Viking Rats attack! (Czajkowski-Minnemann) w/ Morse guitar

[John Czajkowski]

Safeguard the mice Fraulein! Swallow the jewels! Head for the hills! The Viking Rats are heading towards the beach in their magical mythical ship-o-war!

Viking Rats sample mix:

Viking Rats solo bed download:

Here is a full sample clip from my upcoming album, West ZooOpolis, with German drummer Wunderkind, Marco Minnemann. The beast is through-composed over a 52-minute drum solo Marco performed in Germany before moving to the US last year. Five composers, Mike Keneally, Alex Machacek, Phi Yaan-Zek, Marco and myself are each writing a different version over the entire solo to be released before Spring 2008.

This piece, Viking Rats, occurs at 22:55 into his drum solo. Here, Marco is doing a series of metric modulations, so sometimes the Viking Rats sail over the crest of the waves, and sometimes their mythical Viking Rat ship ploughs through the metric modulations head on. The solo section at the end has a strong sea state, but get your sea legs on and have some fun. Ed DeGenaro, takes a fretless solo at the end of this one!

my guitar: EB Morse (both stock DiMarzio humbuckers used on this tune - you can probably hear which is which)

amps used: Egnater MOD 50 with EG5 for rhythm and SL2 for leads

 

[kneeoh]

Sweet as usual John... thank you for sharing!

 

[paranoid70]

Nice John.... Playing LA or Orange county any time soon?

 

[banjoplayer]

very nice,
hey that´s nasty!!!!

btw. thanks!

 

[robelinda2]

That is pretty freaky!

 

[Ripper]

Very nice John! My type of tone!!!

 

[beej]

What a wild idea ... what a challenge to compose over a drum solo like that ...

Awesome playing and tone as usual John!

 

[Spudmurphy]

wicked - great playing!!

 

[John Czajkowski]

Thanks for giving this rough mix a listen folks.

Right now, I have the whole 52 minutes in one big PT session with all tracks open, so the system resources are maxed on an HD2 rig. I look forward to when all the composing and tracking is done so I can separate all the different sections into individual PT files - deactivating the tracks I'm not using to get more fire power for EQ and stuff. This has virtually no section-specific EQ. It's just EQ by volume automation.

paranoid70, the only upcoming HWM gig is at a festival here in Sa Diego coming up March. If you sign up on our mailing list you won't miss any, as I don't always remember to post gig announcements around. Duh...

Yeah Beej, it is definitely taking me far outside my compositional comfort zone due to all the constraints on song form. I vowed to myself not to loop or in a any way edit the drums. There is sooooo much editing that normally goes on in pop/rock records with drums played to a click track, etc., I thought it would be a strong art statement to just let Marco's solo be and then deal with he compositional opportunities and constraints as they present themselves. My the way, there are two more brief samples from West ZooOpolis on my myspace.

 

[John Czajkowski]

Well, to my horror, it has been brought to my attention that the solo bed version of Viking Rats I posted has one little problem…I forgot to mute my melodic guitar section prior to Ed’s solo. Duh…to many hours in front of the Tools done fried my brain. Sorry about that! Also, sorry for the out of tune rhythm guitar. Same excuse…

So, here is the more extended version for guys to have some fun!

http://users.bandzoogle.com/hecticwatermelon/files/Vking_Rats_Bed_2.mp3

 

[Ponch]

What a killer tune !!! thanks for your kindness to share with us John! looking forward for the album yeah!

 

[glockaxis]

How awesome is that!! I love it. Thanks for pposting it!

 

[John Czajkowski]

Thanks for giving this nutty section of the album a whirl! There is nobody more looking forward to this being done that ME! I have everything written now except a four minute section, but the damn thing is just being stubborn!

Just being able to wrap your head around what Marco is playing to come up with those killer parts is incredible.

Thanks, yeah, Marco is just insanely gifted. Here is some info on him from Drummerworld:

 

[Ponch]

yeah I know his playing from Paul Gilbert albums, he's indeed a virtuoso, I;m glad John have him on the new album.. what a pleasant surprise !!