The Green Monster Album – Electronic Rock

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Electronic Rock – Rock Guitars and Electro Grooves

To me, sometimes, playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table. But the disgusting stinks of a too-loud electric guitar; now that’s my idea of a good time. And still, an electronic rock; that’s my idea of a “great” time.

Which is why The Green Monster – My fourth album was released. Though, it has been a busy year, and I am really happy about my latest release. The album regroups 11 of my compositions recorded at the Secret Room Studio over the course of the last three months. It features seven brand new song and two old compositions that were written long ago for my seven pieces band.

The cover of the album is a tribute to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Hence, the spaghetti strainer hat and the spaghetti forks used as a divine scepter. The guitar carried is my custom strat named “The Green Monster” that also sports Flying Spaghetti Monster waterslide logos to hide the terrible paint job I did. Depending on my mood, the lighting and the angle I look at it, I either consider it totally ugly or particularly beautiful.

In this album, I decided to mix my jazz rock guitar playing with much simpler drum grooves. I used high-quality electro grooves that blend perfectly with my playing. Therefore the simplicity of those drum tracks influenced me to play in a much simpler and melodic way too.

Songs like “Fretless Glitch” and “Dirty Robot” have this experimental electronica with hints of exotic beats and world grooves. And “Smilodon,” “King Can,” and “Chandan,” horned a blissful electric guitar in a smooth and gentle landscape.

I have to admit, it’s refreshing and quite pleasing. Every solo, riff, and themes are intended to be as melodic and straightforward as possible. I also put more focus on my bass playing and even committed to a bass solo in “King Can.” The main point of the entire album is to groove.

I only use instruments I have built. Even If I own a bunch (about 20 of ‘em), I focused on a group of guitar only to create a group sound. The Fretless guitar is vastly used on lots of songs, as well as my 12 strings Stratocaster.

I also used in most of the songs my Korg Monotron Ribbon Synthesizer suites to create those strange sounds in the background you can hear everywhere.

As usual, I performed every track on bass, guitars, and voice. Drums part is carried out using the amazing plugin EzDrummer. Each drum pattern or fill present on this album are played by real drummers. Consequently, nothing is programmed.

And here’s how you can listen to them all.

You can listen to “The Green Monster Album,” for free, on every music streaming sites available out there. Distrokid distributes my music and therefore, my albums can be found on almost every music streaming services online.

With a monthly registration to any of those music stores allow you to listen to every music you want for the price of your enrollment. The only thing you have to do is to look for my name: “Hervé Senni,” or the album name: “The Green Monster.”

Songs meaning

  • Green Monster. I play the main guitar part with The Green Monster strat. This is the guitar you can see on the cover album.
  • Dirty Robot is entitled that way because I played the main guitar part using a Digitech pedal named Dirty Robot. It is the repetitive motive that sounds like a synth. It’s not a synth, it’s played on a Stratocaster I have built sporting EMG pickups.
  • Burned Special This is the name of the guitar I use to play every track. Usually, I always use different guitars to have lots of different guitar tone, but this guitar is so polyvalent I could exploit a bunch of unique pickup settings and have each track stands out perfectly. I built this guitar crafting a Bryan May wiring replica of it’s Red Special home-made guitar. I nicknamed the strat Burned Special because the body and neck I used were burned….
  • Fretless Glitch. The main guitar is my Fretless custom guitar, and the drum part is a Glitch groove mixed with Indian percussion. I also used my 12 strings strat and my Thin line Telecaster equipped with P180 pickups from GFS.
  • Chandan is the name of the Indian rhythm I used and mixed with an electro beat. The guitar in the intro is my custom SG built featuring Entwistle pickups, and a Jimmy Page advanced wiring. The first long part of the song is slow and melodic and the second part speeds up and turns into a funk rock type of mood.
  • Satyriasis. It is the masculine word for a nymphomaniac, which I think I am. Lol Groove used is a fast Jungle beat. The song is a dialogue between my fretless guitar and my scalloped guitar.
  • Funk That Map. Map is the name of the guitar I used to compose and record that song. It is a Airline Map distributed by Eastwood Guitars. I sold that guitar since because I decided to only use guitar I built or modified. I miss it, even if the strange body shape was extremely uncomfortable, to say the least.
  • Smilodon is the Latin name of a Saber-toothed cat. I’m an Ice Age fan ( except for the fifth one), and this is in honor of Diego, even if Scrat is my favorite character. I used a short intro based on an Arabic scale I wrote many moons ago, and continued with an Indian/electro groove. I repeated the intro again at the end with a different arranging.
  • Keep It Cool. Keep Cool is the place I was working out when I composed this song. I’m no longer training there. I changed gym. The song is performed using various guitars such as: Fretless, 12 strings, strats, ect. Written in two parts, a melodic smooth intro and a rockier second part where I rock the 12 strings and my scalloped strat.
  • King Can is an old song I wrote for my seven pieces band named Aloes when I was living in Montreal. A King Can was the largest beer you could get at that time, and I entitled the song like that because I had three of them the night I wrote it. I was totally drunk, dancing along in my living room playing the riff over and over and I thought it was a good name for it. If I recall right, a King Can contain three regular can into one. So I had 9 beers while “composing”…
  • Ragged Edge. It’s the first song I ever wrote in my life. It has been composed around 1977! That’s right. Ragged Edge was the name of a group I played with in the early 80s in Montreal. All parts were written out in a sketchbook in which I had traced the music lines. I stumbled on it while cleaning up my mess, and I played it like it is. I just improvised a guitar lead throughout.

Links to streaming or download sites

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This post is also available in: French

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