Tanzmetall (the obvious emperor of Clunkline), Grabass Champion, and myself have written and often times still write music. I’m not really sure about the other two, but my composition writing has evolved out of clicking in a bunch of notes in Sibelius 2.0 and simply saving them as midis. Yes, I now have two really nice keyboards, which I use to play out most of the tracks in my songs, a friend who is quite eloquent on the guitar, and the means to get live recordings of just about any wind instrument I can think of within reason. Recently, I’ve written a new strain of songs for a would-be soundtrack to a graphic novel I am writing and hope to publish someday, and the thought occurred to me that one of Tanzmetall’s original compositions from back in the day would make a splendid theme for one of the villains (a continent-sized magma serpent that dwells under the Earth’s mantle). That song is called FLIGHT FROM EMSARIA, and though everything we write today is vastly superior in almost every way to what we used to write while we were in high school, nothing has ever struck a satisfying chord quite like this song has. At least that’s what I think. But what is it about FLIGHT FROM EMSARIA that is so… so… terrifying (in a good way)?
Well, being that it’s Tanzmetall who created this monster, I’ll begin explaining its greatness by listing what makes a song written by Tanzmetall a Tanzmetall song.
1.) A Tanzmetall song has more instruments in it than there are cells in the human body. His songs have somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-seven parts, meaning that if his songs were to actually be played by a live orchestra, it would have to be a nine thousand piece orchestra, and the musicians would have to be replaced after every performance because none of them would be able to survive the harsh conditions of his music. In actuality, they would probably have a better chance of surviving the vacuum of space. Listening to, let alone playing, Tanzmetall’s music is like running a full out sprint across Death Valley with Saran Wrap covering your mouth.
2.) Every instrument, and I mean EVERY instrument, pounds chords that are stacked with at least six pitches. If you’re a keyboardist playing a keyboard part in a Tanzmetall song, you better have more than ten fingers, and some of those fingers better be able to detach. If you’re a wind player trying to play one of these songs, you’re expected to have three mouths and three pairs of lungs. So since every instrument (that’s brass, woodwinds, strings, guitars, bells, instruments that can’t even play chords to begin with) plays unrealistically massive chords, can you even begin to imagine the walls of sound that burst forth in these songs? Ever see “Terminator 2″? You know the part in the movie where Sarah Conner gets blasted apart by the nuclear explosion? That’s a small sample of what happens when you play a Tanzmetall song through your speakers.
3.) When instruments in a Tanzmetall song are not playing chords dense enough to swallow an entire planet by their sheer mass, they’re playing trails of intricately woven melodies that extend for miles at a speed of more notes per minute than there are digits in John Goodman’s weight. Would you like to get carpal tunnel immediately? Just play a Tanzmetall song. Not only are some of his melodies busier than the Can Can, the notes differ in pitch from one to the next by entire octaves or more. When he contrives these melodies, he actually studies the anatomy of the arm and hand while placing the notes, laying traps for sight-readers and laughing inside at how so many people will likely break their arms in trying to play his arpeggios. He doesn’t just create music; he ruins musicians.
4.) At one point or another, everything in the song plays at a triple forte or louder. After putting on heavily tinted goggles made for staring into nuclear detonations, I actually dared a glance at the sheet music of one of his scores. The risk of blindness was still present nonetheless. I noticed under one of the parts, there were seven forte symbols. That’s a fortisimisimisimisimisimo! That’s louder than the voice of God. Basically, Tanzmetall wants every single last instrument to be heard as the song reaches its climax, but to attain the volume he seeks, most of the instruments in reality would simply explode or melt from the pressure. Percussionists would have to have at least sixty of every drum on standby in the event that any of the ones they’re playing on explodes in their faces from the severe beating required to meet Tanzmetall’s expectations. Brass players (the poor things) would find their lips fusing to the red-hot metal of their mouth pieces due to the extreme heat from the air pressure building up in their horns. Woodwind instruments would either decompose into a million tiny splinters or petrify into a metamorphic state before the song was even a quarter of the way through. As I said before, no one would survive performing a Tanzmetall song, but you better believe they would not DARE play any less suicidally than he would expect them to play, lest the music itself consumes their souls.
5.) Almost every theme Tanzmetall has ever written is epic and final, and that’s the way it ought to be. If I was going to play a song made out of carpal tunnel (and I did), it damn well better be worth my time. It should be noted that all Tanzmetall songs are not for the weak of heart or mind, and if you are over the age of sixty or under the age of twenty-one, it is strongly advised that you abstain.
6.) Almost every Tanzmetall song has an epic name such a FLIGHT FROM EMSARIA. You can probably already imagine the velocity and power held within a title like that. I can tell you from first-hand (and last-hand) experience how truly devastating the song really is. Every time I hear the chimes in the midi file of this song, I always cry for the poor sap who may actually have to play them someday. His arms would have to be bionic and connected by a hose to a really large source of liquid helium. Otherwise his arms would no longer exist, and the entire room would ignite to temperatures hotter than the core of the sun.
7.) Tanzmetall songs transcend keys the way Kenyans fly up staircases. If there were as many revolutions in France as there are transpositions in one Tanzmetall song… no wait, there were.
8.) Tanzmetall songs are the only songs ever written in Demonic keys. No Tanzmetall song has ever been written in a Major key. Tanzmetall does not believe in Major keys. He does not believe in happy-sounding songs.
Now then… I’ve told you what makes a Tanzmetall song a Tanzmetall song. Getting back to what I was beginning to say earlier in this article, his song: FLIGHT FROM EMSARIA is, in my eyes, the perfect theme for the tremendous monster in my comic whose name is actually inspired by the title. It just so happens that everything that makes a Tanzmetall song a Tanzmetall song is fully met three times over in this particular composition. This composition rates a 10… on the Richter Scale. So what I did was I took Tanzmetall’s original score and recorded most of the voices in real-time with my keyboard, a huge undertaking (and I use “undertaking” in more ways than one). Most of the parts I used my keyboard to play were parts that I would not be able to get live recordings of even in my dreams, both because I do not have access to full ensembles of people willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater good. These parts include the ungodly chime melody which, fortunately, I only had to type out on piano keys, the string parts which I rewrote to be more suitable for string players rather than archers, and the harpsichord solo. Ah, the harpsichord solo. Tanzmetall remembers what he wrote for the harpsichord solo, I’m sure. I recall him once saying: “Yeah, I don’t write my music to be played. It’s simply impossible.” Well, I decided to challenge this notion, and I actually took to playing the harpsichord solo he had written, note for note and up to tempo, that being Mach 3. It took a few tries, but after awhile, I finally had a good recording. Now, I sit here typing this whole article with my left hand while I nurse my right hand in an ice pack. I may never get to use it again. What made it so hard to play? Well, it wasn’t the arrangement that was the challenge. It was the speed! Holy shit, was that song fast. Anyway, so the keyboard work is done, and so too is the electric guitar stuff (the song didn’t originally have power chords by the way). Now all I have to do is play the trumpet parts and recruit some poor sucker to play the horn and piccolo parts for me. When it’s all said and done, I will likely post my work on Youtube and under my profile in Garageband.com, however I know deep down inside that whatever I make will never reach the power or the original score in its rawest form.
I have been through the worst of a Tanzmetall song…
AND I HAVE SURVIVED!
