"Twilight Rain", a soft spacey rock tune

"Twilight Rain", a soft spacey rock tune
https://soundcloud.com/bats-brew/twilight-rain

a true story from childhood....
the arrangement is a bit jazzy, with clean electric guitar and acoustic guitar blended,
no drums, it's almost like a spacey folk tune.
njoie

I swear I was going to mention Yes and Jon Anderson BEFORE I saw Lynn's post!
 
I love this track, and it totally reminds me of Yes, which is quite an accomplishment considering their immense creativity and virtuosity.  I can't find a single thing to nitipick about it.  Fantastic!

I love this one. Not sure what bass you used but it pins the whole thing down really well here.You have the harmony down. I like the nice clean sound you got with the guitars. I would listen to this again.

Whew, tremendous tune here bats. Totally loved everything...wouldn't change anything from what you delivered here.
 
Subjective for your head: I would have liked the lead vocals a little louder or the guitars a little lower. Everything was perfectly audible at all times, don't get me wrong. I just felt the voices were a bit underneath the guitars. Thank God the guitars sounded so great. LOL! Nothing worse than when someone pushes a guitar sound a bit in front of the vocals only to have it degrade the performance. That wasn't the case here. :)
 
One other thing...totally loved the guitar solo and sound. However, I would have REALLY loved to have heard you solo on acoustic in that section. Use a sound sort of like what Eddie got on Spanish Fly? That would have worked and sounded so cool there. But again, what you played was incredible and everything as it is was spot on. Just telling you what *I* may have tried if it was my tune. Vocals were insanity. All you good singers from Canada have the ability to pop out a nut or something to sing so high! I'm jealous! Hahahaha! Great job man...inspiring and very pro sounding from start to finish. Effects/atmosphere stuff was spot on too. Really enjoyed this.
 
-Danny

I love the song and the harmonies are great

Excellent playing and singing as always.  I really do love your voice and style.  I think I agree with Danny's comments on lead vocal level.  
 
Beautiful stuff.
 
Rimshot
 

 
My ears liked this, I heard a bit of RUSh along with Yes in the opening.
 
There is absolutely nothing I could say that would mean anything.
 
Thanks for sharing your talents.

Great song! I thought it was really original. The mix sounds great--everything sounds unified to me
(if that makes sense). I found this song relaxing (not boring, mind you). To coin a phrase perhaps overused: sweet...

waltenstein
thanks for listening, and the comments.
i have to embrace this 'yes' thing, i guess.
heheh
honestly, i don't hear it at all, but that's cool, i like yes..
and jon anderson, i'd never aspire to sing his stuff.
he's to unique to try to copy....
 

theguitarplayer
you know, this song was written as an instrumental long before i came up with the melody for the lyric,
but once i got the basic first line down, the vocal part came together almost immediately,
like there was no other version of it in my head.
LOL
doesn't happen like that very often, not for me.
 

STARISE
glad you like this one, and yeah, the guitars are clean, but have a bit of edge to them, i'm just not hitting them hard.
the bass: i used my Carvin LB70 on this one, tried to get it beefy without being woofy.
without any percussion or drums, i really needed something like that bass line to tie it together.
i never know about mixes like this, until after it's done.
i'm just shooting from the hip with it, and change it until i can live with it.
LOL
 

speedtom
no drums, yea, that's kind of a weird thing, i know.
one of the reasons i tried it, was just to see if it would work.
the demo i have of it, the original, has full drums, sounds like maybe an old eric johnson style song.
but i stripped it down to this...
glad you dig it.

champchas
thanks man. the harmonies were easy to write, but hard to get on mix!

thanks again danny..
 
oh, by the way, i'm a southern boy, born in louisiana, raised in florida, traveled all over the southeast, then moved to salt lake city from charlotte NC, back in 2000.
 
