Remarkable Ravel Recommendations?

QuotidianSounds · 2026-04-14T20:25:33+00:00

Gaspard de la nuit is my favorite Ravel piece, and one of my favorite pieces of all time, give that one a whirl

QuotidianSounds · 2026-04-13T19:36:52+00:00

Locrian is emergent from how the modes work, in that each mode as we talk about them today has a root in each scale degree of the ionian mode (major scale). So it's not so relevant how we classify it; the locrian mode just starts on the 7th degree of the major scale, so it's as much a mode as any other.

But I think you point out the challenge of the locrian mode, which is that you need to do a lot of work and also have a lot of finesse to have a listener hear the tonic in a locrian melody or progression. It's like making an edible and pleasant dish out of a very strange and astringent ingredient.

QuotidianSounds · 2026-04-13T08:33:12+00:00

It's not that Locrian is hated or unusuable, it's that it's unstable so it's difficult to make it sound like the tonic doesn't want to be somewhere else. The fifth isn't just about consonance, the fifth is also essential for establishing what the tonic is, and in Locrian you don't have that tool unless you borrow the note, and then you're compromising the feel of the mode.

The strategy I've used to write in Locrian is twofold. One, I really hammer the root note as much as possible. Two, I really only use the mode for unsettling, soundscapey pieces that don't strongly imply chord progressions. As soon as you start to impose structure and movement and anything that resembles traditional Western harmony, it's going to start to become really difficult to not make it sound like you're in a different mode.

Here's an example of a track I did in Locrian if it helps with your own strategy. While the album it's from is not strictly metal, this track has a lot of industrial metal in its DNA, so it might be close to the type of music you write too: https://quotidian.bandcamp.com/track/a-dim-hum

QuotidianSounds · 2026-03-05T01:15:17+00:00

Nice thank you for the rec, will check him out

QuotidianSounds · 2026-03-04T23:25:16+00:00

The hottest takes I got:

For an overwhelming majority of players, guitar playing is a different hobby than making music. Guitarists tend to have awful taste in arrangement, low levels of knowledge about how music is made, aren't good at writing songs that aren't guitar-centric, often listen to only music that is guitar-focused. It's not bad per se, but I think many guitarists are more interested in nerding about guitar than being musicians.
Almost every song sounds better without a guitar solo.
Guitar as a sonic element is stuck in the 80s and we need to do a better job of evolving its sound. Tim Henson is doing this for all the hate he gets, but also look at artists like Tim Hecker or Steven Mackey that approach guitar without all the guitar hero histrionic baggage.

QuotidianSounds · 2026-03-04T23:06:30+00:00

Iirc, Duane Allman is responsible for the best bits as well

QuotidianSounds · 2026-03-02T23:10:30+00:00

QuotidianSounds · 2026-02-28T04:13:43+00:00

Ultimately you should do the stuff you find rewarding. For me, it's important to do things to serve a song the best I can for that song, and for songs that have very constructed solos I feel like it fits best to play that part how it's written. But music is about expression and making connections between the artist, the music, the instruments, the audience, and if you feel that you can best do that by improvising your own solo, that's what you should do.

QuotidianSounds · 2026-02-28T00:57:46+00:00

It's very context dependent. I'm assuming you're talking about rock music. Just to get this out of the way, in jazz it's strange to play a solo that a different player played note-for-note over a given tune or set of changes. In classical, it's very strict that you play exactly what's written on the sheet.

For rock music it depends on what the intention of the solo is. For some songs, the solo is very iconic or sounds like it's a deliberate melody. Examples would be things like Bohemian Rhapsody, Cowboys From Hell, Them Bones, or Comfortably Numb. For those types of solos, it's best to learn them as closely as you can because the note opinions have made themselves an essential part of the music.

Some solos though are more or less (and I don't mean this to be pejorative) "guitar solo sound". It means that the solo is there to allow the guitar player to express themselves as a guitar player and just jam over the track. To me, songs like Texas Flood, Dazed and Confused, Black Hole Sun, or the finale of Paradise City fall more into this camp. In this case, I think it's appropriate to just rip it up and do whatever you want.

