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Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Aug 15 2008, 11:18 AM

Hi there,

I am sure most of you have noticed we have got an incredible amount of metal lessons!

Thanks to our extremely skilled instructors we are starting to get good coverage of different metal sub-genres.

In order to make our archive more comprehensible, and easier to navigate - we are curently thinking of ways to split our largest categories. The thing is - I am not sure I know enough about metal sub-genres to do the classifying by myself!

So my question to you is - how would you like to split the http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/video-lessons/metal_0.html on the http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/video-lessons.htm page?

The tricky part is understanding and identifying which are the biggest metal sub-genres at GMC..! Examples of some sub-genres would be speed/thrash metal, power metal, heavy/classic metal (?), progressive metal etc.

Let's say that a sub-category needs to have at least 10 gmc lessons in it for it to qualify!

All help is appreciated!

Posted by: kyldeee Aug 15 2008, 11:21 AM

This is an excellent idea, but I really don't know much about metal sub-genres either, so let's hear what our metalheads say

But there really seems to be alot of Modern Metal, Heavy Metal and progressive, so maybe something in that direction

Posted by: Mrblomme Aug 15 2008, 11:46 AM

I think Powermetal would indeed be a great first section.
I think we also have a few Death Metal lessons? So maybe also death metal.
And offcourse the classic metal à la Iron Maiden, ...

Posted by: Marcus Siepen Aug 15 2008, 12:00 PM

In theory a great idea, but not as easy as it might sound like. There are so many subgenres in metal that it can become very tricky. Take Blind Guardian for example, we have been labled Speedmetal, Heavy Metal, Power Metal, Progressive Metal, Epic Metal, Melodic Metal, Thrash Metal... I consider us to be metal
As I said, basically a good idea, I am just afraid that we might end up with 100 subgenres here.

Posted by: Oxac Aug 15 2008, 12:03 PM

Uhm, hasn't Gabriel done some Progressive? I know Marcus has done a lot of Neoclassical, I believe we have some power metal, Pavel done some of it if I remember correctly.

But almost the same topic. You should divide the theory board and create applied theory as well. I mean, that would fit a lot of Davids lessons and it would also be a good way to move from etc. Andrews lessons on scales and arpeggios to pavels ionian scale boxes and Muris lesson on diminished arpeggios. That way you would understand what you are learning + getting the theory in your muscle memory!

Maybe divide the metal in riffing/soloing? Maybe for each genre you could add a theory sub-genre? like the theory behind funk, behind metal, the foundations of rock, blues, bluegrass etc.

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Aug 15 2008, 12:12 PM

Yes I see what you mean. Also I personally can't stand categorising of music! This makes this even harder for me.

However this is inevitable for GMC as the video lessons pages will be almost useless when a category contains 25 sub-pages or more.

The good thing is that we don't need to do the kind of labelling which cd-stores need to. In other words we can place different Blind Guardian lessons into different categories. You guys are obviously very versatile in your writing and that should also be reflected in our categorising.

Also because sub-categorising can get subjective - we will start by grouping closely related sub-genres (an example of that would be speed and thrash). This is inevitable as many sub-categories probably don't have 10 GMC lessons yet!

Posted by: JeroenKole Aug 15 2008, 02:16 PM

just generalize most genre's or stick them together because they are similar. Maybe something along these lines.

Prog: Anything progressive, this includes progressive rock
Classic: Sabbath, Maiden etc.
Modern: Stuff like Trivium and that kind of stuff
Epic: symphonic, power etc. Might add neoclassical here, not sure myself though
Extreme: Death, Black etc.
The Rest: What doesn't fit into the other catagories goes here.


This is just a quick idea that can give an nice overview without having hundreds of subpages.

Hope this helps,
J

Posted by: Toni Suominen Aug 15 2008, 02:27 PM

Yes, I think this kind of a system could work, it could get really confusing if we would have dozens of sub-genre pages.

