Sessions: Day 8&9 – June 22nd-23rd, 2008.

Messages From Guitar Heaven

What is there really to say about the last couple of days? Guitar Heaven has continued, led by our very own Jesus. It began with him laying a flurry of electric rhythm tracks which thickened up the sound immensely. The bass and acoustic tracks I’d been grilling over the past few days have now disappeared into the canvas like the first shades of colour on a painting. The multitude of tones and textures, together now, are simply gorgeous.

Now we (well Jesus mainly) have turned the attention to doing leads. Most of today was spent focused on them, aside from some rhythm fill-ins in spots that needed work when we returned to them in the morning. Francis is a great help at this stage for obvious reasons. His ear for holes and hooky opportunities is priceless. Combine that with Gregg’s mastery of finding just the right tone efficiently, and I’ve got to say we’re in very good hands at this point.

Most of the leads have been going as smoothly as everything else. In actuality, songs like ‘What’s My Name’ and ‘Another Way’ are continuing to exceed expectations. ‘Another Way’ has two “solo” sections which seemed to have problematic potential until T2 hit a stride during work on it and made it look easy. The influence of Hendrix is there. Something I feel is shied away from too much these days, forgetting that there is a whole new generation of guitarists, yet to be saturated by it. Tom agrees. The evidence will be on this track for sure…

‘What’s My Name’ simply has a fantastic groove from start to finish. Gregg can’t even hide his love for this one. Considering most of the time he is pushing us to make the songs better, on this one he just sits back and lets us go to town. Francis loved everything T2 was putting down on it and then took it to a whole other level, pointing out some key moments where Tom could continue to leave his imprints on its outcome. His work in the middle 8 is some of his best and then it ends with this Zeppelin-esque effect that takes it into the following section beautifully. Look the fuck out for this one when its done. At this point, both Gregg and Francis are stoked on it with just B’s guide, so it will only continue to get better once she puts some heart and soul on it.

If we’re having trouble with anything lead-wise, its with ‘All These Things…’ It started off just like the rest, but when we got to the solo (which concludes the song) some hang-ups began. Being one of our more bluesy tracks, and concluding with a solo that runs into a fade, T2 is obviously feeling some pressure to make sure it ends as amazingly as it begins. Couple this with the fact that we’ve left about 2-3 minutes of space for him to fill and let the over-thinking begin.

To begin with, he started attempting it at the end of a long day. We attacked it by just letting T2 go to town, but though there were brightspots, it wasn’t taking any shape at all. In the end we kept some of the ideas, but we’re gonna put it on the backburner and Tom and I are gonna work it out at The Glade (I can see him in the garden this minute figuring some direction for it). We didn’t feel anything brilliant was going to come from forcing it. It will come, and when it does, it will be perfect.

Let’s see, what else went down… ‘Heartland’ has – I don’t even know how to do justice to the explanation – a section of the solo recorded backwards that has to be heard to believe. It then goes forward into the climax which pushes it to even grander scales… ‘Seamless’ has reached a point where I now get scared every time something gets added. It just sounds so beautiful right now. I think we’re doing leads on it tomorrow… ‘What You See On The Way’ is more rocking that I ever thought it could be. No complaints about that here. The problem we’re having with it currently is we don’t think the intro is matching the balls of the body. We haven’t been able to pinpoint the culprit but we have some theories and with another listen tomorrow I’m sure the solution will be revealed… We finished the day working on ‘Back To Me’ which Francis seemed to make his pet project of the day. ‘Back To Me’ is one of the songs that shows us just how objective music listening is. Whereas in working with Moe, he felt it was one of our strongest, both Gregg and Francis feel it is the weakest. I think that started to change today though. Tom and Francis came up with a simple, hook-lead that plays over the main riff. Something so simple, but you find yourself whistling it for hours afterwards. Tom also added some riffing in the chorus’, perfectly interlaced between B’s vocal. It’s the one thing I’ve noticed that Francis does so well. Create catchy leads that are so solid, yet don’t take anything away from the vocal. Regardless, the bridge is still naked so I’m pretty sure that’s where we’ll pick it up tomorrow… Until then…