwriter myself, I have often found that the fans that are not musicians themselves, often overthink the music in a way. Like with Meshuggah, some of the fans have even claimed that there are some mathematical formulas used to make the riffs, where the reality is that the guys just come up with the riffs while jamming or screwing around with the drum machine.

So, it is just usually coming up with ideas, then the art of connecting ideas together so that they sound like they have meant to be together. There are a lot of ways to do that. either to use rhythmic -or a melodic sequence or both combined. In Opeth, the ideas are often connected together by a short guitar lick or a drum part.

There are a million tricks to use when writing songs, different intervals, key changes, mode changes... the list goes on and on! So it is very hard to point out specific "tricks" that are used in Opeth, since it varies so much from song to song.

The only thing that is pretty dominant in Opeth, is the use of minor scales, the "sad" sounding scales, which can also sound haunting, angry or whatever.

I know that doesen't really answer your question, but well, I gave it a shot

 

[Fragon]

Off-topic: I'm really interested in songwriting/music theories, maybe you songwriter guys can put some link to a few lessons ,if you know. Thank you.

 

[Luann]

Well.
I started to analyze Benighted, I stopped before the instrumental bridge.
The chord symbols are in some cases weird, since some of the chords sometimes don't even have a 3rd, or there are just a bass note, etc.
So I approached it by the most obvious choice of chord spelling in some cases, but looking at the page, it's clear that most of the parts are just cool by the intervals, slides, bass notes, etc rather than "fixed" chords.
There are some E-, A-, but other ones that are really hard to figure what they are, but well.
This song is in Em, so I used what is the most obvious.
Will post the pdf or jpg when I finish it, altough it's funny to analyse opeth songs, it doesn't seem to have an use. It's more useful to analyze certain sections of songs in this case.
If mike reads my "analysis" he will think WTF.
And there are some things that I could analyze differently each day!

 

[Opethian666]

hahahah
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/o...positions.html
maybe I will start to analyze the drapery falls

Yeah, that would be cool. I hope this thread survives longer than that one, it would seem this is not really a popular topic.

Well, as a songwriter myself, I have often found that the fans that are not musicians themselves, often overthink the music in a way. Like with Meshuggah, some of the fans have even claimed that there are some mathematical formulas used to make the riffs, where the reality is that the guys just come up with the riffs while jamming or screwing around with the drum machine.

I agree on most of that. I'm a songwriter too, and know as good as nothing about music theory and just start recording without much of an idea in advance, just fucking around on the guitar and testing out riffs and combinations of them, or just playing a riff idea that popped up in my head at some other time. But of course, when you're doing that, you're listening to what you're playing or making in your head, and testing its impact on yourself, hence working as a filter that is not based on rational thought but on feeling. The end result in the case of using music theory depends on your knowledge and capability to use it logically, and in the case of not using it, on your musical ear. In any case, analysing music using music theory is just as valid whether the music was made from fucking around or from writing it out with the use of theory, so overthinking it isn't really a problem, only attributing rational planning to something that was made from "auditory selection" (since you use yourself as a filter for what you create, either by relistening to something you recorded, listening to an idea in your head, or even while improvising when you're subconsciously looking into the future and testing out ideas in the time span till the next note).

So, it is just usually coming up with ideas, then the art of connecting ideas together so that they sound like they have meant to be together. There are a lot of ways to do that. either to use rhythmic -or a melodic sequence or both combined. In Opeth, the ideas are often connected together by a short guitar lick or a drum part.

There are a million tricks to use when writing songs, different intervals, key changes, mode changes... the list goes on and on! So it is very hard to point out specific "tricks" that are used in Opeth, since it varies so much from song to song.

Yeah, I wasn't really looking for specific tricks, just a very detailed analysis of some of the most impressive transitions or riffs, which I think could be quite interesting. My interest lies mostly in the relation between music and the emotions they cause, and maybe identifying some aspects of the causality through analysis of the most important aspects of certain transitions/segments that evoke unique and intense emotions.

The only thing that is pretty dominant in Opeth, is the use of minor scales, the "sad" sounding scales, which can also sound haunting, angry or whatever.

I know that doesen't really answer your question, but well, I gave it a shot

Thanks, any contribution is appreciated (except maybe "huh" ).

 

[Luann]

There are a lot of minord chords everywhere.
Most of the major chords are used as a dominant to resolve in another minor chord in Opeth songs.
I don't remember other song than Atonement to be in a major key.

Edit: also, believe it or not, but A fair judgement is in major key, at least the verse, I don't remember the other parts.

Edit 2: It will take a while to finish it, didn't even finished the chord charts .

 

[TomiR]

Yeah, that would be cool. I hope this thread survives longer than that one, it would seem this is not really a popular topic.



I agree on most of that. I'm a songwriter too, and know as good as nothing about music theory and just start recording without much of an idea in advance, just fucking around on the guitar and testing out riffs and combinations of them, or just playing a riff idea that popped up in my head at some other time. But of course, when you're doing that, you're listening to what you're playing or making in your head, and testing its impact on yourself, hence working as a filter that is not based on rational thought but on feeling. The end result in the case of using music theory depends on your knowledge and capability to use it logically, and in the case of not using it, on your musical ear. In any case, analysing music using music theory is just as valid whether the music was made from fucking around or from writing it out with the use of theory, so overthinking it isn't really a problem, only attributing rational planning to something that was made from "auditory selection" (since you use yourself as a filter for what you create, either by relistening to something you recorded, listening to an idea in your head, or even while improvising when you're subconsciously looking into the future and testing out ideas in the time span till the next note)..

Oh, I meant that people who are not musicians often have all these weird misconceptions of the magical writing process. The fact is that a lot of musicians make songs by just jamming and coming up with riffs and melodies that way. Then coming up with lick and parts to combine them.

