Inside a song, Part VII:
Wolf and the Moon
Get an inside look at the song and download notations.
Inside a song
Part VI: Sentenced
Download Notations (song, pdf)
Download Notations (guitar solo, pdf)
Dear Friends,
Yes, I know it’s been a while since we’ve put anything here on the website. We’ve had a breather and given more attention to other things in life, such as family and work lately. This is not to say we’re done with Leverage, not at all, we’re very much looking forward to chances to continue working on making what we’ve done more familiar to more people.
Besides this "Inside a song"‐story, there’ll also be some new footage on last summer’s gigs in the web soon.
Anyway, here’s an insight on a song that I’ve often been asked to write about here; Sentenced.
I believe the main riff is the oldest thing I’ve come up with that has ended on a Leverage album, I remember playing it pretty much the way it is almost 20 years ago. I always digged it, but had no real use for it. I was stuck with the idea of the possible song being a very heavy piece of music throughout the whole thing and never came up with anything that would have made sense. On the other hand I had a piece of music what I thought would one day become a slow ballad that hadn’t gone anywhere either and one day I just happened to try them together and things got rolling right there and then. I believe the story has a lot to do with the above, the riff was so old that it had been ’sentenced for life’. But like always, there’s definitely more to the lyrics than just what they mean word by word, your guess is as good as mine.
Let’s cover the rhythm guitar first, you need to obviously tune to a Dropped D and in general half step down to play along the record with these tabs. I’ve notated it in the key of D minor just to keep sane. I remember Torsti and me giving a lot of attention to where and how to mute, pinch etc. to make our guitars work together on this one, you’ll be able to figure those things out without me marking them. The first verse is of course played by Marko, I had the arpeggios that are written here on the demo, but we went with the piano because it takes the song to a different place. This way you get the chords anyway.
Everything is simple up until the solo part, which is an independent part of the song. I’ve written the rhythm guitars as simple as I could, the idea is to ’pump’ a bit, keep weight on the bottom strings and create those extra notes with the help of your left hand.
This is not a total notation, but it has every part there is, Main Riff, (Chorus), Verse 1, Verse 2, Solo break and solo and the end of the last chorus.
A few words about the solo; I wanted to have a solo that has different modes in each part while keeping the general feel. I jammed to the chords a lot and then figured out how to play the licks I liked the most so that they’d make a complete solo. The first part in G minor is very much a bow towards a certain ’man in black’ and is based on a kind of hybrid minor scale that I’ve really learned to love, thanks to Mr. Blackmore.
The second part (Ab) is more a modal thing with some tapping, the third (A minor) has some arpeggios and the last one (Bb) again some tap/bend combinations. Nothing complicated.
Some of the licks were hard to transcribe with my Sibelius-software, especially bars 10 & 17 that have those bend+tap combinations, but I hope this notation will get those of you who want to through the solo.
That’s all for now, keep on rocking and see you hopefully on the road one day!
Cheers,
TH
