Mark Holcomb: Being Heavy Is About Attitude! Not Drop Tunings // 7, 8 Strings | Periphery

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Periphery guitarist Mark Holcomb talked about the essence of heavy music and how being heavy has nothing to do with drop tunings, telling Thomann Music:

"You can sound heavy in any tuning. To me, it's about intent; it's about writing, it's about the attitude of a riff, it's about what it embodies and how it comes across.

"And even lyrics! The lyrics can make a part seem heavy as balls!

"There's so many things - a freaking drum beat! A drum beat! If you put a straight four on the floor drum beat over 'New Groove' or 'The Walk' [off 2010's 'Periphery'] or something like that, it would be the least heavy thing ever.

"It's not about the riff, it's about everything coming together."

Mark also talked about periphery's approach to writing music, saying:

"We like to do our writing together in a room. I'm saying me, and Misha, and Jake - the three guitar players.

"We'll sit down and if Jake says, 'I've got this riff, check it out,' or Misha's like, 'Check out this riff!', and plays it. It's for 'Marigold'.

"The first time I've heard that, I was like, 'Oh god, this is gonna be a sick song!'

"But none of us said to each other, 'You know what would sound better? If we played it on the 8-string!' None of us ever do that because you start to lose the spontaneity and original sort of fire of the riff.

"The reasons that riff was crafted, that it just sort of sparked out of nowhere out of your head, it's an amalgamation of the tuning, the action on your guitar, your headspace...

"So once you start to swap out one of those variables, you could lose it. I can count on one hand the number of times - because we have done it - it'll either fail horribly, which happens more often than not, or it'll be successful.
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Gojira plays mostly only 2 steps down (D standard), probably to fit Joe's vocal range more than anything, but we all know how HEAVY they sound.

ModuleL
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I somehow felt inspired through the entire video, despite the horendous yet comical voice. Powerful words

sleepinggiant
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Absolutely, heavy is a style of playing, not a tuning. Some of the heaviest riffs I have heard are in standard tuning or at most dropped d. While I like some songs that are down tuned B standard is as low as I could go. Kind of like jiu-jitsu in MMA the moment I see a band with an 8 string guitar I lose interest. 8 string guitars are quite wanky, for players who totally cop out and neglect the fact that the guitar is a mid range instrument, like what is the bassist for?

zlaz