Guys, help me. For some time I was trying to figure out what's the scale that Death plays in, but I found nothing. Maybe anyone here knows it?

from what I have read with interviews of chuck, he said he never botherd to learn any real theory cause it bored him too much. so he may not be playing any 'true' scales

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on february 13th the american Guitar World magazine is going to have a large section on death,including two full transcriptions with bass and guitar. its possible that if chuck DID use theory (i dont think he did,either...) they would explain what it was in this article

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Thats poppy cock.

They play in G minor often and G Harmonic Minor.

Now and again he MIGHT throw one note in there that doesn't revolve around that or some similar scales but i haven't heard anything earth shattering as far as different type of scales being used.

There isn't alot of dissonance in Death's music, which brings up the thought of tonal.

Sure he may have not gone "oh let me do this using this theory technique" but he most certainly knew what scales were and that he liked the sound of G minor in specific.

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well i did say any real theory, not that he didnt know any single scales. but at the same time i took two years of theory and really dont stick to scales when i write

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I've also read interviews where Chuck said that he never studied theory since its not of interest to him. So it could be that when he writes material for songs, he just jams and messes with riffs and licks until they sound good, which would essentially be a trial and error way of finding a scale (a group of notes that sounds good together), if you get what i mean. So he might not know theory or very little of it and just experiments until he gets something that sounds good, which is what I along with several other people do to try to write original stuff. Just a thought though...
Anyway I cant wait till that Guitar World issue comes out in Feb. I'm definitely picking up a copy. Should be an interesting read.

He uses alot of the flavoring of the harmonic minor with emphasis on that major 7th resolvement. When I play around with the modes of the harmonic minor, I hear all those deathesqe sounds. Fool around with it, familiarize yourself with the finger patterns, then try to hack around with it.

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i am so getting that

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tm don't you mean E minor? and E harmonic minor? G minor would be this




----------------3-5-7------
----------3-5-6------------
----3-5-6------------------

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He's in D standard tuning. He plays the D hamonic minor scale, and like some metal and rock songs, goes up a string to--in D standard--G harmonic minor. Then back to D for the end. In other words, I-IV-I. Simple.

Obviously this isn't always the case, but it's close enough.

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To my knowledge i haven't heard E minor. I know what it sounds like cause i play E minor when i want to completely mix things up.

I know for a FACT alot of their songs are in G minor. I was going to say D minor. D minor is very similar except for one note difference. It sounds similar but has a slightly different feel. I play in Drop C so i don't neccesarily play that much death anymore (i could any day of the week) but i use the G minor alot and nearly everytime i do.. i'm like can you say death? haha

I can't speak about his solos because i'm not well versed in many death solos other than the select few i know. (hes just got a acompletely different style than me)

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I have answered this question before on this and several forums........

Chuck did not know, or care to learn theory......he used his ears to dictate what sounded good to him. Part of his arsenal can be explained by theorists, but for the most part he used patterns that sounded cool, just like many self taught guitarists....Dimebag.....Van Halen...etc....how do I know this???? I grew up around him, and jammed with him, I tried to show him a few things....but you CAN NOT interefere with genius and passion, both of which my departed friend had in spades.

steve

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chuck took 2 classical lessons then got bored and no he didn't learn fancy shit he learned mary had a little lamb then he baught some bc rich copy and became obbsessed with the guitar and was influenced by iron maiden and learned by ear so that is where he proably learned all that crazy shit

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Well, for a straight forward approach, just take a listen to any of their riffs that follow a straight scale, like the fill in Crystal Mountain or the intro in Within The Mind.

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I thought he knew scales... Hmmm... He must at least of known how scales worked. And he also seems to have a good way with accidental notes.

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He knows scales. He knows em so well he knows exactly what notes 'not' to hit, hence his unique sound.

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Yeah, that's what I thought. The fill in Crystal Mountain uses a harmonic minor shape I never thought of before I saw it. I like how he sometimes misses out bits of minor to produce a Japanese sound.

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A quick hello, just joined this forum.

I agree on the notion that Chuck never really sat down to learn scales or theory, rather just played (in one or two interviews) what he felt, and so in such a set sound good to him, is a scale--I have done the same, and know others who don't follow scales. Here is one I recorded a while back, and I wish I could tell you which interview this was:

Pit: "How do you feel about learning theory and reading music?"

