From Mozart to Metal
Today as part of my IDS project, I added a very unique part to the song I was working on: a metal take on Mozart’s famous requiem Lacrimosa.
Although not many people know this, one of the greatest influences on metal music wasn’t hard rock or Gothic poetry(although those certainly did have an impact). Metal music was, from the beginning, primarily inspired by several dark classical pieces, such as Gustav Holst’s The Planets and Bach’s Fugue in D Minor. Many music theorists and artists have even referred to metal genres as a continuation of classical music in the modern day.
And of course, one piece that was of huge inspiration to metal, was Lacrimosa, the dark, moody requiem that infamously, was one of Mozart’s last compositions. I was inspired to include a homage to Lacrimosa in my piece Machine Hell after watching this video:
The part that I was inspired by was the building chord progression that bridges together the two main repetitions. I tried writing a riff on this section with a faster tempo, lower, heavier power-chord style guitar hits, and a variated ending that fit the fast pace of the song I was writing more. I later included this as a prechorus bridge to lead up to my chorus, and accompanied it with thrash-metal muted double-picking and a suspense-building drum part,
(This post is part of a series of entries into my Learning Journey for my IDS project in Music Composition.)
