Archive for November, 2011

04 ‘March Of The Pigs’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  • explosive industrial beginning
  • odd rhythm, 7/8?
  • bridge section switches to four on the floor pulsing kik
  • then unpredictable shift into gentle piano and voice modes ‘now doesn’t that make you feel better?’
  • followed by significant moment of silence
  • repeats this whole cycle only twice

KEY IDEAS to plunder

  1. switch from heavy to acoustic and clean ‘now, doesn’t that make you feel better?’
  2. significant moment of silence mid song

03 ‘Heresy’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  • pulsating synth line
  • drums enter, heavy crunching
  • hi hat, dancy, enters
  • vox enter, doubled, hard panned falsetto
  • chorus: very heavy, ‘god is dead’ – shouting, heavy distortion
  • riff kicks in pre verse 2
  • verse 2 vox build to become quadrupled (harmonies)
  • final chorus features mirrored vox performance, hard left
  • marching boots sfx used in beat, machine noises (noticeable in the outro)

KEY IDEAS to plunder

  1. vox layering
  2. sfx (marching boots, machines) become percussion

02 ‘Piggy’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  • minimal/sparse track, in complete contrast to previous track (and following track)
  • vox enters straight away, very dry
  • introduces recurring lyric ‘nothing can stop me now’ that reappears in several later tracks
  • drum loop seems a combination of different drum spaces/ ie one hi hat hit has big room space on it, the snr is dry and dead.
  • this expands to whole parts, different drum and synthesized parts spliced together to form typical drum patterns
  • use of backwards screams/cheers as texture
  • tremelo piano melody enters during track fade out, acoustic gtr becomes audible, drums drop out.
  • piano melody; acoustic instrument treated to still sound natural but doing something it can’t do in real life. ie. tremelo on piano notes. this is the downward spiral theme.

KEY IDEAS to plunder

  1. lyric recurring as theme/chant throughout several songs
  2. drum loops made from different spaced drum recordings; both at a micro hit-by-hit level and at a macro part-by-part level

01 ‘Mr Self Destruct’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  • sfx intro (albeit taken from a film)
  • sfx build to climax
  • machine noise percussion
  • call and response verses (‘and i control you’) – response heavily filtered
  • chorus features big power chords
  • chorus is really a gtr riff – title line leads into it
  • very loud(verses and chorus)/very quiet contrast (middle section)
  • gtr solo loop outro – very long, no fade out

KEY IDEAS to plunder

  1. extreme contrast – very loud to very quiet, very full to very sparse
  2. call and response verses (‘and i control you’) – response heavily filtered

The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  • concept album
  • heavy, industrial sounds combined with melodic material
  • process: generating raw material (eg. 20 minutes improvised gtr) then cutting out interesting bits to sample and loop

01 ‘Mr Self Destruct’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. extreme contrast – very loud to very quiet, very full to very sparse
  2. call and response verses (‘and i control you’) – response heavily filtered

02 ‘Piggy’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. lyric recurring as theme/chant throughout several songs
  2. drum loops made from different spaced drum recordings; both at a micro hit-by-hit level and at a macro part-by-part level

03 ‘Heresy’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. vox layering
  2. sfx (marching boots, machines) become percussion

04 ‘March Of The Pigs’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. switch from heavy to acoustic and clean ‘now, doesn’t that make you feel better?’
  2. significant moment of silence mid song

05 ‘Closer’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. piano melody from previous tracks – establishing itself as the album theme melody
  2. extreme, uncompromising lyric

06 ‘Ruiner’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. pre chorus bridge vox unintelligible – dimly audible vocal production
  2. final line ‘nothing can stop me now’ – hard cut right on the word ‘stop’ – prosody

07 ‘The Becoming’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. unusual rhythm – makes it hard to dance/tap foot to
  2. hard panned crossfade into next track

08 ‘I Do Not Want This’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. great beat
  2. contrast of plaintive acst elements (piano) with hard industrial elements (drums and noises)

09 ‘Big Man With A Gun’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. rapid fire drumming contrasted with relatively slow gtr chords
  2. return of key line ‘nothing can stop me now’

10 ‘A Warm Place’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. pretty, almost sickly so, melodic/harmonic content made interesting through textural production
  2. descending chord progression against ascending melody / track in 2 halves, same progression but in different keys

11 ‘ Eraser’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. long instrumental build
  2. when vox enter it is sudden and everything changes – like 2 tracks stitched together

12 – ‘Reptile’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. bass enter – bass is just one long note hold/throb/hum
  2. middle section features loop of ambient ‘other place’ sound (from film strk)
13 ‘The Downward Spiral’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. muffled, like a bad demo tape – as effect when contrasted either with previous section or with instrument on top
  2. sudden cuts and edits between sections and sudden ending

14 ‘ Hurt’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. one note riff – simple beat 1234 – changes texture (ie., becomes low note/chord)
  2. loop final note/chord and sustain for a long time
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