I don’t really know what I was going for here, mostly I was into using my amp for what it’s meant for, and then playing with some effects here and there.

For the most part the playing is straight forward just major chords in D with a D pentatonic over it. Simple stuff. I threw in some bends here and there to keep Chad happy, even though I hate bends. So cliche. :-) The rhythm and changes are lifted from a couple of bounce blues tunes and then I changed the chords to fit the key.

The chromatic part is a little, eh. I probably wouldn’t have left it in but I felt like trying to work it out and see if I could use it.

The settings on the amp were that I scooped out the mid-level EQ for the rhythm, and then brought it back for the lead. This gives the rhythm a slightly muddy sound that sits between the bass and the lead. I set the guitar to be middle pickup on rhythm so it got a clean crunch lead, and then used the bridge+middle pickup for the lead so that it had more highs. Personally I don’t like this kind of muddy rock distortion, but that was the round.

The drums and the bass are just from my alesis, but the Rhythm guitar is my G&L through the Blackheart amp. Problem is that I recorded that with a mic that needs the volume to be really loud for it to pick up the full sound of the amp. I left it to see if I could clean it up in editing.

Next I used the mics on the DP-008 for the lead part and recorded it in stereo. These mics are much higher quality and sensitive, so they could pick up the amp and nearly everything even when on low. With that I recorded a lead, but didn’t realize the right mic was a little louder so had some clipping.

Finally, I pulled the final tracks into Reaper and then went in to clean them up. I may send the “before” results to the forum so people can compare the results. Basically I applied compressors to the different parts, mostly focusing on the lead guitar that was way too loud. For the lead I used a compressor that gave it a kind of cool weird sustain. For the bass, rhythm, and drums I just lightly applied compression to help with volume.

Put in a bit of pan for the parts to stand out and that’s it.

I may try to do another darker rock tune tomorrow morning before I shoot out Round 14.