Erotic Cakes - The Backing Tracks
Contents
IntroductionWavesErotic CakesWonderful Slippery ThingNer NerFivesUncle SkunkSevensEricSlidey BoyRhode Island ShredHangover
Introduction
Greetings, one and all!Guthrie here...
Hearty felicitations and congratulations on your purchase of this Erotic Cakes Jamtracks package. I’m happy to report thatGeneral MIDI and his Magic Band were in no way involved with the manufacture of these backing tracks: they’re remixes of the actual album sessions. Apart from the fact that the most prominent guitar parts have been removed, what you have hereis the exactly same as the album - Pete and Seth’s splendid drum ‘n’ bass contributions are very much in evidence, as isJan’s unparalleled mixing prowess - so hopefully you’ll enjoy the sound quality and “real band” vibe of the tracks...May you have a Most Excellent time jamming along!
About the transcriptions...
It’s probable that you’ve grown accustomed to the “everything on a plate” fashion in which instrumental guitar music isnormally transcribed. Perhaps you’ve even become somewhat dependent on the comforting notion that a transcription cantell you exactly what to do at any given moment in the track.If so, you may at first feel a little perplexed (or even cheated!) by the accompanying pdfs and PowerTab files, which offer onlythe main themes and general harmonic structure for each track - rather than documenting every last string squeak and pickscrape in slavish detail... Well, I’ve had many a discussion with the good people at Jamtrack Central about the best way topresent this material, and we’ve always concluded that our approach should reflect the spirit in which the music was writtenand recorded.Interestingly, I’ve met a number of fellow musicians over the years who seemed to think that every note on the Cakes albumwas composed. In reality, the intent behind this music was much closer to the “jazz” mentality - in each tune, the composedpassages are interspersed with sections where the guitar is meant to improvise around a predetermined chord progression.(The main melody from something like Waves, for instance, is entirely “composed” - so it pretty much remains the same fromone gig to the next. On the other hand, the ring modulated “robot solo” from the title track is something which could never,ever happen again. To my way of thinking, however, that’s absolutely fine - it was never meant to be replicated...)In general, the solos you hear on the album aren’t meant to be set in stone: they’re just recordings of whatever I happened tofeel like playing when the engineer hit the red button on one particular occasion, in a studio in North Hollywood, several yearsago... The parts you’ll find notated in the accompanying transcriptions comprise every composed note from the album. Onceyou’ve worked out how all the key parts fit into the overall structure, you’ll essentially know the songs as well as I do! At thatpoint, I would urge you to start having a ridiculous amount of fun with the solo sections, taking every liberty imaginable in thename of injecting some of your own personality into the music.
Some general thoughts
In a moment, you’ll find some brief tips on the kind of note choices I would recommend for the solo sections in each track.Before we get to any of that stuff, however, I’d like to share a few general observations with you.Much of what follows is based on my experience of the kind of guitar players who most commonly attend my gigs andclinics. These guys (and yes, they are almost exclusively guys!) often have bucketloads of theoretical knowledge, coupled witha terrifyingly high level of metronome-honed technical proficiency... yet so many of them suffer from an overwhelming lack of confidence when they tentatively approach what they perceive as the dauntingly nebulous concept of improvisation.(If you don’t relate to the above - or you’re just the impatient type! - and you’d rather skip ahead to the more specific stuff later on, I won’t be offended... but the following bit pretty much sums up my whole approach to note choice, etc - so at leastsome of it may prove enlightening...)
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