The Routledge Handbook of Metal Music Composition: Evolution of Structure, Expression, and Production examines metal music composition as a distinct practice that combines a complex array of formal musical, expressive, and technological elements. Reaching beyond the limitations of applying common-practice theories of tonality to metal, this volume brings together a wide range of established and emerging scholars to address the building blocks of metal composition in the context of metal’s subgenres and evolution over time. Together, the chapters provide a holistic theoretical framework for understanding the distinctive compositional features of metal.
With contributions from an international group of experts, the handbook is organized into three parts around major themes:
• Structures, including form, riff, harmony, rhythm, and meter
• Instruments and voices, examining the role of the guitar, bass, drum kit, keyboards, other instruments, and vocal techniques and styles
• Productions, addressing the role of gear, capturing, processing, and mixing technologies.
The contributors examine and discuss these elements with the goal of building an understanding of metal music composition that can also function as a manual for composing metal music. Providing a comprehensive overview of the unique musical elements of metal, this handbook is an essential resource for scholars and students across popular music studies, musicology, creative music performance and composition, songwriting, and production studies, as well as for anyone interested in understanding metal from the perspective of composition.
List of Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction: Appreciating, Understanding, and Interpreting Metal Music Composition
Lori Burns and Ciro Scotto
Part I. Structures
1. Perspectives on Harmony in Early Heavy Metal: Chords, Modes, Functions, and Texture
Esa Lilja
2. Recognizing Tonal Momentum and Echoes of Past Styles in Riff Turnarounds
Stephen S. Hudson
3.What is a Riff? A Structural Definition and its Analytical Consequences for Process and Form in Heavy Metal
Ciro Scotto
4. Mutually Exclusive Two- and Three-Part Forms in Heavy Metal Songs
Nolan Stolz
5. Compound Bridge Sections in Rock and Metal
Michael Dekovich
6. Unfulfilled Expectations: Theorizing on Terminally Anti-Climactic Form
Zach Simonds
7. Conceived Through an Act of Catharsis: The Phenomenological Allure of the Breakdown
Owen Morawitz
8. More than Moshing: Structure, Convention, and Innovation in Extreme Metal Breakdowns
John Muniz
9. Half-Time, Standard-Time, and Double-Time Feels in 1980s Crossover Thrash
David Easley
10. Systematic Onslaught: The Aesthetics and Functions of Blast Beats in Contemporary Extreme Metal
Dennis William Lee
11. Blackened Textures: Black Metal’s Sonic Complexity During the Second and Third Waves
Wolf-Georg Zaddach
Part II. Expressions and Techniques: Instruments
12. Traditional Instruments in Global Folk Metal
Olivia R. Lucas
13. Primordial Percussion: Drumming in Six Influential Metal Albums
Jose M. Garza, Jr.
14. Paradigms of Guitar Performance Practice and the Language of Metal Music
Mark Marrington
15. Metal Guitar Techniques as Timbre, Form, and Speed
Calder Hannan
16. The Evolution of the Bass Guitar in Metal Music: Its Function in Performance and Compositional Structure
Shvan Kaban
17. Keys to Hell: Synthesizers from Early Death Metal to Deathcore
Tyler Osborne
Part III. Expressions and Techniques: Voices
18. “All Shall Scream”: Transposable Lessons from Pierre-Luc Senécal’s Hate.Machine for Growlers Choir
Eric Smialek
19. Song of the Siren, Cry of the Warrior: An Exploration of Song Structures and Female Vocal Techniques in Power Metal
Suzanne Strauss
20. Thine Voice is Oh So Sweet: Gothic Metal and Vocal Timbre Diversity
Vik Squires Donnelly
21. Nu Metal’s Influential Vocal Composition: Tension and Release in the Music of Korn, Incubus, and Machine Head
Clare King
22. Beyond “Beauty and the Beast”: The Evolution of Gendered Clean-Harsh Vocal Pairings in Metal Music
Lori Burns
Part IV. Productions
23. Imagining Future Extremes on the Record Player: Time Axis Manipulation as a Theory of Extreme Metal Creativity and History
Florian Walch
24. Masters of Reality: The (De)construction of Reality in the Production of Metal Music
Niall Thomas
25. Fragmented and Distributed Production Practices in 21st Century Metal Music: From the Studio to the Bedroom (and Back Again?)
Steven Gamble and Lewis Kennedy
26. Electronic Drums in Industrial Metal and Continuing Practices in Contemporary Metal Music
Neyssensas Manuel
27. Guitar Pro or DAW-based Software for Metal Composition
Fulya Celikel
28. Black Metal and the Sonic Search for Nature
David Hemery
29. Contemporary Approaches to Metal Music Production: Traditional Heavy Metal, Death Metal, and Metalcore
Jan Herbst and Mark Mynett
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