Tender Surrender - Steve Vai Cover

ok, i'll say it out loud! I really like it! I even like it more than the original. and i'm not kidding. you see i believe that Vai plays the way he plays because he can. But your playing has something that guitarists have only in the beginning. passion and energy!

very impressed. Congratulations!

Giankap-appreciate the listen and comments, very kind.   I have been playing with different arrangements of this song for a couple years and finally decided to finish it.  I am very fond of the Vai original and thought it would be a fun experiment.  Glad you like it.

Marcos-Thanks for the listen, I was debating whether to post it for that very reason (being the holy grail with hundreds, if not thousands, of covers of it on YouTube)   I had a drummer friend of mine play the drum part with his Roland V-Drums, captured MIDI and then used Superior Drummer for sample triggers.   This set was the NY Avatar set.   Bass Part is Trillian.   There is a Rhodes piano from my Yamaha Motif.  The string and horn parts are NI Kontakt 4.  The guitar parts are all NI Guitar Rig 4.  I record all the parts with all effects intact except reverb and delay (I add those later).  This chain was my Ernie Ball guitar into a Guitar Rig Controller which is connected to a separate laptop computer running Guitar Rig 4, and then to an RME FF800 on my main DAW computer for recording.  I like to record the guitar through Guitar Rig rather than recording dry with Guitar Rig as a VST effects plug.   I get better results that way.  I have played with trying to mike amps but for me it is just easier to use Guitar Rig.  Plus my wife finds me less annoying with headphones.  Thanks again for the listen.

Guitar Rig does rock. I don't know how I ever lived without it. Oh yeah, I remember, I had a Digitech RP7, got destroyed in a flood.

This is really good. I never heard the original. Awesome guitar tones.

i can understand why Vai is a great influence to all of us guitarists, but i don't like that he constantly mixes his music with this monkey business of his while playing. He impresses me when he expresses him self with his creativity but not with all these faces he makes while performing. imo these faces belong in a zoo together with the monkeys.

and i love your playing because everything i needed to hear form this track was there!

Bub-Thanks for the comment.  Really liking Guitar Rig.  I am just too lazy to mess around with amps, effects, wires, miking, etc.... anymore.  GR4 is pretty good and wide variety of sounds.  I use a trick sometimes to give the illusion of miking by re-recording my GR4 performance with a mike, from my KRK monitors.  Just add that track at a lower volume to add a little more dimension in some cases. 

Tom- Thx

Morenoise/Rik- Good question.  I always noticed when plugging my guitar directly into my RME with Guitar RIG in the FX bin that it sounded thin and weak when playing back.  I think it has something to do with the phasing with the pickups and the FF800, or something.  I already had the RIG Pedal so decided to try that out, it worked well so just started using it that way.   I guess the Kontrol Rig is more forgiving than the RME when it comes to guitar pickups.    Later I read an article with Craig Anderton where he was talking about digital artifacts and fizzy tones, and that using products like Guitar Rig with higher sample rates, (I use 96k) reduces the effects of those artifacts and gives a more analogue tone.    The fizzy high, shrill stuff is that noise you find when sweeping across your EQ frequency range with a narrow Q and high boost.  

So I didn't have enough horsepower on my DAW workstation to run Sonar and Guitar RIG at 96k so I just installed Guitar Rig on a spare laptop I had.  The laptop runs only Guitar Rig, with the Kontrol Pedal sample rate set to 96k.  The Kontrol Pedal then goes into my RME FF800.  I have Sonar/RME set to 48K.   As I am just recording audio from the Kontrol into the RME FF800, the sample rates do not need to match.   I found the result to be OK so have just stuck with it.  Also, I like to hear what I am playing in real time.  I know you can do that with Input Echo but the latency doesn't work for me.   I like to hear the entire context of the music behind the parts and when I set latency low enough to not have any noticeable delay, things start to crackle and pop.   This was just a clean way to do it.  Hope that answers your question.

BTW  - The Anderton info regarding amp sim sample rates is located at link below.
http://www.harmonycentral.com/docs/DOC-1652


Regards

I love it!!  :-) Simply amazing playing and great mix.

Holy $!%#

This is great!  I think Vai himself would be impressed!  Very pro sounding mix too!

Your years of diligence definitely show on this track.  Seems like recording, mixing & playing an instrument for that matter are a constant learning experience.  I suppose that's what keeps it interesting.  Enjoyed this one a lot!

great job...rocked like h****

good work!!

Hell of a guitar player you are, Mark. Tone is fantastic for Sim Amp. I find when I record directly from my POD it sounds so much fatter compared to FX-binning a clean recorded signal with POD Farm. But since I have to cheat and cut and paste my guitar leads, sometimes I got no choice!

Vicente- thank you for the comment.  I always enjoy your guitar pieces.

Tom-Thank you.  This was sort of outside my typical genre so glad it turned out.

Pat-Thanks.  I don't know if my mixing technique is right or not, but here's how I  do my mixes.   First I start with something I know is going to sound great, my Superior Drum track and Trillian Bass lines. (I make sure that these parts combined to not exceed -6db at their peaks and average about -9db).     Then I mix everything else around it making sure all the other pieces fit with the bass and drums, and sound as good, and as big.   If there are vocals, I will do vocals right after getting the bass and drums right, if  it is a guitar piece I will do guitar after the bass/drums and then fill in everything else.  Seems to work ok.   Of course, I have read some mixing books and learned a lot from this forum, but, I find that if I don't start with a really good  baseline, my mixes don't work so well...

James-Thx.    There were a couple cut-and-paste jobs in the heavy solo section,  I think I broke it into 3 sections.   I am glad to hear that you are using a similar technique with recording guitar.  Your guitars always sounds great in your mixes.  I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong with the FX bin insert technique because the parts always sounded so thin and weak and I wasted a ton of time trying to work it out.  Finally stumbled across the direct recoding process after beating my head against the wall.

Mark-Appreciate your comments.  The tone took a little tweaking but is basically a canned Guitar Rig sound with a few minor enhancements.  I started with the finger-picking a while ago trying to learn a few Mark Knopfler songs.   I find it opens a lot of options.   I hope to learn a few Jerry Reed songs, like Jerry's Breakdown, to take finger picking to the next level.  Thx again.

Blimey!

I just stumbled across this whilst doing a search for something totally different.

This is amazing! I too am very fond of Vai's original but you've created something here which totally augments what Stevei did with it.

Wonderful playing, great interpretation, and a fine mix.

Top marks  (pun intended!)

Holy's hit! This was an awesome version! I would never even try to cover this song. Great job.

Nice, so what's this, 2 years now you've been playing? :-)

hi markno999 holy smokes that was excellent the talents are amazeing on this forum thanks for sharing eric