What makes vkei, vkei music?

[BrenGun 2261]

Hello everybody,

 

Years ago, visual kei was just a bunch of guys wearing a nice costume and or make-up. 

While playing rock, punk or metal, or a mix of those genres.

Music sounded still original and bands looked wonderful.

 

Nowadays, bands copy lots of melodies etc from past bands, and so visual kei developed even also into a music genre. 

 

So my question for today is;

 

What are typical melodies etc, which we often encounter in music which visual kei bands release. (which are actually unusual for other music genres)

Please shoot with examples

 

Please put youtube videos in spoilers!

 

 

Hope you guys can help out!

[Himeaimichu 1535]

I was actually wondering this myself. There are a lot of cliche musical elements in 90's Visual Kei that I can easily point out, but don't know the music theory behind because I'm barely a musician. There are certain drum beats, chord progressions, scales, effects, vocal techniques, and more that have become cliche in Visual Kei.

 

One notable example is what I call "THAT" Visual Kei chorus. It's not really one thing, but a combination of factors that come together. Mainly the drum beat and chord progession.

Compare the chorus of these songs:

Spoiler

 

These aren't the best examples, but they're the first that comes to my mind. From what I've seen, it seems to be a synthesis of influences from Luna Sea, G-Schmitt, BOOWY, Zi:Kill and whatnot, but I really don't know which artists made it "cool", per-se, probably Luna Sea. They don't all use the same chord progessions or drum beats, but they revolve around similar ones.

 

Then there are the pinch harmonics. (This is where my super basic knowledge in playing guitar comes in). For those who don't know what pinch harmonics are, they're when you lightly touch the guitar string with your thumb joint while picking a note, in order to get a higher pitched sound. In Western Rock, these are referred to as "squealies" because they're often used to make high pitched squeals. In Visual Kei, however, they're used as ornaments to a riff that basically shift around the octaves of the notes.

I would say this started as mainly a glam rock thing, as BOOWY implemented it occasionally in songs, such in the bridge of LIKE A CHILD (which has also influenced Vkei in other ways)

Spoiler

 

Also taking inspiration from Glam Rock, but adding in Punk and Metal twists, COLOR probably were the ones that made these kinds of pinch harmonics cool. This kind of guitar work would appear in both Free Will and Extasy bands, such as Kamaitachi, Zi:Kill and Gilles De Rais

Gilles De Rais probably heard the COLOR and BOOWY songs, and thought that these pinch harmonic would blend very well in their mix of Horror Punk, Thrash Metal and Goth, and man they were right

Kuroyume also played a role in making pinch harmonics cool, with early songs like &die prominently featuring them

Fast forward to 1999, and by then, it had become a full fledged cliche, giving us songs like Zan

And even today, pinch harmonics in this style are called for when you want to make a song sound extra 90's.

 

There is even more that I could go on about, but I'm nowhere near an expert in any of this lol

 

Edited August 7, 2020 by Himeaimichu

[saiko 429]

@Himeaimichu I'm licking your brain.

[Himeaimichu 1535]

25 minutes ago, saiko said:

@Himeaimichu I'm licking your brain.

There are probably other people who can explain it better than I can though. What I've gathered is mostly through listening to these bands myself and noticing similarities.

However, I don't know the actual music theory behind it, and I myself and hoping to learn more about that lol

[Himeaimichu 1535]

One other trope I'd like to mention is speaking parts. This requires literally no knowledge of music theory so I can explain this fully lol.

 

Basically, Visual Kei bands REALLY love their spoken parts. I assume this is a hand-me-down from the Japanese goth scene. Most notably, G-Schmitt songs

Spoiler

 

The song CATHOLIC by G-Schmitt, which has a notable speaking part in the guitar solo, seems to have been a song that was popular among early Vkei bandmen. Popular enough for bands like Gilles De Rais, Luna Sea, Deshabillz, Missalina Rei, Dir en Grey and more to pick up on it. Why speaking parts? Well it's takes the least amount of effort, and sounds fucking cool. Initially, they were just used for intros and during certain parts, but their use eventually spread to other parts of the songs.

Spoiler

 

 

[BrenGun 2261]

What about this video?

 

It sounds so damn familar to me, but I cannot find out myself which bands melodies/riffs I all hear...

It's pretty much mixed with so many famous riffs.

can someone help?

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Also these bands have so many known elements we only hear in vkei music. 
I can clearly hear it, but I'm so bad in saying what it is.. so if anybody can help out, I'm happy.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

[ICEMYLIFE 1]

On 8/7/2020 at 3:30 PM, Himeaimichu said:

I was actually wondering this myself. There are a lot of cliche musical elements in 90's Visual Kei that I can easily point out, but don't know the music theory behind because I'm barely a musician. There are certain drum beats, chord progressions, scales, effects, vocal techniques, and more that have become cliche in Visual Kei.

