Want to play this? Then get the tab book! Arranged for guitar and transcribed by me. Here's the link:

[ Ссылка ]

Puh, this one will be hard. There's so much to talk about in regards to this song, solo, tab book and video, as well as my collaboration with Hannes.

In case you missed it: Hannes approached me in October 2022 and asked me to record the guitars for his new album. Album because at that point he wasn't sure yet what kind of release it'll be. I recorded all main guitars, so rhythm and leads without solos, in February 2023....so exactly one year ago.

My job was not just recording the guitars, but also arranging them into something playable, including all articulations and fingerings. Basically, Hannes sent me tabs with no palm mute indications and unplayable fingerings. Some of them resembled something playable, others were just numbers on strings, that had to be rearranged completely.

Hannes composed all the music (except the guest solos, of which I have two), but I decided how everything was going to be played and recorded on the guitar. So in case you were wondering why there are so many crazy alternate picking runs in there, that was me! I was in the middle of my hi-speed alternate picking phase back then lol

I went to Hannes studio once before the recording to go through all articulations, just to double-check with him (The actual guitar recordings were done by me in my home without Hannes). Here's something interesting: I was highly influenced by Necrophagist and Muhammed, not just in terms of playing, but also writing. The way I articulate and palm mute is all coming from Necrophagist. So the interesting thing is, that Hannes is a way more "melodic" player, and both me and Muhammed are more "percussive" players.

What I mean by that: a lot of "melodies" and movement in Necrophagists guitar parts are "hidden" in the palm muted notes. That's how I do it too when I write music. Hannes on the other hand wants those little melodies and movements to be heard. So my first arrangement of the EP had a lot more palm muting which we then revised when we met in his studio.

Fun fact: for the Blotted Science song on the EP called "Humanoid Body Automation" I used a sort of "half" palm mute, something that resembles Ron Jarzombeks playing. I'm a metal player throughout so I palm mute very hard and in a percussive way. Ron seems to have a kind of rock approach.

My revisions of the original tabs were also the reason you guys got a tab book in the first place! I like my tabs to be neat, so the first thing was to clean them up and use my own notation style. Hannes got the idea for a tab book when he saw my cleaned up versions. You're welcome! :D

After I was done with recording the main guitars of the EP, I wrote my two guest solos, which were then recorded in June 2023. Here's the thing: I would've loved to write all solos for the EP and Hannes would've let me too. But I'm super slow writer and knowing, that this is a proper release, I decided to only write 2 solos and put everything into those, knowing that this could be my place to shine.

My solos are in this song "Retrospective Monologue" and the other song "Echoes Of Eternity". Echoes is my slide solo and was super easy to write. Writing stuff with the slide still feels super refreshing to me, so it never took long to find a spark of inspiration. Basically everything I wrote for that solo ended up being in the final version. This one here though......

The solo from this video was a bitch to write. Echoes was my "feeling" and phrasing solo, and Retrospective was supposed to be my shred-fest. I had at least 10 revisions of just the first bar. After every lick I got a writers block lol. Like I never knew how to continue. My workaround was to decide a structure and write around that. That's how that call and response kind of thing in the second solo was created. It's super fatiguing for the listener to listen to straight 16th notes for 30 seconds, so I needed something to break it up.

That's also when a thought popped up in my head "it's just a studio release, I won't have to play this live anyway". I went all in and included a few slide articulations and made the first solo a complete wank-fest and sweep 21 notes a second.

Which brings me to this video. That was stressful. I prepared for two months and originally it was supposed to be just two takes for the solo. First and second solo. Filmed that. Didn't like it. Then got issues with my hand and some mental health stuff. The solo is so fatiguing, that when the second part of the first solo comes, my hands are already tired. With that mental health stuff, I didn't have a lot of focus, so after 20 minutes I was done mentally. That's why I decided to make it multiple split screens and record each of them seperately. It was either that or miming it and we all know that you don't like miming ;-)

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