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Lucky 2-Night
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Songwriters demo. Recorded in 1996 at the kitchen table using a Fostex 160 4 track analog portastudio. Steve2000: all guitars, bass, Alesis DR programming, lead vocal, producer/engineer.
Artist picture
Guitarist, songwriter, singer in probably that order. On my own I lean toward blues rock licks and tones. In the studio: play for the song, always.
Welcome to my "band" page. I want to share some music I've recorded over the years. I was a member of one of the San Francisco Bay Area's top dance/show bands for 15 years. Today, the best cover bands are usually lucky if they can book a weekend in the same club and outside of the few true 'show' bands left playing a much smaller circuit, today's cover bands - at least in this area - can't make a living as fulltime musicians.
Song Info
Genre
Rock • Rock n Roll
Charts
Peak #498
Peak in subgenre #42
Author
S. D. Slaght
Rights
1996, Stevesongs
Uploaded
July 30, 2004
Track Files
MP3
MP3 4.0 MB • 128 kbps • 0:00
Story behind the song
Songwriter's demo to showcase an instrumental track which had been kicking around for years in various forms and still may not be done. This version was fun, though. Will probably redo lead vocal with new lyrics and harmonies whenever the new digital studio is ready. "Ghost bass guitar" courtesy of premix/bounce #2. There's actually a nice melodic bass line floating around down in that pre-mix somewhere. Ah, the joys of 4 track analog recording. The only guitar used on this recording was my 1987 Fender Strat Plus loaded with Van Zandt replacement pickups. There are only 3 tracks of guitar on this song due to the limitations of the 4 track recording format: 2 electric rhythm guitars and one electric lead/fill guitar part. During the endouts, the fill guitar drops back and plays a descending line/riff which strengthens the chords and drum punches -as an overdriven fourth guitar enters to take the official solo on the track which the lead vocal had occupied up to that point. All instruments were recorded direct to tape on this kitchen table/living room demo. The only mic used was a Shure SM58 for the lead vocal. A Mesa Boogie (tube) Studio Preamp with speaker emulation was at the heart of all things electric. This unit was just inserted just before the tape deck, the speaker emulation allowing the sound of live, loud rock guitars tp be recorded directly to tape. The rhythm guitars went straight through the Mesa using it's clean Fender channel. The lead fill guitar probably went through a Soldano designed preamp before hitting the Mesa..or perhaps it was a Marshall JCM 800 front end. With both these amps I fed the send of the effects loop straight into the Mesa, eq'd it and sent it via the speaker sims into the tape deck. The solo lead guitar at the end definitely went through the Soldano. The bass - such as it is- was played on my 1970 Fender P-Bass straight into the preamp-into-tape set up. An MXR dyna-comp was the only compressor available and was used on the bass at some point, as well as a few other things. As mentioned, the bass part is actually a nice melodic line which got premixed wrong early on and eventually got walked on. Oh well. I was just discovering the wonders of electronic stereo spread and used some chorus pedals, an echo pedal and a Yamaha SP effects box to widen things out sonically and delay them a bit. My old Alesis midi-verb handled the basic reverb jobs. I guess my unconcious goal on this song was to flesh out the production as I heard it in my head, even though I only had a 4 track tape analog cassette porta-studio to work with. I was determined to make it sound as big as I was hearing it. To this end I did a single bounce of a 4 track premix over to a hi-fi VHS deck, playing the bass part live as I bounced. (Aha! Maybe that's where the bass part went!). It sounded ok when I brought it back to the 4 track as a stereo sub-mix. I then added the fill guitar on one remaining track and the lead vocal and lead guitar solo on the other. I also added 'live' cymbal hits and percussion from the drum machine as I mixed the song, perhaps creating another virtual track or 2. There's a lot going on in this recording considering there were really only 6 tracks available for tracking. Oftentimes technical limitations are the father of invention. If I'd had 24 tracks or unlimited pro-tools tracks, the rhythm guitar parts at the top and in the verses of the songs would probably have been played on acoustic guitars as they'd been in earlier versions of this song. Because I only had 2 tracks, I came up with a nice clean yet strong strat tone which has the power of acoustic strumming to it when needed, and then evolves into the 'class A' vox/strat chime for the ends of those parts of the song. This type of tone has since become very popular in pop and country music. Finally, the 2 rhythm guitars fatten up nicely (for Fenders) to punch out the driving chords under the chorus. Thi
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