Welcome back!

When I last left you, I was contemplating lead guitar solos. I'm happy to inform you that my bumbling, rusty, slow and out-of-practice fingers have finally led me to something I'm willing to make public, as rough as it is. This is where the loop recording and quick-comping (the process of piecing together a complete recording from little bits is known as "comping") features of Logic Pro come in really handy: I select a section of the song and put Logic into loop recording mode, which allows me to record the same section over and over, and Logic creates a list of takes, from which I can quickly assemble my favorite parts. Here is a small section of the guitar solo which I had comped together to give you an idea:

*Three takes, used to 'comp' together a coherent solo take - click to enlarge*

As you can see, I've used bits and pieces from these takes to assemble one large piece. If you listened to each take as a whole, you would hear they are all pretty different, and full of wrong notes, pauses, and general mayhem as I'm exploring the notes and phrases I like.

So, after I have that pieced together, I work on it some more, simply trying to get the notes into my fingers, find the transitions from phrase to phrase, and I re-record the whole thing, and you get this:

The latest version of my work in progress. Lead guitar part still rough, but overall shape has formed. Re-recorded all guitar parts and bass to correct for slight timing and tuning issues. Fancied up the drum loops with some cymbals to give it a touch more life before, hopefully, recording a real live honest-to-gosh drummer!

For the 1,000 ft view, here's what the session looks like overall in Logic:

*Start Believin' Logic Pro Session - click to enlarge*

If you click to image to see the full-size version, you'll see that there are actually very few comped sections now (they give themselves away by little vertical black lines in the track). I've re-recorded both rhythm guitar parts from beginning to end (to correct some timing and tuning issues), and only punched into a couple spots where I made a boo-boo.

So... what now? Well, the logical next steps are:

Real Drums
Lyrics/Vocals
Cowbell
More cowbell
PROFIT!

Stay tuned...

Oh, hey, I almost forgot! Here's another little bonus track, as a little sonic treat for you loyal readers/listeners! This one's an oldie (it's so 20th century!) that keeps hanging around the back of my brain. I worked a bit on it recently, and this is the result. It's another work in progress, but here ya go:

A re-visiting of a tune I wrote way, WAY back in the day... like the last century. The title comes from some lyrics that I've mostly abandoned, though may see if I can find and rewrite. There are very few stock drum loops that come in 6/8 time.