Listening Post Spotlight-Akira-Jan.'07

This month's Spotlight shines on a track recorded by G.T. member Akira, simply titled "Instrumental Rock Pastiche Composition". What he lacked in making a catchy title is eclipsed by his ever improving lead abilities. Akira (a.k.a. Sean) practically needs no introduction to the G.T. community, for since joining in February 2004 he's surpassed all to become the member with the most # of posts, 5,900+ and counting! He's obviously managed to learn a thing or two along the way.

Track Info

As for the set-up, he plugged his Jackson Soloist SL2H into his pedalboard, with the distortion coming from a Keeley Boss DS-1 Ultra. From there it goes right into his soundcard. There he used Amplitube for the amp modeling.

He was so detailed and informative in his breakdown to me, I'll just quote him on it:
"I spent a while playing around until I came up with a little something for the first theme. It's embarrassingly simple really, I think the main body of the theme works around only 4 or 5 notes, but it worked, so it stayed."
"I decided I would go all out in the second theme to sort of juxtapose the two parts. Most of the second theme works around pentatonic scales and blues scales."
"That legato lick at 0:35 is based from a blues pattern that Paul Gilbert usually works with; I really like that pattern!"
"The crazy tapping part at 0:41 is evidently Vai inspired, but it's a lot more simple than it sounds! Basically just working through a pentatonic scale, it's the interval changes that make it sound hard."
"At 0:44 I'm just hitting on the trem bar whilst doing some hammer-ons and pull-off between two notes, I recorded another guitar playing the same thing but an octave up to make it sound more interesting."
"The ascending lick at 0:51 works around a load of hammer-ons and pull-offs ascending up one string working through a blues scale pattern, specifically inspired by a lick from Satriani's "Summer Song", if I remember correctly."

Review

The origin of this track goes back a few months, but being unsatisfied, it got put in his "shunned ideas" folder. Now that he needed a short original for his BA in Creative Music studies (thus the to the point song title), it was looked at anew to be salvaged, improved and polished. Admittedly he sees room for improvement recording wise, but overall he's pleased. This feeling was unanimously shared in the forum throughout the original thread. And to sum it up, he had this to say about it all:
"I'm pleased with the end result, the idea sounds a whole lot better than it did 8 or 9 months ago, and I'm amazed by the reception it got at GT, so thank you to those at GT who liked it!"
Original Thread:
http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21340

One final note

I had planned on starting off the new year by making this month a double feature with both Akira's track and silentmusic's latest post "Through the Clouds", which also got great reviews, but a communication breakdown near the due date prevented me adding anything that isn't covered in his original thread. However, that track was definitely a highlight of the month's posts, and at the least deserves a mention!
Check it out:
http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21350