Performances

This solo didn’t take me as long as my radio silence on this blog would indicate. I had to take a hiatus from practicing for a while due to work pressures and other family commitments that cropped up over the past few weeks.

I got back into practicing a few days ago and polished it off fairly quickly. I’m proud of how this turned out. Let me know if it captures the essence of Mick Jones’ raunchy style.

Two weeks later and it’s done. I’m kind of sad to see this one over with. It’s such a fun solo to play, with bends all over the place and a lot of movement up the neck. But I must move on. Let me know what you think.

Whew!

This is the first solo where I’m just glad it’s over. I don’t want to denigrate The Cars or Eliot Easton in any way. The song and the solo are amazing. It’s just not my style and it’s so damn fast.

I’m really glad I stuck with it, though. The speed and finger work I had to learn will definitely help me down the road. That said, I cannot wait to start learning the next solo, which is…  well, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to learn that.

I recorded this one sitting down. Standing up was just not comfortable for this one. Let me know how I did.

This solo took way, way longer than I thought it would to complete. There are two main reasons for this. First, I didn’t play guitar for a month, mainly due to my Mom’s passing, funeral and interment ceremonies which took a lot of my time and emotional energy. I also got very busy at work during the same time, so I was doubly pressed for time.

Second, the solo is a lot harder than it looks. Getting all the pinch harmonics in the right places is a nightmare — I ended up doing pretty well with it, but it’s by no means an exact duplicate.

It’s a really fun solo to play, however, and one of my favorites so far. I hope you like it. Let me know in the comments.

The really hard part about this solo was trying to perfect the recklessness of the original. When Tommy Shaw plays it, it seems like it’s about to come off the rails at any moment. It has to sound both precise and rough at the same time, and that’s a hard feeling to capture.

I performed this with a little more energy than I have in the past, partly because I needed to really lose myself in the solo to achieve the sound I was going for, but ultimately I feel like it came out pretty well.

I apologize about the strange sounding backing track — there were no backing tracks available on-line, so I had to make my own by using an equalizer to pull the solo down as far as I could, while still leaving the bass and drums intact. I think it turned out OK, but it’s a bit strange at the beginning and end.

I love the way Neil Schon puts his solos together. They have a lot of range and a variety of styles that mix together within the same solo to take the listener on a little ride. There’s a lot going on, but it never feels haphazard. It always seems to flow perfectly from one section to the next. I enjoyed learning this one, especially since it required me to improve my speed playing and precision. I’m happy with the way it came out, but let me know what you think in the comments.

Sometimes the best way to improve something is to not practice it. I’ve know about this phenomenon since I was a gangly 14-year-old kid who used to go to the arcade every day and try to set the high score on the Tempest machine. I would get slowly and steadily better at it, but it was only after I went on a week’s vacation and came back to machine after a break that I bested my high score, and by a substantial margin. The brain needs some time to process skills.

Last week, I spent 4 days away from my guitar (not by choice, just due to circumstance), and when I came back to it this past weekend, I had improved my ability on this solo, so much so that I felt comfortable recording it today.

David Gilmour’s style is something I don’t think I could ever fully match, but let me know if you think I came close.

I loved learning this solo. It’s such a classic song, that everyone knows, and it’s hard enough that I feel like I’ve really accomplished something. Because this solo has a harmony part, I recorded it twice and have included both parts through the magic of “picture in picture”, which thankfully iMovie makes ridiculously easy.

I think I got pretty close to Tom Sholz signature “Boston Sound” using the Ampkit+ app on my iPad. It really makes practicing and recording these solos a breeze. Let me know how it sounds. I’ll be announcing solo #7 in the next few days.

Gary Richrath, REO’s lead guitarist, is the king of string bending. The hardest part for me in this solo was getting the bends to the proper pitch, plus the very difficult 2 step bend at the very end of the solo, which was necessary because my guitar only has 22 frets, and Gary’s has 24.

I’ve very pleased with the pace that I’m learning these solos. It’s a side-effect of practicing every day — it’s accelerating for each solo, even though they are getting more difficult. Originally, when I planned this project, I gave myself an average of 1 month per solo, which would have taken me a little over 2 years for the whole project. I think it’s going to go faster, and that’s exciting to me.

So, I feel a little foolish. Yesterday, I posted a whiny rant about how long it’s taking me to learn this solo, and then one day and two practices later, I have it pretty much down. I hit one or two questionable notes in this performance, but nothing I would worry too much about if I were playing live.

What I love about the solo is it’s deceptive simplicity. There’s nothing intrinsically hard about each individual element, but the way they are put together requires constant thinking about what’s coming up next. I thoroughly enjoyed learning it, and feel a great satisfaction in the fact that I learned the entire song. In just two weeks, I’ve added a whole new song to my repertoire.

Now I can form that Mountain tribute band I’ve always wanted to start.