The first song I planned on being the title track for my EP. This meant that I wanted it to be heavy, driving, and set the standard high for the following two pieces. I was aiming for a song that pushed my speed to the limit in parts, but that also has some form of flow to it.
The inspiration for this song came to me while listening to the song ‘Sad But True’ by Metallica while on the way to college. The song starts with a big power chord section, and has this long, eerie moment of silence before the actual rhythm section comes in. I though that the use of silence was a really cool concept to use in a song and wanted to attempt using this in my own compositions.
this section is the first 30 seconds of the song.
I didn’t want just a single pause however, I wanted a slow almost out of nowhere set of power-chords to come in and out of the piece and then have a melody line come in to fill the gaps, so here is the original concept I came up with:
Once I had settled on this intro I expanded upon the melody line by adding it’s third harmony as a second guitar part. Here is the finalised Introduction:
I realised that this intro was fairly steadily paced in comparison to the fast paced metal I was wanting to write in, so I tried writing several rhythms at double the original tempo of 100 bpm and eventually I settled on a ‘Creeping death’ style fast pace rhythm based around an open E power chord. I really liked the drive that this had, despite it only ever using three power-chords. It is the exact thrash style rhythm that I was hoping to achieve and you can quite easily draw a comparison to the writing style of Metallica in the ‘Ride the Lightning’ days. Here is a video of the finished rhythm:
When I was writing a melody line to go over this, I was aiming for more of a memorable repeated line rather than something overly complicated as the rhythm was already filling any gaps. I came up with an E minor pentatonic based line that was structured in a kind of ‘A section / B section’ fashion. The first half of the line repeats each time the line is played, however the B section or the ‘tail’ would change. This changing ‘tail end’ idea came from when I researching into Metallica’s ‘Black Album.’ In an interview with Kirk Hammett, in an episode of ‘Classic Albums,’ he talked about writing the iconic riff from the song ‘Enter Sandman’ in which he wrote the A section to his riff, and then had the B section as the ‘tail.’ – More detail on this is in my research.
I then added a harmony to this by playing the same line again, but up a fifth from the route position and this gave a real ‘Joe Satriani’ style guitar sound. Here is a video of the melody line and then it’s 5th harmony respectively:
I then decided to have moments of a half time section where the tempo drops back down to 100 bpm, and the rhythm section and lead guitar work with each other and play more around a G and A power-chord and is based around E Locrian. The lead guitar follows the same rhythm and chords as the backing, but it’s playing octaves of the route notes from E on the A string. Here’s a video of the rhythm:
And here is a video of the lead part:
Once these sections were written I give the song a set structure to work with. Here it is on paper:
(Apologies for the poor camera quality)
Intro (Stops + Melody)
“Verse” (200 bpm rhythm section + Melody)
“Bridge” (100 bpm ‘big’ power chords)
Solo Section (Verse + Bridge)
200 bpm Stops
Intro Section again
Short Verse (Half the length)
Bridge Section x 2
200 bpm Stops to finish
Now with the whole song in place, It was time for me to write a solo and perfect the melody. The process of getting the whole song’s backing recorded took a full week, which I thought was really good when considering there were only three free days a week to record on.
A lot of this solo is improvised around E minor on the track and when performed live, so I will cover the main licks that have stuck and that are really required for me to perfect this solo when performing it.
When writing the solo to this, I spent a while listening to the section in question and improvising over the top of it until I had ideas and licks that really stuck. I wanted to come into this solo hot, so I used G Mixolydian and ascended from the bottom as rapidly as possible by playing the three notes per string at triplets and moving back a string for every two passed. I then descend the scale in a pentatonic shape using a sort of triplet cascade. Here is a video of this starting section:
Following on from this, there is an improvised section in E minor pentatonic making use of double stops and more triplet rhythms. this is played over the middle of the fret board, rather than being enclosed at the 12th fret. This is basically working its way progressively down to an open E string, marking the last four bars before the rhythm changes.
As soon as I reach the low E, I shoot back up to the 12th fret on the high E string by using one of my personal favourite solo tricks, which is a diminished scale/arpeggio. I rise straight up this and use the same ‘going back a string for every two strings passed’ as I did with the G Mixolydian scale. Here is a video of the part:
The final key part of the solo comes in after the diminished section, and is a set of inline descending triplets on the high E string that move along with the backing rhythm. This repeats twice but on the second time this pattern rises all the way to finish either on the 24th fret of the high E string, or a whole tone bend on the 22nd fret. this marks the end of the solo and the lead guitar returns to playing the melody parts.
Those are the three main parts to the solo that I wanted to be followed on the recording, the spaces in between are purely improvisation and are down to anyone’s interpretation. I chose to improvise as it allow me to flow and really express myself via my playing instead of sitting there and writing something to be followed note for note. I feel as though this song on the whole shows off my ability as a guitarist as not only have I written all these parts, but I have also thrown myself on the spot to play what I felt at the time.
I recorded this track using two different guitars, one for lead and one for rhythm. I used my Ibanez RGT 6 EX for the rhythm guitars as this has a good, ‘bassy’ rhythm sound. I then used my ESP LTD MH-401FR for the lead guitar as it has a really good punchy lead tone.
As well as the two guitars, I also decided to record using my own pedal board as I do not like the sound produced by the Behringer V-amp in the recording room, or by the built in Logic guitar tones. I used my Boss GT-10 guitar effects processor because not am I accustomed to using this regularly, but I already have set up a selection of guitar tones that are ready o be used. One more plus to using this is that I now have a pedal, which opens up the opportunity for effects such as ‘wah’ or and octave pedal, although I did not use the pedal function on this particular track.
As for the bass, it follows the guitar parts exactly throughout. This is because my focus is my guitar for this EP and I want this to take the spotlight.
The drums are the same story, keeping fairly straight forward rock and metal beats through the whole piece, and playing the stops along with the other instruments.
This the the entirety of the title track, and this was the final draft I had before it was finally mixed by an industry professional.
…and here is the full released professional mix of track on my official Soundcloud account:
Summary / Evaluation:
Overall, I am really pleased with the way this has turned out. This was my first attempt at coming up with a new composition from scratch for this project and I feel as though it really captured the style that I wanted to portray. The contrast between the fast and slow sections give this piece a level of excitement to listen to, and the sudden introduction to the track instantly gives you a taste of what the rest of the track is going to feel like.
Another thing is that this was surprisingly easy to produce, with it being in its final draft stage after only two weeks of work. I had anticipated that each track would take much longer than this, and had considered the possibility of having to hire out an external recording suite to allow me the extra time that I would have needed.
200 bpm is really pushing my playing ability, especially with the rhythms I have chosen, however this makes the song for me all the more enjoyable to play. The heavy rhythm keeps the energy up, while the melody lines have a distinctive sound that is easily memorable and should leave a good impression.
I didn’t have any major problems when recording this track, apart from possibly having to record a few different takes of the same rhythm section due to the difficulty of it. I wouldn’t put this down as a major problem however, as this is to be expected with recording any live instruments. The one thing that I have learnt though, is that the speed of this track is my limit – therefore I will not be attempting to push my playing any further than this, especially with regards to the tempo.
I think that this song came together really well, and had a good flow to it. I would have liked to spend more time working on transitioning from one section to another, and will be spending more time on this with the other two songs, as the sections sometimes felt to be a little bit abrupt and sudden.
To conclude, I really like how this song ended up, and I hope that this level of energy can be maintained in my other two pieces.