2024-Aug-31 - Time Machine
This week's random selection is Time Machine, song #11 from disc #1 from my latest triple CD album It Was All Just a Dream.
This song made its first appearance on my unreleased album from 2000 called Ethereal. Although I never publicly released the album, I gave out copies to friends and family. The song would eventually make its first public appearance on my 2016 debut release Legacy. Since then the song has been completely re-recorded from the ground up.
Time Machine has the distinction of being the first song that I wrote with the specific intention of it being a guitar-focused instrumental. Previously, all of my songs were steeped in ambient and electronic synthesizer influence. But Time Machine marked my transition into writing music on the guitar and for the guitar, even if there were still a fair amount of synthesizers providing the sonic backdrop.
One of the synthesizer sounds I used on the song came from a very unique instrument, the Korg Wavestation. It was a standard factory preset sound called "City Of Tomorrow", and the sound provided the perfect ambience that I was looking for. The name of the preset inspired the song title.
The guitar solo on the original unreleased version of this song started as a completely improvised solo, but it was rather short (¼ the length of this final version). I liked the ideas that I played, so in subsequent versions of the song -- both on my albums Legacy and now It Was All Just a Dream, I stretched out the length of the solo, but still used the ideas from that original version as the basis for the subsequent versions.
Guitars & Amps
Despite the sparse and spacious sound of this song, there are quite a few different guitars in the mix. For the chunky rhythm tones supporting the choruses in the song, I played my EverTune-equipped Ibanez RG470, which was custom-swirled by Swirl the World. For the various clean guitar parts, I primarily used my Sully Guitars 624 CS prototype with a couple of bits played on my purple Charvel Pro-Mod DK24. The verse and chorus melodies were played on my Fender American Elite Stratocaster, while the guitar solo was played on my Ibanez S5521Q. All of the guitars were played through my Mesa Boogie Mark V:25 and Mark VII using the Fat and IIC+ voices.
Rhythm Guitars:
 Ibanez RG470 “Swirly” (1999) |
 Sully 624 Conspiracy Series (2018) |
 Charvel Pro-Mod DK24 “Purple Phaze” (2019) |
Lead Guitars:
 Fender American Elite Stratocaster (2016) |
 Ibanez S5521Q (2014) |
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!
❤️😎🎸