Steven Wilson: Biggest Metal Mistake 

►Watch all the Steven Wilson videos in this series: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ziKYBFki3kI.html

This is why I play slayer on ukulele

Interesting. In fact, many of the riffs we've grown to love in the late 60s, early 70s, notably from Led Zeppelin, were played on a Telecaster without much distortion and, in combination with the bass and kick, it sounded very heavy indeed.

"Heaviness" is an extremely elusive term; also subjective. In Wilson's defense: Most heavy metal guitar parts that I encounter these days would sound just as aggressive if they were played by a bass guitar with clanky-treble turned way up or over-compressed (hard rock?). Those same rhythm guitar parts would also sound 'cool' in the anime-video-game soundtrack setting if the unison bass and guitar parts were remixed with DX-7 slap-bass or electro-bass samples (and probably only slightly less heavy). However, it seems that drum timbre and style also determines what makes a song hard hitting or not -- and moreso than most guitarists will admit until you demonstrate it succinctly. The early 90s Doom Soundtrack (Doom OST - E1M1 - At Doom's Gate), sounded 'heavy' even though they were basically using General MIDI that sounded like a garage-sale casio keyboard in most soundcards. They basically created a variation of thrash metal troupes which the culture at large easily translated with their imagination to something played by the thrash "Big-4". Concerning how this was achieved via the casio-guitar sound: it was that tritone and chromaticism that were their ingredients -- not the latest Neural DSP plugs.

When quad tracking guitars I find keeping the gain lower will give the guitars more thump and help to avoid that overly static flat sound. Modern metal sometimes forgets that guitar is a dynamic instrument that can sound soulless when there is too much gain and hi frequency buildup. That being said sometimes I like those hyper distorted guitar sounds as well.

Gotta agree. While the super compressed/gated, Neural DSP type thing was cool for a while, it's got a bit overused. At the risk of cries of "boomer", without some of the organic thud and grit of a pushed amp/cab, some of the heavier guitars are starting to sound like a synthetic pad.

One of My favourite "Heavy" Albums is RATMs self titeld album. It#s played with a Tele in to a Marshall. not realy overdriven. but it's the aggression and emotions of the playing wich make that album so heavy. So it's not about the "djentin" tone, wich is boring anyway, it's about your attitude.

It's crazy how a band like Opeth can play disgustingly heavy riffs in E standard (Drop D at lowest as far as I know). Or hell even the song Black Sabbath. 3 notes, standard tuning, recorded in 1969, yet somehow still heavy as balls. Metal has always been my passion and I have nothing against the tune everything to Drop Q stuff that has become very popular in recent years, but I do feel some of the heart has been lost along the way, trying to make everything as chunky as possible instead of letting it development naturally.

One of my favorite heavy riffs is the main riff in Tigran Hamasyans Drip, which isn't even rock but jazz, and it's played with mainly by a piano with no overdrive, but because of the syncopated rythm and complex harmonic content it's really freaking heavy

Reality is that heavy guitars seem alot heavier when you start out clean and build up to heaviness. TOOL is a perfect example, they rarely start off a song ultra heavy. They start out mellow and work their way up to being heavy. And when they do that, the heavy seems REALLY heavy because of the dynamics. There is a contrast of soft and heavy, which makes the heavy heavier. If you just start out balls to the wall heavy, there is nowhere to go but down. You have to keep up that same level of heaviness to even seem heavy. But, dynamics will make the heavy seem heavier if you start softer... 💯

I’m loving these gleefully mischievous Steve Wilson snippets. He has worked with the monstrously musically gifted/gently humble Guthrie Govan. For the love of God, if you can get Guthrie Govan on board, that would be beautiful. He is a sweet, funny, intelligent and thoughtful educator/interviewee.

I am in full fanboy mode with Steven Wilson ❤️

The 3:50 mark of 'Walk The Plank' off PT's Closure/Continuation sounds heavy, and I always give that 'hate face while slowly headbanging' expression when that section kicks in.

