traz75

Thanks traz, appreciate you listening and leaving a comment with some kinds words. I tried to keep the lead guitar calm and soothing to contrast the harder rhythm guitars. Glad you liked it.

tv

Thanks traz75, i'll use that tip on my vocals next time for sure.

Thank you for listening and reviewing! Well, I`d love to hear more punk here as well

Thanks. Yes, I uploaded as a track until I figured out how to do it as a loop. You can find a better edited version under my loops category. :)

Yes, I like to think of this as intelligent music - I certainly have to put a great deal of thought into making it. Most of my playing I just do in quite a loose, natural, feel-based way, rather than planning it out in any intelligent way.

So, I'm nothing like a classical composer who has to actually work out all the notes and then write them down. I just roughly know the key I'm playing in and then jam out different solos and riffs.

The real intelligence is in the editing and arranging and I have had many times when I really get stuck and cannot work out what to do next. It hurts my brain! Then I leave it for a while and try to relax about how it's going, come back with a fresh viewpoint and get what I need done. I just work on lots of other tracks until I feel like coming back to any particular one.

The smoothness is also all in the detailed editing - constantly going back and trimming and removing little parts that interfere with the groove or things that jump out as being a little bit too loud.

Yes, using jazzy loops can be great fun and various people have done this over the years - there's a whole genre of jazzy hip hop featuring artists such as Madlib. Then there's uptempo dance music based around jazzy drum loops. One good artist for that is Dzihan & Kamien, who have a couple of really good albums. Then there's the cutup sample artist Amon Tobin who uses a lot of jazz drums in his strange, more extreme stuff.

But I don't use any loops here. It's all programmed acoustic EZ Drummer drumkits (plus some single shot hits for the hip hop drums) using jazz and metal kits.

Programmed drums give you so much flexibility over the track and allow you to do all sorts of complex rolls and fills - much more musical and interesting than just manipulating loops. I still use drum loops but I'm not dependent on them and generally mix them up with acoustic programmed drums.

If you'd like to hear some of my tracks based more on drum loops, try these three very different ones: Tiny Little Pieces, Thing Big Feel Small and Restless In Peace.

Thanks again and good luck with your jazzy loops.

Hi, great comment...the track has met its purpose!

Thanks

Steve