Enter Sandman

Metallica write this song in 1991 for the album “Metallica”. To write their songs the guitarist Kirt Hammet and the bassist Jason make tapes of their ideas and give those tapes to the rhythm guitarist James Hetfield and the drummer Lars Ulrich, who use these ideas to create songs by adding their parts. This works for their band because they are all imputing something to the creative side of the song writing and because its not just one person writing the songs this gives them a range of material. "Enter Sandman" evolved from a guitar riff that Hammett wrote. Originally, the riff was 2 bars in length, but Ulrich suggested the first bar be played 4 times.  The song was quickly finished, but Hetfield did not come up with vocal melodies and lyrics for a long time after.

I find that when I’m writing songs I use a method not unlike this, where the lyrics evolve as the band discovers the conclusive sound that the song works to become. It can be argued that these songs are never finished because as you progress with your playing and ideas, songs inevitably change with you.

Hetfield felt that "Enter Sandman" sounded "catchy and kind of commercial" and so to contradict the sound, he wrote lyrics about "destroying the perfect family; a huge horrible secret in a family" that included references to crib death. When Enter Sandman was written this was the first time that Ulrich and the producer felt that the lyrics were not up to scratch with what the band can produce, nevertheless, according to Ulrich, the song was the "foundation, the guide to the whole record" even before it had lyrics. An instrumental demo was recorded on September 13, 1990.

 The album Metallica was mostly recorded in Los Angeles at One on One Studios, between October 1990 and June 1991, although Ulrich, Hetfield, and Bob Rock, the producer, also recorded for a week in Vancouver, Canada between April and May 1991. As the first to be produced by Bob Rock, it was recorded differently than previous Metallica albums; Rock suggested that the band members record in the studio while playing together, rather than separately.

 There are many advantages to this. Songs that are recorded together normally don’t sound over produced and have a live feel to then which engages the listeners. Although a good this, this can be hard for a band performing a new song and because the artists have to be in different rooms there’s always the chance that the chemistry between the band is not reflected in the song. "Enter Sandman" had what Hetfield described as a "wall of guitars"— three rhythm guitar tracks of the same riff played by himself to create a "wall of sound". According to engineer Randy Staub, close to 50 takes of the drums were recorded because Ulrich did not record the song in its entirety, but rather recorded each section of the song separately. Because it was difficult to get in one take the "intensity" that the band wanted, numerous takes were selected and edited together. The bass guitar sound also gained importance with Rock; as Newsted states, Metallica's sound was previously "very guitar-oriented" and that "when he [Rock] came into the picture, bass frequencies also came into the picture."

As the first single, "Enter Sandman" was also the first song to be mixed, a task that took roughly ten days because the band and Bob Rock had to create the sound for the entire album while mixing the song. "Enter Sandman" was the first music video from Metallica, and the band's second ever. It was also the first of six Metallica music videos directed by Wayne Isham. Recorded on July 3, 1991 in Los Angeles, it premiered on July 30, 1991, two weeks before the release of the album.

The plot of the music video directly relates to the theme of the song, combining images of a child having nightmares and images of an old man with shots of the band playing the song. The child dreams that he is drowning, falling from the top of a building, covered in snakes, being chased by a truck and finally falling from a mountain while escaping the truck. During the part of the song in which the child recites a prayer, he is being watched by the Sandman. Throughout the video, the picture flickers continuously. The music video won Best Hard Rock Video at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards and was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Andrew Blackie of PopMatters has said the video's "narrative suits the sludgy riffs and James Hetfield’s twisted lullaby lyric".

