Song of the Week: August 5 – “War Pigs”

I was inspired to try my hand at remaking War Pigs after I did a piano trio gig a couple of months ago. We always like to try off-the-wall stuff to keep ourselves entertained, so I recommended we try and play War Pigs. I’d picked out a few riffs before I showed up to the gig, so I had some idea of what to play, but it was otherwise completely unrehearsed.

It went so well (or at least I thought it did) that I decided to improvise it again at home and work out a more thorough arrangement. It’s long, and still pretty rough, but that’s part of the idea. I’d love to have it recorded with a full band, and hopefully will be in the future.

I’m trying my hand at giving my drum mix some sense of realism, and it was suggested to me to use only the room mic setting from within Kontakt. Thus, I muted all of the close mic channels, with the hopes of getting more of a room sound. I’ll let all of you good people be the judge of that.

• Native Instruments The Giant (acoustic piano)
• Native Instruments Studio Drummer
• Kontakt (acoustic bass and electric guitar)
• Reaktor Prism (effects pad)
• EXS24 (synth pad)