Superhuman

Nice tone, laid back playing in the opening section, cool use of Phrygian mode for this track. Competent riffing as always. I thought you lost it a bit around 1:30 in terms of inspiration or something but then regained towards the end – the ending was particularly sweet. Great effort especially considering your time away from the instrument with ear dramas.

Maestro Shaz

Having really enjoyed your playing for the monthly solos I kind of expect everything you do to be of an excellent quality. It seems a lot of people struggled with your April backing track for some reason (perhaps yourself included?). Your playing, tone, riffs and composition skills all shine in this track but there was just something missing from it for me – some element of feel… I couldn’t get the emotion happening but hey, I think this is the best track submitted by a long shot in any case (get's my vote) :)

wwb

I don’t recall having heard your playing before so I’m not sure how long you’ve been going or where your head is at with music, but this was a good effort in the most part without being overly memorable in any particular aspect. Tone for me was a little one dimensional and levels were a bit high with some distortion evident where it shouldn’t have been on the mp3 version. But playing was pretty tight and sounded good to me.

Wriggler UK

Some quirky playing here. I think the duck-like wah section is really cool for some reason. The repeated themes are quite good and the harmonisation on the second pass is a tool I like to use too. Your transition through the stabs into the next section was flowing. The mix of tones you have in your piece seemed to clash a bit to me though, making it all sound a bit odd in the overall scheme of things. Pretty good though.

Equator

I think someone else mentioned this could benefit from a little reverb (or a little more if some was used) throughout. Your playing is improving to my ears and you are quite calculating about what you are doing – unlike me. The thing I liked most about this months effort from you were some of the nice bends you have thrown in there. With a better tone and some more effects you would improve by at least 10% sound-wise. The only suggestion I have for your playing (and this may not be good advice) is to now loosen up a bit and start improvising to develop the “unknown” potential. Just dream of the girls you have in the little pics and let your fingers do the walking…

mpaq

I felt the same way about your track as Wriggler’s in the tonal sense. I think sometimes we are all a bit guilty of trying to cram as much variation into 2:30 as we can muster. I admit I did this month. Perhaps some things are better left alone and the fact that I preferred Shaz’s effort could mean that all the tonal weirdness of some tracks was off putting for me personally. But that being said I think you are a very good player and capable of composing cool guitar parts (like the main theme played in that bizarre wah tone with the 2nd interval) that stuck in my mind.

Fingerspasm

Crazy intro note! Haha. Some interesting runs and rhythmic ideas in your effort, a splash of improv here and there, some machine gun single-note picking and a bit of harmonisation make this a good piece. The tones and the mix however are a bit on the down-side for me (some parts I could hardly hear) and compositionally speaking for me it lacked any really strong hooks. Overall pretty good though, especially in the sense it was interesting.

Cookie monster

Some nice pentatonic riffing in your track. You obviously have a bag of tricks in that department, although your employment of a few well played “stock” riffs detracted from my interest on occasion. But your playing in some sections has good feel to it and I like the way you warmed into it and didn’t just go hell for leather from the outset. Nice tone as well. Good job.