Musical recordings

I'm actually a bass player rather than a guitarist, but most of the stuff I've recorded recently has been more guitar-oriented. This page is mainly just for fun, and will collect various recordings as of January '06.

I'm going to do this the way Andrew Walker did it.

Date	Title	Creative notes	Technical notes
1/4/2007	Walking on Air	Another new song by me. I don't want to talk about the creative impetus at this point, so let me comment on a few musical issues. First, it was great fun for me to get back to spending time thinking about and playing some really fun bass parts. I greatly enjoyed working out (and now love playing), this bassline, which is kind of a Mike Porcaro meets Adam Clayton approach to the chords. It's very mobile in the second verse, for example, and the rising part under the guitar solo is very simple, but I think tremendously effective in context. Speaking of the solo, I'm quite proud of that; it was like pulling teeth to write, but I now very much enjoy playing it, and I also tried to find a creative guitar part for the section after the "heavy" bit, and ended up with a sort of country-style twangy part that I'm really quite proud of. That's far from my usual style, but I think it works (it also shows how liberating progressive rock is as a medium: you have a kind of Megadeth-ish heavy groove, topped by a piano part, followed by a Toto-ish chorus, followed by a country guitar!). Lastly, the most frequent comment that I got about The Sword of Damocles was that it was hard to listen to without the vocal line, so on this track, I substituted a guitar part for the vocal melody and harmonies; it's hopefully clear where the guitar is guitar and where it's suppose to be voice.	The principal technical point to make about this track is that it is a big production, and a vast improvement on The Sword of Damocles and E55 (although I realize there are still problems) - I was a lot more careful about and attentive to levels, timing and so on, although the timing problems are really latency problems, not my natural difficulties with rhythm, and will therefore persist until I get a better soundcard. There are a lot of tracks in use here, which made mixing it quite the adventure. I also paid attention to building a good overall guitar picture using complimentary sounds, rather than looking for a single sound from the Voodu Valve. The bass is suitably loud and clear (and would be louder and clearer if I wasn't so averse to compressing the hell out of it), which is a hallmark of my productions. I found a home for the EVM Syncoder (it comes in very subtly under the guitar solo) and some 12-string. The EVM UltraSonique makes some big plays here - it basically is the last verse, and adds a neat and bubbly electronica feel to a few places in the song.
1/3/2007	Unicron's Theme (Vince DiCola)	Familiar to Transformers the Movie fans everywhere. :) I contribute very little to this creatively. I didn't write it, and I didn't sequence it (credit to Antoine Fafard), but I had some fun playing around with producing it. The closest to a creative contribution from me is the vocals - I felt it needed something to act as a focal point, and concluded that a voice was a good idea, but I thought more in the mode of Tori Amos' Not the Red Baron or Tears for Fears' Pharoahs - scratchy and indistict - rather than clearly intelligble spoken word, as in Roger Waters' Ballad of Bill Hubbard - would be interesting. And it is!	This is basically a demo track for EVM products. The guts of the sound are EVM's Syncoder vocoder simulator, UltraSonique and bass VSTIs. The vocals are also processed through their V90 reverb unit. The Syncoder doesn't exactly sound like a Vocoder, but it adds this terrific wash of sound to the mix, and it's very effective here. I'll have to check what the Melotron is.
8/7/2006	E55 (Simple Minds)	I think Glenn McDonald put it best: "an unassuming little piece ... Whether anybody but me will react as strongly to it I'm unsure, but I can't stop listening to it. It's resolutely mechanical, and simultaneously epic, in sort of the way Vangelis's Chariots of Fire theme was ... simple and unassuming, but I find it completely charming." Like McDonald, I reacted very strongly to this piece, and listened to it constantly when I went to Russia a few months after its release. It thus has very strong assocation with memories of that country and trip. It's been an aspiration to program this for quite a while, although I took a couple of liberties. This has been very satisfying to work on (I added a bass groove a la Guy Pratt and a bluesy guitar solo), and even having been put through a mauling by yours truly, I still find it hypnotic.	The same setup as for The Sword of Damocles, discussed below. One technique note - this piece just begged for some bass chords, and it got them. They don't always work, but it's always fun to find a home for them.
7/31/2006	High Hopes (Pink Floyd)	As with the Shout solo, see below: one of David Gilmour's best solos, ruined by yours truly. I love this song, although for reasons mysterious even to me, it always reminds me of high school and a girl I was infatuated with at the time called Rowena Hopkins. Anyways, I'd wanted to record a take on this for a while, and I finally did so a couple of months ago, only to decide it wasn't much good. Found it again yesterday, and thought that even with a few bum notes, I'm happy enough with it to put it out there. Vibrato still needs some work (and for some reason, I'm back into the habit of playing entirely too many notes), but it's getting better.	Pretty much identical to War, discussed below. I might have another shot at this when I finally get around to buying a strat - the Les Paul really just doesn't suit this track, it's too fat and thick, whereas the tone needs to be glassy and open for these big Gilmour solos.
6/26/2006	The Sword of Damocles (demo)	Let me start by saying that there are several problems with this demo: (a) the vocals aren't recorded yet, and it really needs to have real drums rather than a loop; (b) it was recorded entirely backwards, insofar as you should always start with the bass and drums, and the result is demonstrative of why you should always start with the bass and drums; (c) a few sync/latency problems; (d) does the middle section even work? Can you have a sort of jazz thing mixed with a Beatles-y flute part in a polyrhythmic pattern? (e) I still can't play piano to save my life; (f) I could be happier with the mix ...[that's enough problems. ed.] But for all that, this is actually the first whole song (as opposed to just bits and pieces or arrangements) that I've written since the late 1990s; I have a work rate that makes David Gilmour and Peter Gabriel look active. I think it's good, and I love the orchestration, even if I do say so myself. This, then, constitutes the first step in slowly working up to writing the bulk of my concept album How the Mighty Hath Fallen, by now a good ten years in planning.	This uses the kitchen sink. Guitar-wise it's the usual Les Paul / Voodu Valve combination; my beloved Boss CH1 provided the chorus effect on the rhythm guitar. The bass is my Samick Fairlane into the Voodu Valve with a 15" speaker simulatioon and a little compression. There's a smorgasbord of hard and softsynths here too: there's a lot of K2000 on here, both native souns and samples. Lastly, the drums (which I'm not happy with) are from Cubase's built-on LM7 VSTI.
