Guitarbloke

Blog posts

  • Where is This Going?

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    by

    geebee
    in

    I tend to get more productive when I’m feeling frustrated. Music’s a great way of taking negative emotions and sublimating them into something more positive.

    I like instrumentals that have lyrics (I’m pretty certain that “Liberty” by Steve Vai is an example, and that’s a killer tune). The human voice is much more engaging to listen to than pretty much instrument, and phrasing a melody as if it’s sung helps a lot with making it more memorable. Having a lot of extra harmony parts in the background also helps.

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  • Go Punt

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This is the companion piece to “Ardor“; the two are intended to be the first and last tracks of an EP, although I haven’t quite worked out which songs best fit in between. Despite being, by my standards, unusually dense and orchestrated, this was surprisingly easy to mix.

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  • Ardor

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This tune is about that time at the end of a good day when you’re dropping off to sleep, feeling generally well disposed and thinking about how lucky you are to have the people you love. This is a reprise of another song; I wrote two quite different arrangements to the main melody and they branched off into their own separate things.

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  • JP…but not

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This track was originally inspired by the tones from the Neural DSP Archetype: Petrucci plugin, specifically the “Glasgow Kiss” preset and the default rhythm tone. I added some extra flanger to make the lead guitar “sing” a bit more and also as the (extremely) lazy man’s alternative to hooking up a wah pedal. The result ended up a long way away from progressive rock and a lot closer to my comfort zone of Surfing with the Alien/Flying in a Blue Dream-style surf rock with added shred.

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  • KDH Solo Competition Entry

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    by

    geebee
    in

    Guitar YouTuber KDH is currently running a solo competition, and I thought I’d take a swing at it. I’m at best an intermediate player by modern standards, but KDH appears to be a bit of a hair metal revivalist himself and so I figured that my stuck-in-the-80s brand of shred would fit in quite nicely.

    This solo is comped to fix a few bum notes – and so only part of this video is the actual live take – but it’s all improvised apart from that one really obviously thought-out-in-advance bit. I’m running my JEM through the Soldano SLO-100 X plugin, which seemed an obvious choice for this sort of sound.

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  • Do You Think?

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This song is an exercise in trying to take the most boneheaded riff possible and make it sound more complicated than it really is. The main guitar figure is just two alternating barre chords (played in drop D for even more simplicity) but it doesn’t really sound that way since the harmony is implied by the bass and melody. This isn’t exactly rocket science from a compositional perspective but I like the sense of swagger you can get from doing really simple stuff with conviction.

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  • Never Feed After Midnight

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This track started out with just the rhythm part and then somehow turned into what I think it would sound like if Joe Satriani played lead guitar for Mogwai and everyone was a bit tipsy.

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  • Left Hand Riot

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    by

    geebee
    in

    This is a mid-tempo rock track partly inspired by the tones I got out of the Neural DSP Mesa Boogie Mark IIc+ suite. The IIc+ is famous for being the Metallica Amp, but it’s also great for classic rock rhythm and lead sounds.

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  • Cathedrals

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    by

    geebee
    in

    I’ve mentioned it a couple of times before, but as someone who was introduced to modern rock guitar by Joe Satriani’s The Extremist (before quickly discovering Surfing with the Alien and Flying in a Blue Dream), I’ve continued to have a huge affection for up-tempo instrumental rock tracks that are less about showing off, and more about establishing a strong melody and having some fun.

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  • Christmas at the Beach

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    by

    geebee
    in

    Christmas isn’t just about snow and wellington boots and a big roaring fire; in fact that only really applies in the Northern Hemisphere. This song was written after a rather nice Christmas Day spent working on my tan. As it turns out, warm, laid back, summery sounding guitars actually go surprisingly well with sleigh bells.

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