New Song: “One World”

This is my new song and I’m a-loving it!

ONE WORLD Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

I am super happy with this song. I seldom say that I’m pleased with my compositions, or playing or mixing. But this is one of the rare times I really cannot complain.

It was a fun song to compose and play as well. The mixing took a long, long time. About 4 weeks, ‘cos I worked on the track on and off.

This is the version without the lead. Try jamming along with it and create your own version (Creative Commons license applies):

ONE WORLD (minus the lead)Link to Archive.org

Total of 19 layers (including the four layers for the lead). Quite a complex song by my standards, so much so that I craved for more computing power and RAM (my 2GB was not sufficient).

The lead melody was composed, recorded and edited in one session. Over 12 hours I think. I was on a roll and didn’t want to stop. Many takes and edits as usual (my ‘live’ playing is nowhere as smooth as what you hear).

First I recorded the rhythm track (A/ E/ B/ C#m) and then added the drum loops. The drums played a very important part in this song because it gave the whole upbeat feel. You can see from the screen shot that it’s a layer of three loops, and each layer are heavily spliced with a mix of quite a few loops. I sampled the GB loops and picked out those that gave me the drum notes I wanted. Then spliced them in. This took quite a bit of time.

Then another major part was spent on the bass (three four layers). In truth, it was due to this song that made me go out and buy a bass guitar! Then I watched some YouTube videos to learn how to play it (I played it like a guitar at first). Apparently the YouTube lessons paid off! LOL

I discovered that by combining two amp effects, I could make the guitar sounds much more solid sounding and/ or crunchier. Here’s one example of the lead guitar effects:

OK, I hope you enjoy this song.

I consider this my signature song for 2008.

[UPDATE: Check this out!!! Firdaus does a mash-up]

~Ivan