3/16/2006	No Good for Me (the Corrs)	Something you may not know about me is that I love Sharon Corr's violin solos. The Corrs started out with a very good debut album, Forgiven not Forgotten, which had just the right balance of pop enthusiasm and actual musical content, and they've been getting systematically blander and less interesting with each album released since. This is my adaption of a more obscure cut from Talk on Corners, their last album that was on balance any good.	This was cut at the same time as the last track, with essentially the same settings; it was delayed because I couldn't get the mix right..
3/15/2006	Mark's prog thing	Mark Moore offered up an amazing track for forumzers to jam over; most of it was beyond my abilities, but this one section cried out for a melodic part, and that I can do. I had most of the melodies worked out quite quickly, but for some reason, actually nailing the part seemed to take a LONG time...Which made this the complete opposite to the March Jam. This took hours and dozens of takes, and there are still some intonation problems on some of the bends.	In the end, the composite track uses parts from only three takes. The main take gives way to a punch-in from 00:38-00:45, and then the final flurry of notes is another punch-in. I cut back on the gain a little for this one.
3/7/2006	March JP forum jam	I was shooting for something like a Wes Montgomery thing (laid-back groove, lots of octaves), but the middle section where the organ gets a little more intense seemed to demand something a little more aggressive. All in all, I'm told, it sounds very Pink Floyd. Which isn't Wes Montgomery, but it's still a heck of a compliment.	Very few takeson this one. The main clean part was "first take, single take" with three punch-ins to fix bum notes. I played two versions of the distorted solo, picked one in toto, added a couple of overdubbed flourishes in various places, and mixed. Simple!
2/13/2006	War (Vince DiCola)	One of my favorite film soundtracks is Transformers: The Movie (yes, I'm that age), and the composer - Vince DiCola, who's an incredibly gifted keyobard player and composer - also wrote music for Rocky IV, from whence this track is drawn. I loved what Rick Graham (another incredibly talented guy) did to Training Montage, so here's me having a go at doing essentially the same sort of thing.	The guitars are essentially more of the same, with the exception that the delay this time is 3/16ths (that is, at 102bpm, just over 450ms). There are several VST instruments here, including Rumpelrausch Täips' Crazy Diamonds VST instrument; the organ in the unison section is Native Instruments' B4, and piano (which is deadpan 80s Vince / Peter Gabriel) is 4Piano. I have no idea who sequenced the MIDI file I worked from, but if "youdunnit," e-mail me and I'll credit you.
2/11/2006	Shout (Tears for Fears)	One of the best solos of the 1980s. Ruined by yours truly.	The original was played on a strat, so a hefty chunk of extra treble and the bridge pickup all the way again. There's a nice stereo spread that's achieved here by bouncing the drums, bass, organ and synth down to a single track, then copying that track, and panning one hard left and the other hard right, leaving the guitar dead center.
2/10/2006	Brief Encounter (Jan Cyrka)	An attempt at my favorite tune by Jan Cyrka. This was recorded as a single take, rather than using overdubs, and actually does pretty well on the "not hitting so many bum notes" front - right up until the final note, which wobbles a touch too much. Argh!	A splash of reverb, more mids, less gain and bass than Sua Sponte, which cleans up the sound a lot. Instead of going back and forth between pickups per usual, this just uses the bridge pickup.
2/6/2006	The Crush of Love (Joe Satriani)	This is probably the only Satch tune I can even vaguely attempt, so with due apologies to Joe, here's a fairly butchered version of The Crush of Love. Some wrong notes, and my vibrato still needs some serious work, as do bends.	This uses the same patch as Sua Sponte, but augmented with a Boss CH1 stereo chorus (easily the best effect pedal ever built) and a Jim Dunlop CryBaby Wah.
1/23/2006	Sua Sponte	Feeling duly emboldened after some positive feedback from my recent first foray into soloing over a backing track, I've had another go; apropos, here I am having a bit of a wail over an 80s Robben Ford / Steve Lukather style backing track (which, I have to add, I didn't write, it's borrowed). Points of reference are the afore-mentioned Luke and Robben, some John Squire, a little Satch, and quite a lot of Jan Cyrka. There are a couple of mistakes (I feel compelled to point out that the G# at 00:59 through 1:04 isn't one of them - it's supposed to be an homage to a Luke solo), but overall, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.	The Les Paul into a Rocktron Voodu Valve. On the advice of several JP forum posters, I've dumped all of the modulation (my preference is a more effect-heavy lead), and on the advice (obviously not to me personally) of Steve Lukather, I've dumped out the reverb, leaving just the pre-amp into a 900ms over 460ms delay.
1/18/2006	The Balance of Judgement (§III) (demo)	A very rough demo sketch for the instrumental coda of a song I'm working on. This started out with an organ part, which didn't make the mix; I then added the bell part as an electric piano part, and worked out the main piano part that now underlies the first minute or so. Then I came up with the pad part, added the bass, replaced the electric piano with bells, and finally, the solo was one take.	The piano and one of the pads is a Kurzweil Micropiano, and the rest of the keys and the bass are from a K2000. The guitar is a Les Paul into a Rocktron Voodu valve, using the EVH eruption preset. There's also a second guitar part, with a very deep tremolo effect, which fades in and out.
1/18/2006	January JP Forum jam	The backing track almost immediately suggested the overall structure of the guitar parts for this one, although in a way, it was a breach birth. The lead-in melody came from the end harmony part, i.e., I knew the end needed a harmony part, so I wrote that part and then went back and put the same melody on the beginning. I also knew I wanted to have the octave part, and that the octave part should lead to the harmony, and the notes for that octave part suggested themselves, almost. From those starting points, the pick scratch and the power chord are a Satriani thing (pilfered from Cool #9), and the general structure - that is to say, starting around the seventh position and where and how to go up to the fifteenth were pretty obvious markers. The only thing that took some thought was how to bridge from the straight ahead soloing into the octave part, which I resolved by using the slightly off-time part around the fifth position.	It's the Les Paul and the Voodu Valve again; this one has some Petrucci-esque abuse of the pickup selector switch. Everything except the guitar is part of the backing track.

