This axe hero edition is just that folks, a heroic look into the styling of the notorious, Meshuggah. These crazy Scandinavians are metal giants, and for good reason. They write bone-crushing riffs and bring rhythm ambiguity to a new level. Mind you, this lesson isn’t geared so much towards teaching how to play along to specific songs; as it is an (insightful) insight into why their music sounds so “off time”. First things last, there is a lot of confusion out there about what exactly they are doing; and yes, this lesson will help clear some of that up. Generally, every Meshuggah song is in 4/4 time, but thrives in a fancy musical realm called Metric Dissonance. Just as Harmonic Dissonance breaks down tonality, Metric Dissonance breaks down your sense of time. Meshuggah writes their riffs in what you could consider a pattern, or group based style; but they are grouped based on some odd number of notes. So instead of landing on every four beats (4 groups of 4 1/16th notes), their riffs will last say 23 1/16th notes. Then they’ll repeat this pattern for say 8 measures until it eventually falls on the downbeat. This will clearly throw off any sense of time, AWESOME. These riffs are tricky and you really have to “feel” them not just count them. If you listen carefully to the drums, there is usually always a cymbal smashing away in 4/4. The real genius in their composition is that these “patterns” hardly ever land on a downbeat, which only enhances or in this case, disintegrates your sense of time even more. While polyrhythms come into play now and again, this Metric Dissonance is the main driving force of their writing. In closing, at Axe we dig this band, we dig that you dig this band, and as always let me know if you need help diggin’ deeper…
Verbal Corrections-The main pattern in Rational Gaze is played 4x not 5 as I said. Also the low string on a 8 string guitar is F# not E as I mention, Freudian slip, been playing to much Animals as Leaders (Tosin plays in drop E)
