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Saturday, February 19, 2011

First Post!! - Children of Bodom's "Was It Worth It?"

Welcome to my new Blog! This is my first time blogging so I am still getting to know how this whole thing works. Please feel free to send me any tips and comments.

The purpose of this blog is to explore songs I really enjoy; whether because of the lyrics, the production, the technical ability of the musicians involved, or maybe for no particular reason at all. In the process maybe we can discuss other things about the song, band, or genre. I'm open to anything! Since I'm always learning tunes at home on the bass or the guitar I figured I would video tape myself playing some of those songs and post it up here.

For my first post I picked Children of Bodom's "Was It Worth It?" A new single from their upcoming album Relentless Reckless Forever due out March 8th, 2011. I chose this one because since this is a brand new ordeal for me (blogging that is) I thought it appropriate to use a new song to start.


Children of Bodom - Was it Worth it? - Bass Cover from Alberto Campuzano on Vimeo.

This song is great! lots of energy, catchy melodies, cool riffs, harmonized guitar parts... Basically everything I've come to expect from COB. The intro of the song sets up a very haunting mood with the choir sounds in the background, but as soon as the beat kicks in it is obvious this is not gonna be a slow song like Angels Don't Kill.

The thing that really caught my attention with this song is the feel of it; the beat can be felt as a regular 4/4 meter, but it has an underlying triplet feel, which makes it more of a 12/8 groove, and the rhythm section sure plays around with that dual sense of time. At first when the whole band kicks in the feel of the song is almost of a shuffle, with that "limping" or swinging eight notes, but by the time the guitar and keyboard solos come by you can hear the bass and drums playing around with the triplets to make for an interesting effect: at around the 3:00 minute mark you hear the bass pattern is to play the first and third triplet for two bars, and then change to play the second and third triplet for the next two bars, and they keep alternating for the duration of the solos. Very cool indeed. I am really looking forward to hearing this one live, because i have the feeling that the solo section will be stretched out and Alexi Laiho and Janne Wirman will be melting everyone's face off.

The bass sound on the song is the trademark sound of Henkka Blacksmith, crunchy! its got tons of attitude and its up front in the mix, so it was not very difficult to hear what he was playing. However, at times i had difficulties making out exactly the rhythms he was playing when chugging on those low Cs, so i mostly followed with the bass drum patterns.  I'm a big fan of bass parts that stand apart from the guitar parts but occasionally jump in and join with the guitar to give a section more power and energy, and that is what happens during the intro: the first time through Henkka plays a very subdued part, but the second time through he joins in at the end of the guitar riff. You can hear that at around 0:32.


The highlight of the song for me is the chorus. Plenty of melody coming from the harmonized guitars, over a simple but cool chord progression, and topped with the angry lead and gang vocals \m/


Ok thats it for this post, I will try to have another one up next week. Thanks for reading!


Al

5 comments:

  1. Welcome to the world of blogging. :) You're playing that tune great, sounds nice and tight. Great description in the text portion of this blog, you really answered all the questions anyone could possibly have I'd say. Cheers!

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  2. Hey! I'm just getting into blogging myself, great start!

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  3. Iam looking forward to see your next vids ;). Keep rockin!

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  4. How 'bout cranking out a little Rush for the next video?

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  5. hey guy... excellent! Music that you choose is a wonderful art compound. Music full of energy, feelings, expressing all its composition ... I must admit that your cover is really converted well ... all the best ...

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