My First Real Project

Angel Gone Bad

http://soundcloud.com/telenator/angel-gone-bad

I already recorded about a dozen, just playing acoustic guitar and doing vocals, but I don’t really consider them projects. They came out fine and I posted a couple on that Podium Poppets group on SoundCloud.

But it was time to start moving on to more interesting things. This new one’s not perfect. I’m still in the process of experimenting with a handful of mastering plugins I installed this week. Also, the bassist was sent a copy of the acoustic guitar and a scratch vocal track and he returned it with his bass part mixed in and too deeply embedded on the guitar, so if you hear what sounds like a rhino softly snorting in places that’s me trying to pull the bass guitar out without harming the guitar part. I had to employ his overtones to create the illusion of more bass, and the rhino is his strings clacking against the frets.

But enough excuses — this is a tune written and sung by an old bandmate by the name of Joe Harper. I thought the tune had a lot of potential; I really like it, and I had some time right now to give it a few hours before I get too busy with a current batch of my own. Aside from noodling around and running a few tests, this is the very first time I ever recorded any of my lead guitar playing. I close-mic’d an old Fender tweed Champ with a borrowed an original 808-model Tube Screamer in front of it, and that turned out to be the easiest part of the whole project.

I hope you like it. Joe’s a true up-and-coming kind of songwriter, and I’m hoping I’ll have time to do maybe one more of his best new ones soon.