Although there were fuzz pedals and boosters as far back as the sixties the first true distortion pedals didn't start coming out until the late seventies. Master volumes on amps started coming out in the mid seventies but it wasn't until the eighties that channel switching on amps became standard equipment. Yet the organic classic guitar tones of the seventies are still considered to be some of the best ever recorded. They tend to be much, much cleaner and dynamic sounding than modern rock tones.

I had a steel body resonator guitar, so literally made of metal. It was quite heavy.

One thing I learned from doing nail the mix projects, is that in many metal contexts, the guitars don't have to be heavy if the bass is. Especially with bands where bass and guitar parts are very similar like meshuggah, you can cut lots of the low end for the guitar, so it sounds horrible by itself, but if you have a good bass tone, it still sounds massive and is more punchy because the lower frequencies aren't as muddy. My favorite trick for punchy basses, is to run the DI into Parallax for the main tone and a high passed version into Archetype Tim Hensons acoustic amp sim, because it gives a little more "punch" to it. Sounds surprisingly good.

Someone needs to tell this guy that you can overdrive a Tele as well.

Djent riffs yes,but chugs i still find them heavy,and the original djennters Meshuggah still tingle my spine

Another way of looking at this, the “heaviest” tone ever created won’t have any impact if it’s applied to a happy unicorns & butterflies riff. The heaviness is in the fingers, the down strokes, mutes, rhythms and notes. The tone is just icing on the death cake.

Realistically, to me, it's not about "How heavy can we get a single guitar? How heavily can we distort this?", it's about crafting a specific sound with 2 or more guitar tracks. (You need a minimum of 2 tracks to create that wide, stereo guitar sound.) I also hate that the general metal "cultural tone" has become so overused. I never aim to sound like everyone else. I try to sound like me, like my song. And to me, one of the biggest components is actually the bass. Not even the guitar. If your bass mix is garbage, your mix will sound thin and be garbage.

it does not seem heavy to me

This has been a pretty common idea for decades now; Go back and listen to the "heaviest" guitar tones you can remember. The individual tracks don't actually have near as much gain as you might think. The overall product has a ton of weight to it. Pretty much any song by Lamb of God, or the beginning of White Washed by August Burns Red. There's not all that much gain, but seemingly tons of emotion and aggression. I suspect originally this might have been done to avoid a ton of fizz on layered guitars. Unfortunately I can't help but roll my eyes when I see these Steven Wilson videos lately. Most of them are him not saying much, or saying pretty non-controversial things as if they were, with some inexplicable and unsupported gravitas behind the words.

The music under this video kinda proves Steven's point

At the end of the day it's all subjective and if it sounds good, it sounds good. It's also got to do with the goal of the musician, producer, composer, etc. Are you gonna tell someone who wants some heavy distorted guitars that 'nah man, it would sound way gnarlier clean' if that's not something they are looking for? If someone is experimenting with new sounds are you gonna recommend them getting a Neural DSP plug in and slap on a preset? It's all in the context of creative process and purpose. If someone wants a sound that works, is tried and true - great, if someone wants to step out of the boundary and spin a hollow tube on a metal record - fantastic.

I wouldn't say the guitar tone in Rats Return is clean or even "almost clean," though. It's just not ultra high gain. It's still got a decent amount of grit to it though. Jmo. I do agree with his overall point though.

there’s more to a riff being heavy than what the guitar tone sounds like. the way its played and how it fits in relation to the rest of the instrumentation is way more important imo

I was listening to Change the Locks by Tom Petty today, and my thought was that it’s very metal. What the song’s about and how it’s pushed out by the musicians is all about being violated. Granted, there’s some serious gain in the guitars, but it’s still a clear sound - lots of tube sound in it. Without being metal, it surpasses metal.

I love Teles! Although mine has high gain rails in it but still sounds like a Tele-ish...

Mikael Åkerfeldt probably agree with this. I'm not sure I do. One thing is for sure though. Really good music/riffs is good no matter the "tone".