Chuck: "I think that no theory is good theory. Nothing turns me off as much as some teacher or book telling you how you should play, and what's right and what's wrong. Theory takes the rock 'n roll out of playing, and you end up sounding mechanical because you're more concerned with watching your fingers play the correct scales than just letting go and playing what you feel in your gut. I have no desire to ever learn music theory."

Music theory reliance -->

I think learning music theory has its uses to actually understand music a lot better, just not for writing it. The whole "learn the rules then break them" notion is absolute bullshit. 90% of rock/metal guitarists and an even higher amount of death metal guitarists are proof of this.

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*agrees

That may be the truth in other forms of music, such as jazz, where knowing theory plays big role in artist's music, but in Metal and Rock'n'Roll - not. Those are music forms which have, let's say, 'rebellious' sound. Now, I am not saying knowing it automatically sucks, by default, there are bunch of good players that know it, but imo, what brought Metal where is nowdays, is that 'by ear' attitude.

It's wrong to rely on theory. But it does no harm to know some.

The point is, anything you play that you think sounds good will be obeying some theoretical rule or other. You just (probably) don't know what it is (yet).

Theory is written AFTER musicians decide on what sounds good. This principle goes way back to Ancient Greece and probably before. Musicians always worked out what they liked by trial and error, and then theorists came along later and worked out what the underlying rules were - purely in order to save subsequent beginner musicians the same trial and error process.

What then happens is that following those rules proves boring in the end. Music depends on a mix of the familiar with the fresh or surprising. You have to follow SOME rules. But the trial and error process is also crucial - we always need to refresh things, break boundaries. So the theory gets re-written, eventually - but always lags behind what musicians are doing.

We play guitars, right? With frets? That means equal tempered tuning. It sounds wrong if we don't - because we're breaking fundamental rules. OK, we bend notes sometimes. But only certain notes, to certain amounts, or only at certain times.
Many of these rules we follow are intuitive. They're no less rules for that. They could be written down and learned. (Rock music is FULL of rules; it's an extremely conservative genre. It was rebellious and new in the 1960s, but has barely changed in 30 years... but hey, if it ain't broke... )
But within those basic rules, things are more flexible - and were always designed to be. (Chords don't HAVE to go in a certain order - unless you want to make a certain recognisable form of music...)

At the same time, all forms of popular music have depended for their vibrancy and constant development on musicians who have learned purely by ear - by copying their heroes. This applies to jazz as much as it does to rock, blues, folk, country, whatever. We learn the rules the same way we learn to speak - by copying those who already can. A child learning to speak doesn't need to learn grammar from a book - he/she learns it from listening to how others use words.
Same with learning music. The rules (grammar) are already there in the music. We know what's correct, without having to read about it.
We also discover (later) how far we can bend the rules (to be creative) before the whole thing stops making sense.

But learning theory is not a bad thing, if you're curious. If you know how a car engine works, does that make you drive worse? Nope. It won't make you drive better either, of course. You can drive perfectly well without knowing anything about the engine. But if you do, and something goes wrong, maybe you can fix it...

The mistake people make is to imagine that theory is "laws" that we have to follow. It isn't. If you let theory inhibit your playing or your creativity, that's your fault, not theory's fault.
There's no Theory Police. YOU are the law, because your ears are the judges. And your ears have been trained, whether you know it or not. (Of course, some ears are better trained than others... )

Hey, I know a ton of theory and learned it of my own volition. I am self-taught in both playing and theory. I learned it out of interest.

Theory has brought me to find a style of my own and be able to control the sound of anything I write.

The style probably came from approaching theory at an odd angle, starting from a time early in my guitar playing when I wanted to learn how to play Eastern melody, which built into exotic scales into weird chords into general chord theory and so on. It also allows me to discern by both ear or tab what an instrumentalist is doing and why he is getting that sound.

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He probably knew very basic theory and didnt go past that. As a lot of the heavier metal bands use a lot of chromatic and accidental notes hence not sticking with all the right notes in the scale all the time, its easier than having to know theory for other styles which use more harmony based playing.

All i gotta say is i am glad he didn't do solos like Kerry King or some offensive noise pollution like that... Well with exceptions to the solos on the demos but who is counting that... O and on Leprosy with Rick Rozz, they should rerelease that album remastered without rick rozz's solos that would make that album 1000 times better...

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