Posted: 3/15/2026 1:46:21 PM EDT
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So, this is a little outside the typical type of "deathcore" stuff I write, but I am very proud of how it turned out. My wife wanted me to write a song for her, so I better do it right? I thought of the concept I wanted and general ideas in my head then wrote the lyrics and guitar parts. I wrote that little lead guitar melody early and immediately could see that going into a guitar solo and about the 3rd time or so in the song it felt right. I improvised the guitar solo then made a few tweaks and ran through it several times to get it smoother. I started on that this morning, and it was the last thing needing done to finish the song. All guitars by me. The drum and bass lines I wrote with midi. For vocals I ran my lyrics in AI several times and picked out the parts I could work with to put in my song. I'm almost up to 3 months playing now after restarting between Christmas 2025 and new years. I'm really stoked with how things are coming back and just keep grinding several hours a day. Thanks for checking it out any productive criticism is welcome. Link to Song here |
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Nice work! Good guitar tones - what software/input do you use? I've struggled getting midi drums to sound "organic" when sequencing them, but yours don't have that robotic feel and sound pretty natural. Always good to get back into playing after taking a break from it. I've started jamming again with my brother regularly since he bought a drum set last year. |
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For guitar I use a Jackson Rhoads with Jackson brand active pickups. From the guitar it goes into a noise gate - overdrive pedal - Peavey 6505-amp sim- EQ- impulse response. For lead guitar I use a 5150-amp sim and different impulse response, a little delay/reverb, and slightly different EQ. As far as programming drums I do not know how to play drums but do watch a ton of drum instructional videos to learn how drummers do certain things. I also have a friend that is a very good drummer in a band that I talk to, and he gives input on my drum lines. Sometimes I intentionally move things slightly off the grid and vary the velocity to help make the drums a bit more human. I also have a friend that plays bass in another band and talk to him. Same with bass lines intentionally making it less than perfect and vary the velocity so it's not all the exact same velocity and perfect like a machine. All guitars are at least doubled and panned left and right. Sometimes I put a little different EQ or other little changes from the guitars I double with to thicken it up. Nothing crazy and I limit how many plugins I use to spend more time creating and less time chasing sounds or tweaking. All of my songs have come together in a week and usually recorded/programmed in one weekend. I also almost always find things I'd like to do different or improve upon but leave them alone at least initially. Since I'm just getting back into it my improvement progress is pretty quick so I will probably revisit all my songs later this year, but don't want to continually tweak on them. I'd rather just move on to the next and potentially redo my best songs later this year. I'm tuned down but use a standard tuning not a drop tuning. |
That's a good idea on adjusting the velocity and moving parts slightly on the grid for programmed instruments. I've found that I try to make everything line up perfectly and it ends up sounding robotic. Live musicians just don't sound like that. It's really hard to just leave things alone and not chase "perfection". I usually end up tweaking things too much and wreck the tracks, then revert to how I had it 
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Ya you can really tweak things forever. I basically practice my finger exercises and scales every day as well as spend a good amount of time just working on palm muting patterns on open strings. After that I play a few of my favorite riffs then go right into experimenting and trying to play things I hear in my head. I do that all week then on the weekend start trying to put things together and write a song. If I can't complete a song recording and editing in a weekend it usually gets set aside and I move onto the next thing. I'm also always playing through the computer so as soon as I create something, a riff anything that I think may be useable I record it immediately. I've got a large collection of riffs I've created in the last few months. Some may never get used but at least they aren't lost. We all know how it goes. You get in a groove and come up with something cool, but then it's lost because you didn't record it and forgot exactly what it was. I listen to all my songs later and always find things that need tweeked, little mistakes, or maybe things I should have done different. I will eventually rerecord all of my songs but for now I just want to let the ideas flow and get them captured. |
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