Toccata in D Minor

[Skezza]

I've recently been going through my old University recordings and I found this kiddo. I was about 18 when I recorded this and massively into classical instrumentals. I thought uploading this would make a nice change as you don't hear it very often.

This is a cover in the style of Sky's virtuoso performance of Toccata by Bach. For those who don't know, Sky were a jazz/classical influenced instrumental rock band from the late 70's early 80's. They were mainly session musicians but all were stunning at their respective instruments and I suggest checking out the works of Kevin Peek who is one of my all-time favourite players. He sadly died about 2 years ago of cancer while being in the news for all the wrong reasons after being found guilty of deception if I remember rightly. We all have our demons, Kevin should be remembered as one of the premiere virtuoso guitarists of his generation and hopefully in time, he will, after wounds have heeled.

So, I've never been one to put too much polish on production and this one really eclipses it for me. I took the original track and EQ'd out the body and filled in with my own work. That's it. I also altered the arrangement slightly so the harmonies at the end follow a more Bach feel, regrettably added some very unnecessary sweeping in the last section (with hindsight, I was 18 after all) and hopefully brought out the keys a tad.

As I remember, the track was made up of just 4 layers:
Track Base
Guitar Central (25% Vol) Percussive Background
Guitar Left Harmony 1 Lead
Guitar Right Harmony 2 Lead

I did very little else really with the production really. I was never one to over compress, over distort or brick wall and what not.

The guitar I used was a Charvel CX291 which had been converted into a Fake E. Lee. So, the trem was removed and hard tail installed, body painted white, headstock painted white, Charvel decal, finally, the bridge pickup was a SD JB and Dimarzio SD's for neck and mid.

The amp was a Peavey Bravo 112 from the 80's with a few pedals in front. Interestingly, the mic was a fake (or at least a replica) Shure SM57.

The first verse is played with a plectrum.
The second verse is tapped in the style of a keyboard player.

In all honesty, I'm not sure which I prefer, but the tapped version always looked better :P That said, having tried it again just recently, I realized it was much easier to just tap it with just my index finger rather than try more than one Very much for show.

I was actually lucky enough to play this live at a local music festival. For that particular gig, a friend helped me with a proper backing track so I didn't have to balls around with the original. All seems so long ago now.

Anyway, here ya go:
http://webcreations-uk.com/Toccata3rd.mp3

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Toccata in D Minor

That sounds pretty good. How old is the recording ?

[Skezza]

Re: Toccata in D Minor

Apologies for not replying sooner. Haven't been on since.

Heh, well, it's not that long ago, I just get very nostalgic ha, but I would say it's coming up to about 10 years old at a guess, which I suppose isn't really that long is it lol? I was actually playing it for a few years before I recorded this though.

I often used to play it to warm up, some of the descending hammer-on licks are quite good for warming fingers up you see (mainly because they go against the sort of mechanical pattern which is descending straight down the minor scale, you sort of have to adjust your playing a bit but that in itself is good when you're warming up). Anyway, I don't exactly remember what inspired me to record it as such although I do remember playing it to someone in a bar and them saying that'd sound really good over a backing track.

At the time, I was mostly writing and recording my own stuff and part of the problem was trying to define my own style. I sort of wanted to be everything (Yngwie style neo-classical stuff crossed with the melodic heaviness of Children of Bodom with the musical appeal of an Ozzy Osbourne). Naturally, that made it impossible for me to find a band that I fit into (most bands were doing indie anyway and all that lark, plus the few metal bands that were around wanted nothing to do with Yngwie or anything like that), so I simply started to write and record my own music. Got myself a really limited setup, doing the mixing mostly in my bedroom, which really wasn't easy at the time as money was tight so I was short of good recording equipment, and you couldn't really crank your amp living in a poxy flat anyway.

I really wasn't a big fan of the whole 'line-in' recording (Pod, GuitarRig etc) and I'm still not overly fond of it now, although I've softened to it. Anyway, my dislike of line-in recording meant I preferred the whole guitar->amp->mic way of recording. There was this University music room which was (badly) sound-proofed about a mile away from where I lived. It was really badly neglected. Horribly neglected in fact. A couple of drunks broke in there one night and smashed up the drum kit (decent kit as well) and broke the guitar (a cheap Ibanez) and damaged most of the other equipment too. Gave the place quite a sad feel but that also meant you could pretty much guarantee it would be empty any time of the day. No band would realistically practice or rehearse there. As the only person who actually used the room regularly, I was given a key in exchange for assurance that 'if I arrived and the place had been trashed.... again..... I cleaned up the mess'. You'd be surprised how much a place that's already been trashed beyond belief can be trashed again. So anyway, to record, I would haul my guitar, amp, pedals, microphone, cables etc, all the way to this horrible little shack a mile down the road. Sounds ****ing barmy when I think of it now. Anyway, you can imagine that the effort it took to record meant I didn't just record any crap. I always went down with a specific purpose to record at least something or I had something in my mind that I wanted to do. The great thing was it gave me freedom to really crank my amp, and you can imagine I absolutely did.

So yeah, this was recorded in that room. If I remember rightly, I recorded about 12 takes (all in one of course), and chose the best 3 when I got back to my flat. Of course, it wasn't really possible to fix mistakes once I was home, so I always had to record at least a few takes just in case of the odd duff note.

Fair to say that I now own a GuitarPort which is the only line-in interface I actually like, even if it is about 15 years out of date!!