Growing

The foundation of my guitar technique comes from many years of lessons from my classical guitar instructor, Ernesto Quilban--the spark that started the fire. I would like to dedicate this song to him and also my father, for getting me started on guitar, driving me to lessons, buying me materials, etc. But more importantly for helping me keep my resolve when I felt like giving up. Much love, peace, kisses, todo.


Resolve

Mixed and mastered by the man with the plan Jonny Stunka.

Trial By Combat

Mastered by the sound wizard Jonny Stunka (https://soundcloud.com/jonnystunka)
Cropped art by Christian Ward, from the comic ODY-C. Check it out, it's mind bending stuff.

This song has been in my head for a long time now. Early in my musical career I was afraid that I didn't know how to write music; that I was missing that certain aspect or quality that deems sounds as "music". So I tried to define those things. 

First and foremost, if there is a discernible rhythm that the listener can easily identify, or anchor to, then a certain amount of madness is allowed on top of this established familiarity. So, a simple 4/4 rhythm is omnipresent, to ground the listener. 

For the bass, me myself I just really dig phat funky bass. Bass that grooves and holds it down with the drums. It also acts as a nice counter point to the running, stressed guitars. So the core, the spine of the music is groovy and discernible. Obviously it has to keep up with the guitars, so there is some dancing around the rhythm that occurs, but again, you can tap your foot the whole time and remain centered. 

The guitars are where I start playing with some shit. There's a interval in music known as the devil's interval, or the Augmented 4th/Diminished 5th. My guitar instructor Scott Parsons was explaining to me how the church banned this certain interval, because of its unholy nature; it was so unpleasant and ugly that it was banned from all religious music, for music back then was a way of giving praise to God. 

So I decided to make that terrible interval a prevalent idea in this song. It acts as the root chord (BFBF)and many of the leads are based from this chord. This idea is used to push against the familiarity of the rhythm, creating its own kind of tension.

The guitars are stressed ideas; the "dream experience". Some of which never reach a satisfying conclusion, just a haphazard display, loosely held together, yet inexorable, as dreams tend to be.

The lead acts as "The Dreamer", coloring the rhythmic walls as it's pulled along, sometimes achieving a state of harmony, a semblance of balance, and other times, not. 

As for other bending, the down beat is often moved around, defined differently per instrument, creating this weird, rolling groove. Things reach moments of harmony. 

Sometimes the One count is avoided, throwing off the familiarity of the rhythm. Sometimes the one count is a palm mute, giving that sense of missing beginning, a contrarian pull against the other instruments, each trying to make their downbeat the downbeat that the listener attaches to.

But again, that 4/4 is the anchor, allowing the listener to sort of choose where to put their attention. 

As for influence, this song was influenced by the likes of The Red Chord, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Into the Moat, Btbam, Mono, Mr. Bungle, Rings of Saturn, and Behold The Arctopus. 
\\\\\\\\
Being pulled through dimensions, no time to catch the breath. Trapped inside the experience, the only way is through the aural ebb and flow of extended dimensions. Tension, neglected sounds from bygone times, the under sounds of poly-focal grooves. Rhythmic trains with separate intentions. Overwhelming download. Can't catch bearings. Pulled through the interdimensional heat, my interdimensional fervor dream.


Interdimensional Fervor Dream

A foray into sound manipulation. The guitar is from a recording I have for an acoustic track I'll make eventually, but here I decided to take a few moments from it and then see what I could make. Lots of sampling from ableton packs and a sizable amount of patience later, here is this creation.

The original acoustic track was/is inspired by The Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert, so it made sense for this "remix" of sorts to also have some dune relation. Thus, the title of the track. 

As an aside, Frank Herbert is the best and the Dune series is a monumental piece of art. I highly recommend reading them, you will never be the same. Terrible sales pitch, but then again, how does one sell the truth?

There is no true snare in this song, or anything really emphasizing beats two and four, or on beat 3. This kinda gives it a rolling feeling, sort of infinite nature to it. Sort of trance-y as the song name also implies.

Cropped art by Mike Del Mundo from the comic WeirdWorld. Check it out, the art is unreal.

Headphones are highly recommended, or alternatively, you could just turn it the fck up!



Semuta Trance

Here's the same track from before, only this time it was mixed and mastered by The Venerable @JonnyStunka

Tosin Abasi once said "Metal is a mentality." 

So I ran with that idea. The original song goes so hard on its own, I just used different instruments. 

I don't own this. At all. Just for funsies.

Destiny's Child - Bills, Bills, Bills Djent Cover (Stunka Master)

Recorded using an Ibanez Tam-10 into a Focusrite going into ableton 10, using Archetype: Abasi Neural DSP plugin.

Saethron - Dismissing Portent

Three songs written about/based on/inspired by Frank Herbert's Dune series.

Kralizec

Spice Trance

Catspaw Of Prophecy

hello, I play extended range(8 string) guitar. Standard tuning with the low G dropped to E(AKA The TOSIN A-BOSS-I tuning). Header art by the homie Max Machado

 Set up consists of:

Ibanez TAM-10 straight into a focusrite scarlett 2i4, using Ableton Live 10. Using Neural DSP plug-ins for the Guitar and Bass tones. Using an Alesis DM10MKII Pro electronic Drumkit as a midi controller, and using the GetGoodDrums plugin with the Modern & Massive sample library.


Links:
http://saethron.bandcamp.com/

http://guanaeps.tumblr.com/

https://twitter.com/GuanaEps

saethron

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