Still stands as the sickest song my brother and I wrote - never got our project off the ground + couldn't land the right lineup... Riffs + tone and production on the guitars is something I'm the most proud off. Super bummed I lost the stems, but might re-record one day.

Fun story on the recording of this. We'd been shedding this song ahead of the studio and were totally locked in with the tempo changes. The toughest part was lining up the metronome track to follow where we were going between verse/chorus/breakdown.

Following the breakdown we come back into the chorus up to tempo and in one of the takes we get 2 measures in and as we're playing my brother and I both open our eyes and stop. We tell our buddy running the board that the metronome track wasn't right - he swore it was lined up perfectly. My brother and I went to se for ourselves and saw two points on the automation line that looked in line with the tempo spread across 2 measures. Turns out we were right, but it was only by 2 BPM. I'm sure pros would hear that minor of a change across 2 measures, but as kids in a garage we felt pretty damn 1337 lol

Cuidado

Death Before Dishonor

Obvious inspirational vibes in the working track title HAHA

Never got this one through to a full lineup, but had the riffs and some general structure. The solo track is a touch hot... OOPS! lol it's also hella slops, but I did like my overall composition minus the execution

Typical chuggy breakdown and harmonized riff goodness

As I Switch Killing - Demo

Another demo from the vault of working out material with my brother Drew and my brother (via another mother) Nate - this has live drums!

Little At the Gates and Killswitch vibes, but that breakdown is HILARIOUS. I don't remember what we did to make our dropped c guitars sound like actual barking seals, but we did it. Totally out of place but we had fun with it. Lots of harmonized guitar, noodly bits in there too, but the standout riff for me is the section before the barking seals. Always loved the way the harmonies moved - the tracking wasn't so tight, but cest la demo

The Gate Broke - Demo

Just messed around with some basic af chuggz only because I wanted to make the "zoooooooom" noise as a break in a track... lol pan automation and sliding down the guitar neck. Still so satisfying to hear for some weird reason!

Despite not being in an odd subdivision of 4, this riff has all kinds of Meshuggah vibes. Definitely a throwback!

Just an Outro

Interesting demo with my bro and Nate - working title still around the vibes (As I Lay Dying, Lamb of God). This one needed some actual structure to get anywhere good.

Better drum sounds on this one, but is a little hollow without some bass... breakdowny outro was more of a placeholder. Fun times!

Dying Lamb - Demo

Nate and I were in the studio and wanted to do a song in 1 session.

We both kinda came up with some chord ideas, Nate had the lyrics pretty much instantly so then we started tracking. Not sure who signed me up for backup vocals, but I remember that as soon as I heard them in playback I couldn't stand them... To be fair this was early on in my foray into being a vocalist so the chops weren't even there yet. Too much head voice, so nasally and pretty thin overall.

All in all I think it worked really well as a contrast to Nate's smoky and dark tone. Those ad libs tho..... painful LOL

We went direct in with Nate's Ovation acoustic and was suuuuper pleased with the tones we got there - as a lead guitarist I always love a solo HAHA

So Far Away (Nate & Dane Demo)

Nate came up with the riff/idea for this, so we tracked it against scratch drums to get a feel for it. Very Trivium in the vibe (probably the straight ahead drums) but always fun to throw down some harmonized licks - the power of thirds!

Fist to the Face (Nate's Riff)

Back when GarageBand was new for me I threw together a quick little mash of world music samples and added SHRED! Fun little snip

World Shred (GarageBand Sample Test)

Covering Ryan Adam's cover of the band that actually got me interested in learning to play guitar (Champagne Supernova did it).

There definitely was a touch of pitch correction in here, but this was before I started working as a vocalist singing lead. My tone and support was definitely better, but pitch and control were not the strongest part of my chops.

Not sure what the fade out/in midsong was about (probably too lazy to retrack the whole guitar take and just wanted to redo the intro or something). Also the last line of the song was without guitar because I for some reason didn't count it out right and ended up being a cappella. Despite shoddy production I was pleased with the overall performance.

Wunder

This was my "reprise" of Aura. Wanted to try my hand at using the piano roll to map out some lead lines that sounded played vs. programmed. I also wanted to add some heaviness to the track (typical metal head) plus some guitars. Little repetitive I know, but in the spirit of the original track. I took out the harp/arppegio riffs to put more focus on the lead lines (the coolest vibe of the track to begin with).

This definitely has me inspired to take another crack at getting some better production on a remix/cover in Logic.

Aura - Dangerous Remix

I might actually be Dane....

I'm also a session guitarist faking my way through vocals where needed. My stuff on here is a lot of metal, but I do it all. Check out my LinkedIn for my full musical resume!

Dangerous

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