Author: geebee

  • Bigger Than You

    I kept this one is as close to the original demo as I could possibly get it. This was another case of the first thing I played being surprisingly good, so I kept it. This is sort of a cross between Paul Gilbert and Nothing But Thieves, but for some reason those harmonics from Machine…

  • Make It Count

    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…

  • Change

    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…

  • All of Us Together

    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…

  • Cetacean

    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…

  • Eminence

    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…

  • Mountaintop

    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…

  • Turns into Mike

    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…

  • Ominous

    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…

  • Where is This Going?

    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…