 

One notable example is what I call "THAT" Visual Kei chorus. It's not really one thing, but a combination of factors that come together. Mainly the drum beat and chord progession.

Compare the chorus of these songs:

  Hide contents

 

These aren't the best examples, but they're the first that comes to my mind. From what I've seen, it seems to be a synthesis of influences from Luna Sea, G-Schmitt, BOOWY, Zi:Kill and whatnot, but I really don't know which artists made it "cool", per-se, probably Luna Sea. They don't all use the same chord progessions or drum beats, but they revolve around similar ones.

 

Then there are the pinch harmonics. (This is where my super basic knowledge in playing guitar comes in). For those who don't know what pinch harmonics are, they're when you lightly touch the guitar string with your thumb joint while picking a note, in order to get a higher pitched sound. In Western Rock, these are referred to as "squealies" because they're often used to make high pitched squeals. In Visual Kei, however, they're used as ornaments to a riff that basically shift around the octaves of the notes.

I would say this started as mainly a glam rock thing, as BOOWY implemented it occasionally in songs, such in the bridge of LIKE A CHILD (which has also influenced Vkei in other ways)

  Hide contents

 

Also taking inspiration from Glam Rock, but adding in Punk and Metal twists, COLOR probably were the ones that made these kinds of pinch harmonics cool. This kind of guitar work would appear in both Free Will and Extasy bands, such as Kamaitachi, Zi:Kill and Gilles De Rais

Gilles De Rais probably heard the COLOR and BOOWY songs, and thought that these pinch harmonic would blend very well in their mix of Horror Punk, Thrash Metal and Goth, and man they were right

Kuroyume also played a role in making pinch harmonics cool, with early songs like &die prominently featuring them

Fast forward to 1999, and by then, it had become a full fledged cliche, giving us songs like Zan

And even today, pinch harmonics in this style are called for when you want to make a song sound extra 90's.

 

There is even more that I could go on about, but I'm nowhere near an expert in any of this lol

 

Good analysis. By "that chorus" I thought you'd mean the Rosier style chorus where the guitars make a very brief pause at the end of each bar, then if you listen to the guitar solo in that song you'll hear a million songs that seemed to be influenced by it, Driver's High by L'arc En Ciel is just the example of the top of my head. I'm actually not sure if Luna Sea was the first to do these, if anyone has earlier examples that'd be cool.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRLkiX-NZzE

[ChocoSandBiscuit 0]

On 8/8/2020 at 1:59 PM, BrenGun said:

What about this video?

 

It sounds so damn familar to me, but I cannot find out myself which bands melodies/riffs I all hear...

It's pretty much mixed with so many famous riffs.

can someone help?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

Also these bands have so many known elements we only hear in vkei music. 
I can clearly hear it, but I'm so bad in saying what it is.. so if anybody can help out, I'm happy.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

Those examples are metal but compared to western "real" /non VK metal bands (as some metal elitists put it), it's the chorus that makes it distinct. VK has a habit of mixing unadulterated metal sections with harsh vocals, to pop sounding choruses, typically clean vocals. Sometimes this isn't even limited to choruses. 

 

If I listened to the intro and verse blindfolded, I'd think this was some tr00 technical death metal. Bridge comes in and it starts sounding like symphonic metal. Chorus comes in and it sounds like pop rock haha. You'd never hear this in any other metal scenes. 

 

Jiluka is another band that comes to mind that does this. Deathcore everything, then pop chorus. 

[hopefully_benign 56]

Basically if they're dramatically shaking and looking side-to-side in PVs it's true VK

[BrenGun 2261]

7 hours ago, hopefully_benign said:

Basically if they're dramatically shaking and looking side-to-side in PVs it's true VK

haha I'm talking about "music only" not looks or how PV's effects are made. 

[Alyx A 2]

In my opinion, vk artists don’t stay in their lane. They incorporate multiple genres into their music whether it be metal, rock, pop, rap, classical, jazz and mash it all together. Most of time they are skilled enough to make it work. I could be wrong but there seems to be little blowback when they do this which is a good thing. There also tends to be quite a bit of shameless borrowing from older rock groups – embracing the ethos of nothing new under the sun?

 

In addition to the screams and growls, there seems to be an unwritten rule that the vocalist should be able to sing reasonably well and exhibit some range – there is a lot of competition out there!

[Punk 5]

I believe  the things that make vk music is basically the shops , type of aestethic language labels too.

 

 

To you reply nothing althought the sound of someones solo riffs are very japanese  .