N. Schon all guitars

[Eric]

I like both Red13 and Eclipse. I get bored with State of Grace and The Time.....and I skip Venus - but out of 16 songs that's pretty good. I'm skipping all over most other albums.

Agree that the solos don't stand out for me, but I think that's because there is so much other guitar going on.

[koberry]

I'm scratching my head here, since these guitars were done in the studio and probably nitpicked to death. I'd say that's how Schon wanted them to sound. I read one comment on Schon making mistakes, there are no mistakes in the studio. That's what he wanted the sound to be!! Now whether you like it is a different story, I'm not a musician so it's OK with me.

That's the point I'm trying to make....but maybe I didn't explain myself.

I think Neal's playing on this record is fucking awful. There's parts where he sounds out of time. There are parts where he's pick attack is sloppy....it's like the guy is suffering from arthritis.

Also, one of Fro's calling card was very structured solos, which have a beginning, middle and ending. His solos were works of art. Songs within songs....Not so much on this record, where it's just senseless jerking off on the guitar, without any structure. Very little of his solo work on eclipse complements the songs. Granted, the songs are fucking awful to begin with....but if they didn't let Neal ruin the songs with these extended solo sections, we might have had a better overall record and better solos, to boot.

Giving someone free reign in the studio to be creative, sometimes is a double edged sword. In this case, Fro wasn't held in check on this record. They found some no name guy (to replace Shirley) that didn't tell Fro to dial it back.....and the result is a fucking mess. Poor playing, all over the place, no structure to the songs and solo sections that take away from the quality of the record.


This is the first record Fro has released, where I actually cringe at his crappy playing, instead of listen, jaw on the floor, awe-struck by what he's playing.

You're one of the guys on this forum, I've always respected a lot. but you're saying Neal was in the studio and Neal deliberately put out piss poor music?

Neal's on record saying he likes to wing his solos.... that he doesn't like to comp them...

"comp"... is studio speak for composite - like writing 10 of the same sentences, each with mistakes in different spots... and cut~n~pasting the best parts together...

What this means in Neals case... would be Neal replaying (and recording) the solo over and over then "comping" the best parts of all the takes together into the final solo... as I said Neal prefers to wing it..

.,,, and this is how we get what we get on Eclipse...

That's BS. We've all read the same stuff on how he approaches solos - goes in with a theme idea and then pulls it off on the fly in the studio. The Walks Like a Lady solo was purportedly a one-take effort. Sometimes you get gold, sometimes it's something less. There's no single right approach.

They chose to stretch out on this album and guitar is more out front. With that as a framework, there's more/longer solos because that was the intent. Nothing wrong with that... Conversely, the intro to AIP is tight, focused, tasteful and fabulous. Awesome way he intersperses legato phrasing with articulated, syncopated pick attack. The first 4+ minutes are classic tasteful Schon and the last 40 seconds are classic harder-rocking Schon with melodic shred stuff you could have heard him play on the Santana III album. It's all good...

[The_Noble_Cause]

Conversely, the intro to AIP is tight, focused, tasteful and fabulous. Awesome way he intersperses legato phrasing with articulated, syncopated pick attack. The first 4+ minutes are classic tasteful Schon and the last 40 seconds are classic harder-rocking Schon with melodic shred stuff you could have heard him play on the Santana III album. It's all good...

Well said. I remember when "Arrival" came out, most fans loved the blistering, raw solo at the end of WGW. That was the rocked-out Journey of Frontiers/Escape that fans wanted more of. Now that we finally have an album full of such moments, fans inexplicably want less of it and more Cain gay balladry.

[StringsOfJoy]

Conversely, the intro to AIP is tight, focused, tasteful and fabulous. Awesome way he intersperses legato phrasing with articulated, syncopated pick attack. The first 4+ minutes are classic tasteful Schon and the last 40 seconds are classic harder-rocking Schon with melodic shred stuff you could have heard him play on the Santana III album. It's all good...

Well said. I remember when "Arrival" came out, most fans loved the blistering, raw solo at the end of WGW. That was the rocked-out Journey of Frontiers/Escape that fans wanted more of. Now that we finally have an album full of such moments, fans inexplicably want less of it and more Cain gay balladry.

...I don't think it's inexplicable: people just like gripe about things they can't control and you can't please 100% of the people out there ever.

We seem to have a glut of pop music marketing MBAs on the forums too (who knew???), but I also don't subscribe to the idea that there is a magic formula for sales from one album to the next...it's like chasing the dragon because big numbers are an ever-moving target.

On that note though, here's a concession: if I'd had my druthers, the album would have sounded differently (I don't think it's perfectly in line with my tastes but I still like the end-result on the balance). I would have preferred that on longer songs that they would have adopted the approach that you see in some of Green Day's songs off of "concept albums" (and The Who, before them...)...meaning, short, strong and hooky thematic musical passages ("mini-songs" within longer songs) that didn't over-elaborate before your ear heard something else that was compelling and hooky.

