A slight tag onto Mother’s Day… This is “Always on the Run” by Lenny Kravitz. Lenny says it was about all the good advice and instruction his mother was giving him, but he was too young and crazy to appreciate it, always running.

The guitar lick at the beginning (and throughout the song) hooked me the first time I ever heard it. Throw in that bass with the funk and the beats and it gets all my musical atoms synched up and vibing in rhythm. Slash and Lenny recorded this song together in a vodka-fueled weekend, and the energy level in their version is near 11. They are singing most everything up an octave. I tried that in my version but it just wasn’t working (and I don’t do vodka) so I dropped most everything down an octave, and I thought that gave it a vibe that worked.

An acoustic re-make almost always comes out a little slower, and more relaxed than its high-energy, amps-to-eleven original, but somehow, my version is substantially faster — at 185 bpm to their 169 bpm. That’s just what seemed to sound right to me. The faster speed pretty much assured zero chance of pulling off Slash’s solo, so I just did my own thing around what he was doing as best I could.

I always enjoy trying to use random objects, like the 8-ball, that have the sound I’m looking for, and exploring the sounds of different materials. It was a perfect hi-hat type of sound. There’s a subtle wah-wah pedal effect I stumbled upon with the main guitar while I was playing with the EQ. When I narrowed in on a some particular frequencies and raised them, it created this warpy-flangy-wave sound alongside the reverb. It sounds much like the kind of frequency-collision one might typically want to remove in the mastering process, but I thought it was the perfect way to “distort” the clean sound of the guitar without going too far.

By the way, I always post these videos to have a decent-level of audio quality so that some of these nuances can be enjoyed by anyone who is into it. I hate what computer speakers and phones have done to good music. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to listen to some of these with at least some decent earbuds, headphones or speakers to appreciate the full mix. (See Victor Wooten’s “The Spirit of Music” for more on that :)) I’m sure open to any thoughts or critique on any of my mixes. My ears are getting old, too. Enjoy!