The Mars Volta

The Mars Volta has influences all my writing recently. Musically and lyrically. Each one of their songs is stuffed with pure performance, musical genius, and trashing energy. Many people just see them as a punk jam band with little influence or constructive talent. Its true if you look them up on you-tube most of what you see is 7-8 guys spazzing on their instruments for a long time. Sometimes their entire set-list has been just one or two songs dragged out 45 minutes to an hour.



I applaud if you watched the whole thing




You see them live and they are out of control. what they planned to play on the set list is tossed out the window. Bridges turn into elaborate epics of noises on solos on riffs on licks on distortion. It takes a fast ear and head to keep up. During this next song, they cut to a 29/16 timed bridge out of nowhere. It is all improvisation until they break into the next song. They later recorded this in a song called "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus".



The next studio performance is the closest thing on the internet of them under control. Unless you rip an mp3 of their actual studio work.


This is them playing structured, written out material.

When they went into the studio to record "Amputechture", none of the band-mates knew what they were going record but the guitarist, omar. He had written everything for every instrument in detail with no room for improvisation. He, like Frank Zappa, doesn't even perform in the studio. He has another guitarist learn the music to perform it on the album. Omar becomes a genius producer and composer in this sense. The musicians dont even listen to each-other's part. They perform what is written in front of them and dont ask questions. All the parts are later cut together like pbj. Simply, Omar knew what he wanted and how to achieve it. The only person that was aloud to listen to the songs in their entirety was Cedric, the vocalist. He writes the lyrics and melodies while he listens to the song.

It is so rare to find such extremes in music composition and prog-rock jamming in an alternative punk band. While jazz musicians accomplish this all the time, most bands will fall to one extreme or another by jamming to write (punk-pop, alternative), or stuffing their heads with sheet music (Commercial Jazz). I hope to eventually accomplish what omar has accomplished by mastering both respectable talents.