Near Wild Heaven
Out of Time | 1991
Listen Original Listen Final Mix

Understanding Peter Buck

Today, I put down my first real Peter Buck jangle guitar part. I can see why he has such a unique playing style. Ther is so much complexity in the left hand picking for this song. The notes are very straight-forward. But the way Buck approaches chords puts all his arpeggiation off what regular barred chords would lean toward.

I practiced that chorus/intro guitar riff for two days and still couldn’t play a decent enough riff. Fortunately, it becomes a ton easier by only playing the upper three strings in one take, then adding the fourth string that plays a bass part on another track. I double tracked each part and overdubed the fills. Blending this composite track togther gave me enough usable versions of the riff to vary across the track.

The octave piano part really brings everything together. There is a small string hit at the top of the send verse, but I think I’ll leave that off. Only instrument left is some lap steel chord swells to hit - and those aren’t even on the original track. This leaves me with five days to record the vocals for this one. Should be about right considering there are around 27 harmony parts there.