TopCat studio with Brad

Just back from a recording session at TopCat studio with Brad.We had about six hours and in that time I took in my new bass and re-did the bassline for Starlight - a contemporary/acoustic-rock story-song about a young lady called Sally and her journey away from abuse toward hope. Lot's of guitar in this one, and multi-layered vocals.

Once the bass was down, I ran my electric guitar - a natural wood finished Yamaha Pacifica guitar, through my guitar effects processor - an old Boss GT5. I chose one or two of the preset sounds and adjusted the levels of chorus, tremelo and delay to get a lovely clean tone. I then recorded two tracks using this tone - a crisp, clean-strummed series of chords and occasional sustained individual noteson one track, and on the other one, a series of higher-pitched arpeggio-like notes which soar and shimmer over the remaining layers of sound. This worked very well and it wasn't long until the two tracks were fully recorded.

Then, for a lead break, I used my Cort electric-acoustic guitar and ran it through an old valve amp, and then miked the amp with a Shure SM57 instrument mic. The tone was gutsy and bright and by running it through the amp we achieved a powerful brilliance that was not being heard beforehand. We got a great lead solo section and I came up with a few new harmonic ideas for the piece.

Once Starlight was finished for the day, I bounced a rough mix of it down and loaded Lucky - a longer, more prog-rock style piece with a heavy/mystical feel to it - (it's a song I co-wrote in the early 1990's with my old friend, Luckey Sweetwater!). I played the bass-line and before too long it was also finished. A great night!