Stuff I use:

Epiphone Les Paul standard
Samick Fairlane
Rocktron Voodu Valve
Alesis Midiverb 4
Boss CH1 chorus
Jim Dunlop Cry Baby wah
Kurzweil K2000
Kurzweil Micropiano

Click here for a diagram of the guitar rig.

I started playing guitar when I was 16, but my first love is bass (the first website I ever made was a tribute to John Paul Jones). Funnily enough, I never seem to end up playing bass when I do projects...Always seems to be guitar. Anyway, I hadn't played guitar seriously for at least a couple of years, but this year I started thinking it'd be fun to find the time to get back into it, as a sort of creative endeavour that's missing in my other interests. So this stuff is more for my indulgence than for anything else.

Bass players who influenced me or who I just like: John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), Guy Pratt (session player with Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Whitesnake, Madonna), Mike Porcaro (Toto), Chris Squire (Yes), Peter Hook (New Order), Adam Clayton (U2), Adam Nitti, Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), Mani (Stone Roses), Duck Dunn (the MGs; Blues Brothers Band), Bernard Edwards (Chic), Steve Harris (Iron Maiden), Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath), Roscoe Beck, Larry Graham (Sly & The Family Stone), John Patitucci, Tony Levin, Mike Mills (REM). (I once wrote out a list similar to this on a message board, and someone same "hey, you forgot Jaco!" - I hadn't and I haven't. He's just not on the list. Never got into Jaco's work).

Guitar players who influenced me or who I just like: Charlie Burchill (Simple Minds), David Gilmour, Jan Cyrka, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai (his more melodic stuff, that is - I like stuff like Liberty and Tender Surrender, not the esoteric noisemaking he seems fond of), John Petrucci (Dream Theater) (as a general rule, I only like his pre-1999 stuff, really), Slash (Guns n' Roses), James Hetfield (Metallica), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Noel Gallagher (Oasis) (I'm not apologizing for this one), Robben Ford, Eric Johnson, Pat Travers, Pat Metheny, Wes Montgomery, Rick Graham, Steve Lukather (Toto), The Edge (U2).