The best metal guitarist usually know that "heavy" isn't just down tuning or overprocessed sound. All about texture!

One big problem when we describe music is we always use words that have nothing to do with sound. What is a heavy riff? A lot of bottom end, so it sounds like it’s “pulling” the music down? Is it distorted? Is it dissonant? It is loud? I would ask Steven if Meshuggah is heavy. It’s everything he said is not heavy anymore.

I have always thought distorted single coil has such a badass sound. "Bite" is excellent word for it. Just listen to Deep Purple's Mad Dog. That's Ritchie Blackmores brassy stratocaster doing its thing.

Heavy is nearly all in the transients and attack, along with a selective analogue clipping of distortion to give the illusion loud and heavier. Heavy means of great weight. What are the acoustic cues that are perceived as emanating from a large heavy source? Dynamics or the ear gets bored. It starts with the hand, not the box. The heaviest and most frightening sound is air itself. Creep up behind someone and GENTLY! blow directly in their ear. Remember to duck!...and I'm not just talking about compressors!

I played with a guy few years back, He ran a Gibson SG, messa stack, Wah & EQ, that's it. God it was nice to play with someone talented that's not just a a metalhead NPC.

Metal would benefit massively if mixed with edm timbres. Edm has some really heavy sounds

That's 0% heavy. This is some weird hipster take.

for me...the gain rotary goes lower and lower with the passing years, but the attitude keeps being the same. One of the thing i love the most on my Les Paul it's that even when being almost clean it still has some kind of "frying" growl when you play on a certain way and thats the only thing i need. i happened a lot that i listened riffs from old recordings with similar sounds that sound heavy as F* even with this kind of sound then i realize there is more on the attitude, the groove, the dynamics and notes more than in the gain itself...like saying the music its one dimension and the tone of the sounds its another different one.

love the thinking

What's the background song????

I'm loving this series btw

Are we going to collectively ignore he's talking to an alien life form?

Funny I stumbled on to this. I was just laughing to myself how much ive backed off the gain over the years.

The music of the end of the video is a song? It sounds amazing

epic ! I love this guy and you guys

will you merge all these bits into 1 full lenght video? please 🙏🏼

Finally someone who agrees with me. These tones today sound more like a fart than a punch. Palm mutes have less attack, so it's less heavy

Led zeppelin is a perfect example! They sound heavy, Without the guitars being heavy I stick with a Tony Iommi tone, and work my volume (while amp is maxed, Eddie Van Halen taught me that) When I kick in a solo I go for def lepperd delay tone It might sound weird but it’s my fucking sound and it’s killer

But that's exactly the current aestethics of heavy music: trebly bass and tele-like mildly distorted guitar sounds.

A not so distorted gtr sounds bigger and heavier than a super distorted one.... compare an AC/DC tone with a very Metal one..... but at the end as all are sounds and vibes you are looking for

SO FUCKING TRUE. It's fucking sad man.

Key words: "To me".

"Heavy" is not a "sound", a "tuning" or an amp setting... A composition can be heavy though. Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights. Heavy as F....

I feel the same way about Cookie Monster vocals. They don't sound heavy. They sound stupid and unimaginative.

A great example of a song that sounds heavy but is played very clean is Wild Eyes by the Stampeders .

True

Why did they get Voldemort to interview Steven Wilson?

Yeah the telecaster is the heaviest sounding guitar ever and that's no news

ironic hes saying it like its a fact when heaviness is by far one of the most subjective things ever. to me im so used to lower tuned stuff that higher tune songs now just naturally sound less heavy to me. I think there's cool heavy grooves and riffs in higher tuned metal but to me guitars only keep getting heavier and at least im not framing it like its an objective fact. ngl this guy has some terrible takes

Modern metal sounds are very cookie cutter. That's why I like the whole NWOSDM thing, bringing back big amps and cheap pedals of yore. Unscoop your midss, turn up the volume and get your palm off the bridge for five seconds!

