2024-Oct-12 - Spheres
This week's randomly selected song is Spheres, the first song off the first disc of my latest triple CD release It Was All Just a Dream.
The first version of Spheres appeared on my unreleased 1998 album Kosmos. Then for my 2016 debut album Legacy, I adapted the song to include lead and rhythm guitar parts and dramatically simplified the synthesizer arrangement. For the final version, I re-recorded EVERYTHING. New drums, new bass, new guitars, and new synth parts.
The inspiration behind this song came from a lecture in a world history course I took in college, where the professor mentioned the term "spheres of influence". While I understood that this term was referring to a figurative sphere, my imagination immediately cooked up a mental image of a literal sphere of influence in some sort of sci-fi fantasy futuristic storyline. Perhaps a little weird, but sometimes that's how inspiration works. 🤣
The first version of Spheres was entirely synthesizer based. The song featured over 50 distinct synthesizer parts, all woven together in a sonic fabric that was heavily influenced by the likes of Tangerine Dream and Delerium. As it was arranged, there was pretty much no way a song with that many parts could ever realistically be performed.
I officially released my debut album Legacy in 2016, and I took this very layered song and reduced it to an arrangement that was much closer to being performable. Perhaps more significantly, I added guitar parts to the song. For the final version of Spheres found on It Was All Just a Dream, I reduced the arrangement even further, and re-recorded the drums, guitars, synth, and bass parts, and I gave the song a much cleaner and punchier mix.
The clean and distorted rhythm guitar parts on this recording were played on my Purple Phaze Charvel Pro-Mod DK24 and Zinc Silver Ibanez RG250LTD. All of the lead parts were played on my Solar S2.6. The wide variety of tones were all courtesy of 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!
❤️😎🎸