Brandon is one of the most exciting players in modern metal. As lead guitarist and key songwriter for the band The Black Dahlia Murder, he mixes a decidedly retro appreciation for the classics (and neo-classics!) with an adventurous sense of harmony that borrows inventively from classical music and jazz.
Beyond The Blues
In the interview, Brandon plays and analyzes the Black Dahlia Murder tune “How Very Dead”, including both harmonic and melodic elements and how they intertwine. We also delve into inventive uses of classical harmony like the neopolitan chord, augmented sixth chords, and jazz-like applications of add2 and dominant sequenced arpeggios.
If this sounds like someone’s had some formal training, you’re not totally wrong. We learn in the interview that Brandon has a stealth music major background thanks to AP Music coursework in his high school. This included topics in voice leading and harmony typically taught in theory courses at college level. Here’s a cool clip of the discussion where Brandon explains how he wove the neapolitan chord into “How Very Dead”:
Mechanical Intuition
When it comes to mechanical subjects, Brandon is not just a great player but also a uniquely astute observer of his own technique. Unlike most Cracking the Code interviews where we observe through conversation, in this one we explicitly discuss topics like joint motion and escape motion.
More often than not, the Magnet footage reveals that Brandon’s guesses about what’s happening are indeed what is actually happening, even when it comes to the kind of subtle changes that occur during high-speed, high-gain alternate and economy picked lines. It’s a very cool conversation.
The full 1-hour and 18-minute interview contains 67 musical examples with tablature, including a complete transcription of Brandon’s rhythm parts and solo on “How Very Dead” by the Black Dahlia Murder.
Awesome! How do I watch it?
Good question! There are two ways, depending on what you’re looking for. Most simply, you can pick up an individual copy of Brandon’s interview in our store right here:
If you’re interested in any of our other interviews, or if you want to get started working on your chops with our instructional sequence in the Pickslanting Primer, you can also watch Brandon’s interview with a membership, which unlocks everything on the Cracking the Code platform:
Either options works, and will support both Cracking the Code and Brandon himself. As always, thanks for watching Cracking the Code!
Awesome, can’t wait to check this out later!
Sorry for the delay on this, it’s been a challenge getting the Magnet in the store over the past year or so and a million and one other housekeeping chores. Small business — it’s no joke.
It’s a great conversation. Given that a little time has passed since we filmed it, I get to be surprised all over again about the stuff we discuss.
There’s all kinds of cool harmony talk for theory nerds to get excited about. Personally, it’s somewhat interesting to know the technical, but I forget about that pretty quickly unless there’s a decent song to go with it. In this case Brandon takes apart the intro tune and talks about how he wove neapolitan chord harmonies and chromatic motifs into both the lead and the rhythm parts. If you like the song to begin with, you like it even more when you find out how it was done.
Mechanically Brandon is super in tune with all the little motion changes that happen once you start playing a little faster. And the Magnet footage confirms that’s he right in just about every case as far as what is actually happening.
The only thing he might not be totally aware of is the double escape aspect of his pure alternate scale playing. He is a USX player, which he is aware of. And he notes that there is finger motion in some cases for doing downstroke string changes. From the footage I think he’s correct. However there may also a be a wrist component, so that whether you have upstroke or downstroke string changes, you’re getting reverse dart wrist in both cases, just along slightly different axes. Ascending 3nps alternate picking is one place where I think this may be happening:
You can poke around in there and see what you think. Anyway great conversation, let us know how you like it!
“…with a lot of this harmony stuff, you have to speak like a lawyer.” lmao Very true!
This was a great interview. Brandon is an incredible guitarist and comes across as a really nice, humble guy. It is very cool to see more of these amazing artists come to these interviews with an awareness of CtC vocabulary and conceptual framework. It makes it easier for them to articulate a lot about their own playing to an audience that also speaks the language and can more readily understand the conversation and potentially apply ideas to their own playing. I was impressed with his practical approach to technique (“think like an engineer”) and his perspective on the different tonal qualities of different techniques as they apply to his own playing. I wonder if this is a phase that many guitarists go through wrt “alternate pick every damn thing” until they achieve enough proficiency and can put this now-sharpened tool back in the belt to select in the future when it is appropriate to use. Brandon’s knowledge of music theory is amazing (I thought Neopolitan was an inferior ice cream flavor). I followed maybe 25% of that conversation but loved all of it because (1) it is another demonstration of the utility of theory knowledge in composition and (2) it inspires me to continue studying. Awesome job.
so awesome can’t wait to watch this, brandon is one of the most interesting players in metal. Two other players in the metal space i would love to see you guys interview at some point are Wes Hauch and Dave Davidson. Both have some insane picking mechanics but like Brandon also play some very interesting harmonic material (especially in the space of metal) thanks for the great interviews as always!