Why all the Metal??????

IMHO in Progressive and Djent Music there are no rules, how the music should be done. And also the players don't want to be limited by their gear. And an AxeFX is the only logical consequence if you want to smash limits.
 
Haven't read all the replies but, logically, it would have to do with the demographic of metal players and their proclivity towards technology. Age, tech era, adaptability and being accustomed to. Younger minds accept this stuff more readily - younger generations dig metal more often than not. And yes, these are gross generalizations, but since you asked...

Lastly, we have the computer. Is the computer as firmly entrenched in the minds and lives and practices of all genres of music? Doubtful. On one hand you've got people who play everything but metal going about their daily lives - playing - gigging - working - writing music - traveling and the like. On the other hand you've got metal players who surf porn and seek Harry Potter re-runs on YouTube and custom airbrush paint jobs for their LTD Alex Laiho siggy guitars.

Pretty simple to figure out really.

(i keeed, i keeeeeeed)
 
With a metal tone that sounds good on a recording there isnt that much gain, and its definitely not something that you can hide behind. In reality distortion results in a LOT of compression and really make strings come alive, making the whole guitar more touch sensitive. IMHO this only makes it harder to play cleanly and articulately. Its like speaking two different dialects of a language that are equally difficult to master.

I think that metal people tend to be younger in age and therefore more apt to check out modelling technology, or technology in general. As those younger guys/gals age and branch out into other musical styles they will find a wealth of resources in the axe that will help them reach their musical goals.

There is plenty of "adult" metal too. SYL/DTP, Opeth, Meshuggah, Mastodon, Isis, lots of others.
 
Plus. Unless your serious about your craft, it seems like metal players are the most apt to drop $2200 on their rigs.
 
I always get a kick out of the "Oh they play with all that distortion because it's easier to sound good with bad technique" folks. Having studied classical guitar as my minor in college, I have seen perform, met, and talked with some of the most virtuosic players alive, including Anna Vidovic and the Assad brothers. The level of skill and coordination, focus, and attention to detail for the music that they perform so utterly dwarfs any other genre that I just think it's laughable when some popular music buff gets all huffy about how "easy it is to play _____ music.". HA!

Playing any music convincingly, really well, and getting it clean enough for a high quality recording (without a shit-ton of editing) is a particular and professional skill. Funk can be hard as hell to get tight. Acoustic strumming music needs to be played perfectly if it's double tracked. Bluegrass, jazz, R&B - it all requires a dedication to creating a musical moment. Disrespecting a performer simply because you don't like the genre of music being performed is belligerent, prejudiced, and altogether ridiculous. When you do it, it just makes you sound like some bitter, old codger that longs for the good ol' days. You know, when your bitter, old codger parents hated what you were listening to...

It took me a pretty long time to get all of the noise elements under control when playing high gain stuff. Unless you are gating your signal to the point of absolutely strangling your guitar, any extraneous movement suddenly becomes a pretty big whoopsy. Hard to hide those strings scraping, flumping, weird mutes, palm mute positions, etc. Especially if you've got any delays going. Good God... the delays...

Are there horrible high gain players out there? Yes. Are there horrible blues wanksters on Youtube as well? You bet your bippy, pal.
 
axecellent said:
I've noticed that there is a lot of metal guitarists on here...and I come on here every night to see whats happening and all these Metal style recordings are showing up...don't get me wrong I like some metal....but the axe can go far beyond that as we all know...I'm just surprised that other guitar such as country, blues, jazz, etc...haven't discovered Fractal Audio...I think its all the "metal" associated with the unit on youtube and alike. I think Fractal has to do more advertising for the "broader market" and reach the community as a whole. Being a blues/rock guitarist, I get so many questions about the axe fx 2 on my youtube channel from blues guitarists and country guitarists as well.... I'm just surprised they don'y know about it. The fractal website doesn't really explain how you can use the axe fx 2 very well for a new customer....as far as I'm concerned, youtube has been Axe Fx 2's main source of advertising and its endorsers.... I just think they can reach a lot more than predominately "metal guitarists". I've been doing my best to demo the product in the blues context and I've been reaching a lot of that market with my demos. Its a great product, too bad that everyone I mention it to doesn't even know what I'm talking about... :)

another thing, I think some in depth videos explaining different setups and how to tweak sounds would be very beneficial for the Fractal Audio website for beginners or advanced users. Fractal should consider paying some experienced users to do this and place them on their website. If the Axe Fx 2 was made simpler by making these videos I think the average guitarists would consider Buying one.... setting up a basic tone is easy but what about all the other stuff the fractal can do... VIDEOS? YES.

cheers!
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Been thinking the same thing since I first discovered FAS
and I couldn't agree more :)

I still cannot believe how good this box sounds, I would love to learn more about it
from videos like you suggested.
 
