This was the most approachable Bonamassa song that I happened to like quite much. It still took a longer than usual time to get everything recorded, mixed and video edited.

I had a first close to complete version that was nearly a year older (mid 2017). This was one of the first songs I practiced when developing the idea of the current format of audio recordings complemented by the video of the performances. Well, that recording had no video and all tracks were in mono (I had no clue how to record in stereo...). Having no video turned out to make the recording process more dull and the result less enjoyable, at least for me.

Vocals

This was complex. First I couldn't match the range of the original recording. So to the suggestion of my vocals teacher I lowered the pitch by 3 semitones. This got me in the ballpark. After that it took me several recording attempts. Finally, just like for Don't Cry, I recorded the final track without the original recording. This way I could completely focus on hitting the right notes while not sounding too awful.

Lead guitar (distorted)

Rhythm parts are during the solo and the rest of the track is lead. In hindsight I probably should have probably split the rhythm parts into a separate track and apply more distortion to it.

The lead is in D minor pentatonic.

Rhythm guitar (acoustic and clean)

Along the keyboard the rhythm guitars are keeping this track going. The drums and base come and go, but these are the constants. So I tried keeping their timing constant. Also during mixing I focused on making their sound blend well together.

Bass

I normally use a pick bass but I felt that this needs to be a fingered performance.

Electric organ

When mixing the composition I thought that was finished I noticed the lack of the keyboard pad. For this song this is an electric organ. So this was the final track that I recorded.

Piano

This is a typical chords backing track. You don't necessarily notice the piano because its sound blends into that of the rhythm guitars.

Drums

There are tricky bits during the solo and in general the patterns have subtle effects and variations. There's a lot of feel in Anton Fig's performance some of which I tried reproducing by trial and error.

Mixing

The lead guitar's solo section had an annoying muted note. Instead of rerecording, I just copy&pasted the same note from a different section of the solo. The power of digital editing!

I learned of envelopes and automation in Reaper and started applying it for the acoustic and lead guitar section. I used automation to adjust the volume during the various sections and to mute a short section of the outro which had bad notes.

Video recording & editing

All recordings were made with my DSLR and I tried 3 different lenses. I'm the happiest with the one I used to record the vocals (Sigma 18-35 mm f/1.8 Art). I expect to use it almost exclusively in future recordings. The electric rhythm guitar's track is a bit out of focus unfortunately due to the various focusing strategies I've been experimenting with.

I introduced the animation of the lead guitar's video track. The animation is not my first choice, but I do like the option of changing the focus to another instrument in a way that's less intrusive than switching to a full screen video like in Comfortably Numb's solo section.

I'm trying another variation of capturing the video of my DAW. I either don't record any of that or go a bit extreme like in Into the great wide open or somewhat more restrained in Don't Cry.

Misc

The background image is a sunrise (or sunset) from Fairbanks, Alaska. When I visited it was December and the sun never really got any higher.