Guitar Solo #4 "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes

Today's guitar solo arrives to us from the muso quadrant of 80s video rock - yep, Yes. I'm still on the solos that I really like, but I must say I don't have a single Yes song on my ipod and my only exposure to "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was on MTV when I was a teen and currently on any number of oldies radio stations I blast on my drive to work.

I kinda like this song, and, truth be told, I like it more every time I hear it. Before dissecting the solo I just want to draw your attention the variety of guitar tones going on here. There's ridiculously distorted guitar playing the main riff, but, if you listen close, you can hear the clean, rhythm guitar somewhere between scraping and thumping out a counterpoint tension. Then the nice picked bass plays a riff around the chiming guitars. Cool.

The solo starts at 2:34. What you're hearing is primarily the result of a pitch-shifting effects pedal, (I just about shift my pitch every time I hear that guitar solo!). The pedal plays notes a fifth above and one a full octave below whatever note Trevor Rabin is fretting on his guitar. This kind of sonic tomfoolelry has long been the purview of prog-rock musos like Fripp and Belew. What I like about this tone is how it's both totally unnatural sounding, while at the same time it evokes the appropriate emotion sonically. It's lyrical, sounding like laughter in places, where in other places the discordant wailing conjures Hendrix with all his pulsating toney goop. This solo sounds uncannily human in places, while machine-like and alien in others. The effect of this dichotomy heightens the tension in the rest of the song.

Too often, in prog rock, the idea or concept, the structure beneath the music is given too much emphasis. One time I was in a band that practiced at the DePaul music school. One night we were setting up as a class was finishing. I heard the teacher tell a student, regarding music, "You have to consider how it looks like on paper." I knew then and there that a music education simply wasn't for me. I'm pretty devout in my opinion that you do not need to consider how it looks on paper.

You need to do what Rabin is doing here: consider how the sound works within the emotional context of the music. This song is groovy while in many ways its alienating and unnatural sounding. To be honest, I have no idea what the lyrics are about (does someone shoot an eagle?), but I get a specific vibe from the dynamics and the tones of the instruments, the phrasing of the lyrics. This solo fits that vibe perfectly.