Tears of Sahara (reupload to fix a few glitches) cover Tony MacAlpine Maximum Security

Reuploaded this to fix a couple of glitches I found. I'll del the old vid later.

This is a cover of Tony MacAlpine's Tears of Sahara from the Maximum Security album.

For those interested in the boring trivia of what all I did to make this vid, well, read on.

Since around 2000, I stopped playing guitar due to fingertip injuries. I started again about 2 years back using fingernails only. Hard to do, but I did. Then I worked up my tips slowly and now I'm like maybe 80% back. So, for me, this is like seeing after being blind for 10 years.

This is probably my favorite MacAlpine tune of all time. Yes, I'm a sucker for slow, melodic, romatic, kick-ass tunes with soaring guitar solos. This one was right up my ally. Well, As for the technical mumbo jumbo, I basically programmed the drums using EZ Drummer and the bass guitar is another plug called Trilogy. The synth parts I did using Omnisphere. The guitars I did using my brown special (the diamond guitar was just for looks in the vid but it also kicks much ass but harder to play due to small frets and laquered fretboard etc). So, basically, I redid the song from scratch and played all the parts. I use Reaper for the multitrack. All done on the PC.

The guitar tones were achieved by using Guitar Rig 4 and some radical EQ and some stereo delays and verbs added. Most of the tune is played with the neck pickup (an Air Norton) but Lynch's parts were played with the bridge (Tone Zone).

Yes, I'm finger-syncing in the vid but I played it as if I was really playing it as you might can tell by watching the old fingers. Some funky greenscreen nonsense is going on in places because my room is too small so I had to stand too close and it didn't work well. So, I just played it along with the tune afterward and filmed myself several times and a few up close shots and spliced it all together. Rain was done in After Effects. That's about it I guess.

Oh, I didn't try to copy the solos 100% and the descending Bmaj arp at the end solo was pretty darn hard so I "altered" it a tad into something I could play. But I think I got the important parts down and that Lynch style pretty close.

This was really fun but took a while to do. Hope you enjoyed it!

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• truthsurge
• tony
• macalpine
• tears
• of
• sahara
• cover
• george
• lynch
• maximum
• security

[COEXISTential]

Nicely done! Next 'Yngwie's 'Leviathan' maybe?

[TruthSurge]

@COEXISTential hahaha Anything by Yngwie is tough. I prob won't even attempt. My first finger pad is still screwed up from like 12 years back so I can't play like I want to but I get by. thank ya!

[NisseEricsson]

Awesome cover of awesome song, what more to say?

[TruthSurge]

@NisseEricsson thank ya! You COULD also say "check's in the mail" HEHEHHEHEHE

[karlbuttler]

Hey Surge, i had to Break away from the home work video's for a Moment and watch this Video,,Not Bad for an Old Timer :-).. you can really make that thing Sing,, Cool back round images.. keep up the good work,, ive nothing better to do..

[TruthSurge]

@karlbuttler thanks! Yeah, guitar is a fav hobby of mine. Just wish I could have done it from the age of 18 on instead of kind of forced away from it. then right as I went to do it again in 2000 i injured many fingers and couldn't play for 10 years. :(

Now, I play a bit but still very careful.

[InventorGorilla]

I want to hear originals

[TruthSurge]

@Swidhelm thank ya! Those solos were hard to do. had to modify tony's a tad. heheh but it's close.

[Swidhelm]

Wow, serious skill!

[TruthSurge]

@MrAshphillips thanks!