I'm actually
quite proud of this song. It began as a couple of ideas I just threw
down real quick while trying to work on something else that I already
had ideas for :) After a couple of weeks messing with it, this is the
final result.
The song is very lead guitar oriented, as will be
evident as soon as you hear it. It works well like this I think... after
all, it *is* an instrumental... something needs to do the "talking" in
place of a voice. The lead tracks I feel do a lot of talking, which is
the thing I am probably most proud of... I tend to get so carried away
with the composition of the song, that I end up with something very
machine-like and devoid of feeling... well, this time, I think I got a
lot of feeling across in the guitar work.
If you listen closely, you can hear which lead tracks
were done together, and which were done on separate nights. The first
section of lead tracks were done all together, and I was playing pretty
good. I think it shows in the music. The second section is just a short
lead part... right after the keyboard/piano solo section and the no-lead
measures that follow. Well, I was really kicking ass that day, and
absolutely love the lead work here... I think it came out amazingly
good. The last section of the song was done last (how odd, huh?) and I
was not playing very well. Because of this, you'll hear that the lead
stuff is pretty simple in construction and I don't do any fancy Yngwie
stuff. After I recorded all the lead tracks, I actually went back and
re-recorded the rhythm track... I did some changes to my sound, and cut
out some reverb to try and make things a little clearer. The end result
I think worked out pretty good. Cakewalk is a wonderful tool in that I
am able to put down all these guitar tracks without making any of the
keys or drums concrete... they remain MIDI based, so I can easily change
and refine them as the song develops with each recording. This way, it
is very easy to readjust in areas where I expected a bigger impact, or
where things didn't mesh like I wanted them to. This is VERY clear in
the last pause of the song. It took a lot of messing with this to get
the level of impact I was looking for... but in the end, I got it, and
it kicks in nicely I think. I got lazy with the bass guitar track, and
just ended up writing that in Cakewalk. What can I say... I have no
excuse :) The soundfont I have loaded that I record with has a pretty
nice bass sound with it, so to help keep me focused on the lead guitar
stuff, this seemed the best approach... I suck at playing bass anyway :)
I still had some battles after mixdown... trying to
get the volume level set and normalized right, and trying to adjust the
low end bass and mid-high's. Somehow I ended up with not enough bass and
too much highs (around 4khz). I think I got that stuff worked out pretty
good (I hope). I am still trying to get a better "fuller" sounding
recording. It still seems flat when I compare it to a CD by my favorite
artist. Granted I don't quite have all the fancy equipment they may
have, but I think I can get it a little fuller sounding than I have thus
far. I'll try a little harder next time :)
All in all I really like this song, and though I
don't feel this is representative of my best ideas, I do feel this is
the best recording I've done to date... and I guess the ideas aren't too
awful bad :)
