Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame

I passed over into just being a punchline.

I dig it, too. The playing is amazing, but I think what impressed me most is the arrangement. Lynch needed multiple (dozens?) of guitar parts on his original recording. Ben chose to skip some of the harmony lines, but it didn't detract at all. It was clearly Mr. Scary through and through. Just really cool!

Thanks for this. it IS really good. The only part I'll disagree with you on is this photo IS concentrated badassery.

I'm really struggling to accept that "budget" lines like LTD and Sterling have a bunch of guitars priced over $1k, and even some over $2k (I just checked). Particularly since brand new Fender Stratocasters are now selling for as cheap as $650 (okay, MIM, but still...not Squier).

A seminal observation

Okay, y'all, time to put me some f'n knowledge in here, if you don't mind. So many people have talked about "mastering in _____." I didn't do any mastering. I don't know what that is. I guess I can grasp that "mastering" is fiddling with the EQ knobs and stuff to balance parts and make sure parts aren't muddy and stuff. I did tweak the slider knobs for output on each of the parts, like deciding I wanted the drums louder, and on the doubled guitar parts, there were times one amp was "louder" than the other, so I messed with those sliders to often make the Left channel slightly quieter, because I don't know why, it just seemed right. Is that "mastering"? Is that extremely rudimentary mastering? Mike, did you do some mastering on it for me? I can't really hear any difference from the .mp3 I listen to from GarageBand's "Save to Disk" function. Does the song suffer from lack of mastering? Does it make it clearly amateurish? Background: I know a sound engineer is important for getting the best out of a song. I still believe that the best engineered album I've ever heard is Brooks' "Generic Hustle" album, where every single part is crystal clear. Most of the professional albums I've heard aren't that good. So to my untrained ear, my song is no worse in sound engineering than most of the old albums from the 70s I've listened to, and maybe better than many of the ones from the 60s. Is this a stupid opinion?

...we've been instrumental??? Haw! I got that one!

I came up with the main lick for the song several years ago. It took me a few months to work it up into a complete A section. I caught my daughter humming it one day, and that told me it was a good hook, and also got her name on the song. It languished for a while. It took me a good year to come up with a good B section. If I had kept working on it, I might have never finished it, but I finally got my home "studio" set up (a mac mini with Garage Band and an iRig2), and started recording it. I messed around with a few bass lines for the A section, but the B section was just pure serendipity/inspiration. I was first going to do the bass lick in pentatonic (root, 7th, 5th), but something made me try the 6th, and it was clearly perfect, so I kept it. At that time, I heard another song that had held on a chord, and then shifted upward a minor third, and I really liked how it added energy, so that became the alternate B section. I recorded it, and played it for some friends, and my son, in particularly started nodding his head and tapping along with the B section, so I knew I had a hit. But it still wasn't done. No idea when it would have reached completion, but the HFC Vol IV announcement came out, and I decided to do it. I needed to re-record to use the beater Centaura I had just picked up, and that was the only guitar I used. 2 days after the announcement, I was waiting for some online activity to start and pulled out my office guitar (Michael B's Tele-Dega) and started trying out the circle of fifths riff from one of my favorite Chinese rock songs. I figured I could make it work for the C section of this. Then I began structuring the song. The drums are all Garage Band, mostly the Jesse AI on the Smash set. half time for the A section, then regular time for the B section. I switch to Benny in half-time for the C section (still on the Smash set), and closed the C section with Rose doing double time on a Slow Jam set. For guitar/bass settings, I used a beater 1990 red sparkle Centaura for all guitar parts, and the bass was a Jon Kammerer 5-string. The A section was doubled with Surfin' in Stereo and Clean Studio Stack. The B and C sections were both doubled using Brit & Clean and Burnin Tweed. But some different virtual knob twiddling resulted in different tones. Finally, I really recommend people use headphones to listen to Noel's Boogie. The use of stereo for the guitar parts are likely overdone and amateurish, but it was really fun doing it, and I like the effect, even if I could have been more judicious in the application.

See, it's good you shared this, because I can confirm I *definitely* got an EVH vibe on a few aspects of your song, particularly harmonic use.

I wasn't really going deliberately for anything, although I can see what you mean about Joe Perry. I just clicked around in Garage Band until I found a setting that seemed to let the notes sound clearly, then doubled it with a different setting that seemed to help balance it with the other settings for different parts. The most fun I had with it was playing around with stereo, i.e., putting slightly different rhythms in the doubled guitars so that they would kinda echo each other (like in Heart's Barracuda). So y'all should listen to it at least once with headphones on. There is one section that was a mistake, but apparently I was consistent with fumbling the part, because I redid the take a half-dozen times and could clean it up. (at 01:36)

I was just joking around with some self-deprecation. But more seriously, I do welcome both constructive *and* negative criticism on this song. PM me if you feel it impolitic to put it out there in public, but the only way I'm really going to improve is to get some brutal feedback from somewhere. Flat-out, God's-honest truth, tho: I have nothing negative to say about any of the other tracks. Some might not be my personal taste, but I can tell they were well-written, well-played, well-recorded. I'm working on some specific positive feedback for each track, but it might take me a few days. I don't want to go off just one close listen. I want it to soak in a little.

I know, personally, that not having anyone single out my contribution as complete crap has inspired me to come up with a few more songs. I've already laid down drum and rhythm guitar tracks on 2 of them, and I think one of them is going to have vocal/lyrics.

Just did a spot-check of all the songs. There's some great music, great guitar work, and great vocals going on in these songs. A lot of these songs are going into my listening rotation.

Congrats. Good choice.

Concur. That is smooth.

If you want to talk about songs that play with time signatures, I think you have to include Journey's "Dead or Alive", which can be written in 4/4, but really seems to be mostly in 6/4: and Loudness' "Complication":

A little bit more data: 1) I've never seen one Music Go Round go out of business. New ones keep popping up as I do my online used guitar searches, but not one has disappeared. 2) When I moved her 8 years ago, the DC area had 3 Guitar Centers. Now there are 6 within a 20 mile radius. 8 if you expand to a little over 30 miles. I'm not sure what's going on, but it isn't *all* geezers building up their guitar collections.

So I finally killed my guitar GAS by discovering I like scalloped fretboards. Now I have nearly-uncontrollable GAS for scalloped fretboards...

Set it to music, and you've got a hit song.

Losing my GAS feels pretty much what I imagine losing my sex drive would feel like.

With the direction of guitars set by PRS and expanded/extended by Carvin (now Kiesel), how soon are we going to start seeing guitarists killed by OB (overbling)?

I can't sing when playing bass with fingers. I can when playing with a pick.

Yeah, I've got the book. Had it for a few years. I've picked it up before and gotten some good progress on it, but never *learned* the songs. Definitely doable. It either sounds harder than it is, or his style of riffing fits my abilities better? Dunno, but I will have the songs learned well enough to play rhythm within about 6 months or so. The solos, tho... No promises.

A man's gotta know his limitations. And then break through them if he can, but he's gotta know them first.

I might have a chance to get most of the rhythms and fills down. But I'm not much of a soloist, so...