City Lights Lead Guitar Work

So I have been working through some lead guitar compositions for City Lights and you can hear what I have come up with in the accompanying video. Please note the tone of the guitar is not something I necessarily desire for the song; I'm more focused on trying to come up with the arrangement and note progression.

Dave Eastman had a chance to listen to the guitar work and came up with some suggestions, all of which I completely agree with. I am currently working on revising this part and will update you on its progress. Keep in mind as well that this just a demo version of the song; drums, bass and singing are all just placeholders for the lead experiments.



Dave's Notes:

" I listened/watched the city lights
recording from Cullens house- its coming along really well. I put
together some notes on the lead guitar part you sent me- here they are

verse 1- the intro melody is nice- kind of a floaty/blind melon vibe. The
delay you have on it suits that feel. could see it being a bit more
locked into the main groove as this song has an uptempo-rocker sound.

prechorus1- the lead does a good job of lifting/building the prechorus to
the chorus

chorus- overall, it feels like the ld gtr and the vocals are fighting for
the same space. the lead should either double the vocal and stray a
little bit, staying complimentary to the melody, or just harmonically
compliment the lead vocal all the way through, or some combination.
Basically, the rhythm and the harmony need to match up a bit more.

verse 2- compliments the vocals pretty well- maybe make this line a bit
more sparse? (i.e. not having it repeat every 2 bars?)

prechorus2- again, this does a nice job of building to the chorus.

chorus2- Same thing as chorus 1- could have it match up melodically with
the lead vocal for the first 8 bars then start to build for the second 8
towards the bridge- you do this a bit in the demo.

bridge- want to keep this pretty minimal so the solo section afterwards
really pops out- otherwise, you're hearing too much lead guitar.

solo- like this solo- you're basically looking for a soaring type of solo
that heightens this section. Minimal well chosen notes with the delay on
could be very effective- or one minimal guitar with delay and another
smaller sounding guitar filling in the gaps. want this section to be big
so that the drop down for the quiet start to chorus 3 is dynamically large
and important.

drop down- no lead?

chorus 3- This sections sounds good- could keep the solo closer to the
melody at the beginning, and then like you do in the demo, have it take
off a bit and harmonically compliment the vocal and logically lead us to
the drop down in intensity at the very end.

end verse- I like coming back to the playful verse melody.

The lead part has a really good feel. Ultimately, it just needs to be
narrowed down a bit so that there it isn't overplayed and so that every
time it comes in, it serves a specific purpose."