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Awesome, can’t wait to check this out later!
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Sorry for the delay on this, it’s been a challenge getting the Magnet in the store over the past year or so and a million and one other housekeeping chores. Small business — it’s no joke.
It’s a great conversation. Given that a little time has passed since we filmed it, I get to be surprised all over again about the stuff we discuss.
There’s all kinds of cool harmony talk for theory nerds to get excited about. Personally, it’s somewhat interesting to know the technical, but I forget about that pretty quickly unless there’s a decent song to go with it. In this case Brandon takes apart the intro tune and talks about how he wove neapolitan chord harmonies and chromatic motifs into both the lead and the rhythm parts. If you like the song to begin with, you like it even more when you find out how it was done.
Mechanically Brandon is super in tune with all the little motion changes that happen once you start playing a little faster. And the Magnet footage confirms that’s he right in just about every case as far as what is actually happening.
The only thing he might not be totally aware of is the double escape aspect of his pure alternate scale playing. He is a USX player, which he is aware of. And he notes that there is finger motion in some cases for doing downstroke string changes. From the footage I think he’s correct. However there may also a be a wrist component, so that whether you have upstroke or downstroke string changes, you’re getting reverse dart wrist in both cases, just along slightly different axes. Ascending 3nps alternate picking is one place where I think this may be happening:
You can poke around in there and see what you think. Anyway great conversation, let us know how you like it!
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“…with a lot of this harmony stuff, you have to speak like a lawyer.” lmao Very true!
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This was a great interview. Brandon is an incredible guitarist and comes across as a really nice, humble guy. It is very cool to see more of these amazing artists come to these interviews with an awareness of CtC vocabulary and conceptual framework. It makes it easier for them to articulate a lot about their own playing to an audience that also speaks the language and can more readily understand the conversation and potentially apply ideas to their own playing. I was impressed with his practical approach to technique (“think like an engineer”) and his perspective on the different tonal qualities of different techniques as they apply to his own playing. I wonder if this is a phase that many guitarists go through wrt “alternate pick every damn thing” until they achieve enough proficiency and can put this now-sharpened tool back in the belt to select in the future when it is appropriate to use. Brandon’s knowledge of music theory is amazing (I thought Neopolitan was an inferior ice cream flavor). I followed maybe 25% of that conversation but loved all of it because (1) it is another demonstration of the utility of theory knowledge in composition and (2) it inspires me to continue studying. Awesome job.
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so awesome can’t wait to watch this, brandon is one of the most interesting players in metal. Two other players in the metal space i would love to see you guys interview at some point are Wes Hauch and Dave Davidson. Both have some insane picking mechanics but like Brandon also play some very interesting harmonic material (especially in the space of metal) thanks for the great interviews as always!
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Brandon may have my favourite vibrato of all time!
And even more impressive is the fact that he was clearly a little nervous playing that initial tune, yet he delivered a masterful performance and the vibrato did not suffer one bit!!
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Totally agreed. I went down a string gauge just to try to emulate that vibrato, even.
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This was a really great interview, one of my favourites so far. Brandon’s playing is insanely good and he makes it all look effortless. He seems to be very knowledgable with regards to theory. He has such a good tone as well, very articulate and clear and I’m going to guess that he’s not using as much gain as you think a metal player out.
Trivial question, but I’m always curious about these things - what picks was he using in the interview?
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He just played through the Cornford Hellcat which is a high gain amp, and I keep the gain on max on that channel. The Hellcat does a good job overall especially on rock stuff. But for fast modern metal things where you have a lot of single note lines and muting on the low strings, or fast double stops on the low strings, I don’t think it shaves off as much low end going into the gain stages as a modern amp would. So you can’t hear the individual notes as clearly.
In Brandon’s case I don’t think it mattered that much for the song he played. And for single note lead playing I don’t think it matters at all, the Hellcat has plenty of gain and headroom isn’t as much of an issue for that.
I don’t remember what pick he used but from the Magnet footage it looks like a 1mm Tortex Jazz III or Flow.
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Thank for the info, Troy. I think he sounded great on this, the sound he had straight into the Hellcat is very impressive. His vibrato is insane! One of my favourite interviews for sure.
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