It’s been literally AGES since we’ve done a giveaway, so we thought it was about time we caught up with ourselves and give you the opportunity to win a pedal, for doing very little at all.
It’s all contained within the video that Brian posted yesterday… In the video, he’s dissecting the classic track from Alice In Chains – Them Bones. As you may remember from my blog post a couple of weeks ago about breaking down Bohemian Rhapsody, listening to the raw tracks is most definitely our thing at the moment, I mean… I’ve even been listening to songs by Rick Astley in stem form – it’s like an addiction that is almost impossible to break once you get into it!
This track is enormous… well, the guitars are anyway… Brian takes them apart track by track to give you an idea of how HUUUGE the tones are.
We got a great insight from Wampler Artist Andy Wood about the recording process, how he hears it… “Judging by the tones there definitely seems to be multiple mics on each track, that’s where the real magic is happening. It sounds like maybe even a pair of stereo room mics are involved that creating that 3D effect. once you go left and right with that it ends up HUGE. None of what I.m saying is based on anything other than what I’m hearing and my own experience in the studio.”
What I love about this song is that the guitar groove that dominates the song gives a times signature of 7/8 with the chorus reverting to a straight 4/4 groove (this, of course, is open to interpretation but that’s how I hear it)… certainly makes it stick out from the rest of the field!
Guitarist Jerry Cantrell said in an interview with Guitar World in 1998 when asked about the time signature – “I really don’t know where that comes from; it just comes naturally to me. I could sit down and figure it out, but what’s the use? Off-time stuff is just more exciting — it takes people by surprise when you shift gears like that before they even know what the hell hit ’em. It’s also effective when you slow something down and then slam ’em into the dash. A lot of Alice stuff is written that way — ‘Them Bones’ is a great off-time song.
Drummer Sean Kinney said about it in an interview with Rhythm Magazine in 2016 –
“I remember that one p**sing me off because it was a pretty straightforward sort of metal-edged tune. I remember working on it but not wanting it to be straightforward. I had to figure out what kind of groove to put on it. The grooves were disjointed, timing-wise. I remember getting pretty frustrated, knocking over the drums and wondering what I could do there. It took a little time to figure it out and make it more unique than it could have been. I had to wrap my head around it and once it clicks you think, ‘Ah, I’m gonna try it this way.'”
Anyway, enough of me geeking out about cool time signatures (I really hope he doesn’t dissect anything by Dream Theatre or Rush anytime soon), here is the video that gives details about the giveaway…
For reference, here is the original track from the official Alice In Chains YouTube channel.
Good luck people!