On the sound-engineering, I noticed for some reason my ears tended to like the Amazon MP3 release better than the Wal-Mart CD release because the CD Release sounded more "lush" and balanced (and yes, I'm willing to admit I may be imagining this but my ears keep hearing the difference no matter how many times I go back and forth) while the MP3 release sounded a little drier with more soundscape separation. The bass in certain songs sounds more bad-ass in the MP3 release, in particular.

Anyway, I always think of Escape as a record where the arrangements of the sound provided a wide soundscape with greater separation: a littler drier, a little punkier, a little more stripped down, which I think made for a bigger dynamic impact. I'm still hoping Journey has another record that sounds like that in them because I think it'd sound great if they could apply what they've learned as musicians since them to something that sounded like that (note: this does NOT mean a more ballad-heavy record).

Oh yeah...and on the lyrics, these were clunky, no doubt. Journey/Jon does best when writing about concrete things/experiences/sensory perceptions that SUGGEST things about Journey themes (hope, perseverance, love, faith, etc...). There's WAY too much exposition in this record, like you get from a college freshman or precocious high school student, and too little to tease and stimulate you into thinking about something in a new perspective. There's a cliche among fiction writing instructors ("show, don't tell") that would be good to take to heart. It's not dogma, and DSB did both showing and telling, but sometimes when you ONLY tell...it just sounds preachy/Christian Rock-like/clunky. By contrast, check out the way that the best Nashville songwriters compose lyrics (I hear someone just moved there...hint, hint...)...and even just take a whiff of lyrics from someone like Taylor Swift (or a host of other great lyrics writers) to see what it looks like to describe things that link up to her themes of love/loyalty/disillusionment/resiliency etc...Sometimes a turn of phrase about something mundane can be more evocative than lines and lines of preachy or expositional abstraction (one of my favorite examples is "'cause I'm a little bit tired of fearing that I'll be the bad fruit nobody buys" by Australian singer-songwriter Missy Higgins...how relatable is that and how much more of an impact does that have than just talking about some grand abstraction?)...

...just some random thoughts to add to the madness for the day.

[FishinMagician]

speaking of schon guitars, does anyone know when/if the Fernandes signature guitar is coming out?

[StringsOfJoy]

speaking of schon guitars, does anyone know when/if the Fernandes signature guitar is coming out?

Do you think Fernandes would have something imminent and ready to go if Neal was playing PRS guitars virtually exclusively during the run-up? If you don't hear anything this July during Summer NAMM, I'd consider this vaporware...

[RocknRoll]

speaking of schon guitars, does anyone know when/if the Fernandes signature guitar is coming out?

just read this recent interview...

http://www.dinosaurrockguitar.com/new/node/862

DRG: Tell me about your signature guitar.

Schon: I’m now working with Paul Read Smith and I’ve got some really exciting stuff coming out with him. I was using his guitars first, before I was coached away from using his guitars, by Gibson. I basically helped Gibson up-date the Les Paul and Les himself, before he passed away, he loved the guitar. They wanted to put the guitar out without my name on it. The fast access heal that I showed them, which I had on all my old guitars, they wanted me to sign it off so they could use it on all guitars. They screwed me over. Now they put another name on a cheaper version of my guitar, so I got a bad taste in my mouth and I had to move away. So I struck up conversation with Paul at the NAMM show and we’ve got some great things coming. A semi-hollow body, like a 335 with easy access to the neck, single-cut larger body Les Paul. It’s set up with a Floyd Rose. He’s also gonna re-make the Schon guitar, the black one. He’s had that to evaluate and remake. His head turns purple when I talk to him because I have so many ideas and he likes my ideas. We’re on the beginning of a great relationship that I’ve had with him for a long time. I think I bought number 5 guitar from him when he first started out, right after Carlos bought his single cut from him. I own the first 12-string he made and brought to one of our concerts in the early 80s. He’s making one of the best guitars out there and he’s a pleasure to work with as apposed to some Joe that doesn’t know fuck all about what you really are playing.

[strangegrey]

Conversely, the intro to AIP is tight, focused, tasteful and fabulous. Awesome way he intersperses legato phrasing with articulated, syncopated pick attack. The first 4+ minutes are classic tasteful Schon and the last 40 seconds are classic harder-rocking Schon with melodic shred stuff you could have heard him play on the Santana III album. It's all good...

Well said. I remember when "Arrival" came out, most fans loved the blistering, raw solo at the end of WGW. That was the rocked-out Journey of Frontiers/Escape that fans wanted more of. Now that we finally have an album full of such moments, fans inexplicably want less of it and more Cain gay balladry.

This gets back to me 'its about the song, stupid' comment I had earlier in this thread. The difference here, is that alot of the songs on eclipse are really bad....WGW is an absolutely stunning classic of a song. If the song's good, that gives the guitarist alot more wiggle room to cut loose.

Im just not hearing it on eclipse. bad songs all around....and with SIC getting 95% of my attention, I don't ever see coming around on eclipse.