This song dates all the way back to the nineties. That version had really wild, more dance-oriented drums and plenty of guitar histrionics but it was way too complicated for its own good. I decided to revisit and simplify the whole thing a bit.
The keyboards are heavily influenced by the Tron soundtrack by Daft Punk. I love the “futuristic city” sound of that film, evoked by all those huge sounding pads and strident brass instruments. Some of Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn seems to have got in there as well.
The main guitar used for recording was my Ibanez ARZ800. Or at least that’s what I think it is; Ibanez model numbers can be hard to work out. The ARZ series doesn’t have a great reputation but it’s a relatively rare example of an Ibanez with active EMGs and that active sound suits this track perfectly. It doesn’t hurt that this thing sustains basically forever.
Blog posts
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I love the guitar and drum parts in David Lee Roth’s “Skyscraper”. I don’t really like anything else about the song, which honestly seems as if it doesn’t know where to go after it establishes that great opening riff. So, I wrote something rather similar and didn’t even try to add a vocal part. A song that could only really have been written using an Ibanez JEM; it’s a perfect instrument for both in-between single coil sounds and scooping up to a note with the whammy.
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I bought an Ibanez JEM 7VP, and this is the first song which came out of it. For anybody unfamiliar with the JEM series, they’re basically like playing a really awesome tremolo unit with a pretty neat guitar attached. This guitar has a beautiful satin-finished neck which encourages slippy, slide-y Vai-style melodies. The JEM put me in a good mood, and I think that comes across in the music.
This track uses the base Logic Audio plugins for guitar, bass, and drums. The quality isn’t quite up to the standards of your Neural DSPs but I rather love the sound of the basic midrange lead tone.