For me part of the writing process is also having a story in my mind.
Of course there is nothing wrong with playing over a backing track and going wild, love to do that myself.
But when I record a track I love that it follows a theme with different variations that also tells a story.
The fun thing/problem is that of course everyone will have another idea/story with a track.
But let me tell you my story for Andromeda.
And it’s pretty simple.
It’s about a journey to another planet, from starting the engines, take off, the long voyage, boredom, problems and finally the landing part.
The cover
The cover of Andromeda is a mix of two of my photos.
One was shot during a “freezing motion” workshop with our model Nadine.
The other was shot during a workshop “creative motion” where I played guitar with lights attached to my hands.
A whole different challenge 😀
The technical bits
For this track I used the following
DAW : Logic
mainly due to the easy way to add keys and layering them with session players.
same for the bass, I can play a little bit bass, but always find the session players coming up with parts I could never play.
Of course it takes a lot of fine tuning but as a starting point the session players are great in Logic.
Guitars :
Ibanez Jiva 10 for the clean parts
Ibanez Jem v7 WH ebony for the rest
Amps :
Synergy Vai module
ENGL 920/100
Marshall SE100 – Marshall Cab with black backs
Slate Digital SL-2 with SM57/R121 emulation
Software :
Genome for noisegate and “mixbus”
Genome now has a free version and I HIGHLY recommend testing it out.
Hardware :
G-major for main effects Lead Guitar and part of the Cleans
Digitech 2101 part of the cleans and intro dirty
X32 added depth with Edison emulation, slight chorus and reverb/delay
Lexicon Alex for main reverb and space
During mastering the track was send through a SM pro TC02 tube pre-amp for a little bit of extra glue.