This one came along as a series of accidents. I initially wrote the underlining bass groove in 4/4. As I was setting things up to record it, I accidentally set the metronome to 7/8. I tried it that way and it worked out, so I kept it. It then took me a good couple of days to figure out the guitar parts. I accidentaly stumbled upon a video review of the Roland JC-120 amp on
Gearwire. The guy was playing those jazzy arpeggios between chords, something I still couldn't get my head around after all these years. I saw that he was pretty good at responding to questions posted on the site, so I asked him how that works. He told me to check out diminished chords and scales. I googled it and found a website with a basic introduction. Reading that article, I realised that one of the riffs I'm playing on the bass in this song actually matches the "whole-half" scale. That's how I ended up playing the corresponding diminished chord over that part. Recording the lead part there was pretty uncomfortable, my left hand is locked into the pentatonic box thing. It took me about 10 takes to get an acceptable result.
For the recording I used my Magix Audio Studio software. I built the drum track with "LiViD", a synth that is included in the DAW and did some manual editing to fit the bass track. All bass and guitar parts were done with Guitar Rig 2. I used a Jazz amp with a Psychedelay a synthlike effect on the rythm guitar. The main bass groove uses my own preset, all the others are stock, namely "Vocode Bass" for the bass solo, "No Holds Barred Lead" for the cleaner lead guitars (the distortion is turned off), "Stepping Gates" for the parts over the diminished chords and the lead guitar following the bass solo (the tremolo rate was adjusted to fit the song). The latter part is doubled on another track with the "System of a Crown" preset from the Metal & HiGain bank (wah pedal on, controlled by the input level modifier). Enjoy:
