Road Race

Instrumental with big tunes and riffs, and a driving cadence that's perfect for cycling (especially if the weather should force you to ride indoors). Bandcamp download (with artwork).

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posted by Wolfdog (1 comment total)

Here's a few notes on this:

1. Most of the voices are NI Massive, but there's one melodic voice that was recorded on the Dave Smith Evolver that I also use to key in most of my stuff. I don't record as much on it as I'd like because it has 78 knobs and they all need to be cleaned, like, every week. Or they cease functioning as knobs and begin functioning as random number generators.

2. One of my favorite rock instrumentals is the Scorpions' Coast to Coast, which pulls off the great feat of sounding totally laid back and yet fist-poundingly driven at the same time. Hopefully I got some of the same feeling in this, although the songs aren't really very similar (and I wasn't thinking of Coast to Coast at all when I wrote this).

3. There's also a few bars that remind me of Rush's "reggae" sound like in Vital Signs and The Enemy Within. It sort of seemed to come out of nowhere but it fit, so what the heck.

4. Getting the timing right on the ending was difficult.

5. This was one of the fastest songs start-to-finish I've ever written. I laid down a dumb bass line at the speed I wanted for riding my bike inside, and improvised some stuff over that which became the verse melody. Then I invented some obscene lyrics, which I won't share, and the chorus was easily written to fit the lyrics.

6. It fills its purpose as cycling trainer music pretty well, it makes me pedal hard, and the prechorus sections give me a decidedly satisfying feeling of cresting a large mountain. YMMV.

7. I'm not sure I can write a song without using ♭9 for tension somewhere.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:20 AM on October 9, 2015