I’ve started the school year with a new song that falls outside my artistic wheelhouse! “Petrichor” is a lo-fi/chillhop song that I wrote for my wife, who enjoys napping and reading to this kind of music. While we’ve worked on several songs like this in the past for other artists, I’ve never written one myself. I can only do things the way I know how (guitar, amps, and mic in hand!), so Petrichor contains mostly recorded performances of real instruments. Here’s some of my favorite toys that were used to put this song together.
Fernandes Revolver 7 Ltd
Coming out of the gate we have a 28″ scale length, downtuned heavy metal monster… the polar opposite of what this song embodies. What made this guitar work for this song was the neck pickup. The Fishman Fluence Modern Alnico pickup has two modes, a typical hot active humbucker voicing and a crisp, chimey tone that lends itself to beautiful glassy clean tones. The stereo-panned ambient guitars were recorded on this second mode. They were recorded directly into a Focusrite Clarett, and processed through a clean guitar amp sim (note: no cab sim!), a compressor, ping-pong style delay, and a long-decay ambient reverb.
Godin Progression
The greatest Stratocaster Fender never made is a much more intuitive choice for an instrument on a lo-fi song! Everything I’ve ever had a qualm with on an authentic Fender Stratocaster is addressed in this guitar. It features NO pickguard, a rounded neck joint, meatier pickups with oversized poles, and a two-knob wiring scheme. This guitar lives in a corner of my music room and reguarly gets used for a variety of odd jobs.
The Progression provides the guitar solo in “Petrichor”. The signal chain for this solo also included:
- Darkglass Hyper Luminal: transparent compression
- Chase Bliss Generation Loss: VHS tape simulation for random warble
- Keeley Caverns: some simple delay and spring reverb
- Quilter Superblock US: Fender-style amplifier with onboard cab sim
Odds & Ends
Anyone who spends enough time making music seems to accumalate a small collection of oddball instruments and other doohickeys that are donated, gifted, or forgotten at your space. I’m certainly no exception, and “Petrichor” gave me an oppotunity to play some handheld instruments like singing bowls and a finger piano that I’ve collected over the years. The trick with recording these instruments was to find an optimal position for the microphone so that minimal finger noise would come through the recording.
XLN Addictive Keys
As much as I’d love to have a full studio grand piano at my disposal, it certainly isn’t realistic. For the piano sounds in Petrichor, I played into a MIDI keyboard and used the the Addictive Keys Studio Grand library for the actual piano sound.
“Petrichor” can be heard on all streaming platforms!
Substation Onyx 
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