Opeth Key's/Scales

[Necroticism]

he he, this is the second time I have managed to post an Opeth guitar topic in the past two months! Anyway this one is slightly different...

Does anybody know specifically what scales and keys Opeth tend to use when constructing their music?

 

[Gnuckell]

Harmonic minor, Phrygian dominant etc. etc.

 

[Thorns of Sorrow]

alot of their riffs are in the blues scale.

 

[opethpainter]

i don't think opeth [mikael...] think about a specific scale or key when they write music... music is in the air, and they capture it without worrying like "oh, yeah, let's use this scale here..." or something like that...

so, don't you worry about that, it's just feeling. and technique without feeling is nothing [did i say dream theater....? no, i just didn't... they've got feeling IMO]. mike knows that very well...

 

[warman]

chromatic

 

[fadingessence]

lol chromatic? ever played a song in chromatic? it wouldn't matter what note you hit at least!

I doubt mikael would know what scales he's playing, but whether you learn the scale or figure things out for yourself you ARE using a scale. A great deal of what they do is based on blues and jazz, even the half step chords come from that. A good thing to try is take a standard blues scale and throw in half step changes to give it that disharmonic sound. Or just do it like me and learn enough Opeth that you can just do it by feel, as in you just get to the point where you "know" what will sound right.

They also switch keys a lot....

 

[Ermz]

Mikael uses alot of Pentatonic and Blues scale in his soloing. On the old albums there was alot of harmonic minors happening (especially Orchid). But to be honest I dont think Opeth sit there and go... 'ok, so let's use this scale here... and we'll have it in this key, so we'll have alot to play around with'. I think they just write whatever they want and worry about making it 'fit' later.

 

[Katatonic]

mikael has no actual musical training, so he just writes what sounds good.

 

[akasha33]

I saw an interview on guitar.com where Mike was being asked what chord he played (on drapery)

he answered that he had no clue but that he uses it all the time!

Genius! if you ask me

 

[Ermz]

yeah... ugh I'm trying to remember the chord name. It's like Aminor add9 or something. But yeah Mikael is cool... he's got his own little form of theory inside his head when he writes (... so ok, this riff sounds good with this one... and when it's played soloing on this part of the neck sounds good with it).

 

[Thorns of Sorrow]

trust me, I dont care what he says, he knows exactly what hes doing. He may not "remember" the chords and scales he plays in, but at the time where hes writing the songs he sure as hell knows exactly what hes doing.

 

[akasha33]

I guess I just like to think of him as divinely inspired, you know, like the Zart was.

 

[opethpainter]

hey, i said that first!

 

[akasha33]

I must have captured that thought in the air then

 

[Netheral]

I'm pretty sure mikael doesn't know and doesn't matter about the scales he plays..................he even didn't know which chords he was playing in their guitar-video from guitar.com

 

[Scourge of Malice]

Music sounds better when you don't sit around trying to use some scale. Especially if you're trying to sound like another band.

I've only learned a couple scales and sometimes I'll use bits from them just because I know which sound dark and which sounds more happy, but I pretty much just improvise and something cool will come up. Of course everything I write lately sounds like Opeth.. oh well

 

[Anarkissed]

There are people that do have strong music theory and can still play good music, namely artists such as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen (hope i spelt that right). They just happen to have a strong ear for good melody too, instead of just running up and down scales.

 

[Scourge of Malice]

Yngwie does a lot of just running up and down scales though... but I still love him

 

[Sorrowful Night V]

I imagine that he uses some scales. I have seen the guitar.com video and sometimes it is hard to remember all of those chords! At the time he was writing the song "the drapery falls," I am pretty sure that he had at least a faint idea of what he was doing. Anyway, I think of Opeth as the kind of band that pieces riffs and parts together in order to make a song.

Most of their songs, especially on the older albums, change drastically throughout the song. It's always one riff to another, an acoustic interlude, then another riff and so on. I guess it's whatever goes together and works.

 

[Ermz]

All Yngwie does is go up and down scales man. After you have as many videos of him as I do, you realize he recycles the same arpeggios in different songs