He's right,ya know

Drums with a bunch of compression make guitars sound heavy

I think Baroness agrees with this approach

Why does he speak so slowly?

He's right. Metallica sad but true heavier than any double drop B 9 strings band

well. Actually it's not that bad after all 🙂

djent djent djent

You play bass with a pick

The problem is that everyone is using these plug ins directly to their computers. You need to be miced up to a real amp. You need the air in between and the ambiance of the room captured on a mic. That's where you get heaviness. Not direct. That sounds like ass. Maybe some 2 inch tape for some warmth. Then you can transfer it to a digital format after that.

Metuhl gitaws

Cliché cliché 🎸 🏋️

This guy is so pretentious while his whole career he's been making derivative drivel copying other bands' sounds in the most uninventive and dull way. Also, the telecaster into heavy amp has been done since like the 90s by the like of Aaron Turner and others.

So chon guitars

I love this dude. As soon as I watched the first steven wilson video here I instantly knew ppl would love it. A lot of the heavy element comes from the rhythm, "dark" harmonies and scales etc, and not from the guitar distortion itself. King crimson, for example, managed to do that pretty well.

Take RATM as an example, overdriven tele tones combined with effective riffs, equals heavy.

2 things: Thing 1: The sound still sounded pretty heavy to me, but metal is not my thing, so I'll presume that's why. Thing 2: I found out how to put distortion on my piano one time and cackled my bum clean off, so...I can vouch for using unexpected combos of instruments and effects. :D

Diversity and experimentation are the names of the game! Thank you so much guys for bringing us these amazing and truly inspirational videos!!!

Steven Wilson and Mikael Akerfeldt are synonyms of good taste. 80% of what they compose we like and surprise us. It's one of the reasons I keep buying and listening discs from Porcupine Tree and Opeth.

Steven is actually right. I think however it isn't so much the tone/sound itself, but the lack of a heavier rhythm. To me, even Steven's own work doesn't sound as heavy as it could be because the rhythm in Rats is too quick and temperamental (thanks to the polyrhythm). A great example of a very heavy track that actually FEELS heavy thanks to it's methodical and slower rhythm, that actually lets each beat and each "chug" settle in as if it has mass, is "Los" by Rammstein. That song sounds heavier than a LOT of common black or dark metal because the BPM isn't even all that high, the rhythm isn't chopped up so it's easy to groove and the "chug" following mostly 8th notes settles. It actually feels like it's so massive that you couldn't move it any faster, play it any faster or listen to it any faster. At the same time, it's so heavy that it also feels unstoppable, hence the ease of the addictive groove it brings. And that's all done with mostly clean tones. IN fact it works just as heavy playing a clean, only slightly over driven (tiny bit) acoustic! I think THATS how you know when it's truly heavy. If you're wanting a HEAVY song in Metal, if it cannot be played on a clean tone and not still come across as heavy? Then you're doing it wrong. That's my opinion anyway. Steven is amazing.

Sorry, no. Clean Teles do not sound "heavy" at all.

“Heavy” isn’t about cramming tones of distortion into your rig and scooping mids. Heavy tone is about harmonics, texture and touch of the guitar player. Too many “heavy” tones lack a real musical sound and I believe this is because people “scoop” frequencies and the organic frequencies range is squished in the pursuit of aggressive tones.

I don't agree. Yes it's a bit creative to use a clean tele caster to play these riffs. But I don't think they are heavier than a distorted version of same stuff. It feels heavy for sure because the structure is metal. But calling it heavier...I don't know...

Im so happy Dimebag didn't used a Telecaster!

It's the single coil guitar combined with trebly bass, making it closer to the guitar. Genius.

I love listening to Steven talking. So intelligent and knowledgeable about music and sound.

What I'll say as a metal guitarist is that downtuning with distortion really gives you a heavier sound, it just doesn't mean that you need Just the downtuned guitar to sound heavy. The riff has a lot to do with it too.

