2024-Oct-26 - Frozen Ocean
This week's randomly selected song is Frozen Ocean, track #12 from disc #3 of my latest album It Was All Just a Dream. This song features a stunningly beautiful guitar solo from my dear friend Christopher Cisneros.
Frozen Ocean made its first appearance on my 2019 album Electric Sky. For the It Was All Just a Dream release, the song got new drums, a cleaner more punchy mix, and a couple less synth parts thus making the arrangement a bit cleaner.
The inspiration for this song came from a somewhat unlikely source: the name of the sparkly blue finish on that lovely Ibanez RG5120M in the photo is called "Frozen Ocean". This evocative name made my mind race with imagery of a polar sea, glistening with ice, and I started immediately to try to represent these mental images with a musically similar sound painting. I used smooth, clean and low gain tones to capture the serene imagery in my mind, and I decided that write the piece in 7/8 time signature to try to capture the uneven feeling of standing on a boat in the ocean.
I was beyond honored to have my long time friend and guitar phenomenon Christopher Cisneros join me on this song. He wove together the perfect combination of taste, virtuosity, phrasing, tension-building, and release. I'm still floored every time I hear it.
For my parts, I played all of the backing guitar parts on my Ibanez RG5120M and the lead melodies including my own guitar solo on my Fender American Elite Stratocaster. I played all my parts through my trusty Mesa Boogie Mark V:25.
You can listen to this song as well as the entire 44 song collection right here on the website! If you love what you hear and want to support the music I make, please consider purchasing this album on CD or digital download. I will gladly personalize and autograph your copy.
https://chrisstark.com/it-was-all-just-a-dream
Keep an eye out for next Saturday's song spotlight, and as always, thank you sincerely for all of your support!
Love, Aloha, and Rock!
❤️😎🎸