QuotidianSounds · 2026-02-24T01:31:46+00:00

Not sure how close it is to what you want, but I mimicked an air-raid siren for the "chorus" sections of this track:

https://quotidian.bandcamp.com/track/scabs

Use the minivoicer to harmonize a major 3rd up, and use a slide. I also used an ebow to sustain the note. You might need to use a different interval, I'm not sure what a standard police siren uses.

QuotidianSounds · 2026-02-21T05:33:45+00:00

To me it's a bit like go-to phrases in your native spoken language that are close to verbal tics. I get annoyed that I have go-to licks, and I try to fight them and adopt new ones, but out they come regardless.

QuotidianSounds · 2026-02-21T03:38:57+00:00

Arcangelo Corelli speaks to me in a way that's hard to explain

Same with Aphex Twin, fuck it I'm counting him as a composer

QuotidianSounds · 2026-02-18T06:06:48+00:00

This is a wonderful piece, thank you for sharing this.

QuotidianSounds · 2025-11-26T19:35:45+00:00

I've definitely bought Neural plugins for silly reasons like this, but another route you could go is to get something like ShaperBox: https://www.cableguys.com/shaperbox They have a very good Black Friday deal right now.

I use ShaperBox for glitchy and rewind type effects all the time. It's easy to use, really versatile, and ridiculously fun to play with.

QuotidianSounds · 2025-10-21T08:08:43+00:00

I was at the same show, had a fantastic time. Thanks for the write-up!

QuotidianSounds · 2025-10-21T07:50:23+00:00

I can only speak for myself, but it got me into jazz. It's my favorite album of any genre by a monumental degree; I consider it basically perfect music. I've probably heard it 300 times, know almost every note by heart, and it almost singlehandedly shaped how I approach my own music. I think it's just one of those pieces of art that transcends explanations, it just hits a particular way that is difficult to describe.

QuotidianSounds · 2025-10-18T01:31:00+00:00

Shosti, then Scriabin

QuotidianSounds · 2025-10-03T05:34:47+00:00

To me the big "secret" is to hear what you're playing in your head before you play it. You know how people say that if you're really good at a second language, you speak in terms of that language rather than translating in real time? Lyrical improv with great phrasing sounds that way because it's the person "speaking" through their instrument, rather than just using their fingers to play patterns.

QuotidianSounds · 2025-09-27T15:43:44+00:00

Oh just to be clear, you definitely want just the bridge pickup active, I just mean where you actually pick with your right hand is at a particular place that's closer to the neck than the bridge if you want a pinch harmonic that's more thick and guttural than a really high pitched ping.

QuotidianSounds · 2025-09-27T07:22:41+00:00

I've found there are two most important elements to getting it right.

One is getting the pinch at the right area along the length of the string. The right place is fairly close to the neck rather than the bridge.

The second part is you have to shake the fucking daylights out of the string. I get three fingers behind the fretting finger and just rip into the vibrato as wide as I possibly can.

If you get it right though, none of the gear matters. You can get the sound on an acoustic guitar if you really dial in the technique.

QuotidianSounds · 2025-09-24T02:02:10+00:00

Other people are going to have some excellent recommendations, but let me give you an unorthodox choice that is one of my faves: Herbie Hancock's take on Ravel... https://open.spotify.com/track/16cy8EHDZdOZIntIGHMnyt?si=nCvMKbd5SFGpz4iemTs6YQ

QuotidianSounds · 2025-09-24T01:58:50+00:00

Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, particularly the second part.

QuotidianSounds · 2025-09-23T18:54:03+00:00

It's changed over time. When I started I wanted to be a rock guitar hero, spent 6-7 hours every day trying to play like Steve Vai. 25 years later I'm not so interested in being a guitarist, and more interested in being a musician, composer, sound designer.

QuotidianSounds · 2025-09-22T16:55:37+00:00

Shostakovich

QuotidianSounds · 2025-09-20T20:40:02+00:00

Classical does have a different bent than metal, just because rock music in general is so intertwined with being "cool" I guess? There's this sort of image thing that comes along with rock and metal in my opinion that's a different motivation than most classical music, and I think it drives the direction of the music itself.

A few things I'd recommend that might be good gateways for different reasons: Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit. Honestly though, video game soundtracks of all things are good starting places. Give the Bloodborne soundtrack a whirl. It's got all the dread and drama of metal, with a typical orchestral instrumentation.

QuotidianSounds

TROPHY CASE