“Removing Company” Echo

Revisiting the Choose Must playlist: Day 17

06 May 2016
This idea is a resurrected riff that was bouncing around for a few days. I had an early version of it on my phone, but I couldn’t figure out a good place for it to go. Should I use it as a chorus? Was it a coda? An opening?

After playing it over and over, the second part finally spilled out. But with just these two layers, I needed some icing on the cake to finish it off. I put down a scratch track, playing the first and second parts twice on my Gibson RD through a pretty standard Marshall-like amp set up. Then, I unplugged everything and took a break. When I came back, I came up with the soaring end. It’s pretty simple, just four notes lifting to a closing, resolving chord.

To make it even more dynamic, I doubled the idea, recording the same progression with my Les Paul. Then, I copied those recording to two other tracks, adding a heavy chorus to one and a heavy flanger to the other. Once I got the ending done, it was back to focus on the rest.

I left the scratch track as-is, straight down the center in the mix. I played it two more times, split left and right, and then went to focus on the bass line. This is when things got weird.

I wrote and recorded an idea for the bass relatively quickly, but when I went to mix it, it change the feeling of the original idea too much. I scrapped it and started again. I played the bass along with the guitar playback for a while, trying to elicit a new idea, but nothing stuck. So I muted the guitars, and wrote a part that went great with the drums. When I brought the guitars back in, however, it sounded awful — back to the drawing board.

I tried a couple more times to get it right, but everything was wrong. I finally asked myself, “Do I have to record a bass line?” The answer ended up being, “nope.” What you hear here is seven different guitar tracks, some drums, and no bass line. It’s not anywhere near as good, but I guess this could be considered my “When Doves Cry.”

\m/ #100DaysEcho