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Aug 15 2008, 03:32 PM

Thanks Jeroen - it definitely feels like we are approaching a solution. Does anybody have anything to add?

Posted by: Smikey2006 Aug 15 2008, 05:01 PM

too many subgenres of metal, simple classifications would be nice. i don't really have a suggestion, im sorta with Marcus, its so hard to classify metal. but simple classifications like JeroenKole said would work.

Posted by: sigma7 Aug 15 2008, 05:08 PM

i agree with jeroen kole...here r all the metal sub-genres just put them in the catergories

nu metal,
doom metal,
death metal,
power/symphonic metal,
heavy metal, thrash metal,
melodic death metal,
Gore Metal,
progressive metal,
idustrial metal,
gothic metal,
folk metal,
viking metal,
glam metal,
groove metal,
neoclassical metal,
metal core,
post-metal,
sludge metal,
speed metal,
stoner metal,

thats about all i no...hehe

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Aug 15 2008, 05:15 PM

But we don't have lessons with all these sub-genres.. right? (Or do we?! )

Posted by: wollace03 Aug 15 2008, 05:44 PM

actually i am against categorizing too much and would think riffing / solo / riffing and solo would do but as there are so many lessons dealing with metal i think the suggestion from j is a very good one!!

Posted by: skennington Aug 15 2008, 08:05 PM

How bout catagorizing them by level of dificulty. beginner 1-3, intermediate 4-7,and advanced 8-10. Metal is very hard to determine unless you go from one extreme to another. ( 80's hair metal to todays deth metal ), alot of styles in between will get sort of lost in the mix.

similar to the lesson plan I know, but would give you a way of grouping the lessons.

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Aug 15 2008, 08:50 PM

I agree. This is a very good way to divide the different metal lessons.

Posted by: audiopaal Aug 15 2008, 10:49 PM

This seems very good

Posted by: Hisham Al-Sanea Aug 15 2008, 11:16 PM

i think we have to cover almost metal sub-geners... in the same time the GMC full of pentatonics/lydians/mixolydians and others . thats let GMC repeat it self .

Posted by: Ctodd Aug 15 2008, 11:21 PM

I think it would be important not to restrict any one lesson to anyone category though.

If you are not sure if you want to put lesson A into either Category B or Category C, you should just put them in both.

Know what I mean?

Posted by: Fsgdjv Aug 16 2008, 01:45 AM

From what I've seen you basically have either speed/power or some modern symphonic/melodic death lessons. So it's basically nothing to cathegorise.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Aug 16 2008, 05:29 PM

I would say JeroenKole had the best proposition and this idea is a good place to start.

Now regarding labeling... I don't like labeling too, but I think this it actually not labeling. It is simply a good way to categorize lessons in order to find them easier here on GMC.

So this categories bellow (as JeroenKole suggested) are good way to start, and see how it goes, maybe add one and work issues along the way. This is my modest suggestion.


Prog: Anything progressive, this includes progressive rock
Classic: Sabbath, Maiden etc.
Modern: Stuff like Trivium and that kind of stuff
Epic: symphonic, power etc. Might add neoclassical here, not sure myself though
Extreme: Death, Black etc.

The Rest: What doesn't fit into the other categories goes here.

Posted by: sigma7 Aug 16 2008, 05:35 PM

all we need to figure out is which metal goes where

Posted by: Marcus Siepen Aug 16 2008, 07:34 PM

Jeroens approach makes sense to me

Posted by: JeroenKole Aug 17 2008, 01:06 AM

Glad you guys like the idea.


You might want to divide the scalar lessons as well, As I notice as an complete guitar noob that knows nothing of scales they get thrown in my face all the time while I didn't have the chance yet to study most of them (read, get the boxes inside my head and keep them there until they get into the fingers). so making several catagories with scales would work very well as well.

One of the greatetest things about GMC is that lessons can be put into several catagories. So if we would stick to the BG example you will notice that they have some very complex songs aswell. In that case you can put the song in both the epic catagory as well in the prog catagory. So I don't see any problem in that regard.

