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Very, very, very nice.
–c.

I have an Xbox 360. I have Guitar Hero World Tour. I have Rock Band 2. My gamertag is Tommi Starr.

Do you want some?

–c.

It’s been nearly 5 years in the making, just this one song. I dread to think about the number of times I scrapped melody lines and almost deleted the whole thing from the hard drive, but something kept me going.

Anyway, if you’re a regular reader you probably know most of the saga behind this track. It’s inspired by the Stephen King “Dark Tower” series, and in particular the lead character, Roland of Gilead – the last Gunslinger. It’s 200bpm, the rhythm guitars are played on a drop-A tuned 7-string, and I did all the lead parts on my fixed bridge Blackmachine B2. All guitar tones by my the Behringer V-Amp2. Drum programmed in Cubase drum editor, sounds from a soundfont called Gold Drums that I use for literally everything.

Guest solo in the middle section by Dan Ranger – thanks for playing, man. Nice one.

Caveat: I’m not an engineer, and I’m still not 100% happy with the mix, but I have to just get this out the door now so I can move on. Perhaps I can come back and remix at a later date.

No further ado, here it is: Gunslinger. [MP3, 5m05s, 192kbps, 7Mb]

Enjoy.
–c.

PS: The title of this post is pretty self-aggrandising, I know. The “wait” referred to is me waiting to get time to finally finish this track and get it out the door. I’m not implying that hundreds of adoring fans are awaiting every note from my guitar with baited breath…

Last night I remixed The Devil Went Down To Georgia, and came out with three mixes, one of which I like better than the others due to a slight treble boost in the mastering stage.

Anyhow, without any more ado, I give you:

The Devil Went Down To Georgia remix [MP3, 192kbps, 3m48s, 5.3Mb]

Comments welcome!

–c.

I mentioned recently that I was going to be branching out into vocal tracks, and this is definitely very much the aim. It’s pretty daunting though, seeing as I’ve never done lead vocals before*, so I thought a bit about how I got started with instrumental stuff, and that goes back to my 4-track days.

Ah, bless the Fostex X-26. What a machine! On it I started out by learning and then recording cover versions of Joe Satriani tracks, and it was though doing this that I learned not just how to play some cool tunes, but how best to go about everything from starting to write an instrumental right down to getting it on tape and mixing it. Latterly this has translated well to digital recording and that’s where I find myself nowadays, but with no experience of doing things vocally. It followed that I should perhaps start by doing a cover song or two.

I tried doing a Nickelback tune to start with, but quickly found that I couldn’t reach the high notes. So I ended up doing something that’s pretty easy to sing, although I’ll be honest, I did manage to pick something with some tricksy guitar parts. Anyway, I’ve just lobbed together an MP3 of the first cut of it, and here it is.

The Devil Went Down To Georgia. [MP3, 192kbps, 5314Kb]

The mix is well off in places and things go up and down seemingly at random due to my eccentric approach to punching in and out, but I think you can see where I’m going with it. Hopefully I can find time in the next week or two to get a proper consistent mix done.

Anyway, let me know what you think! (Unless you’re Charlie Daniels… I think he might not be my bestest friend for what I did to his poor song…)

–c.

* A few years ago I did record a version of “The Old Apartment” by Barenaked Ladies, but it was pretty rubbish. I was even using Antares Autotune to cram my wavering voice into the right key.

I’ve been pretty obsessed with computer games ever since I got my first ZX Spectrum in 1983. I’ve also been a guitar nutjob since I got my first guitar in 1988. So naturally you’d think anywhere that the two fields cross would be a veritable nexus of joy for one such as myself.

I squeak, of course, of the Guitar Hero series of games available for the console of your choice for a few years now. However, I completely avoided them citing a total lack of interest because, primarily, I play the real guitar – why do I need a guitar game?

» Read the rest of this entry «

Friends, neighbours, countrymen, Evil Dave.

I am desperately proud to announce that I have completed my first original song in a little over 5 years. I’m so chuffed, I’m giving it away to you all right here:

“The Smoke” [mp3, 192Kbps, 4m35s, 6.3Mb]

This is the second full-length song that will form part of my second album, the first being “Kalahari” which I completed in October 2002. I have several other half-finished songs laying around on my E: drive and with this new-found enthusiasm I hope to finish this second album by the end of this year.

However, I won’t be giving away all the songs like I am this one. Or why would you give up a few quid for the album when it’s done? It won’t be expensive, I promise, and any money received won’t be going into my pocket – it’ll be going to pay back the people who dug into their own pockets to pay for the production of my first album, “Earthman”.

For those of you that care about this kind of stuff all the guitar sounds are generated using a Behringer V-Amp2 straight into my PC’s soundcard. I used one of the Ibanez Jems for the clean guitar, plus a friend’s Coral Sitar (thanks Andy!), then my Les Paul Custom for the distorted rhythm guitars, and all the lead was done on my Blackmachine B2.

Anyway, the big news of 2008 is that I’m back writing and recording again, and I hope to have a new disc finished before 2009.

Enjoy the tune,
–c.

I have made a new Christmas tune for you all. Aren’t I nice? Check it out:

Snowmelt. [MP3, 192kbps, 7.11mb]

I got snow, but I’m not a snowman.

Merry wossname everyone, and I’ll be back at some stage – probably half a stone heavier.

–c.