But, yes, theory is a very powerfull tool when making songs. It works as a toolbox and let's you express yourself a lot better, since you know "what tool" to use when trying to achieve a certain atmosphere or effect. It's a major part of my writing.

For example, you need to add a dramatic effect to one of your songs, lift the atmosphere to epic proportions lol and the melody is in A harmonic minor, then just go up to B and play the same thing again. I love the dramatic effect it has.

I personally use a lot of little tricks derived from classical music, like when changing keys and modes. I like my music to be constantly changing, while maintaining a nice flow.

 

[Crepuscularia]

Mike is passionately in love with minor 9 chords. The Drapery falls is a good example; they're everywhere. And yeah, minor chord progressions in general are everywhere. I think major chords are treated as an occassional necessary evil in a lot (but by no means all) of their songs. It would be mildly interesting to see an actual analysis of an Opeth song; but I'm skeptical as to whether doing so would yeild any insight into why we love it so much.

 

[russiaonice]

he makes good use of chromaticism and chord modulations which adds quite unique sounds and beautiful mood changes...a decent amount of people use them but i think you need a special ear to really use it well (as he does)...the beatles used it very well too....actually its funny...for the first 2 semesters in school we studied bach then in the third we hit upon some beatles tunes...i love how mike , john, and paul didnt know theory (at least not a lot?) which makes the music sound so real (unlike dream theater...haha...totally an opinion!)

 

[MegaMoose]

mikael has no say in his songwriting cause there is no such thing as free will iirc

 

[Opethian666]

^Well, you could still say that the collection of matter and energy known as Mikael in the state at the moment of songwriting in combination with the environmental input he received at that time resulted in something that causes a lot of natural drugs to be released in our system when used as input to the collections of matter and energy that form us, so all praise Mikael's molecules!

 

[Iki-ilkkuja]

I don't know wether Mikael has meant these songs to have deep structual meanings or anything. Just parts put together and so forth.

 

[epihasi]

Mike is passionately in love with minor 9 chords. The Drapery falls is a good example; they're everywhere. And yeah, minor chord progressions in general are everywhere. I think major chords are treated as an occassional necessary evil in a lot (but by no means all) of their songs. It would be mildly interesting to see an actual analysis of an Opeth song; but I'm skeptical as to whether doing so would yeild any insight into why we love it so much.

minor 9 chords are the shit.
my favorite chords are am add9 and em add9.

 

[Metalstrm]

Hmm. I'm the songwriter for my band as well. I do know some theory, but really most of the music (95%+) comes from the ear in my case. I only use theory to help me out when I'm really stuck in some part; e.g. to help me find a matching chord or to find interesting scales. Other than that I usually use the theory for fun, to analyze what I've been doing (e.g. "woahh that's a minor 7th flat 5th chord!", etc.). I rarely follow 'standard' progressions or chord shapes, as most people who do it by ear probably do. Akerfeldt doesn't know/use theory as far as I know. His music is very minory and often delves into harmonic minor scales (e.g. Master's Apprentice intro). He uses a lot of octave intervals and diminished 5th intervals. What gives the music the sound we've grown to love is probably the mixture of simple blues scales and chromatic transitions on minor scales.

 

[Lethal01]

To go right against the topic it seems that much of Opeths music comes from a love of musical exploration. To hear something cool in a song and think "I want to try that too", and then managing to perfectly blend that with your existing sound. (Or just steal it right off in most cases)

 

[Black Session]

I fear/think that people with great knowledge of music theory and classical music or jazz would say things that you wouldn't like probably ... What we call complex and progressive music, isn't that complex at all compared to other stuff. But Mikael is surely aware of that, and it is not the intention to create the most intelligent and complex music ever written. Music (and art in general) isn't a matter of pure rationalism, which is where some artists go wrong in my opinion. The essence of art (again in my opinion) is that it transcends our false conception of a duality between rationalism and emotions. By this I mean that although you can analyze art in a rational way to a certain degree and you can create art out of specific thoughts and ideas, there always is a strong instinctive and emotional aspect to it. So you can create a certain composition based on mathematics, but to judge the end result you will always rely on how good or right it feels to create something in a certain way. We all know that ... making a drawing or creating a song or writing a poem, you feel if it's right or not. This feeling might also go back to mathematic concepts of your brain but might just as well be something else.

So, analyzing Opeth's music might be somewhat dissapointing as it will turn out to be far less complex and highly developed as some on this forum might think it is. But this does not take away from the fact that it is art. There are intelligent ideas in the music, there are thought through concepts and structures, but far more probably you have riffs and melodies and so much more which appeal to us in a different way.
Since for me there is no strict dichotomy between ratio and emotion, or mind and soul (or whatever else you want to call it), it is pointless to look at it from one specific angle alone. A highly complex and mathematically perfect composition is not art or better than simple music, because it lacks something specific. But note how difficult or impossible it is to create something purely rational, you need a computer to do that ...

 

[BefriendedUnit]

^Wat eh sed.

 

[GregR]

It might have been mentioned already, but a lot of Opeth riffs are played in the half-whole diminished scale. This scale alternates half steps and whole steps the whole way up, so in E it would be (E, F, G, Ab, Bb, B, C#, D, [E]). Along the E string in tab this would be like:

E---0--1--3--4--6--7--9--10--12--

I wrote it out on the low E string because that's where it's best suited for the low heavier riffs used by Opeth. There's tons of different sounds in this scale. This scale contains notes from the locrian mode (which has a b2 and b5, very "evil" sounding notes), the blues scale, lydian, and dorian. This wide array of sounds gives many Opeth riffs touches of different styles, sounding grim at times, almost bluesy at other times.