Do you DJENT on your Squire VM Baritone Jazzmaster??

[bluemonday]

This was news to me!

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/ho ... f-all-time

I admit my ignorance of Loathe, but if you happened to have bought a Squier VM Baritone Jazzmaster you have something very DESIREABLE for a reason you may not have expected.

Then again, does anyone here use their VM Baritone Jazz for heavy, distorted low-tuned riffs like this?

[JSett]

I saw this happening during the pandemic, it was slightly surreal.

More importantly, it seems you can now get a MIM Baritone neck for just $300! (well, apparently this is old news, but just new news to me haha). Only US shipping though, which is dumb.

[s_mcsleazy]

i have a baritone jazzmaster i built years ago and i remember during the pandemic, i posted a picture of it on instagram and i had a bunch of people not understanding that it wasn't for sale and saying stuff like "you must really love loathe"

honestly, i don't get loathe. they just sound like all the deftones tracks i skip.

[LVC]

The thing I don't get is what can the rare and now overpriced baritone do that the widely available bass VI couldn't?

The VI can djent, as some Youtube videos demonstrate.

[JSett]

The thing I don't get is what can the rare and now overpriced baritone do that the widely available bass VI couldn't?

Not to make wild generalisations* but I think most 'djentlemen' ( ) likely would struggle to understand how to set up a traditional offset correctly.


*proceeds to make wild generalisation

[LVC]

Hmmm... good point.

[s_mcsleazy]

my experience is most djentlemen don't know how to set up their own guitars but will tell you 100 reasons your setup is wrong.

[skeletonpower]

I'm a big fan of using offsets in heavy music, personally.

[JSett]

I'm a big fan of using offsets in heavy music, personally.

A lot of us here have been using them for heavy music for decades. Djent isn't heavy, it's just low-tuned math rock with shitty tone*. The amount of processing they put the guitars through, they could be playing any fucking guitar in the world and it'd sound identical.

*Personal opinion alert!

[skeletonpower]

I'm a big fan of using offsets in heavy music, personally.

A lot of us here have been using them for heavy music for decades. Djent isn't heavy, it's just low-tuned math rock with shitty tone*. The amount of processing they put the guitars through, they could be playing any fucking guitar in the world and it'd sound identical.

*Personal opinion alert!

I don't really disagree with that summary at all lol.

[s_mcsleazy]

i think my biggest issues with djent are 3 things.

1. it's annoyingly became the default style for all heavy music right now and it has been such for a while now. it's got to the point where even bands i love like rolo tomassi have added djent elements to their music. there's interesting things happening in heavy music right now but unless you have a song that copies that riff from doomsday - architects, no one really cares. also god forbid you put on a metal playlist at work because it'll just be djent. it's over saturated the market.

2. the fans are....... quite annoying. the fact that i still hear people say "but does it djent?" after *checks know your meme* 12 years later kinda says everything. during the pandemic, i gave my friend's husband a lift to work, he's an NHS worker and he loves djent. he kinda doesn't understand that not all music is built on the core pillars that djent is. which leads me to 3.

3. i can't stand the production. so i mentioned giving lifts to my friend's husband. well one day when giving him a lift in, i had in/casino/out - at the drive-in in the cd player. this is one of my favorite albums ever btw and i kinda love it for how raw it sounds. he starts saying "well why does it sound like that? the singer is out of tune, they could have fixed that in post. the drummer keeps going out of time, why didn't they quantize it? the guitar sounds so flat, could they not afford any plugins?" i tried explaining it was an album from the late 90's recorded live to tape and he was like "don't make excuses, this wouldn't fly today, this is objectively bad" but i kinda realised that djent doesn't really work for me because i don't hear musicians making music. i hear studio engineers making music and trying to make it as perfect as possible. like i'm glad young people have access to professional level recording equipment, but i can't help but feel good enough isn't good enough for them and no one notices your mistakes like yourself.

p.s. i wanna say i don't hate metal. my favorite album of this year so far is a metal album (check out this song from it: ashenspire - the law of asbestos) i just think the path metal is going down is a bit of a dead end. djent has always been about tuning lower, sounding heavier, more gate, getting the sound to be tighter. it's an arms race and i'm worried this will be something that can alienate kids who just wanna play with their friends.

as for loathe, as much as i dislike them, i like that their taking a risk in a genre that's quite conservative..... i just think i'm not the target audience.

[sal paradise]

You can’t blame the format, it’s been drop A noise for the last 10 years: JM with stock pickups & metalzone turned on full. And actually, those folks are the ones who record live at Bear Bites Horse studios & the like, and would probably use tape if they could.

But I guess this is more the metalcore-turned-beatdown-turned a-tonal, overproduced double-time stuff that people like ADTR started doing?

I’ve always been on the melodic side of hardcore & metal. Give me Darkest Hour or MLIW.

After hearing the new Architects album, I think it’s the ambient stuff that came from BMTH & similar which has made the genre pretty dull (not sure what genre that is- I seem to be spilling all over the place).

On a positive note: the new ETID album is fantastic.

[JSett]

...and he was like "don't make excuses, this wouldn't fly today, this is objectively bad"...

With this one phrase alone I can tell that that person's opinions are (objectively, lol) worthless.

[Embenny]

i kinda realised that djent doesn't really work for me because i don't hear musicians making music. i hear studio engineers making music and trying to make it as perfect as possible. like i'm glad young people have access to professional level recording equipment, but i can't help but feel good enough isn't good enough for them and no one notices your mistakes like yourself.

This. What many "metal" fans seem to totally miss is that Djent is just metal made with the bubblegum pop production approach. Homogenized, quantized, pitch-corrected, formulaic, and more about image than substance.

Metal fans used to absolutely shit on everything that commercial pop music stood for. Now they* seemingly demand it. Sign of the times, I suppose.

*I recognize that metal has many subgenres that still resist these trends, but I'm talking about the "average" metal fan here, and like you said, Djent has infected much of what's mainstream/popular in metal.

[s_mcsleazy]

i kinda realised that djent doesn't really work for me because i don't hear musicians making music. i hear studio engineers making music and trying to make it as perfect as possible. like i'm glad young people have access to professional level recording equipment, but i can't help but feel good enough isn't good enough for them and no one notices your mistakes like yourself.

This. What many "metal" fans seem to totally miss is that Djent is just metal made with the bubblegum pop production approach. Homogenized, quantized, pitch-corrected, formulaic, and more about image than substance.

Metal fans used to absolutely shit on everything that commercial pop music stood for. Now they* seemingly demand it. Sign of the times, I suppose.

*I recognize that metal has many subgenres that still resist these trends, but I'm talking about the "average" metal fan here, and like you said, Djent has infected much of what's mainstream/popular in metal.

my experiences is they still shit on anything even remotely pop.