First up today was the re-recording of Father God you reign, which actually appeared on the Rooted album In the beginning. I remember being pretty pleased with the original recording back when I did it, but the more I listened to it the more I thought there was more that could have be done with it. It needed to be louder. It needed to be more rocky. It needed better electric guitar sounds. It needed better guitar solos. So I decided to re-record the song from scratch to appear on this album as well.
I started off with a drum track, using drum loops, and then added guitars, bass and vocals. I’ve given it a slightly edgier feel, and hopefully a more mature interpretation too. It took a while to get right though. A younger version of myself would have dismissed most rock music as being unsophisticated and requiring very little intelligence – after all, it’s just a case of turning the guitars up too loud and playing three chords… But I’ve learnt in recent years that there is a definite art to creating a convincing ‘rock’ sound, and getting just the right sound from the guitar and amp combination is tricky stuff. And of course if you then add in complex guitar solos as well, you can take it to a whole new level again.
Now, I’m not saying that my recording of Father God you reign would compare to a version recorded by Brian May, for instance, but it is pretty rocky, and I reckon it’s much better than the version I did for the Rooted album. We’ll see once it’s been edited.
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