I've been trying to get away from keyboards and get more Sticking going on, although I'm not ready to go totally over to Sticking--at least, not without a MIDI-capable Stick, which I've been reluctant to do, since I can rock a keyboard (and didn't want to wait for the GK-3 parts to come in when I ordered my Railboard last year.)

One technique I find difficult--although Guillermo Ramos (and several others, of course) have mastered it--is the art of Stick Picking and strumming. I was looking through some old studio tracks, looking for music to put with fractal animations, and I came across this old gem: "Raiders of the WatchtowerFunk (WTF)." It was made using the Scarbee Funk Guitar plugin from Native Instruments. A couple of years ago, I was playing around with it and made this (the bass line is from the plugin as well):


It's a silly song that I never did anything else with, but I've been trying to get away from my beloved piano and do something else. So, I went back to the Scarbee Funk Guitar plugin and made something I'll describe as WTF the 2nd, or "Flying Monkeys." A good friend described it as "Rush + U2 = Flying Monkeys." I like that assessment.

Instead of using the pretty crappy bass accompaniment of the plugin--which I thought was pretty cool a couple years ago!--I slapped together a couple of quick tracks of Stick Bass on the Rosewood, after the guitars and drums (Maschine 16-pad drum controller/sampler/looper) were laid down. Even though I'm just pretty much rooting and octaving with an occasional fifth, it's a bit better than the stock accompaniment, and I'll probably take another crack at it again, probably with the Railboard. The guitars have no effects on them, other than a 16Bar Remix plugin from NI's Guitar Rig on one track of the Scarbee Funk Guitar.

Next would be lead and vocals. I have a nice "Santana-ish" sound I've already dialed in and tweaked in Guitar Rig, or maybe an EVH-ish tubeblower patch, or who knows? Tonight when I get off work, I plan to record a melodic "Santana" solo over the top of this.

Vocals are the hardest! If I can overachieve on the Stick melody lines, maybe I can skip the vocals altogether! That shall be my motivation on the Sticking--make it good enough that I don't need vocals! I'll probably fail at that but it's fun to try!

Here for now is a rough production of Flying Monkeys, my Rush meets U2 song in progress:


Cheers! I welcome your feedback, comments, questions, suggestions, and enlightenment!
--Steve Sink

Adds: today is Stick Day 361. 4 more days makes it a year!

tastey guitar. needs horns to funk it up. lol

Rob! I didn't even THINK of horns! How can you bring the funk without the horns?

But that's also the one chunk of the instrumental family that I can't touch. My 13-year-old daughter rocks a mean trumpet, but she can't bring the funk.

If only I knew someone who was a world-class Master of Brass.....you better watch out, Rob, I'll have you roped in to lay down tracks yet!

(And I know you've got the Kontakt horns going now, and the CineBrass, but that's cheating!)

Very nice...

Nice work, man. As always it's very cool!

Thanks guys, for taking a listen. This was really about just having fun with the Scarbee Funk Guitarist plugin.

Listening to the song this morning, I think I need to spend some more time on the percussion as well. In fact, I'm going to throw out the bass line altogether and try something a little more syncopated. There's also no real distortion or other effects on the guitars yet.

My first attempt at being Stevie Santana and making a melodic solo went okay last night. I got lost in having to do some updates to my MAC and the Native Instruments software and didn't get as far as I wanted to. This weekend, I'll lay down some serious tracks and maybe take this thing up a notch or 4.

Thanks for listening and the suggestion about the horns. Let me finish my melodic lead lines over this and then we'll see where to take it next. (The answer is always: add vocals to it, you lazy git! But then I rarely do, 'cause that's hard work...)

Speaking of, the "melodic solo" is something that I find really awesome, in the best tradition of Neal Schon, or Slash, or David Gilmour, or [insert long list of awesome melodic guitar players).....That's another whole topic, which I shall probably post forthwith!

I'll post version two of Flying Monkeys when it comes together! Thanks!

--Trying to rock it melodically, Stevie Ray Santana Gilmour Schon Slash WannaBee Sink

I've been working on the solo lead line this weekend--and some new 3D fractals, of course. In the meantime, I have several fractal videos sitting around awaiting original music, and I figured if I use Flying Monkeys as it is now, I can use it again when the next version comes out. I've been doing some good noodling--hopefully post the results soon. Meanwhile here's a 3D Fractal Animation Music Video.

I've been working with some of the international development team for the software I use to do this stuff, "Mandlebulber," under the head of lead programmer and main designer of the program, polish programmer Krzysztof Marczak, also the creator of Mandelbulber. I've been given some amazing, unique and custom formulas to use and tweak, that will eventually appear in the new version, 2.09. Here's one of those amazing formulas, called Amazing_Surf (short for "Surface"), for a video my son Xavier (11) named "Gardens of Kronus Surf."

YouTube:


Better-quality and downloads, Vimeo:


Soundcloud:


Cheers!
"EXTERMINATE ALL HUMANS!" (A Clockwork Orange)
Created with "Knighty's Pseudo Kleinian" 3D fractal formulas, ported into Mandelbulber OpenCL v 1.21.
--Steve Sink