It’s already been fourteen days of guitar recording… and I feel like this project is taking forever to complete.  Today was another day of lead guitar recording… but it just didn’t happen for most of the afternoon.  For some reason nothing was coming up for the arrangement.  Out of ideas… and generally frustrated with myself.  But, I believe the lead guitar is at least down for Winds of Change.

Slow recording day–but had the opportunity to get lead guitar down for two more songs: Morning Sun and Photographs.  Only two more songs to go (for lead guitar,) and it’s time to move on to the second album, I suppose.

Had the opportunity to get the lead guitar parts down for three more songs, today.  The lead parts are for Picnic Day, Little Secrets, and Black Lake.  Originally, I wanted to limit this project to being made up of four basic parts: drums, bass, rhythm, and lead guitar.  But as time goes by, I’m finding places (in these songs,) where I just want to add a few more parts… ha ha.  I guess it doesn’t matter when I don’t plan on performing these songs in their album form, anyway.

I think the lead guitar parts are pretty much done for the second (Purpose People) and third (Willow Green) songs in the Dream World series.  Took most afternoon to get… but, I’m kind of liking how the effects are turning out.  I have the feeling that only the first two albums (at best,) are going to be finished anytime soon.  Really want to get it all done and over with, though.  The past is over, anyway.

Hmm, didn’t realize that a lead guitar part could take all day.  I think the lead guitar part for the first song, Dream, is finished.  Later on, I still need to adjust it a bit to fit the beat… but it’s recorded, at least.  Playing around with Guitar Rig and finding some interesting watery-sounding delay effects to match the mood of the song.  The overall musical goal is to make the song sound kind of like a dream.

Other than that, just got a couple of outlines done for the first two songs on the second album.  Going back to acoustic guitar after electric is pretty terrible.  I didn’t think it would come to this…

Day 9 of Dream World recording.  Today was a pretty short day of recording… just able to get the rhythm track down for the last song on the first album.  The song is called Three Willows.  The story behind the song (inside the overarching story,) vaguely references an old Japanese folk tale that I read prior to writing this song.  Here’s a shorter retelling or, (if you have a lot of time,) a longer version online if you’d like to read the story.

Decided to re-record the rhythm guitar track for the first song (Dream) in the Dream World series, today.  I just didn’t want to deal with the noise issue from when the earlier version was recorded… and wanted to do a better job with how the rhythm track sounds anyway.

Other than that, I just went back through the previously-recorded rhythm tracks and added the chosen amp simulator, today.

Finally found the amp simulator I want to use for the clean electric parts of this project.  For now, I’m going with Guitar Rig 4 by Native Instruments.  I picked up a few different simulators over the past couple of years… but only just recently have been trying to pin down some settings I will actually use.  Aside from the clean sound of Guitar Rig, I’m liking the effect possibilities, as well.  Native Instruments included some of their Traktor effects in the latest version of Komplete… which is pretty cool.  It’s like having a whole new box of crayons from which to pick.

So, knowing what I know now, I recorded rhythm guitar for another song (Winds of Change) today.  I also went back and re-recorded the rhythm guitar for Willow Green.

Think I got a couple more rhythm tracks done today.  Still have to review them later… but the songs were Morning Sun and Photographs.  Not really sure how the guitar on this first album is going to turn out.  It’s all kind of experimental in some ways.

One thing I know for sure, at least, is that I’m getting a lot of arpeggio practice with electric guitar through this project.  That counts for something, right?

Recording can be like life–full of both good and bad news.

The bad news:  this week I realized that some of the earlier work had some weird electrical ground background noise… so I’ll probably end up re-recording some of the earlier days’ worth of material.  If it isn’t obvious by now… this is my first electric guitar-based endeavor;  I didn’t realize how different the dynamics of recording would be compared with acoustic recording.

The good news: I was able to more-cleanly record two more songs today for Dream World (named Little Secrets and Black Lake.)

Still thinking about how this project could ever be helpful for the Kingdom.  I wish I was able to better relate the project’s story through music.