Regardless of the style of music, it is easier to sound good with bad technique if you play with a lot of distortion. No question about that in my mind.

That being said the technique displayed by some of the metal guys is uncanny. Some of these cats are virtuosos in their own right. Even though I am not a fan of that genre of music and I might not be able to listen to what they are playing for more than a few seconds -- their skill and virtuosity is undeniable.


Speculum Speculorum said:
I always get a kick out of the "Oh they play with all that distortion because it's easier to sound good with bad technique" folks. Having studied classical guitar as my minor in college, I have seen perform, met, and talked with some of the most virtuosic players alive, including Anna Vidovic and the Assad brothers. The level of skill and coordination, focus, and attention to detail for the music that they perform so utterly dwarfs any other genre that I just think it's laughable when some popular music buff gets all huffy about how "easy it is to play _____ music.". HA!

Playing any music convincingly, really well, and getting it clean enough for a high quality recording (without a shit-ton of editing) is a particular and professional skill. Funk can be hard as hell to get tight. Acoustic strumming music needs to be played perfectly if it's double tracked. Bluegrass, jazz, R&B - it all requires a dedication to creating a musical moment. Disrespecting a performer simply because you don't like the genre of music being performed is belligerent, prejudiced, and altogether ridiculous. When you do it, it just makes you sound like some bitter, old codger that longs for the good ol' days. You know, when your bitter, old codger parents hated what you were listening to...

It took me a pretty long time to get all of the noise elements under control when playing high gain stuff. Unless you are gating your signal to the point of absolutely strangling your guitar, any extraneous movement suddenly becomes a pretty big whoopsy. Hard to hide those strings scraping, flumping, weird mutes, palm mute positions, etc. Especially if you've got any delays going. Good God... the delays...

Are there horrible high gain players out there? Yes. Are there horrible blues wanksters on Youtube as well? You bet your bippy, pal.
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LVC said:
Regardless of the style of music, it is easier to sound good with bad technique if you play with a lot of distortion. No question about that in my mind.

That being said the technique displayed by some of the metal guys is uncanny. Some of these cats are virtuosos in their own right. Even though I am not a fan of that genre of music and I might not be able to listen to what they are playing for more than a few seconds -- their skill and virtuosity is undeniable.
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Yes, but the guys who are "doing it right" aren't using much distortion at all - that being a subjective point, I guess. And I just disagree flat-out with you, dude. You can sound equally horrible playing poorly with distortion. And some do.
 
Metal is one of those easy to learn, difficult to master guitar styles. There are plenty of fine metal guitarists...Alex Skolnick, Adrian Smith, Dave Murray, Tony Iommi, John Petrucci. Sure, you can learn to move power chords and detune your guitar and call yourself a metal guitarist, but it takes that much more to get to the next level.
 
Speculum Speculorum said:
Yes, but the guys who are "doing it right" aren't using much distortion at all - that being a subjective point, I guess. And I just disagree flat-out with you, dude. You can sound equally horrible playing poorly with distortion. And some do.
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Agree 100% .. I should have qualified my statement by saying "it is easier to sound good to yourself using a lot of distortion"
 
Reading this thread has been very interesting. Some thoughts, in no particular order...

I think we, particularity as guitarists, are inclined to want more of what we do and sometimes don't see the bigger picture. Anyone who drops the cash on a piece of kit like the Axe is at least a bit particular about their tone, and generally speaking we don't spend much time learning the subtleties of the sounds we don't prefer. For myself, there aren't very many models in the Axe that work for the high gain sounds I'm looking for and I haven't heard many clips that sound like what I'm looking for either. I often find myself wondering why there are so many Plexi variants and how different they could really be. It's all a matter of perspective. At the end of the day though, I think there's going to be at least something in this little black box of magic for everyone & anyone.

The comments about metal being easier to be a cool guy guitar player are interesting, since my personal experience has been pretty much the exact opposite. I started out with influences handed down from my father - mostly blues, classic rock, and a little progressive rock. The first songs I spent time learning were from the likes of Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page, SRV, Van Halen, and David Gilmour. Playing their stuff with the same feel and style is difficult (I've never heard what I would consider a true-to-form rendition of a Gilmour solo), but I could learn the riffs handily enough. Then I started getting into Wilton/DeGarmo and Marty Friedman, and that was a bit more challenging. These days I'm listening to the likes of Jeff Loomis, Michael Romeo, and Abasi/Reyes where I'm lucky if there's a single track on the CD that I have a prayer of playing. There are going to be subtleties and intricacies to anything, and it's easy to miss unless you spend the time to learn the genre. Except disco. There's nothing interesting there. ;)

