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.
I used a combination of Neural DSP’s Soldano SLO and Mesa Boogie 2C+ plugins and the standard Logic Pro guitar, bass and drum sounds. I’m pretty sure the main guitar used for recording was again my JEM but it’s quite possible that the Solar 8-string is in there as well; the Seymour Duncan pickups on that guitar clean up very nicely for rhythm tones, while the huge neck (and huge weight) of the Solar also add some impressive sustain for lead parts.
Most of the melodies are improvised around various Christmas carols, which I think makes this a decent example of how thinking in terms of vocals can make for much more interesting phrasing in an instrumental piece. Keeping the words of a song in your head, making up lyrics as you’re playing, or just putting the guitar down for a bit and singing over the backing track can be really helpful in breaking away from the usual guitar noodling.
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