Song 17 in Db minor

Song 17 in Db minor (mp3 file)

Steel string and electric guitar.

Okay, it's time for some instrumental rock - well, sort of. This is the first tune of this batch to feature overdriven lead guitar, which was like my favorite thing to do once - in excess, too. Now, Itry to restrain myself a little bit, because it is so easy to get carried away with this kind of sound... and I do it too sometimes... But this song called for some screaming guitar, altough I tried to hold back a little bit.

I had an idea for C# minor (had to rename it Db to avoid screwing up blog links, because the "#" sign has special meaning in links...) which I decided was too much like the folk/minor/russian/swedish type things I've done before. Then I started fooling around with another one of my other favorite tricks, which is strumming with open drone strings. C# minor lends itself beautifully to this. The chords are C#m (open 1 string) - Badd11 (open 1st and 2nd strings throughout) - F#m7add11 - Aadd9 and Badd11. The chorus starts with an E instead of C#m. I liked the change from B to F#m. After figuring out the chords and the beat, I knew there was a melody waiting to be discovered, and I labored with it for a while before I arrived at what you're hearing here.

Once more, I had to record using the internal mic of the steel string, but it seems to work rather well in this context. I added some chorusing for a sort of 12-string effect. The lead guitar is my Ibanez ES copy, through a Fender Cyber Deluxe in the higain "tweed" setting. All effects were added in the mix.

After struggling a bit for the past few days, I felt reasonably good about this one. I think I might return to this idea later on, it would be fun to hear this with a full band...