One of the reasons I think metal folks tend to gravitate toward modelers has to do with a general lack of availability of the gear we want. I'm not sure if it's this way everywhere - seems to be much more so in the states - but there are no less than 5 shops in my area specializing in vintage, reissue, and new-old-stock gear. I can drive 30 minutes and play a host of boutique and vintage gear similar (to my ears) to what we have modeled in the Axe. For high gain though, if it's not a Mesa then forget about it. Everything is special order only, and 99% of the time it’s full cost up front with no refunds. I've asked a number of dealers why it's like this, and the answer is always that "metal stuff" just doesn't sell whereas a boutique Plexi or Vox derivative will go in a week or two. I was even willing to buy a plane ticket and fly to LA just to try out a few amps and I still couldn't find anywhere that had anything on the floor. The Axe is a pretty awesome solution to this problem.

Just my $0.02, YMMV, etc, etc...
 
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LVC said:
Regardless of the style of music, it is easier to sound good with bad technique if you play with a lot of distortion. No question about that in my mind.
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Sorry, but I have to disagree with this. Completely. If you're going to play with lots of distortion your technique needs to be VERY clean, VERY precise, and your tuning & intonation have to be VERY good. Otherwise it just sounds like poo.

There are, however, plenty of guitarists who use varying amounts of distortion and do indeed sound like poo. :ambivalence:
 
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I tend to think that people who play blues/jazz/classic rock/etc are people who are more inclined to work with simple setups. Guitar/amp/pedal or 2 etc.... they dont want to deal with complicated rack units you have to program. Keep it simple.

I think metal players in general tend to be more open to new or extreme ideas. They are ore drawn to this "new" way of creating tones....
 
OK, define METAL. I don't like vocals that are just mono tone low grunting stuff. I like it when the singer actually sings! The stuff I grew up on is now classic rock but then, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy and such was METAL. I love Pantera and Metallica but I also love Steve Vai. I have recorded some country and flamenco type music just to do it and it was fun but HEAVY METAL is the best! To each his own! Whatever floats your boat. MUSIC IS AWESOME!!!
 
OmegaZero said:
One of the reasons I think metal folks tend to gravitate toward modelers has to do with a general lack of availability of the gear we want. I'm not sure if it's this way everywhere - seems to be much more so in the states - but there are no less than 5 shops in my area specializing in vintage, reissue, and new-old-stock gear. I can drive 30 minutes and play a host of boutique and vintage gear similar (to my ears) to what we have modeled in the Axe. For high gain though, if it's not a Mesa then forget about it. Everything is special order only, and 99% of the time it’s full cost up front with no refunds. I've asked a number of dealers why it's like this, and the answer is always that "metal stuff" just doesn't sell whereas a boutique Plexi or Vox derivative will go in a week or two. I was even willing to buy a plane ticket and fly to LA just to try out a few amps and I still couldn't find anywhere that had anything on the floor. The Axe is a pretty awesome solution to this problem.
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This exactly!
 
Shask said:
I tend to think that people who play blues/jazz/classic rock/etc are people who are more inclined to work with simple setups. Guitar/amp/pedal or 2 etc.... they dont want to deal with complicated rack units you have to program. Keep it simple.

I think metal players in general tend to be more open to new or extreme ideas. They are ore drawn to this "new" way of creating tones....
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Exactly.
My dad has been a Jazz/Blues guitarist for 40+ years and he's always amazed at the sound available in the Axe.
His opinion is that it really is the next step in guitar amplification, but he knows he doesn't have the time to learn to use the unit (not so tech savvy) and the need to stray away from his simple Class-A combo + 2/3 pedals setup for what he plays...It just works for what he do.

He often say that he'll buy the "simpler Axe Fx with 10 amps and a simple T/M/B setting that'll eventually come out" though *hint at Cliff*
 
Shask said:
I tend to think that people who play blues/jazz/classic rock/etc are people who are more inclined to work with simple setups. Guitar/amp/pedal or 2 etc.... they dont want to deal with complicated rack units you have to program. Keep it simple.

I think metal players in general tend to be more open to new or extreme ideas. They are ore drawn to this "new" way of creating tones....
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Agreed. Traditionally, you don't see old blues or jazz guys with massive pedal boards and a wall of amps. I hardly hear those guys talk about gear, whereas metal shows are full of gear chat.

Also, tons of metal guys are in their bedrooms and basements jamming or playing back alley basement gigs because that's where that scene lives. Consequently, you get a higher percentage of that demographic posting content online.
 
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