Hi everyone!
If you're wondering what I've been working on with Darius lately, the answer is a new solo composition.

I worked hard on this one because, as most of you know, Darius has really high expectations from me. He really likes to push me to the maximum in all the areas (playing, composition, tone, mixing and video editing) and I love the fact that he does this. So, I learned new things, I applied a bunch of details and I tried to do my best to come up with even more complex ideas.

Also, this time, I decided to use a second guitar to harmonize some parts. I can say that we really had a lot of fun.
You know, it's more than easy to make the harmonization, but the hard part comes when you try to do this and to not sound like a japanese video game (hahaha…that's our private joke). Anyway, in the end it turned out how we wanted and we are very proud of the result.

Hope you guys will enjoy this.

Amazing playing as always, Monica!

I heard some classic lines in there, I heard some meaningful lines with lots of feeling, I heard from fresh and spicy lines, I heard some great bends and the improvement in your playing over the 9 years you've been here at GMC is really great. I love to see these solo compositions, as they show more of the player themselves than a cover can do. The harmonies was a really nice touch!

I'm listening more now as I add to the comment here. The whammy bar touches are nice too. It's really just overall a very musical composition showing good skill, but all in a very touching way and not just one of those "play as fast as you can" videos. FAR from it. It's really great You really are a great player, Monica, and I'm proud of you for the development I've seen following your journey

This post has been edited by Caelumamittendum: Mar 1 2022, 03:47 PM

Beautifull composition monica!

Really love the relaxed Beautifull vibe but then with the shreddy parts and a the dynamic stuff.
Did you play the piano yourself and the bass?
Very cool techniques also 😎

Outstanding Monica!
The harmonics and single taps work really well where you employ them.
Every time you present one of these your advancement is evident.

Ben, thanks so much for your awesome words!!! I tried to keep a balance between shred and melodic parts. The funny thing is that those tiny details from the melodic parts are much harder for playing than any shredding part (where fingers have a mind of their own).

As an example:
- 1:22 - 1:30 - there I have the same line played twice. One is played with very much force but the second one is designed to have a very glassy sound. Beside the fact that is hard to change from a mood to another in one second, to achieve that sound I made a lot of experiments. I had to completely change the angle of the pick and make that hybrid picking almost with the nails to cut down the gain from the tone and catch a totally different kind of sound.

- 1:42 - the "crying" bends. Maybe you wont believe but you have no idea how much I worked to make myself able to play these bends. Around one month I heard Darius told me: "no, it doesn't sound emotional enough", "these should have a crying sound", "you play them too precise and must have an irregular timing like a real crying". When I finally succeeded to play them in a good way and I heard him..."Yes, now I literally feel shivers"...I said that I will drunk myself.

Anyway, no matter how much I worked, I'm happy that I succeeded to let a piece of my soul in it.



Thank you very much, Tim. I'm happy to hear that you like it.

No, this is my solo composition over a backing track that I bought. I wrote this in the description on my YT channel.

But...I made the music school at piano section. Sometimes I play at bass just for fun but nothing too serious. I'm just a guitarist playing at bass (and this is not a good thing). I think each instrument require time to achieve a good level. The same happens with the drums, I not studied with a teacher but I can handle some rhythms.



I really thank you for your kind words! Your opinion always means a lot to me.
I'm also very happy to hear that my progress is still visible. I always try to add new things in my playing and I'm glad when people notice this.

*Totally blown away* 😲

You have gotten sharper in virtually every sense. Your pitch accuracy, your tone, your timing, your harmonics, your fast runs, the composition...just WOW.

This is extremely inspiring Monica! Can I please have your chops?



edit: I had to feature this on the frontpage... it's just unreal!

Thanks from my heart Kris for your awesome comment and for putting me on the frontpage.

I know someone who say...."Monica, this sounds very beautiful but you still have not applied everything you learned. You can do more."
Next time I will come up with a blues composition, so....I'm more than curious how I will handle this but we will see.

Hahaha...I give you my chops if you give me your flawless legato. I think it's a fair deal.

Monica, that is absolutely incredible, you are an inspiration to us all, I LOVE the tone, the licks, the smoothness of your playing, the emotion that comes through, it's all amazing, you could share a stage with the best

Awesome solo Monica! Your bending sounds even more expressive now. Like the bending sequence around 1:45 sounds amazing. So many cool moments in the solo. Congrats!

Thank you Phil, you are very kind! I'm really happy that you like it! I still have a long way and a lot of things to learn, but that's the beauty.


Thanks so much, DeGroot!
I try constantly to add a little more juice to my bending. In that particular spot of my solo, because I had already started to raise the tension, a normal type of bend would not have worked well and also would have totally broken the tension. So, I had to find something more spectacular, more expressive, a literally kind of crying.

Great solo!! it seemed to get wads of replies as well which is great! Your hard work is clearly paying off. Your showing a huge array of technique here as well as and more importantly, a sense of dynamics. It's the icing on the cake imho. It takes years to learn to play in key, then more to learn to play in time, then more to learn to play with proper technique and yet more to learn to play with any sense of dynamics at all. Super congrats and on the front page as well

Todd, thank you so much for your awesome words! It means a lot to me.

I tried to use various techniques because I like the fact that each has it's own flavor.
To be honest, I didn't expected that this solo will be so appreciated (I even received many private messages). You know, usually people aren't so excited when it's about new compositions and they prefer to listen the already known songs. Somehow, this time something changed and I'm very happy to see this.