After listening to the first solo, it seemed like it was still lacking depth. While I’m not at all dissatisfied with the way it sounded, it could use something more, especially because it only lasts 14 seconds.

The result is a second solo, wider and still based on the same theme as the first one.

Let me know when you’re bored.

Today, I started writing a 14 second solo. I would’ve never thought it would be so hard to write a 14-second solo. Basically, the progression underneath is simple enough: D/F/C/Gm.

The major problem I had was building the solo. I already knew I was going to play D Aeolian over it, but I found myself facing a challenge. How do you actually tell a story in 14 seconds? The solo goes on top of a bridge-like intermezzo which lasts only 29 seconds in total. In the first part of the intermezzo, I play the first part of the progression (A/F/C/Gm) to get the groove going. But that only leaves me the last four chords to actually play around. And I have to keep in mind that immediately after the solo, the songs slows down again to half the speed of the intermezzo. So had to end the solo in a way that would prepare for the slowdown. So, while the solo had to be interesting enough to listen to, it also needed to prepare the listener for the slowdown …

I managed to come up with something that’s at least one line of a story waiting to be told.

Click the link to listen to Little Girl - the solo.

I’ve composed a fair number of songs over the years. A lot of these are only on tapes meaning they sound like someone sticking two fingers in their mouth and trying to recite Shakespeare: wobbly and unidentifiable. “Womeowwwwooowomeowwwwwewefowawouwomeow” Extra points if you guess that one. It’s by William Shakespeare. ;)

Anyway, composing is something I used to do with an acoustic guitar and a piece of paper to write chords and lyrics and notes to the performer on. Later on, I got a mic for no money at all with no quality at all, plugged that into a small amp, plugged the amp into my stereo and recorded that on tape. While that would help me remember what the song sounded like, the composing was still done on paper since there was no way to actually mix or master anything with this set-up.

Fast forward to a few years ago. I got hold of a Line-6 Pod XT Live and the corresponding software. I recorded a lot and mixed some, but the problem was still the same as with the tape: no real mixing, no real mastering.

These days, I have a midi keyboard, the Tascam US-144 is working wonders and Cubase, though expensive, is doing miracles.

As a personal project, I wanted to record some old game and cartoon themes. This started out as a guitar project but I was never really pleased with the end-result. I could never get the right drums, there were too much guitars and not enough subtlety. Yes, there’s a thing as “too much guitars”.

The draft of “Fun With Nobue”, an adaptation of the Final Fantasy I battle theme and the Final Fantasy Victory Fanfare and the Thundercats draft should give you a good insight. I recorded these songs with one-take tracks, so there are a lot of errors in it: timing, phrasing AND technique as well as slightly out of tune. While I usually avoid all shredding in my own band, this was a challenge because there’s a lot of notes with a lot of flags on top in the original work by Nobue Uematsu. It’s a draft, it’s too loud so there’s some distortion in it, and the sound is not round enough. Still, it should give you a very good idea of what I mean by “too much guitar”.

Today, I set out to arrange Thundercats to something less Eighties Metal and somewhat more interesting. Boy, arranging is not exactly the same as composing. While composing, I will put down the main chords, sometimes the vocal melodies, and some bass tracks. When arranging, I found out that most of the chords I played on guitar could/should be different. I started out with listening to the original theme again, trying to discern all the elements and different voices that present in the original theme. After a lot of time and playing along with my keyboard to find out the notes for the melodies, I laid down a bass-line that was mostly the same as the original. After that, I recorded all the vocal and melodic stuff to base further arrangements on. When all that was done, I took out my old batterd copy of “Thundercatz Chordz” and played along. Most every chord I had in there was wrong or sounded off. It took me along time to find chords that would be suitable and I also located the problem: too many chords, too many guitar stuff going on. In addition to the bass-line, I had to alter a number of chords to make things more interesting instead of “let’s all play a D chord here”. I spent the better part of the afternoon doing this and I’m almost done. I’ve now got a complete project containing bass, melodies, the guitar chords, the main lead guitar etc. It took me three hours to arrange 1 minute of music … Still, there’s a lot of valuable lessons learned and it was very rewarding to actually see all of the music theory that I learned over the past years put to good use.

I’ll try to keep you posted on the progress of “A Challenger has arrived” but it may very well be a ten-year project …