GetYourGrooveOn

DFG? They're the chords, or variations thereof.

Another all Adrenalinn affair here. Again! I hear you say. Well that’s all I use these days. It’s your swiss army knife guitar and bass tone machine. If the kitchen sink could generate chords I’d put that through the A/linn as well. I find good bass sound patches between 1 and 8 on the Adrenalinn tweaking them to remove reverb or add a small amount of gain.

The swooping, soaring type soundy thingy on the choruses? I think it’s patch 147, Variation 6 of the FCH effect. But! I may have used the Adrenalinn 1 as well when I originally recorded it. Nonetheless I think I transformed a garden variety DFG (with sus4 passings) chord progression into something a bit different. There’s a lot going on. Lots of dotted eighth delays which are bound to fill out a part.

The 1st verse is a veritable desert landscape compared to the chorus. Stripped right back to a pulsing chop trem effect from the A/linn and a pretty cool bassline (if I do say so meself). I’ve always liked Simple Minds’ “Love Song” and that wonderful 16th feel keyboard part that drives the song and this is a major influence on my track plus of course Charlie Burchill their fantastic guitarist. For my trem part the guitar plays root/fifth D, F and G power chords this time at the 10th, 1st and 3rd frets and the open D and G strings are sounded as well. The ratio on the trem sound is set at 16th notes and played with down and up strokes. And you really have to concentrate on getting it tight. Down strokes have to be bang on the snare hit. The verse opens out a bit with the introduction of clean chords (probably Adrenalinn patch 69 but with effect off) and another dotted eighth part which is an unashamed nod to the aforementioned Charlie Burchill.

Chorus again.

Second verse and a short dirty riff appears with a 1 bar delay (I think!). And as is customary for me, dirty single note riffs are probably based on an Adrenalinn talk box preset. I love cocked wah sounds. Guaranteed to stick out in any dense mix. Also another dotted 8th delay riff appears. Second half and the clean chords come back and a simple….wait for it…..dotted 8th riff comes in. And it’s actually very nearly my favourite part of this piece.

Chorus again. Enhanced this time with the addition of a guitar line consisting only of random false harmonics on the D string (picked very fast).

The middle 8 appears at 2min36. Always a good excuse to take a song somewhere else. The power of the A/linn comes to the fore with its arpeggiator effects. On the V3 A/linn the patches 150 to 159 show varieties of arpeggiator effects. Variation 19 is the particular sound used in the middle 8. I grabbed another guitar and tuned it down to D but keeping the standard tuning intervals. So, grabbing an Em chord it’s voiced Dm and simply strumming it’s the arpeggiator travelling up and down the scale that transforms the part into something totally different. Note that the Adrenalinn arpeggiator sounds default to the key of E. To get the sound to D I adjusted the Frequency knob down to 10 from 12 i.e 2 semitones. I doubled it and panned each hard L and R. It rocks! A fresh take on a generic chord part. Two other arpeggiated riffs make up the middle 8 however I actually played them this time. A solo appears, fingerpicked with notes popping as the strings slam onto the fretboard…the simplest sound of the whole piece (and quite frankly the execution is pretty simple as well....sheesh!). I changed the drum loop as well to a brushes style. Subtle but effective for reinforcing quieter sections.

The ending. A fairly hamfisted ending at this stage. I’ll fix it later.

Overall, I like this track. Mucho enjoyment writing and recording it. I think it’s fair to say that the Adrenalinn made me rethink the role of rhythm guitar in rock music. And long live the dotted 8th delay. It’s a wonderful device for groove orientated pieces.