Thanks for the super cool comments!
I agree with you Larry Alex the intro does drag on too long. I try to find a good place to truncate it but then that voice in my head pops up, "Why?" because I realize I'm not shooting for the 3:30 single AND I've invested in all this computer crapola so why not please myself and be criminally indulgent with arrangement length? Oh, yeah, and call it "art" . . . that's the most important rationalization. :)
But I agree, it's too long, the listener sadly suffers.
As for melodies, I think they come later in the tune but for most tunes like this, you might think of what the bass is doing as a kind of melody that holds the thing together. That said, no one is going to croon to "Participant." I pictured it as more of a song you'd play while tearing up the curves on a long road trip you would take in a car like this:
whereas my real life is decidedly more this:
And as I'm getting some compliments on my guitar playing, it's time to reiterate the full disclosure from post #10: I do play real guitar in fits and spurts, but in this song, every bit of the guitar is me playing it on the keyboard, using Orangetree's Dracus. Pretty convincing stuff methinks but please don't think of me as a guitar slinger like many other legit players around here . . .
sorry for the long wind, and thanks again!
-Tom