 
 
i don't know where the 'canada' thing came across, but hey, i've been to Whistler ski resort, TWICE, so there's that.
LOL
 

a little info on the electric guitar i used on this tune:
 
The Williams Special.
The Williams Special is a Les Paul-Strat-Mustang-Explorer hybrid, with hollow body cavities, Mustang scale length, built like a paul with mahagony and maple top, with vintage-dimension strat body, explorer headstock.
 



back of body/neck:




(semi-related: my first guitar was a '75 Fender Mustang.)
This guitar was commissioned in 1986.
It is a Gibson Les paul-Fender strat-Fender mustang-Gibson explorer HYBRID.
-built by Stan Williams, Rome Georgia.
-based on the Fender Mustang scale length....this design is also similar to brian may's red special.
-honduras mahogany body, with air cavities carved in the body below the maple top.
-flame maple top, 3/8" thick.
-vintage-dimension strat body.
-2-piece flame maple neck, with ebony fingerboard.
-no truss rod! there are (2) rectangular pieces of aircraft aluminum running the length of the fretboard.
-flame maple veneer on headstock, front, sides, and back.
-24" scale length.
-jumbo frets.
-custom inlays: mother of pearl, diamond shape, with a split diamond around the center pickup.
-Kahler 2300 pro tremelo.
-(3) off/on switches
-master volume, master tone, 3rd switch now unwired-
it was originally equipped with a EMG SA assembly, and the 3rd knob was the presence control.
it now has (2) bill lawrence L-280's, and a duncan Little 59 humbucker in the bridge.
-explorer headstock shape, true to scale.
-long tenon set neck
-13 degree tilt back headstock
-graphtec nut, with locking kahler nut behind it.


the Flame maple used on the top and neck, and veneers, was from a large timber (136 years old as of 2011) salvaged from a barn in Illinois.
The honduras was acquired long before there were conservation laws on that particular wood (blank dates back to pre-1980).
___________________________________________________________
design criteria:
the les paul connection.
the basics of the les paul (the obvious basics) are:
slab mahogony body;
maple top;
strings on top of body;
2 piece maple neck;
glued in neck, long tenon;
tilt back headstock, no string trees required.

later, in 2008, they started weight relieving the standards, but remember, i built this in 1986.
so, the Gibson nod starts there.
mine has:
Honduras mahagony body -- maple top -- strings on top of body via the Kahler -- 2 piece maple neck -- a glued in neck with long tenon -- tilt back headstock.

it's really not hard to see the connection.
but my design tried to improve on all of this, because it also was capturing the best ideas of other guitar designs.

for example:
the volute on the explorer headstock is inherently stronger than the les paul (commonly known over time for breaks at the neck), plus i liked the headstock shape;

the weight relief is secondary-- the sound cavities i had routed strictly for that semi-acoustic property, making the guitar, at stage volume, extremely lively - this followed the basics of the Brian May Red Special, which was my starting point. his guitar is designed more like a 335 than mine, but i went there as much as i could without floating the top over a central beam;
the ebony fretboard brings out more les paul-style tonal characteristics than, say, a rosewood fretboard would have;
the glue in neck was a must, and unlike the les paul, which has that awkward heel, mine is smoothed out right into the back of the body, without so much as a line. the tonal effect with the glued in neck, and the long tenon is an obvious connection to the les paul lineage;
the tilt back headstock was unnecessary with the kahler locking nut, but i added it anyway, feeling that the downward pressure of the strings still helps to maintain a strong connection to the neck, vibration wise, and this is very much in les paul territory;
the strings on top, versus thru the body, is a very important link to the overall sound, and the use of the kahler is a great way to bridge the gap between a stop tailpiece and a floating trem.
tho they didn't have them then, now kahler has a 'hybrid' tailpiece, that can lock as a hard tail, or float as a trem.
best of both.

If a young Michael Penn was asked to write a tune for yessongs, this would probably have been exactly what they recorded. Fantastic.
In the car, the bass sounded a bit too much in 400-500hz range, but that could just have been the car's response again.

 
Very pleasant and elegant tune!
 
Thanks for the ear candy!
 
All the best!