Rejoicing, indeed.

We have slain the beast which is recording...

And Ye Shall Rejoice!

Yes, I'm happy to say that recording has finally wrapped up as of last night! I finished the last half of the guitar solo for The Bottom and we are all done. Where do we go from here? Mixing, mixing, mixing. Mark has a lot of work cut out for him, so I hope he's getting his head in a good space. Maybe some light stretching, pushups...?

An interesting thing happened during the recording (and afterward) last night. I started having some similar problems to last week with another new line I wrote for the solo. I just wasn't getting it, and the line itself was a lot easier than I was making it seem. I started getting frustrated and angry again. This was exactly the kind of thing that happened many, many moons ago which caused me to stop playing for a few years.

The difference this time around was a bit of a revelation. On the way home from our session I kept going over the frustration in my head. Last night, however, I was motivated. I was analyzing why I wasn't able to play the line and I immediately had the urge to go home and work on it. This is the subtle difference from years ago, and pretty damn cool. Now that the recording is done, I have a TON of shedding to do before we start writing for the next album.

The Soundtrack to Mark's Nightmare

Last night started out well... With only one guitar solo left to record before the album is done (the solo on The Bottom) I was feeling pretty confident walking in that I would be able to lay down some shred and call it a wrap. I had no preconceived idea of what I wanted at all; I figured I would wing it and come up with something cool. Well, that was true and not true at the same time.

The solo started out great. I came up with a killer beginning to the solo. Not nearly as much shred as I initially expected, but VERY cool harmonic elements (in my opinion, of course). Things were chugging along, and we ended up recording some final takes for these parts. And then it happened...

I have to tell you that the last phrase we worked on last night was the biggest exercise in frustration I have ever encountered in my tenure as a musician and guitar player. We literally tried it 100 times before I nailed it. I was sweating like crazy, tired, angry, frustrated, and sick of hearing that part of the solo. I never had this much trouble in the past, and if I were to tell you which part it was (which I'm not) you would say something to the effect of, "You were having trouble with THAT?!?!?!!?!" Yeah, all things considered it was a ridiculously simple phrase that I should have nailed right away.

I suspect what happened was that the first 60 or 80 or so times I tried it I was adding more notes than the time of the phrase would allow. I could play it perfectly on my own, but as soon as Mark hit the record button I kept messing up. Once I realized the problem (at least that's the excuse I'm going to stick with as to why I kept sucking) I changed the phrase a little bit, and then it only took about 20 more takes before I landed it. Good thing I'm not a pilot!

I have to give extra, extra, extra, extra thanks and props to Mark for last night's session. His patience with me was incredible and well-appreciated. Admittedly, I would never have been able to show the same amount of patience with him, I'm sorry to say. I guess he had confidence in me to know that I could do it, so rather than try and dissuade me from that particular phrase, he allowed me to work through it and finally get a take I was happy with. The solo will be better off as a result, and I think I walked away with a nice lesson in patience should we find ourselves in the situation again, with Mark being the person playing. (Thanks, bro. You rock!)

I'm feeling much better today, and I'm actually looking forward to getting the rest of the solo finished. I just have to give my poor fretting fingers a chance to rest and heal up.

Nothing like bass in the morning…

I went down to the studio this morning to install my new video card (went without a hitch - now THAT'S new!) When I got finished doing that, getting all the video settings all finished, I opened up "Awaken the Man" (the song) to listen to the solos we just recorded the other night. Just before the new guitar solo section was a short bass part that was a little out of sync with the drums, and we had marked it as "RE-RECORD." I figured, what the heck, I'll knock it out real quick. Plugged into the trusty ADA, got my nice warm'n'fuzzy(tm) RickenFaker tone, and put down a real nice take in about 25 minutes (in my pajamas, no less).

When that went smoothly, I jumped ahead to the bass solo part of the song. Now this was dangerous territory; as a self-admitted non-soloist, I've had a bit of trouble getting a solo down that I'm happy with. But with the video card and other bass part having gone so well, I was feeling a little saucy. So I went for it.

Now, Josh had laid down some nice solo lines on a fretted bass to give me some guidance and inspiration, but we were pretty set on doing this on fretless. So I picked up my custom Hoyt six string fretless and went with it, using Josh's scratch tracks as a "map" of sorts.

Hey, not bad. The solo came out pretty well, my intonation was (surprisingly) pretty solid, and I think we've got a keeper. Sweet! Only one more guitar solo to go, and it's mixdown time...

Progtopus!

Last night I finished the guitar solo for Awaken The Man. We started it last week, and this week I wrapped it up. Mark and I thought it would be cool to do a call-and-response type of solo, so it would be two distinct guitar solos playing off each other. We added a Dream Theater-inspired section at the end, where the guitar and MOOG play a cool unison line. Pretty hip, if I do say so myself. All in all it came out quite cool.

We're so damn close to finishing now I can practically taste it. Re-record the bass solo and finish the guitar solo for The Bottom/Between Two Lives and we're frickin' DONE!