The Obvious Exit

Here’s a new starter track I put up last week. It could almost stand alone but I think it would be greatly enhanced with a good bass track and some strings. Where the heck are all of the viola players that want to collaborate with rock musicians anyway? One thing that’s sorely lacking with at least Kompoz’s collaborations is the constructive criticism that’s so important for crafting really good music. It’s difficult to establish that sort of rapport with individuals from such a large community and I think that online communication is often prohibitively cumbersome when trying to hammer out creative differences when you have such a limited interface.

I find myself drawn more and more to electronic compositions as a starting point for collaborative pieces rather than traditional guitar-based pieces. I usually feel comfortable really stretching out creatively – sometimes adding sounds and play styles that fall outside of traditional guitar play. The parts for this piece aren’t too far outside the box, but there’s a nice mid-section use of heavily over-driven and palm-muted harmonics. The opening single note line is played through a medium resolution vocoder which gives it a funky ’80s sounding electric viola on steroids. I played the rhythm under it using a snappy thumb and middle finger-style attack. The melodic single note section is played through a Boogie heavily driven by a bass distortion pedal. I like the sound of this the most. It gives the notes a great whistling sustain that almost sounds like an Ebow. Check it out here:

Update – new vocals: