You aren't familliar with Ministry? Not even N.W.O.!?
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
Legendary song! Wow, they're one of my biggest influences. Possibly my favorite band too, although that's very often a tie with several other artists. Here's a clip of the part I 'covered' in the song:
http://www.distractionware.com/josiahto ... 20clip.mp3
Obviously, that song gave me the idea of sampling an air raid siren.
And yes, I'm very proud of the bass tone here. I've been using it in lots of recent stuff (haven't posted it here though), I'm just borrowing a friend's cheap bass guitar but it sounds amazing pushed through my guitar setup (treble 3, mids 10, bass 4, gain 2). Of course, I'm not a bassist, so I'm still learning as I go. You might be amused to know that I struggled with that one-note groove bassline in the Ministry ripoff part for quite awhile. Simple as hell, but the pattern tripped me up on bass for some reason.
The quality thing... Well, you may be right, but the fact is I'm just not sure I'm A. really satisfied with the music I am making, and B. that I'm doing anything remotely original. Then again, that's very difficult these days, but I think it's still possible. I think I just don't spend enough time working on my songs, it's like I whip them out in less than a day's time and never touch them again, and I think they sort of blend into this body of work that I'm not very satisfied with because of that.
One of the things is my complacency with my guitar playing; I've been at this kind of plateau for ages now, able to play fairly tight but simplistic rhythm guitar, but unable to really break the formulaic limitations of my 'style.' Plus I still can't really play decent lead.
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
Another issue is my obsession with connecting what I see with what I hear; with the obviously fake and industrial drums/samples/etc. that I'm using for this stuff, I find looped and processed guitars really meld to the drums and samples quite well. But for some reason, if I load the beat up and improvise riffs to play over it live (like I did with this song, for the most part), there seems to be this kind of 'gap' between the real guitars and the blatantly sequenced drums. Funny thing is, it's created only from looking at the session file and seeing that the guitars are seperate from the drums in that they have parts that aren't perfectly synced, even tiny bits, parts that sound 'too real' which I know is ridiculous. If I had heard the song without ever making it or looking at the session file, I'm sure it would sound fine to me. It's really a very aggravating habit that I need to break. This is actually why I tend to layer a bunch of samples over most of my stuff; I feel it sort of bridges the perceived gap created between the guitar/drums.
Anyway, sorry for ranting like that. I'm not trying to sound like I'm whining here or anything-- just trying to figure out ways to better evolve musically.
I think I will add vocals to this at some point, probably not very much though. I
really need to work on my voice for singing heavier stuff; I've pretty much nailed singing a few of my acoustic songs since I last posted any, but the more powerful style of singing still eludes me. (Anyone have any tips? Especially for having a little bit of grit to once's clean singing without doing it improperly and ruining your throat like I have?)