4 Weeks At Home
4 Weeks was the first CD I recorded with my own songs. Initially, I didn't have big things in mind when recording my music. I have always seen my recordings as a musical diary, primarily for myself.
4 Weeks was recorded just before I began my studies at the University of Applied Sciences of Kaiserslautern, Germany. Before that, I had studied at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern for 3 semesters. After that time, I realized that I was interested in more practical and technical stuff than my computer sciences. And at the same time I was forced to stay at home because of a surgery I had to undergo. Hence, after some recreation followed the weeks which I used to experiment with my first real recording software: MAGIX Music Studio Deluxe which I had gotten from a friend.
Most of the songs have rather simple names and are named after either the main chord they are played in or the style they resemble.
In the following song details you'll find a lot of references to Clapton's live recording of One more car, one more rider of 2002. 4 Weeks At Home came out just some time after I had been on Clapton's tour of that CD. So I probably was deep enough impressed by what I had heard...
- A-Blues: The whole song resembles the structure of Clapton's Key to the highway. Especially the beginning is played a lot like his introduction to the live recording of Key to the Highway on the album One more car, one more rider.
- A-Moll: The song starts with some extensive chord variations on A minor. The prominent bass creates a quite dark atmosphere which is supported by strings or a heavily distorted guitar solo. The bass is created with a guitar with the help of an octave shifting effect of the GT-6. The tension of the song rises to its maximum towards the end until all the instruments come together on a few heavily intonated beats.
- Capo: Capo is mainly inspired by Eric Bibb. The western guitar produces a very laid-back style of playing. Even the electric guitar comes to its solos, clean and distorted, but without destroying the cozy atmosphere.
- C-Blues: Here we have another standard blues in C. The way of playing it is inspired by the great piano player Bo Heart who used to do a live recording with the old german rocker Klaus Lage, called Live zu zweit.
- C-Moll: This is a quite melancholic song, played in C minor. It is partly played reggae-like. Here, the bass is also simulated by some down-pitched guitar effect. It has a few solo parts. Somewhere in the middle, for a very short moment the guitar plays the melody of Stairway to heaven. Just like in A-Moll, the song rises to some metal-like chords which evaluate into some hardrock style. Finally, everything returns to normality again. The ending is started by some strange hawaiian notes. The song somehow seems to be connected to Anchor on the album Another Day.
- Cool A: This song should actually have sounded differently! The plan was to sound like It's a long way to the top of the movie School of rock. But because of a misunderstanding of the rhythm the song got what it is today. In the middle of the song the e-piano and the guitar play some repetition game. The guitar has quite some extraordinary solo part. During the rest of the song one even finds some other elements inspired by School of rock like the organ solo.
- Dark A: This whole song has a very dark atmosphere. The intro is based on Clapton's intro to Layla on the One more car, one more rider live recording, with the characteristic strings in the background. After the intro, a techno base drum starts to enforce the tension of the song. The rhythm guitar's A minor variations are based on Clapton's Goin' down slow of One more car, one more rider. A heavily distorted solo guitar makes many bendings throughout the rest of the song. A distorted organ solo remembers vaguely of the formerly heard School of rock excesses.
- E-Blues: A standard E-Blues, led by a distorted guitar, accompanied by a clean guitar. Many parts of the song remember of Clapton's Before you accuse me.
- E-Swing: This is a very relaxed song. It consists of the standard chord progression scheme I - VI - II - V. This scheme first touched my soul when I heard Clapton play Somewhere over the rainbow on One more car, one more rider. It has great similarity to Somewhere it has to start on my third CD, Changeover. There's a distorted slide guitar solo. The western guitar also tries a slide solo which isn't that bad.
- Fuzzy: This song is actually an attempt to cover one of the soundtrack songs of Collateral, called Rollin' crumblin' by Tom Rothrock. In my eyes, it was not exactly successfull but the song nevertheless made it onto the CD...
- G-Dur: If I remember it correctly, this song was actually my first recording of a whole song with multiple tracks at all! Maybe it grew out of an electrified Eric Bibb accompaniment of chords in a country and bluesy fashion. Here, the bass line is also played by a guitar and pitched down by an effect.
- Gis-Moll02: This song was probably the second recording of a whole song I ever did! It is based on the orchestral song Edge of darkness on the live recordings of 1991's 24 Nights. But of course, it has been heavily modified and bluesified... The style of playing the piano solo towards the end is inspired by Greg Phillinganes' piano solo in Hoochie coochie man on One more car, one more rider.
- Rolling E: This is clearly a pure rock'n'roll song. The melody is actually an exercise line out of one of my guitar books for beginners. The guitar solos resemble some of Chuck Berry's. Sometimes, the solo guitar changes from its blues scale improvisation to some appropriate major scale improvisation.
- Western: The song is inspired by some typical Scorpions style. The first half resembles the Acoustica version of Send me an angel. The main chords could also be inspired by Zombie by The Cranberries. Towards the end the guitar delivers some very distorted notes and also tries some first tapping experiences.
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