Alright if a musicical arguement is what your looking for then I'll give you one.
Why Lamb of God is awesome:
1) They tastefully and intelligently utilize chromatic notes rather than sticking to the key note by note.
2) They utilize more than one meter. They do do their fair share of 4/4 but, unlike many pop bands today (and for those that don't know pop in this case refers to anything BUT classical orchestra type music). They have songs, Descending for example, that use 6/8 and other comples meters as well as dabbling in assymetric meter. I believe the breakdown in Laid Tor Rest is in 7/8. I'm not positive about that though.
3) They are NOT stupid. Mark Morton, the lead guitarist graduated from, I believe, the University of Chicago but either way, he was in the conservatory there. Also, in an interview Randy (the singer) was asked what he does to maintain his voice. He said that he doesn't do anything special but avoid straining it and said that he was no Pavarotti. I doubt most people on this forum know who Pavarotti is.
My only problem with Lamb of God:
Despite their use of chromatic notes most all of their music is in D minor/D dorian and some other occasional modal twists but still all in some variation of D. The use of more keys would be nice.
Thyeora
Good! You're on the right track - but here are some comments:
1) Your initial statement if far too broad to support with the evidence you have provided. Your claim is a general one, but your evidence is far too specific to support that claim, yet not specific enough to actually be considered evidence. I hope this is clear, because it sounds contradictory, but think of it this way - your evidence would not be considered compelling for a specific argument about Lamb of God's music because it is too general, and yet your initial claim was SO general that even this evidence is too limited (specific) to support it.
Stating that a particular group is awesome could be referring to their compositional or their performance abilities, for instance. And then, if you are speaking about composition (which seems to be the case), arguing that a group is just awesome in general would demand that you address much more of their output with your evidence. You'd be better off to make a specific claim, like "Descending is an awesome song because of its use of metre." Then you'd have to indicate why the use of metre is awesome. 6/8 isn't exactly an uncommon metre. How is it used to heighten the musical effect (in other words, how does it contribute to the piece's awesomeness)?
2) Terms like 'tastefully' and 'intelligently' can be used in musical discussion, but because they are themselves subjective, you should qualify what constitutes tasteful, intelligent use of, in this case, chromatic notes. Again, this is hardly an original idea... so what is it about this particular group that makes their chromaticism effective? Is it used to direct harmonic progressions? Is it used in a recurring way to highlight a particular motive? Does it help to clarify the large-scale form of the work in any way? If so, how? These are the sorts of questions that would need answering if we are to accept your claim that Lamb of God makes intelligent, tasteful use of chromatic notes.
3) What you seem to be arguing is that Lamb of God employs more musical variety than other bands do. Your points seem to suggest that their harmonic and rhythmic palettes are larger - and if that's the case, you should have used that as your thesis. Remember that this is the subjective part of the musical debate, and probably the most challenging part of the debate, because you have to convince your opponent that increasing the variety of a compositional palette necessarily leads to better music. Many people would disagree with that claim, saying instead that music which is overly complex is less effective, because it becomes impossible for a listener to follow the overall form.
The trick is to figure out what really makes the music you like tick (and what separates it from competing genres), then to focus your thesis on that. For instance, I don't make the argument that cIassical music is superior to popular music because it is more complex. I instead make the argument that cIassical music does a much better job of fusing variety with simplicity of expression, and as such captures the best of both worlds, rather than focusing on simplicity to such an extent that the music becomes simplistic. And in arguing that cIassical composers are superior craftsmen to metal composers, I point out that the cIassical composers I use as examples manage to achieve more cohesive form than you find in metal music.
The key is that all these claims refer specifically to perceived strengths of the opposing genre (simplicity in pop music, complexity in metal music), and all could be supported easily with musical examples. It would be easy to show that pop music is simplistic by comparison to cIassical music, because simplistic music is the result of overly limited variety. Similarly, it would be easy to argue that cIassical music is formally more cohesive than metal music because musical cohesion is understood to be motivic unity. Since metal makes very limited use of motivic development, it obviously can not compete with a genre that goes out of its way to highlight the development of motives and the connection of one section to another through motivically-driven transition passages.
4) The intelligence of the composers in question (or any other aspect of their personality) should not factor into your analysis. I could say Wagner's music is unsophisticated because he was a terrible human being, but I'd be wrong. I could say Milton Babbitt is the greatest composer of music of all time, but unless the criteria is one's ability to fuse mathematics with musical presentation, I doubt many people would support the claim.
Time-permitting, I'll try to post a short analysis of a work as a demonstration of what musical analysis really is. But I can't promise anything - this isn't exactly a quiet time for me with work and all.
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