You'll Never Know

Nice ideas in that one, well done! Good elements in the rythm guitars with those stops

The drums and chorus affect guitar on the opening remind me a little of Suede’s “So Young”. Mix sounding better each time.

I think from 1:20 - 2:10 under that riff you’d maintain the urgency if you just had simple 8th muted chugs for the chords. In general it’s a solid idea to counterpoint your rhythm and lead guitars. So when the lead is playing something complex, have the rhythm play something simple, when the rhythm is complex, make the lead simple. If the rhythm is low on the neck, then play the lead high and vise-verse.

So e.g. you like to use the motif of rhythm doing something like “bah-da-bah-da-da-da-da-baaaaaaaah” or if you prefer “living on the edge of the wooooooorld” (would be nice if this forum had notation built in, but phonetics will have to do). This is a classic call and response rhythm, which means to create counterpoint and let each part shine you don’t play anything on lead while the rhythm is doing it’s complex bit, but then play a response riff over “woooooorld”, it might be the same thing but higher up, or it could be something else, you can have one or two notes playing the root but otherwise keep it clean and clear. That will give you a lot more punch.

A good way to think of arrangement is that it’s pre-mixing. You’re creating space or cohesion before you even touch the faders. By keeping things really simple you actually make things more powerful. There’s a solid tendency everyone has to over-play, we hear these rich productions full of players, but things actually sound better when there’s more space and intentionality. So when you want things to come together and sound cohesive, you actually just overlay the exact same thing with multiple instruments. When you want things to be spacious, you arrange things so that there’s just one lead, everything else is just emphasizing parts of the drums (most often hi-hats or kick, leaving space for the snare), when you want a complex rhythm track you introduce it on its own then once the audience gets it add your lead over it (e.g. Dr Feelgood by Motley Crue), and when you want complexity that’s when you craft two or more melodies or leads against each other (think Delibes Flower Duet, which is just about the apex of what can be achieved with intertwining melodies) but they benefit hugely from repeating the motif to create a coherent harmonic whole.

Arrangement is hard but is where you’ll elevate yourself. It’s hard because when you practice only on your own you try to fill up all the space, but often you’ll find your ideas for parts are really ideas for more than one instrument and you’ve just grown used to filling in both parts as you play to make it sound fuller. Always step back, always listen to the tracks that are your inspiration, and pay attention to what they’ve layered up to sound so good. You can learn a lot from trying to copy someone else’s arrangements.

Quote from BayouTexan

I literally wrote this watchin grass grow. I had new sod installed in my front yard and then the damn sprinkler controller went haywire. It was a bad week.

I created the chorus riff first (which I totally adore) and then did some dissonant chords (my first time) to go for the rhythm stuff, and then made the verse arpeggios . I like how the little break came out. This is the fattest guitar tones I could get so far. I got the bass track more defined but I'm still getting some cross-mud with it over guitars and kick I'll have to figure out later. I need to spend more times doing solos.

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Nice one BayouTexan the chord tone on the accents sounds especially good. Brilliant

I’d also pop in some 1/8th note root note bass. Nice one

Hey BT!

Best one so far. Only thing missing is vocals.

Cheers,

Mats N