Magnum

5 months since my last track.  Dark.  Blues.  Mesmerizing.  Magnum features a haunting melody,  downtempo rhythms at 70 bpm, and my first turn on guitar in many years.  I had spent a month and a half going down the wrong road at 90 bpm but wasn't feeling it at all.  So I actually scrapped the whole piece starting over.  It was worth it.  The second time around textures were built up around a simple piano melody coursing with vinyl-grit.  The TX81Z FM synth part at 0:53 is a crazy patch I conjured for a demo of the synth called DrtySecret, and knew at the time I had the starting point for this track.  While the drums are basic, I had spent a great deal of time in BFD getting them to sound big but not too busy.  As always the analog synths had to be in there.  There's quite a bit of Matrix-12, VP-330, a bass part from the Jupiter-6.  Continuing to push myself outside of my comfort zone with some simple ambient guitar textures drenched in Eventide Timefactor, and a short guitar lead part going through a ProCo Rat.  I had been practicing with a Fender Strat for a while now, and starting to trust it from a songwriting standpoint more and more.