I had the weirdest dream a few weeks ago where I was buckled into the seat of a massive airplane that was about to take off. It was cavernous and empty; there weren’t any seats in it other than mine and maybe 5-6 other people who were buckled up in lone seats elsewhere in the plane. For some reason I knew that there was no pilot yet I was still completely at ease. Up it went for about 10 seconds and suddenly I could feel it swooping up into the beginning of a loopty-loop. Pants-shittingly intense “OKAY…. HERE WE GO!” thoughts lightning-bolted through my brain. The next thing I knew it was dark out and I was walking up a super steep grassy hill with some other people (maybe the others on the plane?) I didn’t see it but could hear a river behind us as well as big boomy fireworks going off. I couldn’t see those either, I could only see the flashes going on behind our shadows as we walked up the hill.
I woke up with tornadoes in my stomach and could feel my heart quickly beating. I was back in our dark bedroom and I looked at my alarm clock.. it took a few seconds until I finally realized that it was a dream. I still haven’t quite figured out what to think of that one but knew at some point that I would musically document it.
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“Jet Island” is that dream’s musical interpretation and the 3rd tune in the ever-expanding glob of the Linn drums/Fishman TriplePlay pickup project that I’ve
My synesthesia’s BFF: Les Paul + TriplePlay pickup
become obsessed with. I feel like I’ve unlocked the doors to a massive warehouse of instruments with that TriplePlay pickup; it’s super fun putting instruments that I’ve never even heard of together and seeing what kind of cool, odd sounds come out of it. The phrase that starts at around 15 seconds into the song is some sort of African guitar combined with a bell that I guess is from the Middle East. Whaa?
The song was born out of the first 4 bass notes you hear at the beginning – while I was testing out bass synth sounds I randomly played the E, A, D, & G strings at the second fret and thought huh, that sounds like bass line potential to me, and locked into it. Next came the drum beat. At first it was a square rock groove but for whatever reason Stewart Copeland came to mind and I tried out a Walking On The Moon vibe which fit in poifectly… After that the rest just sort of fell into place. Although I grew up on the guitar solo-drenched music of Malmsteen, Satriani, Zappa and Vai I’ve never really felt the desire to play solos. For whatever reason this music makes for a super easy and fun frame for guitar solos, this is the second song in a row where I’ve let the wankery fly. So(lo) be it.
This one weighed in at a whopping 26 tracks! I usually only need 6-8 tracks if that. Toward the end my computer (which is a pretty beefy system mind you) was begging me to stop – I was getting blue screens, plugins were freezing, it became a reboot frenzy. It was finally done cooking last night. Here is “Jet Island”:
