I’ve ended up traveling for much of May, which I guess I knew about coming onto this but kind of put to the back of my mind. So, I haven’t had as much time to record as I’d hoped, between a week away, a week back rebuilding calluses and overdoing it while relearning material, then a long weekend away which gave my fingertips a chance to recover a little. Anyway, one more song done.

First, a bit on this Strat – it’s a 1997 American Standard I bought new in 1998, wired up with a set of Suhr ML Standards (now, V63+) and a master volume and tone, with a Gotoh 510 trem and locking tuners. I’ve played this guitar forever, pretty much every technical plateau I’ve ever broken came on this guitar, and a disproportionate amount of the music on this album was written on it.

Anyway, on to the music. This strat was used for all the lead parts, and will probably be used for the bridghe breakdown. I say probably because I recorded two tracks with this guitar and two with my sunburst, so it’s possible I’ll use that one or a mix (probably not all four – it’s a pretty intricate part with a lot of bends and vibrato and it started to sound indistinct when I played all four back together). With the lead guitars dropping out there, I like the continuity having the same guitar carry on for the bridge riff, with a broadly similar tone, to help the song sound like nothing is dropping out there.

Everything else was this one, though, from composition up to recording. In particular, the ML Standard in the bridge actually sounds rather full and vocal, so there’s a few melody lines in that position that I don’t know if they’d work as well with a different pickup, and I’m not sure I would have written the part that way with a bridge humbucker, with major seconds beating against themselves on sustained, ringing notes.

I shot some video while working on this (which I think is probably slowing the process down, I like the fact that it forces me to think about trying to nail a perfect take, but I do think I’m passing on takes where maybe there were some really cool overtones on one of the bends, because I want to nail it in a single pass, and it would be faster and maybe sound better if I comped a bit – I did end up comping the main solo with that in mind, so I’ll see how things go as I keep working).

I did capture the keeper take on video for the outro solo, so I’ll start with that:

(this is all neck position, but there’s some audio of the bridge position when it comes in)

And, here’s an outtake of the main solo. Not perfect, but close enough to share.