Three to the East
July 18th, 1998 was the day that the first seed for this song was planted. On that day I noodled out the first baseline of the original version. It wasn’t long after that that I programmed my first entire song called ‘The great far west’ on my new Soundblaster AWE 64. The Great Far West was more of a standard metal song, and used about 98% midi driven sounds, partially because I had little audio recording equipment/software, and little experience using it.
The song sat around for a while until sometime in the summer of ‘99 when under the influence of several bands such as Tool, Smashing Pumpkins live Adore shows, and VAST, I decided to try my hand at rebuilding The Great Far West influenced by what I was enjoying at the time, and to head more in the direction that I wanted to take my music. I spend a good part of late 1999 summer rewriting and creating new guitar and drum figures for the song. But things slowed down when I went back to college and I didn’t finish the rewrite until March of 2000. This version which was known as ‘Return to the East’ Was a completely different feel from the original and contained a much longer guitar solo, and improved strings and a new kick-ass drum line. But it suffered as the Great Far West did where there was just too much midi ruining the show, giving the song a thin tone.
So it is now late summer of 2000 and I decide that now that I have a decent technique for recording audio that it is time to smite the midi demons from this song. I deleted all but the essential midi lines (drums and other instruments I don’t have) and re-recorded them with many layers of my 1966 Gibson SG in all its buzzing glory. And I also rewrote almost all of the guitar figures giving the song one badass solo that was laid down in one face-twisting guitar improvising fury. And so the latest version of this song is born, ‘Three to the East’
Then, once again in 2004, I decided it was time to tweak again. I dissaembled the song, and rewrote the drumline for the outro. Not a major overhaul, so I kep the name the same this time.
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