This is a long overdue update – in part because I’ve had the song I was working on done for about a week now, and in part because it probably should have been done weeks before that. Life’s been getting in the way lately; work’s been busy, family life has been busy, and then I’ve got a cycling event coming up in several weeks that I’ve really hit the point where I need to pick up the training now (I’ll be leaving for a long endurance ride right after I write this, and then earlier in the week I was doing a block of VO2max intervals which, if done right, should leave you in no shape to even think about picking up a guitar and doing anything useful with it).

That said, I’ve finished tracking five of the ten songs now, and while that’s the exact midpoint for lead guitar, it’s probably also pretty close to the midpoint of the album, if you also include reamping, mixing, and mastering on the back end and bass and all the rhythm tracks on the front. I’d hoped to wrap the whole tracking process up by, well pretty close to now, but that was optimistic and progress has at least been steady.

This track and another track I’ve been practicing the solo for again before recording, I’ve wanted to cut the opening verses on my Strat, and then switch to my Suhr 6 and humbuckers for the choruses and solo, and oddly it was the Strat part of this song that took the longest. The one I’m relearning now, I nailed the part in just a couple takes, but this one the groove felt wrong so while I’d recorded a part, after finishing the Suhr tracks I went back and threw another fresh set of strings on my Strat after spending some time listening to the demo and figuring out where I thought it sounded out of the pocket, and a couple takes later I had something I was far happier with.

Just to have some media to add to this post – I shot a video of the main solo while still practicing it. This isn’t perfect and in particular that opening bend is a little sour, but that’s why we practice (I was trying to figure out how sour it could start, and then still sound resolved once it was fully up to pitch – good way to drive yourself crazy.

This is also probably the final signal chain for my lead guitars, even if maybe the amp settings and mic positions will change a hair – I did some A/B testing after getting my Roadster back and it turns out stacking tracks of the Mark V and Roadster on top of each other sounded better than each alone. I’m really happy with this tone.

This one’s still technically nameless, though “Taking Flight” seems to be winning.

Also, while basically procrastinating (I’ll own it) on finishing this one, I went back and shot a playthrough video for the solo to “Ghost Dance,” in part to make re-learning it easier if I ever have to, and in part to see how my Strat sounded through that same chain.The strings were maybe a hair less fresh than ideal, biut I ended up grabbing the fast legato figure towards the end of the third section and using that for the album, something about the vibe of the vibrato and the flow just grabbed my ear a little more than my original take (which, thankfully, that solo had come together really quickly anyway).

Next couple weeks are going to have a lot more training than recording, I’m afraid (and a doctor’s visit for something going on with my fretting hand knuckle – clipped it on a ride on New Year’s, it seemed to have healed, and then bar chords while doing some of the rhythm parts made it flare up so I’ve been dealing with some fretting hand pain ever since). Thankfully fast flowing legato doesn’t stress it much and it’s only big bluesy bends up near the nut, and the blues licks at the start of Ghost Dance only took a couple takes to get right, so it hasn’t been too much of a problem… but it’s one more setback here, I guess.

Also, the new Dunlop Flow Nylon picks – awesome. I’ve switched over to the 1.14 (which feel a hair lighter than the Ultex 1.0s I’d been using for leads previously) ands just bought a big bag of them, which typically means I’m going to find something else I prefer in 3-6 months. but for now they feel great and I like the sound of the attack a little more than the sharper sounding Ultex – it’s fuller and to my ears more natural.