Right on the money - we gotten so used to what's that "heavy-sounding" , it's not "heavy" anymore. (Btw, Blending a clean "tele" on top of distorted guitars is great - 1 in the same octave, and 1 above. Greets from Sonic Peak Studio)

That's an interesting idea and I'm going to experiment with it. But I still think distorted guitar is a great sound, but used with discretion, not just swamping the song in distortion, although for some songs that works, too.

Someone call websters Looks like we’re changing the meaning of yet another word!

I don’t necessarily disagree, sometimes a riff can be real heavy without distortion, but on the other hand shit like that don’t work for bands like Pantera and Slayer.

So very interesting, thanks!

I think it's more three issues. Very similar tone, mixing/fx, and songwriting. I think it sounds heavy, but if it's dynamically flat and samey the ear will tune out. You mix guitars tuned to e, in a well arranged song, it will bang! And I use tunings as low as drop e on 8s.

Interesting how Mikael Akerfeldt has the same approach in Opeth’s latest albums :)

Maybe its my age, but I disagree. That sounds seemed mellow, though a bit jarring. I mean listening to Peace Sells, Tempo of the Dammed, Vulgar Display of Power... Or Savage's Loose and Lethal and Whiplashs Power and Pain? Those last two can be considered terribly produced, and maybe they are, but the sounds are energizing, they just bring a little controlled insanity to the table. Those arent played on Telecasters at all. And I don't think they sound thin either, we can say they sound terrible perhaps but man thats part of what makes them what they are (and why I love them) I see where he's going, and he has an extremely valid,point and all the credentials to back it... But this is a trend I hear in current metal that I frankly don't like. I think this search for perfection has made it safe, and often boring. Kind of like technical diving, where there is tremendous pressure and any mistake will kill you. Yet, there is less to see and,hear than closer to the shore. This is of course an opinion, but go listen to those horrible sounding albums and check your heart rate. Then listen to a masterfully produced album and checkyourself. Music is subjective, of course, and we all ought to strive to make what we can. I love his remasters, I think he's one of the best producers ever (and that is the hat he's wearing in this interview), and for a more Peggy sounding piece it could work. Still, I think something can then be said about focus in the 70s vs a contemporary equivalent done completely digitally (with no click, we are talking about tone and balance) Anyway, thought Id throw that thought out there

So many artists nowadays using "signature guitar" in their "signature amp" driven by their "signature overdrive" and their overpriced signature "strings". Albums after albums, everything sounds the same. Not even talking about that "wall of sound" thing whete modern album have to flood ALL the frequencies, all the time. Nothing is breathing, even some instruments lost in the mix during the process... The heaviest album i've listen to in my life are actually all older. Not because of that "older music is better" thing, but because without that modern recording way, artists had to rely a lot more on good riffs, atmospheres and musicianship instead of increasing the distortion or the layers. Nowadays riffs are really less intersting for the most cause it makes musicians become lazy in the way they compose

Heavy is the music itself. Like Drop-D can be as heavy and make you do a Meshugga face, same as Drop-E. It's the music that's heavy, and I say this as playing the same thing in D might not be heavier in Drop-E and vice versa. Amps, guitar and plugins doesn't matter. I've heard heavy clean riffs.

Layers of compressed distorted guitars become sludgy. They no longer have the dynamic range because everything is maxed out, so they have no attack. Clean, or near-clean guitars can certainly be more abrasive. Some people wouldn't call it heavy because heavy is so associated with lots of distortion and low-end.

It's so funny how God awful guitar tones sound now. Sterile. 1 dimensional. No feedback. It's at a point now that we have feedback plug-ins to compensate for the lifeless tones. Haha

A good example of this in extreme metal is the band Baring Teeth. Relatively very clean guitars but it's the chords and the way it's played.

What's the music at the end?

One my top 5 bands right now is, Baroness and they use Telecasters and Strats with the odd Jazzmaster here and there and that's some of the best sludge out there.