Eric P. Metze

Look closer.

Here’s a project I have spent quite some time working on, but not nearly as much time as Dream Theater spent creating the music that went into it. This is a complete album of the nearly two decades of DT’s career. It starts with an intro that includes all of their albums, ends with an outro that includes all of their albums, and has one representative track from each album in between.

ytsevolution.metzae.net

This is the updated version that includes a track from their newest album, Systematic Chaos. The entire track list is as follows:

1. (intro)
2. The Ytse Jam
3. Learning to Live
4. Scarred
5. Burning My Soul
6. Beyond This Life
7. Blind Faith
8. Endless Sacrifice
9. Never Enough
10. The Ministry of Lost Souls
11. (outro)

I would recommend you listening to this all at once, if you can. There are no track breaks because it’s supposed to represent the typical length of a musical piece by DT. If you find that you love it and absolutely must have a copy in CD form, let me know. I have to burn special copies because of the tracks.

This is a suite of four songs that I mixed together after I realized that they are parts of a larger body of work that Dream Theater is actively working on. Each song is from a different album and will likely be performed as a single piece of music once they have put it all together. The drummer and one of the main creative minds of the band, Mike Portnoy, has created this suite as an homage to the twelve step program from Alcoholic’s Anonymous. Each section is titled after a step in the program.

I’m only uploading this because there is no mixed version, and I would encourage you to get the albums if you liked them. Then again, if you do know about this suite, chances are you already have the albums.

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So, it occurred to me recently that there are four different versions of the same song that I had on my computer, but it’s not immediately obvious that this is the case. I just thought it was so weird that I wanted to share it. And, besides…I wanted to share my remix anyway.

A Perfect Circle released the following songs (in this order) on their second album, Thirteenth Step:

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Then, they released a remix (of sorts) on their third album, eMotive:

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So anyway, a while back I created a remix of all three songs, which I’ve given the annoying title “Counting Bodies Like Metzae to the Lullaby of the Pet Drums.”

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The thing is, I just remembered last night that I’d used all three of those songs to create the remix. I took different sections of every version I could find (even a bit or two from other songs). I sped it up and mixed it all together with an industrial sound and rhythm.

Geeky things to be aware of…

• The file is loopable, which is intended to echo the cycle of violence, war, and the propaganda that causes it. It starts and ends with the sound of boots marching, a sound that A Perfect Circle clearly intended to be a part of the Nazi/Hilter/military theme. I just sped it up and slowed it down and made the ends meet.
• Right around two minutes into the song, listen for the low male voices and eerie sounds. It is the track “Palpatine’s Teachings” from Revenge of the Sith. I didn’t put that there because I’m obsessed with Palpatine (even though I am), but because of how closely the two themes relate to one another, both philosophically and musically. Plus, it sounds creepy and cool.
• About three minutes into the song, I wanted to emphasize the only “bad” word in the whole song. I pumped up the volume and added an echo for when Maynard says “fuck” because he kind of mumbles it. In the end, though, it made a nice smacking sound that gets the point across just fine. Besides, if you don’t know what he’s saying there, you’re not really listening to the song anyway.

This is a musical collage, so to speak, an homage to dark and powerful film scores. It is a single piece of music, with an emphasis on the more powerful or dark moments produced by great musical minds throughout the soundtrack genre. I have not composed any of this music, but I have been editing, expanding, and eliminating sections for several years. It is my hope that each version is better (at least to me) than the previous one.

Symphoniacal: Sound Occupies Space

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This is a piece that I mixed together when I first discovered Cool Edit Pro (which is now called Adobe Audition). It’s a wacky remix/homage/compilation thing that is made of the intense and instrumental moments from Dream Theater’s first few albums. I would like to make another one, but there are twice as many albums and about three times as much music to use now. The thought of doing that is daunting, so I’m leaving this mostly out of posterity.

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