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.