I'd kinda hit a personal frustration limit with myself - knocking my head against the wall with LiaC for two months now, with interruptions and delays that meant I come back and then get hypercritical of the details - well I needed to move to something else for a little while to gain a fresh perspective plus get some more playing time in to continue regaining my chops. The choice I made to go back and pull out "That Day" from Nov/Dec 1998 was really to get my piano chops back, as well as do something a bit simpler musically with more arrangement and production involvement. Because of the really simple chord voicings being used on the piano, it's also got interesting opportunities to inject more interesting chord inversions for variation - I've learned a lot about song arrangement in the 15 years since this was written and the song will definitely benefit from some changes in chord voicings, vocal arrangements, and just instrumental changes. Some of the "outside" soloing I did back on the original also doesn't fit well - weird for the sake of being weird... that will be fixed.
I opened a new project file for the song on Saturday, and then imported the original mp3 as a guide track. Spending time relearning the song and then starting recording of parts, it's taken a few nights to get to a usable piano take (I'm using Ivory II for my piano samples, so the track is being recorded as a MIDI track) with the timings and the playing being acceptable enough for editing and some adjusting / quantizing. I also got a basic drum MIDI track triggering Steven Slade Drums VST from the keyboard - I was mostly following the original programmed drum track but I'm finding that where the kick sits doesn't fit well with the song and needs adjustment as it seems to be pushing the song more aggressively than it should. What will help with this will be getting the bass guitar down - where in the past I would be running away from doing a traditional ballad style rhythm section, in this case I can see it being a big benefit to make it more of a Nashville style backbeat to anchor the tune. It can get a bit more rock(tm) for the electric guitar solo and the ending chorus, but thru the nylon string guitar solo it needs to stay back in the pocket.
Another thing I noticed in redoing this - the piano is literally a Beatles'y type 1/8th note 4/4 straight progression, no swing or syncopation at all. But I wanted to make it a bit more involved in the 2nd verse with playing that is more arpeggiated and flowing - more romantic I guess. But playing this arpeggiated, I want to jump from the F sus2 to the G Maj inversion starting on D on the "and" of beat 3 in the bar, which throws off the straight rhythm. My tendency to push things will change the song too much - I'll need to capture and fix this quickly.
All the keyboard sounds from the original recording were from the Korg X3 I had back then - decent enough 16-bit multisamples, but limited for pianos, organs, etc... Today's version of the song will take advantage of the richer palate of sounds I have now, but I need to be careful not to make the palate the focus and keep it on the song. I also have better guitars, real amps, etc... and a bass guitar. Sticking with my "Keep it Simpler" mantra I'm adopting, making appropriate choices will be important.
Anyways, I believe that even though I have a workable piano track right now I will still revisit the piano again towards the end of the time allocated, and if I can talk him into it I'll get PaulH to come in and play the piano for me. I'll still do B3 and the pads since I can do this and save time overall, but the piano is the feature instrument and it needs to be done well.
Final thoughts now with respect to my purging of instruments:
- the Krome 73 sold on eBay, it will be leaving home shortly. I'm down to the Muse Receptor v2.0 as the workstation, lets see how it holds up going forward. I am also in possession of Paul's Korg Triton Rack so there's no worries w.r.t. workstation for playing live.
- a Vox AC100 guitar head I got in trade for the Nomad, but it's just another extra amp I don't need. Too powerful to hang onto so I'm going to try to swing a trade in at Guitar Center for a Les Paul Jr if possible.
- I'm very torn on what to do with the Carvin Legacy - the THD Flexi50 is a wonderful head, but the Legacy is a tone monster.
- I might hang onto the ESP LTD EC256 relic - I can pull out the MIDI Ghost system and sell separately and maybe get more for it, then the guitar can be one I hand to one of my kids when they get proficient enough. I bought a Washburn Nuno Bettencourt N1 for my son Thomas to replace the First Act guitar he has - he's taken more interest in learning, so getting him a much better instrument is key and the N1 was on sale for $99 on Black Friday. Win/Win. When he gets good at playing, I'll give him the ESP as a 2nd good guitar - if he wants or needs it.
- there's a few other odds/ends that can be purged - some pedals and stuff that are kicking around. I'm also considering selling the Godin 5th Ave just because it's very much a niche item. The more I play it, the more I feel it's not something that fits well with what I want to achieve. The strings feel a bit tinny to me, so I'm going to change them out and see if that changes anything for me before moving it out. I got it for a very good price so I wont lose anything selling it.
- I'm also still trying to sell the Brix Pro PC - it will go up on eBay today as a fully loaded and functional package so it should sell quickly.
- final gear porn post - I'll be digging into rewiring the Svilpacaster very soon. Looking seriously at replacing the LRBaggs power trem with a Wilkinson trem equipped with Ghost saddles. Also still on the fence about Sustainiac as it hasn't worked out to date. I could simply plop in the Fender Lace Sensor I have in the neck spot and get more value out of the guitar than with the Sustainiac - I hesitate because of the amazing results Steve Hackett and others get using the driver, but it drains my 9V battery too quickly in combination with the Power Trem preamp and that's frustrating. Also the array of micro-toggles on the guitar to date is ridiculous and gets in the way - I have a blade superswitch from Fender that I'm installing as a part of this effort, so that should help with this complaint. The rewiring will take me a few days likely, since my soldering skills aren't great - hope to have this done by the saturday before xmas though.
Ok done - have a great holiday if I don't get back anytime soon.
