Guitarbloke

Blog posts

  • Make It Count

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This was honestly a really difficult one but I think it’s 90% of the way there. I decided that I just had to bite the bullet now as I have been badly procrastinating on putting this out. The subject matter is pretty heavy, and there’s a lot of singing involved which is a very, very long way away from my comfort zone.

    As to how I justify writing a 8 minute 40 second song, I have two justifications; firstly, I think it really does go some places in that time all of which build to a pretty powerful conclusion, and secondly because it’s prog rock and that’s just how these things are done.

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  • Change

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This is a somewhat darker track, both in terms of the themes but also the overall tonality. I had a period where I was experiencing some pretty big challenges and this translated into writing a lot of music which starts out very dark and brooding, but I’ve always tried to find a way to turn things around and end on a more uplifting, positive note. You know how everyone goes on about how Every Breath You Take is so dark and clever because the music never changes and the narrator remains trapped in his obsession? Well, this is the opposite of that.

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  • All of Us Together

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    by

    geebee
    in

    I think I must have been listening to Ommadawn a lot when I wrote this; more in terms of the use of vibrato and ornamentation than the composition. The writing process was very quick; I improvised the melody in one-and-a-half takes and after that the arrangement also came together quite naturally. It’s nice when a piece of music decides on how it’s going to sound without me having to think about it too hard.

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  • Cetacean

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This one really goes places. I tried splitting the different sections out into their own songs but none of them worked out. I think there’s a reasonable flow from one section to another, so it doesn’t seem too odd unless you directly compare the final section with the introduction. As you can imagine from the title and the atmosphere of the introduction this started out inspired by “Leviathan” but then it diverges pretty wildly and the QOTSA-with-double-kick drums aren’t like anything Mastodon would ever do.

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  • Eminence

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This is a song that I wrote while I was trying to write another song, which itself turned into two separate songs. Sometimes compositions take a lot of effort to fit together, and sometimes they seem to just come out naturally. You’ll often hear from (actual, professional) songwriters that they feel like a particular piece of music already exists out there, independently, and all they are doing is condensing it into a listenable form. The really frustrating part for me is that the music which comes easiest usually ends up being better than the pieces I’ve really sweated over.

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  • Mountaintop

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This is more of an improvised sketch, really, but sometimes a piece of music doesn’t really need anything more added. Gear-wise this is my JEM with the Sustainiac running through Archetype Plini. I might also have used an EBow on some of the backing instruments; it’s inferior to the Sustainiac in nearly every conceivable way with the exception that, since it works on only one string, you can sometimes get a bit more control over exactly which note is sustained.

  • Turns into Mike

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This is a remaster of an older tune; the main difference is that I re-did the bass part and “re-amped” the guitars (i.e. swapped the original Native Instruments Guitar Rig plugins out for Neural DSP equivalents). The verse is heavily inspired by Eric Johnson’s track “Trademark”, while the chorus sounds a lot more like Mike Oldfield to me and the final guitar solo heads distinctly in the direction of Dave Gilmour.

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  • Ominous

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    by

    geebee
    in

    The idea was to have two lead guitar melodies in conversation with each other. If anything, though, my favourite part of this track is the backing, which comes across as nicely claustrophobic.

    This piece starts out both subdued and tense. I had the option to keep it that way, constantly circling back on itself, but I don’t really like music that makes a thing out of never resolving and frankly I felt like a bit of catharsis.

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  • Where is This Going?

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    by

    geebee
    in

    I tend to get more productive when I’m feeling frustrated. Music’s a great way of taking negative emotions and sublimating them into something more positive.

    I like instrumentals that have lyrics (I’m pretty certain that “Liberty” by Steve Vai is an example, and that’s a killer tune). The human voice is much more engaging to listen to than pretty much instrument, and phrasing a melody as if it’s sung helps a lot with making it more memorable. Having a lot of extra harmony parts in the background also helps.

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  • Go Punt

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This is the companion piece to “Ardor“; the two are intended to be the first and last tracks of an EP, although I haven’t quite worked out which songs best fit in between. Despite being, by my standards, unusually dense and orchestrated, this was surprisingly easy to mix.

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