Dream by Day

Dream by Day is an instrumental album written as a guitar quartet. I came up with the idea because I now own four guitars, each with its own unique playing characteristics and playing sound. The four guitars are an Ibanez acoustic, an ancient Washburn A20-V, an Indie Black Jack, and my recently acquired Ibanez 8-string. Obviously the acoustic sounds different to the electrics and the 8-string is a radically different playing experience to all of them but there are significant differences between the other two electrics as well. The Black Jack is a solid, chunky, Les Paul style guitar compared to the long scale, sleek and fast A20-V.

Each track is written with each guitar used once. Each guitar has a role in each track and, generally, sticks within the confines of that role (the exceptions being Consider Tension, where the 8-string flits between bass and melody, and Solo Guitar with Delay). I wanted it to sound as if it were four people sitting in a room playing together, rather than an impossible to play, multi-layered thing constructed in a studio somewhere. Even if it was actually constructed in a studio…

Mostly I feel I achieved what I set out to. There are some warts to the album and bits I’d like to clean up (Cryptic, I’m looking at you) but, overall, I’m way more pleased with this year’s Nasoalmo than I was with last year’s. I’m pleased with it enough that I want to continue the concept, possibly with a cover of the Game of Thrones theme. I think that could work well. Speaking of covers, the last song on Dream by Day is The Last Man, from the The Fountain soundtrack by Clint Mansell, of PWEI fame. If you haven’t seen the film I would highly recommend it, it’s amazing. The sountrack is PHENOMENAL!

Have a listen to Dream by Day for free on bandcamp and let me know what you think.