Overview of the whole track.
So this happened the other night
essentially by accident. I did that little trick of copying the drum-midi into an instrument track, just to see what happens. This time, I pasted it into the Ableton Strangler Guitar tone, and it worked out amazingly. Because there is a lot of kick drum, and that is mapped to a low C, the whole song wound up being essentially in key, because that C drones on the whole time.
Listen to DIGIMETAL here.
Basically there are 3 parts
to the guitar line; Part 1 is the first 8 measures, with the staccato guitar notes. Part 2 has the tritone fill every other measure, and the staccato notes. Lastly, Part 3 is the straight drum beat (with the double bass) and the constant guitar. That part is the whole end of the track, after 1, 2 and 3 repeat 2x, we play Part 3 all the way till the end, with a lead that comes in. As can be seen in the screenshot below, the drums and the guitar are identical to each other as they were copy pasta.
The Drum and Guitar copy pasta trick, described above.
I wanted to just leave the song
as is, but it felt kind of empty. Everything I tried to add that strayed away from the main form just didn't fit great, so I decided to just add some other instruments that basically mirror the same thing the drums and the guitar do. I added 2 synth tones, Tracks 4 and 5, that also play what the guitar plays. I felt that adding some different tones to this would be good. Track 5 is the same as 4, but 2 octaves up, also just helps fill it in a little more.
Listen to DIGIMETAL here.
Before I discuss the lead at the end,
I should mention the bass line, Track 8. It is just playing 1/16 notes on C for Part 1. For Part 2, it slides up to an F# 3 times a measure, which because of the synth settings, sort of just bends the note up and back down. It does this even more in Part 3, which makes that rolling feeling of the rhythm even more apparent.
The bass line during Part 3 as describe above.
Last up is the guitar solo/lead
that comes in at the end of the song. It plays a C, up to a Bb and down to G, then Ab down to Eb, and then to F and a little trill between F and F#. The second time through, we skip the Eb and go straight to F. When the higher notes come in, the basic lead is still going on below it, basically just plays 1/16th notes above it, jamming in Cminor. This lead then doubles in tempo, and takes us to the end of the track.