Onyx

This tune turns my usual method on its head a little bit. Okay, the guitar lead and rock feel aren't at all unusual for me, but the rest of the production was different compared to what I'd been doing lately.

First up, the drums were done in LMMS. It's the easiest way for me to experiment with different samples and have better control over dynamics, but fills are less convenient and it's a total pain in the rear to depart from the 16th note grid. That limitation didn't really hold me back here, as I was really just interested in putting together some loops quickly so I could play guitar.

I lifted the bassline from the A section of I Got Rhythm. It has just the right amount of swagger for this tune, while being tonally ambiguous enough to work in minor without alterations. I used my normal bass signal chain, which is Reaper's built in amp simulator and a ton of compression.

The synth was a last-minute addition that wound up, in my mind, stealing the show a little bit. It's a simple patch I threw together in ReaSynth, but it gets the job done and provides a break from the onslaught of guitar shredding. 

Aside from that, there's not much to it. Just a lot of notes, a wah pedal, and way too much distortion (which is the correct amount, of course). I got to bust out the automation feature I never use in Reaper in order to do the sweep panning of the tapping part, but other than that it was a fairly normal production for me. Onyx will probably go down as my grooviest tune of the year.