tgorycki
Inspired
One of my very best friends, Stefan Kalman, recently died mysteriously. A core group of musician friends got together to hold an informal memorial on the beach in South Florida where people brought pictures and shared stories about our friend. Prior to the memorial, I was listening to Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop and heard the track, Where Were You. I thought, “This is something I’d like to perform at the memorial.” So I programmed the MIDI keyboard parts, learned the guitar parts and recorded it in Cubase.
Rather than do a tone match on this one, I tried some of the Axe-Fx II stock presets to start with and found the Screamin’ Plexi to be a good starting point since I read that Beck used an old Plexi with a Rat distortion pedal. I used an Ibanez RG1570 with a brass tone block mod (my apologies to Strat purists). I did however play most of it without a plectrum. I found that playing this piece was largely a balancing act between playing clean and using a ton of vibrato. There’s no way I could play this like Jeff since he’s one of a kind (and a hell of a lot better player), so I backed off the vibrato quite a bit.
I’ve attached the preset for anyone interested. Actually, it makes a pretty good “Guitar Solo” preset (as most stock guitar solo presets have a ton of echo and reverb).
Rather than do a tone match on this one, I tried some of the Axe-Fx II stock presets to start with and found the Screamin’ Plexi to be a good starting point since I read that Beck used an old Plexi with a Rat distortion pedal. I used an Ibanez RG1570 with a brass tone block mod (my apologies to Strat purists). I did however play most of it without a plectrum. I found that playing this piece was largely a balancing act between playing clean and using a ton of vibrato. There’s no way I could play this like Jeff since he’s one of a kind (and a hell of a lot better player), so I backed off the vibrato quite a bit.
I’ve attached the preset for anyone interested. Actually, it makes a pretty good “Guitar Solo” preset (as most stock guitar solo presets have a ton of echo and reverb).