The Autotuned Generation

Inspiration or intense editing?
Queen! Sting! The Jackson 5! Frank Sinatra! Would these still be the greats that we look up to now if they had used autotune? We talk about natural talent with an expectation that the talent is natural, but what’s natural about a box that pitches your voice perfectly for you?
Autotune is the source of many arguments throughout the music industry. Some say that the musicians that blindly disagree with the use of the autotune are hypercritical because they themselves use similar technology to enhance the sounds of their instruments. As technology has progressed over the years there has been more and more to help people in the creation of music. The invention of the electric guitar in 1924 brought the sounds and the creativity of musicians to a new level, the invention of amplifiers in 1947, by Nathan Sokal and Allen Sokal, gave the guitar the power to compete with the intense sounds of the orchestra, and then in the 1960 ‘s came the invention of the Guitar effects, so why can the instruments get away with the use off these effects while the autotune gets such a bad response? To understand this first you must know how it works!
Autotune uses a specific scale or group of notes to correct the pitch of the vocalist. For example if the vocalist was singing in A major and they hit a note which was slightly sharp or flat of a note in the scale which they intended to hit, it would be automatically brought up or down to the correct pitch of that note. The majority of artists in the charts today use autotune, these include T-pain, Rihanna
and Katy Perry. Although it can be argued that some of these artists need autotune to be able to sing, it also seems to be becoming very fashionable to use it – even if you can sing in tune! A great example of this is JLS. Although they can all sing extremely well and have no need for something like autotune they still use it! T-Pain has even brought out his own application on iTunes for use on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This app only costs 59 pence, contains a huge variety of keys you can sing in and will tune your notes to perfect pitch within the key you select!
Nowadays anybody in the world can get into the charts easily even if they don’t have much, if any, talent. All people want to see is someone who is attractive to the eye, can dance around on stage and sing in perfect pitch. Unfortunately, although the person may be attractive and they may be able to dance to a choreographed sequence, without the aid of autotune would they really be able to pull off such a great performance with all the atmosphere and passion that people want to see at a concert and still be as successful as they are today? On the other hand autotune has meant people can go and see their favourite artist at a live performance and they know that they will sound exactly as they did on the album. So they will be able to enjoy the show knowing there will be no vocal mistakes. This has affected music making very much as there are less and less talented artists who are able to get into the charts and therefore makes it very hard for them to make a living because everything is so dominated by artists using autotune. This means that the majority of music making is slowly creeping away from live instruments and voices and towards a load of electronically altered vocalists. But if this vocal effect didn’t exist the charts today would consist of a totally different variety of artists who could actually sing without effects in a live performance.
The x factor scandal
The news on the X Factor in 2010 was that the producers of the show were auto tuning the acts that they wanted to get through the first rounds so that they had an advantage over the other contestants. This defeats the whole idea of a talent competition. This is the equivalent of entering a guitarist competition and recording slash to play your peace for you!

What we think!
Looking at all the reasons for and against the Autotune, as a musician myself I believe that there’s no problem with people at home using Autotune, but when it comes to professional musicians and competitions autotune has no place. It defeats the point of actually singing. The X Factor has lost our respect and so have the producers that allow people like Justin Bieber to make it with autotune.

Nd1 Music at Suffolk New College

For the last project in the National Diploma Music course at Suffolk New Collage we have to perform in, what we are calling, our MMP (major music project). This consists of putting on our own gig using the things that we have learnt through the year.
The first part of the process is to decide on what type of event we want, as a class, to put on. We want to put on a show case that we are calling "Back to the future". This will be a night of music from different decades. We had a class discussion about what different styles of music we wanted to play and from this have allocated students into their bands. The band that i was put into is the Thrash/Metal band and consists of Myself, Sam, Jacob, Jack, Nat and Pete, and is going to do 90's metal.
At the first meeting Pete decided that he is going to join another band and Jack said that he does not want to do the Thrash. After discussions in the band we have decided the three songs that we are going to perform at the MMP. The songs are;
Enter Sandman by Metallica
Holy Diver by Dio
The Trooper by Iron Maiden
A fourth song will be composed by the band together.

In the next few weeks of the project the class will be split into different groups that will be delecated different jobs and Roles within the MMP. For example;
Money management
Artist/band management
Promotion

Hopefully when the different sections come together the work that the individuals have done will be enough promote and perform in the MMP.
To help myself and my group keep on track i will be activly be blogging about the MMP.
Aaron Henry. Suffolk New Collage ND1 Music.

Let us

Let us dance under the star lit sky to the sound of our hearts,

Let us hold each other when the shadows have found us,

Let us hear each other when we silently cry for help,

Let us pray that today will end happily,

Let us move together as if we shared a leg,

Let us be free to make our own mistakes,

Let us learn,

Let us be individually identical,

Let us see through our own eyes but most importantly

Let us love

Please

Let us love.