I took a break and fiddled around with the BOSS GT-8 (with the T5 of course), and I thought I ought to at least try recording some of my new material. I have tons of them… but guitar and vocals only.

It’s simple enough to make songs with a guitar and a pen (in my case, the text application of the laptop). The real killer is coming up with the accompaniment to complete the song (bass, drums, strings, etc.). Even if I had a clear idea of the accompaninment – it’s still tedious to sift through the software and pinpoint a patch that is closest to what I had imagined (not to mention having to go surgical with a myriad of plugins and EQ just to shape the tone into what I want).

And that’s only the “laying in of the tracks” part of it. Mixing, then mastering is a whole different beast altogether.

Anyways, enough of that. Going back to the GT-8, I spend a considerable amount of time creating two patches.

First was a Carlos Santana sounding lead tone, which is pretty specific if you’re familiar with his music.

The second one was a generic distortion rhythm patch for the typical “rock song.” I guess my peg here was to be able to pull of a sound somehwere between a Matchbox20 and Switchfoot (in terms of “heavy-ness”)

So I ended up with this. It’s only the intro as I’m still stumped on how to do the drums for the other parts. Once I think of a decent drum track then everything would be faster.

Quite honestly, I really like it :) I like it for a number of reasons:

1. To the best of my knowledge, it sounds nothing like my other songs, which I guess is a good thing.
2. I was trying to get an “OPM” feel of a rock song (since this particular song will be in Filipino), which I think I did accomplish.
3. What you’re hearing in that file is all raw. No EQ, no plugins, no mixing and mastering (yet)

Which leads me to the conclusion that having a good guitar goes a really long way. (DUH!)

I remember the time when I was still recording with my Ovation: I plunked in a bunch of effects and EQ-ed the shit out of the guitar tracks and it still sounded like shit. And here comes the T5 with a superb acoustic tone straight from the jack… and as proven by the mp3 in this post, performs just as well as an electric guitar!