Shaking Through

To cut a long story short this recent batch of backing tracks is born out of a desire to feature my new 12 string acoustic guitar in one of my recordings! So I racked my brain for R.E.M. songs that I hadn't already covered that feature, or would benefit from, a 12 string acoustic guitar part. Annoyingly, the main one, Swan Swan H, I had already completed a while back. 

I'm 75% sure that Shaking Through uses a 12 string acoustic guitar, either that or it's Peter Buck's 12 string Rickenbacker but with very little amplification. Either way I saw an opportunity! I also like the way the two lead instruments, guitar and piano are panned far left and far right leaving plenty of room for the bass guitar in the middle. Putting together the piano part was quite laborious but I think I've got it pretty close.

The 12 string acoustic being a clunky instrument to play I'll admit to recording the guitar part at a slower speed and then speeding it up afterwards. That riff in the first verse and at the end of the middle 8 is played way too fast for me to perform it in real time. Stuff like this further discredits Peter Buck's claim that he wasn't very competent on guitar when they first started out.

Time After Time

Though I suspect Time After Time is often regarded as one of the weaker songs on Reckoning I have always had a soft spot for this song from the moment I first heard it. I always liked it when R.E.M. slowed things down in their early days and, while this is nowhere near as strong as Perfect Circle, I do think it's a lovely song and a nice sonic departure from the rest of the songs on side 1 of Reckoning.

This was always going to be quite a complex song to put together and yet I was determined to get it right. From the way the tribal drums are panned right to the way the ringing guitars fluctuate in volume sporadically throughout the song I wanted to pay attention to these little details. I learnt early on that the song is played with a capo on the first fret which explains why I could never play along with the CD previously (incidentally Harborcoat is also performed in a different key on the album version).

The only thing I'm still not happy about is the loud acoustic strum that introduces the song and then repeats throughout the verses. I did this on a 12 string acoustic but on the album it sounds far more eastern-sounding.