So, I took a bit longer between tracks this time.  In between, I actually started two different things that are in an unfinished place right now, that I will probably return to next.  I was really just trying to make sure that I wasn't getting into a rut.  Track Seven is a little bit different from the earlier tracks in that it's a bit heavier in the guitar department.  If you're here looking for chamber music, you may want to scroll down the page a bit.  It's written in the same mode as Canine Helicopter Anxiety, which was the string sextet in an earlier post.    I still don't actually know the name of this mode; it's really not a proper mode at all.   But I like it.

Click here to download Track Seven: The Merits of Being Carnivorous

This track started as a very simple guitar riff in a dropped-D tuning.  I don't think I had actually intended to use it.  In fact, the original riff turned into the bassline on the final piece.  After realizing that this would fit nicely into that "Canine" mode, I came up with a few more riffs that would also be in that mode.  I made a decision when I started it to actually not use any distorted guitars playing the riffs.  As you can hear, this is not what ended up happening!  In fact, when I got to the middle section, I started layering up multiple guitars doing the same thing to get a thick, fat sound. 

So, this track didn't start with just drums like many of the others.  I recorded the drums after coming up with the basic musical ideas.  Anybody that has heard my music for a long time knows that I'm a big fan of this kind of ambiguous time in 3, where you're not sure if it's in 3/4 or if it's in 6/8.    I love those moments where you're tricked into thinking you've been hearing the time wrong.  It's something that I've heard Bill Bruford do a lot, which is probably where I got it.  Charles Mingus had some fun with this too, on "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady."  

I resisted the urge to put any orchestral sounds on this, but I did add a little bit of analog synth.  For some reason, I just can't get enough of arpeggiators.  This is a Yamaha DJX keyboard that I normally just use for Midi input.

The mixdown of this track was pretty challenging for me.    Because of all the fat guitars and the super-low bass, I had to put a ton of compression on the drums to make anything other than the snare audible. I also had to remove a lot of the low frequencies from the bass to make the kick drum audible.  I must have mixed it down to disc about 5 or 6 times before I got it right.

Please let me know what you think.