If you haven't participated in Jayesskerr's All-Stick collaboration, you have until Christmas to submit something in E minor/G Major at 110 BPM.

In the spirit of community and collaboration (and because Scott's my friend), I made an 8-bar bass riff in E minor on my Railboard last night and sent it to him. He liked it and said that a solo could be 16 bars, so I thought, well, let me dig deep and put a backing melody track on top of it.

Here's just the raw Railboard bass riff and drum track:



I let it loop in Pro Tools several times while I did Loop Record, played my Railboard melody on top of the bass, and PT automatically makes a playlist of all the different tracks when you're finished. Hypothetically, it's like doing several takes, although in effect, it's like playing over a looper if you ignore the return and just keep playing over the looping. I looped 9 times and recorded. Then I pruned and pruned and then said "Fuck it, Scott. I can't get down to 16 bars and I don't want to. This is now my song and you'll have to just pick as many seconds from it as you want for the 2016 All-Stick Collaboration."

My son was supposed to record my playing for a performance video but I recorded all my tracks this morning while the family was asleep. So here's just a SoundCloud file for now until I can later go back and Stick Sync me playing.

This is only 3 tracks at all times: 1 drum track, and then one 2-handed Bass Railboard track, and one 2-handed Melody Railboard track.

Most exciting to me: I could hypothetically play this live with a looper, or in real time if I had 4 hands. The bass and drum tracks are 8 bars looped throughout the whole piece.

Presenting my first Stick-only (not counting drums) creation: E is 4 Empath. The bass side is pretty much raw Railboard with some hi/low pass filtering and then the melody side has NI's Guitar Rig patch 34 "Breathe" plus some pixy dust and EQ love on it. The whole damn thing is one long ride in E minor--and only E minor. I wouldn't normally write a song this way!

I'll have a video later, but somewhere among these 4 minutes will be my 16-bar submittal (and then some) for the All-Stick 2016 Collaboration. Cheers!

[Now edited down to 3:13!]



For our Tapatalk non-embedded listeners:
https://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1/e4empath

Really enjoyed your composition and your playing!! The bass side is really tight, and the melody side's effects are really cool. Bravo!

Thanks, Randy! You rock! I appreciate the comments!

This probably goes on a bit long and still needs more pruning, but I was pleased at how it came together over a weekend. It's been a year in a week since I got my Railboard.

Hey, Steve, that's pretty cool! At first glance (what's the audio equivalent of a glance? early AM vocab failure...), the melody side sounds like you're playing keys.

I won't have bandwidth for it until after the 18th, and I'm confident my contribution will be somewhat mundane (my creative juices aren't what some of y'all's are), so I quite appreciate the look inside of how you're approaching the Collaboration.

Ummm this might qualify as a thread hijack? Sorry, Steve, but I am hijacking really quick here...
Gusset, don't worry about what's mundane or not in comparison to whatever, you just play a thing that you think sounds nifty and I guarantee it all works itself out. I believe from the bottom of my heart that if it sounds like music, then it probably is... And what you do will play off of what other people submit, so no worries. It will sound awesome. Just hearing what has been submitted so far makes me want to practice. Very inspiring to say the least...

Steve, I am gonna re-iterate from my email. This is a fun groove. It has a bounce and a growl to it that is pretty cleverly combined with a cool melodic statement. I like it a lot! I am thinking that more Stick-centered stuff is in your future.

Yeesh, I just remembered that you will be a Stick and an N/S guy too. Awesome.

I know, right? That's simply Native Instrument's Guitar Rig stock patch #34 called "Breathe," over the raw Railboard sound. I suppose it's not ironic that a keyboardist turned Stickist likes the sound of a keyboard on his guitar/Stick. But as I was telling Scott, I just don't play like this on piano, although I'm starting to actually hear my own "style" in Stick now. I continue to make SinkMusic and crappily, on whatever instrument I'm playing at the time.

I actually sent Scott this exact version minus all effects (after first forgetting that the level was boosted 9 decibels just to hear one part and I forgot to turn it down and Pro Tools now does offline bounces, which can be dangerous to speakers!) I still owe him the master files of the clean stuff so he can use it however.

I've actually never used this patch before, which is why I advocate recording direct and adding effects afterward. I just auditioned a few 8 patches and this one lept out at me instantly as sounding pretty fricking cool (and like a keyboard), so I didn't go any further into the stock library. Sometimes you can spend literal weeks futzing with patch sounds, and other times, the stock sound is PDG(E) or Pretty Damn Good (Enough).


Can't wait to see whatever you contribute! And you can see by my example that you can do pretty much whatever.


Thanks, Scott! I still owe you some clean master tracks. I just couldn't resist putting this into a song, since it was a jam to make. I think about a minute shorter, and it would be better. Also, some post work on the drums to add some fills.

And I thought I'd get deep into my Railboard melody side, since that will be pretty much how the NS/Stick will be tuned. Lots of work to do, so let's pile more on! (There's a universal Sink's rule in there somewhere to be made about the busier one gets, the more that one is capable of. Also something about nothing focuses the mind quite like an impending deadline.)

The journeys continue! I really, really need to start recording video in the studio EVERY time! It would make doing videos so much easier than faking it after the fact.

Steve, i would very much like to emulate that melody side sound that you have on this recording. I am using a Helix... any pointers on what effects are in the mix? thanks.

This is the stock patch #34 in Guitar Rig. Looks like (from bottom up):
some EQ'ing, an Octaverb, an auto filter that provides that "wah" effect and is probably the root of this sound, and an effects processor that is triggered by thresholds. I am somewhat new to guitar effects in the digital realm, and most of the time, I fiddle quite a bit with the setitngs. On this one, because of the fact that I had no idea what was going on, other than some kind of an auto-wah effect, I left it alone and it sounded just like I was looking.

It seems to ignore a lot of the lower frequencies and notes and make the higher tapped notes "sing" and "warble." Effects are fun to play with, and can add a new dimension to the song.

I'll let more experienced guitar effect gurus tell you how to get something like that on the Helix. I think Jayesskerr might know!

"Don't get too attached to notes/words!" said two very wise composition teachers to me several times, each referring to a different thing. One was music; the other, was creative writing. Both were very wise.

I made it my mission to prune 1 more minute of the most repetitious, or non-tasty licks, and got it from 4:10 to now 3:13.

Here is "E is 4 Empath" for Railboard and Drums, at 3:13.

I think this is Steve's first "all Stick" tune, and it is indeed a departure from what he might normally do. I notice right away that when I am trying to create a riff or a composition on Stick, that things feel... different. The approach, the tone, the results, all of it end up being different. Part of what makes the instrument so cool in my opinion.

Anyways, I just want to say again how cool I think this little bit is...