"Tonight..." Leads

  I spent this weekend finally putting down the main guitar melodies/leads for a song called "Tonight, You Reached Me" which will be on the "jazz machine" album.  I was supposed to do it back in early January but it was put off since I wasn't feeling well, etc.  The recording went really well this weekend and I'm pretty pleased with my results.  I also had to re-record the solo on "As Evening Brings Tears", the opening track on the same album, since the previous solo was basically a compiled mix of many different takes all sewn together, and because of it, I just didn't feel like it had a nice cohesive feel.  Therefore, I listened to the compiled solo quite a few times, wrote down what pieces I liked the best from it, and then tried to recreate it in a more listenable fashion that flowed in a better manner.  I think it worked and was a good choice.

The solos on "Tonight..." were interesting since I took the approach of doing it much more slowly, deliberately, and doing a lot of listening in the process.  The rest of this album so far has been done in more of improv vein, trying to preserve anything unexpected wherever possible.  "Tonight..." feels much more deliberate and then also has a more proper melody line flowing through it.  It was also the first time I've recorded with my Les Paul Std.

I decided to use my old Electro Harmonix Micro QTron pedal for the third verse of "Tonight...".  I had an idea in my head that using a strong effect like this would create an interesting alteration to just having another standard verse sound, and I think I was correct.  I don't know why people don't like the Micro Qtron; in fact, I believe it's now discontinued and I frequently see them for sale for around $60.  I think it's a great pedal, personally, but it's something you only really use in short bursts, and maybe that's what throws people about it.  I personally can't imagine trying to run the pedal continuously through an entire song since it would get fatiguing very fast.  They still make the full size QTron, which I personally find odd since EH full size pedals are kind of big and clunky, and I don't know what more you could need that the micro version doesn't do.  Who knows.

It should also be noted that the entire "jazz machine" album so far has been recorded exclusively on the Benson Vinny with the 10" cabinet.  This little sucker is pretty phenomenal, in my opinion, and it's worked really well for this style of music.  Sure, you lose the low end with the 10" cabinet but I probably would have just EQ'd it out anyhow so in essence the cabinet saves me some work.  The crazy thing is the whole amp and cabinet are about the size of 2 boxes of cereal.  I can't recommend this thing enough so far and I'm sure it'll become my goto going forward.