This tune is about that time at the end of a good day when you’re dropping off to sleep, feeling generally well disposed and thinking about how lucky you are to have the people you love. This is a reprise of another song; I wrote two quite different arrangements to the main melody and they branched off into their own separate things.
This track was originally inspired by the tones from the Neural DSP Archetype: Petrucci plugin, specifically the “Glasgow Kiss” preset and the default rhythm tone. I added some extra flanger to make the lead guitar “sing” a bit more and also as the (extremely) lazy man’s alternative to hooking up a wah pedal. The result ended up a long way away from progressive rock and a lot closer to my comfort zone of Surfing with the Alien/Flying in a Blue Dream-style surf rock with added shred.
Guitar YouTuber KDH is currently running a solo competition, and I thought I’d take a swing at it. I’m at best an intermediate player by modern standards, but KDH appears to be a bit of a hair metal revivalist himself and so I figured that my stuck-in-the-80s brand of shred would fit in quite nicely.
This solo is comped to fix a few bum notes – and so only part of this video is the actual live take – but it’s all improvised apart from that one really obviously thought-out-in-advance bit. I’m running my JEM through the Soldano SLO-100 X plugin, which seemed an obvious choice for this sort of sound.
This song is an exercise in trying to take the most boneheaded riff possible and make it sound more complicated than it really is. The main guitar figure is just two alternating barre chords (played in drop D for even more simplicity) but it doesn’t really sound that way since the harmony is implied by the bass and melody. This isn’t exactly rocket science from a compositional perspective but I like the sense of swagger you can get from doing really simple stuff with conviction.
This track started out with just the rhythm part and then somehow turned into what I think it would sound like if Joe Satriani played lead guitar for Mogwai and everyone was a bit tipsy.
This is a mid-tempo rock track partly inspired by the tones I got out of the Neural DSP Mesa Boogie Mark IIc+ suite. The IIc+ is famous for being the Metallica Amp, but it’s also great for classic rock rhythm and lead sounds.
I’ve mentioned it a couple of times before, but as someone who was introduced to modern rock guitar by Joe Satriani’s The Extremist (before quickly discovering Surfing with the Alien and Flying in a Blue Dream), I’ve continued to have a huge affection for up-tempo instrumental rock tracks that are less about showing off, and more about establishing a strong melody and having some fun.
Christmas isn’t just about snow and wellington boots and a big roaring fire; in fact that only really applies in the Northern Hemisphere. This song was written after a rather nice Christmas Day spent working on my tan. As it turns out, warm, laid back, summery sounding guitars actually go surprisingly well with sleigh bells.
I bought the SR1.6AMP because I decided needed a six-string guitar with an Evertune bridge to make it easier to record clearer, more in-tune rhythm parts which would sit nicely in a mix with the synthesised instruments I use for orchestration. In particular, I wanted to try out the Fishman Fluence Modern pickups, since I’d heard that they were both very noiseless and also quite versatile. I figured that I’d try to put together a quick demo song, using as many different pickup settings as possible, as part of the process of figuring out how I can incorporate this guitar into my recording process.
The distorted rhythm guitars were recorded using Otto Audio‘s II II II II, and the lead guitars and clean rhythm are Neural DSP’s Plini plugin. The harmony guitars use Logic’s built-in guitar presets. The drums are Toontrack’s EZ Drummer with the Drumkit From Hell sound bank, and the bass is my Ibanez SRX700 recorded using Neural DSP Parallax.
I thought I’d write up some first impressions of the SolarSR1.6AMP which I just picked up. I haven’t seen any reviews for this model online at all, so I figured somebody might find this helpful. This is a six-string superstrat with a set-through neck joint (I think? the website also describes it as a through-neck at some points) and Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers, all topped off with a beautifully garish gold/metallic purple gloss colour scheme. The main selling point of Solars is that they use the Evertune constant-tension bridge across most of their higher-end models. The Evertune is an amazing piece of equipment which, in addition to keeping the guitar in tune, also dramatically improves the intonation in every position on the fretboard. As a result chords are much more pleasant to the ear, especially when playing with distortion. Not only were Solar early and enthusiastic adopters of the Evertune, they also work very hard to keep this very expensive and complicated piece of engineering from impacting the price of the instrument too much. As a result the SR1.6AMP comes in at about half the price of the closest equivalent Evertune/Fishman-equipped Ibanez RG, which is admittedly part of the Japanese-made Premium range but uses a cheaper and less ergonomic bolt-on neck joint.
