I present to you all the first post on my passion blog, where I have decided to talk about a different genre or subgenre of music that I listen to with each post. For this entry specifically, I would like to talk about a subgenre of instrumental music called math rock. This genre heavily features rhythmically complex guitar playing accompanied with drums with and, oftentimes, a bassist. In most cases, lyrics get axed in favor of more artistic vocal work, where a voice becomes an instrument rather than a way to tell a story. However, some scenarios create a different situation where a vocalist may employ lyrics to enhance the “vibe” of the song.
My favorite band for this genre boasts a three-person group called Covet. They follow the typical model for math rock musicians by having one guitarist, one bassist, and one drummer. The guitarist, Yvette Young, uses many different complex techniques to play melodies and harmonies on the same instrument. Such a technique waxes into possibility by learning fingerstyle, a form of playing guitar that in no way involves a pick. With this style, guitarists will tap strings with their left hand and pluck different ones with their right, thus creating two different and separate musical parts on one instrument. Math rock guitarists must practice for many years before fully honing such a talent, especially in a genre that is defined by its complex rhythmic structures, which only makes their job harder.
Yvette Young possesses immense talent regarding fingerstyle guitar, as shown by “Shibuya” (from the album “Effloresce”), Covet’s most popular song on Spotify which reflects and demonstrates her skills very well. If any of my readers take an interest toward trying out math rock, I highly recommend starting with this song! My personal favorite song from them is called “Parachute” which comes from Covet’s most recent album, “Technicolor”. I find this one in particular especially unique, because while it still captures Covet’s signature sound, Young actually does some lyrical singing and her voice fits very well with the rest of the band’s sound.
Plentiful amounts of underappreciated talent that specializes in making this niche music becomes properly exemplified in bands and artists like Ichika Nito (leans more into a genre called progressive rock), Via Luna, Clever Girl, and of course Covet as well! Hopefully after reading this blog you will be willing to try listening to math rock, and even if you happen to dislike the music, it will always serve as perfect study music!
I’ve heard of math rock before and lightly listened, but I just started playing Covet’s discography while reading and I’m really enjoying it. I love music especially looking at it from musician point of view and this genre is incredibly hard to master so huge respect to this band. It’s also not something I would normally put on for myself because I usually prefer to listen to something with lyrics but something about this still keeps my mind busy and captivated even without vocals. I’m so excited to keep reading your blog!
I’m glad you like Covet! It’s great music to play when you are doing some other light activity. I like this genre a lot specifically because it is able to capture your attention without words, which is incredibly difficult to do. It’s very refreshing to hear that I’m not the only one who thinks so!
This was a very interesting article! Lyricism and writing have always been a very important factor of music to me, but you’ve convinced to me to check out math rock. I really liked some of the verbs you used throughout, such as when you referred to lyrics being “axed”.
In my second paragraph, I changed “Such a technique becomes possible” to “Such a technique waxes into possibility”