As part of this project, we were required to prepare 3 songs to perform as a solo act to help better prepare ourselves for an audition. We were also tasked with producing our own backing track for at least one song.
The songs that I chose were:
The RSL grade 8 track “Lead Sheet”
Highway Star by Deep Purple,
and my own arrangement of Metallica’s “One”
The backing tracks for Lead Sheet and Highway Star were easy enough to get hold of, however I would have to record my own backing for the last track.
So first of all I decided to completely change the orignal song’s feel by making this into a 3 piece acoustic arrangement. This was an ambitious task considering that this is a long and complex piece, and I was on a short timescale. Despite this however I managed to get it done just in time to practice it for a week before the performance.
In this arrangement, I shortened the song down to about 5 minutes for the original 8 minuets. I recorded two backing guitars, both playing seperate low and high parts to add more colour and texture to the piece. For my lead part, I would play the lead rhythm parts, the guitar solos (which I rearranged to work on an acoustic), and the vocal melody lines as well. Another thing that I did when recording this track was playing the two guitar backing parts in differant styles. I fingerpicked one part, and more agressively picking the other. I feel as though this worked well as it provided a more interesting tone to the piece and made it sound a lot fuller as a composition.
As a final touch to just finish the piece off nicely, I added simple percussion to the track, using the acoustic guitar of course. I simply recorded a bassy sound and a higher ‘snare’ sound by hitting the acoustic’s body in different places. This I felt just finalized the track perfectly, and when performing the backing guitars it is possible to play the percussion part as well, making this a good song to perform with an actual acoustic trio.
The hardedst part to get down was the fingertapping sections in the solos, particularly the final solo. This is a technique used normally on an electric guitar, and involves tapping the fretboard with your picking hand. This was difficult on an acoustic as it does not rely on pickups like an electric, and requires much more force to produce a sound from fingertapping.
With a lot of work and a lot of practicing however, I managed to get all three tracks down to an excellent standard. When the performance finally came around, there were very little errors, if any.
Here is the video of my performance: