Outrageous solos

As previously promised, the sub-section I am working on "The Pride Of Life" features outrageous solos on various instruments.

First, classical guitar, then drums, then bass, then piano and finally electric guitar. then there is a build-up coda (in 7/8) featuring all but drums.

The drums and piano are performed through samplers and so can be programmed as MIDI instruments, which is how the solos were realised, working through slowly and adding the notes by hand.

Guitars and bass are a different matter.  There were two major techniques used - firstly breaking things down into short phrases or sub-phrases, usually a bar or two in length. Secondly, when I want fast playing to a) pitch-shift down an octave and b) resample to twice the speed.  This effectively doubles the speed without changing the pitch.  Not all the phrases have this done, sometimes I did it when I didn't actually need to (I could actually play the phrase) and for parts of the electric guitar I did it twice making it really, really fast.

Basically it's taken quite a lot of time to do this, each sub-30 second solo taking at least an hour to create, this has been one of the most work-intensive sections, but I believe it is worth it.

The other thing I have added is clapping to the flamenco guitar backing, for the first two times through the pattern before the drums solo (after both the drums and bass solos the respective instruments join the backing). I cheated and used clapping samples (I could have done this for real but fake claps often sound better than real).

that Flamenco Feeling

Still on the theme of temptations, the third temptation is "The Pride Of Life".  To me it seems obvious that this should be littered with the most outrageous soloing. Also to me it seems obvious that this sub-section should be Flamenco.

There are two reasons for this. The first is from the classic book Asterix in Spain, where the Spanish are depicted as noble, stubborn and above all, proud, and their Flamenco music is an outpouring of this pride. (please note this opinion is not necessarily the opinion of the author)

The second is that I happen to have a Flamenco idea I wanted to use, which follows naturally on from the somewhat Flamenco ending of the previous section.  The classical guitar sound continues now into it's third sub-section.

And the real reason that I have so many ideas on classical guitar this time round is that I have unearthed a cheap classical guitar that someone lent or gave me to look after to hang around for my son (1 yr old) to play with and have played at him.  Consequently I've been playing it quite a bit.

 Anyway, the first outrageous aspect of the section is the chord/rhythm pattern itself, one of my most complex yet. It's (let me think) 17 bars long with the following chords and times:

• 1 bar Am 4/4
• 1 bar G, F 6/8
• 2 bars E 4/4
• 1 bar Am 4/4
• 1 bar G, F 6/8
• 1 bar E 4/4
• 2 bars C 4/4
• 2 bars G 4/4
• 2 bars F with suspended B and E 4/4
• 3 bars E 7/8
• 1 bar gap 4/4

This is a total of 129 1/8th beats.  In the three minutes I have the time to play this 6 times through and then have a coda of 12 bars E in 7/8

I have recorded the backing flamenco guitar for this, as I often do, twice to give it stereo depth.  This is probably the only playing in this sub-section which will be genuine, unedited and played back at the same speed it was recorded. I played it to a (rather complicated) click-track and I feel as if I might actually have some skill at this guitar thing.

 

Tweaky tweaky

Just a short post after a short session, re-recording some kazoo, hopefully better in tune this time.  It certainly sounds better to me.  Also processing the classical guitar slightly differently - it's amazing what processing can do, I think it's making a really cheap classical guitar sound like quite an expensive guitar.

My reservation about the guitar stuff is that it was really quick to record. Maybe this is because I'm quite comfortable with a classical guitar (my first guitar was a classical) and hopefully I'm quite good at playing it.  This is something that I really need to leave to marinade and see how much I like it or not.

In the list of stolen things I did not acknowledge the bit of Pink Floyd that is in there too.  Sorry Roger (actually it's probably Dave).  It's a guitar instrumental from The Wall, the name of which I forget just now.

Temptations part 2

So sub-section 3.2.2 is "The lust of the eyes" - greed and theft, musically this could be called plagiarism.  Tributes, or ripping off.

This fits nicely with what I wanted to do.  In the previous two albums I have had a section which is just a solo instrument.  First was piano ("lost in a moonlit desert") then came electric piano ("lost in a monochrome desert") and this time - classical guitar. The section unashamedly copies or steals from Scheherezade by Rimsky Korsakov, "Private Investigations" by Dire Straits, a descending arpeggio riff from previous stuff of mine (including ""Lost in a Monochrome Desert" and a song I wrote called "Behind The Storm"), God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and a classical piece, I forget what it is but I think it might be Albéniz.