ORIGINAL FUSION for fans of Holdsworth, Donati, Tribal Tech

Hey fellow musicians,

I've recently released a set of my compositions and just want to share them with people who might enjoy them.

There are 9 tracks in the jazz fusion genre and influenced by Tribal Tech, the Yellowjackets, a Chick Corea, Billy Childs, Allan Holdsworth, Mike Brecker, etc.

I hope you can take a few minutes and check it out. I'd really appreciate it.

I'm the guitarist and composer and used my Carvin HH2 on all of the tracks, a wonderful instrument that's helped me recover from a nearly career ending injury.

Have a fantastic week and take care!

Peace,

Scott

MY FUSION RELEASE

Nice Scott! It always amazes me what our members do with their skills!

All of your songs are great! I really like Beast of Burton!

What are you using for the other instruments? How long have you been playing for?

Glad you posted!

Originally Posted by: Guitar Tricks AdminNice Scott! It always amazes me what our members do with their skills!

All of your songs are great! I really like Beast of Burton!

What are you using for the other instruments? How long have you been playing for?

Glad you posted!

Very grateful, man. Thanks. I've been playing since 1980.

The short answer on all the other instruments is that I did all the programming. How....that's the thing:

(First of all, I composed and did the programming of every last note of these particular tracks between 1992-1995. These guitar tracks and sound updates are in Feb 2015.)

A brief explanation about my process for these tracks is that the non-guitar rhythm section parts were the result of me literally inputting note by note into notation software, every drum fill, keyboard run, all solos, every bass line, tuned perc. It's like having a piece of staff paper, writing out the music, and being able to hit "play", or handing the chart to a band to perform. (It wasn't done in real time, but as a composer would write. I did input the parts from a MIDI keyboard, so it recorded the dynamic range of my input). So I had to consider, as I wrote a keys solo line for instance, or drum fill, what energy to give that moment. Of course these days, there are auto generating drum programs that allow anyone to create realistic sounding parts, but know this: that if there was a buzz roll on the snare on a tune, or ghost notes in between the hi-hat and snare, I had to figure out what that would be, literally, and write every note. The one thing I did with the keyboard solos, was to input them as quickly as I heard them in my head, without going back too much, so that they felt more improvised in real time. Things like that gave the parts a more realistic sound. And after finishing writing a solo, I'd go back to the rhythm section and have them "react" to the soloist.

(Again, this was all done in 92-95 …and on a Mac Classic II - a brand new computer at the time - and I wasn't in a place to have players come in and actually play these, so my thing was to go for as realistic a "performance" as I could.)

Plus, I never actually intended on recording guitar parts, because there were nothing but 4-track cassette machines in my 1992-1995 world at the time. These were only meant to be performed by my "superhuman computer band".

Anyway, in 2002, when I finally had ProTools, I started recording some guitar parts. (Now, I recorded the first, original guitar tracks from my original release of these on Holdsworth’s label back then “Gnarly Geezer Records" in 2002-2003, but in Feb 2015, I've gone back and re-tracked EVERY guitar part with my new Carvin HH2). Both to feature the instrument itself, AND to update my own playing in this context. All of this new work was done in Logic with entirely new and updated sounds as well.

Going back and laying the guitar parts was tricky, too, as I had intentionally composed ALL of the music from the keyboard, to stay away from guitaristic traps and routines. So I really had to woodshed to get those guitar parts laid, especially the ones that followed the keyboard lines in unison, or voicings that mirrored the keyboard voicings, were particularly challenging. It was as if I was learning someone else's music, as I had not ever seen it from that point of view before. Luckily, I had the notation pages pulled up on my iPad, for reference. Some have asked if any of it was guitar-synth triggered, which it was not. I had to play against the sequences note for note.

So that's it, essentially. Sorry if it's a wordy explanation. No other way to describe it.

So glad you dig it!

Wow!!! That is quite a bit of effort and it certainly shows! Keep it up, you have a very cool and unique sound.

Thanks for sharing your creative process too! Some of our members might like to see how you did this as well!