This weeks Mashup Monday brings to you a mashup of two of my favorite bands, Linkin Park and Metallica (with a hint of Apocalyptica). Primarily, this mashup is the instrumentals and vocals from Linkin Park’s My December and the vocals and guitar solo from Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters, Apocalyptica comes into play only at the intro. Apocalyptica started out as a string tribute to Metallica and eventually spread into originals, and I can tell you if you haven’t listened to them before it’s definitely worth checking out (here is their cover of Metallica’s One to get you started). Anyways, back to the mashup (seriously though, playing that solo on cello?! Come on… oh right, mashup). These two songs are definitely lighter musically than their respective artists other songs, but still are two of their best. What really makes this mashup incredibly impressive is their differing time signatures.

My December sits in a 4/4 time (each quarter note gets a beat with four beats in a measure) while Nothing Else Matters chills in a 3/4 time (quarter notes getting the beat with three beats to a measure). Combining the two is no easy task, but Kill_mR_DJ mashups makes it happen.  One could argue that Nothing Else Matters is in a 6/4 time (six beats to a measure) to phase it out a little better, but really I will use it to better explain how it fits… hopefully. So the main riff of Nothing is a constant strum of quarter notes in the 6/4 time signature, so 6 beats, or notes, per measure. That can be difficult to match to a 4/4 time, but he does it adjusting the tempo of Nothing to have the beats fall into a triplet pattern with My December. A triplet is just three evenly spaced notes spread across a certain amount of beats, and in this case its three notes per two beats. So with that, this artist is able to time the riff within a single measure of My December, making it reasonable to throw Nothing Else Matters vocals on top it all and make it sound incredible! I am very impressed with this mashup and I am going to have to dig deeper into this artist’s catalog.

Linkin Park vs Metallica – My December Matters

I hope my explanation was somewhat clear… maybe. I am more than happy to further talk about it if anyone is interested, patterns are cool! There is a really neat metal song intro that is in 10/8 time that transitions… off topic. Ok. I hope you enjoyed that mashup, I think it’s pretty solid. As per usual, if you hear anything that you think sounds pretty neat, don’t hesitate to send it our way at our Facebook page or in an e-mail to plustalonholmes@fundmc.net. Have a great week!