I do believe however that there might be problems into putting lessons in the catagories. If we would take Metallica for example; which catagory would they fit, Metallica is a classic metal band beyond any doubt, but they are still modern. Add to that the fact that if they didn't take ages to finish an album they would invent their sound more times than Madonna would change image.

Another difficulty could be the grey area lessons. If they would, for example, fall between rock and metal. Lesson labeling currently put it in both rock and metal. But with this new proposal the isntructor him/herself could get very confused. And believe me kids, an confused instructor, although a sight to behold, is not ideal.


This proposal I've made is just a rough sketch, and should be fleshed out more. I will be more than happy, however, to help put lessons in their corresponding catagories.

J

Posted by: Daniel Robinson Aug 17 2008, 04:48 AM

I do think that Jeroen's idea is the most logical.



This way we arent bogged down with too many sub-genre's. The question is how from an instructor point of view can we break these down. I mean we have the tagging system now, so it would be up to an instructor to put it into a category?



What i call Power metal someone else might call Epic....Its this distinction we need to clarify.



Perfect example would be a group like Within Temptation...i say they are Goth...my friend calls it Power metal. So who is right.



I guess we can try a premlim sub-genre layout and tweak it as we go would probably be the most logical.



Daniel

Posted by: Marcus Siepen Aug 17 2008, 11:29 AM

You are right, they are goth

Posted by: Ian Bushell Aug 17 2008, 11:50 AM

I Totally agree with JeroenKole.

That's the best way to divide it up, to the point and straight forward.
I like metal and i don't even know all the sub genre's it does get confusing!

Posted by: Fran Aug 17 2008, 01:34 PM

That sounds really good to me!, I like learning things that 1) I can play, 2) Sound good.
The sub genre of metal they belong doesn't really matter to me, as have been stated, the borders of metal are unclear. Confused and led to the dark side we might be.

Having said that, Jeroenkole's approach sounds sensible too, better have just a few well diferenciated subgenres than too many which we don't really know what they are!

Posted by: JeroenKole Aug 17 2008, 08:31 PM

Actually they are symphonic rock/metal. But they call themselves Gothic Rock. I hate subgenre's and I prefer the approach of like and don't like. But if I have to put them in any catagory I would put them in the epic block.

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Aug 18 2008, 12:59 PM

Thanks again for the advice here - we need the techs to adjust the video lesson page slightly before we can add sub-categories. Then we will get a better structure thanks to your advice (next we will proceed to the other categories).

Good thing is - that once we have got the sub-categories, you will be able to slice them up into difficulty level by using the advanced search.

You can already do this today to the metal category - just be sure to not have the text field empty when you click advanced search.

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Aug 29 2008, 08:56 PM

Ok! Thanks to your help (and especially JeroenKole!) - we have now got metal sub-genres!

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/video-lessons.htm

We will continue the restructuring of the video lessons page in the near future to make easier to browse and [hopefully] more logic..!

Thanks again for helping us improve GMC!

Posted by: kyldeee Aug 29 2008, 08:58 PM

Great Great Great

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Aug 29 2008, 09:08 PM

Good joob! It looks great and clearer now.

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Aug 29 2008, 09:11 PM

Thanks Gabriel - your lessons are all over that section! I had a blast watching them all again!

Posted by: Juan M. Valero Aug 29 2008, 09:11 PM

yeah !!! that's great

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn Aug 30 2008, 01:44 PM

Excellent - well done Kris!

Posted by: Fran Aug 30 2008, 01:47 PM

Simple & effective! Good job

Posted by: Canis Aug 30 2008, 02:33 PM

Awesome ^^
No more searching forever to find what I'm looking for
Not that it was bad before either, though ^^

Posted by: Lian Gerbino Aug 30 2008, 09:47 PM

well done mates, now it´s easier!

Posted by: Canis Aug 30 2008, 09:51 PM

Hehe, I noticed that when I go into Epic and Extreme Metal, over half of the lessons there are of Lian