Here is my NS/Stick guitar bass tune "Trunk," with a fractal video called "Cube Traveler."
https://youtu.be/2oUe8rqTjjA
https://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1/trunk
Work was closed Monday and school for the kids was closed Monday through Thursday, on account of snow and freezing temperatures. The Postal service actually stopped delivering mail for two days, it was so bad.
So for the day I was off, and then for two days I had to telework, I had my Sticks, and NS/Stick and guitars and bass all sitting next to me while I teleworked. I just kept adding layers and layers of lines to this tune, mainly with Lord Vader, the NS/Stick. The basic riff on NS just kept drawing me back to it; my own earworm that had to get out.
I then fed some lines through Jam Origins MIDI guitar and MIDI bass to generate some MIDI lines, as well as I played some organ lines on LinnStrument that I ended up deleting, because it didn't fit with the wall of guitars sound.
But I was able to use those MIDI lines and export them out of Pro Tools and into Logic Pro X, where I used Drummer to track drum lines with the organ line, lining up the kick and snare with the MIDI beats. I ending up not using the organ line, but it still helped me track the Drummer beats to the music. After I did it, I remembered that Drummer can track with audio too, at least according to Jayeskerr, but I had already used the MIDI lines. At some point, I should probably migrate over to Logic Pro X, instead of using it as a glorified plugin inside of Pro Tools.
Then I had a bunch of drum fills I strung together back in Pro Tools using NI's Studio Drummer. I had one track of those NI SD fills, and then another track of Studio Drummer fed the MIDI lines from Logic Pro X's Drummer plugin. Then I mixed both drum lines together into a buss and applied effects across the buss, to blend the two drum kits together into one. It's a technique that works well as long as you like busy drumming, and it may not be to your taste, but this is exactly the type of drumming that excites me. Where even Neil Peart would have to multitrack himself, or just go with two drummers. Two sets of snare hits and kicks either line up together for an extra ooph, or act as ghost notes on top of each other, and sounds completely deliberate. And with harder rock, a kick on every beat is perfectly fine.
And since I now had some MIDI lines, I even fed a few into Dracus and Strawberry plugins, to get a bigger wall of guitar sounds than just NS/Stick through Guitar Rig. So lots going on here, but a couple of pretty basic and simple blues riffs. And a 5/4 section at the end!
Down in Fractal Rock!
Steve Sink
rock and Stephen’roll!