This album hits its straps early with the fast and furious chops n changes which is almost entirely played fingerstyle and is a bit of an homage to "Mama Said" by Jeff Beck at least in its inception. After that BFT is a dropped D tuned riff originally written on the acoustic - early mixes still included the acoustic guitar but it was dropped in the final version. The first let up for some 'light' is Si - this was inspired by Sting so something of a departure from normal influences! The end really didn't work the way I wanted until I got worked on the drums which then pulled it all together. Arc is probably my favourite track - I always wanted to use the riff idea from "Highway to Hell" and "One Vision", dropping the root note down a semitone in a power chord and this is where it found it's home, accompanied by an eastern indfluenced lead and a harmonic section that comes sraight from Brian May. Sticks and Stones is essentially an improvisation that came from the opening 4 note sequence - I just wanted to get a real 'bluesy' feel to it but with plenty of attack. The layered drums give it a sense of scale, but then it needed a pad sound to hold it all together. Alpha Male is in the same vein as BFT and is pretty straightforward 4/4 rock. The Jack again comes from an idea written on the acoustic, once more the acoustic was finally jetisoned for the final mix. Growing Pains developed from a different piece that used that chord sequence, it seemed to be working better when it was expanded into what became this track. The intro i semi-improvised around the chord sequence. The first 'extra' track - usually I would have used this as an opener to th album, but for this one I wanted to go straight into chops n changes. The second 'extra' track - This is actually a track written for something completely different, and was an experiment in a different recording method so has a very different sound, however I like it and thought it would make a useful end to the album that may form a good segue into what will be the next album!