Jimmy,
Thanks for listening and glad you enjoyed this piece.
Yes, these are all samples that I have arranged on various tracks, which is a very time consuming effort in order to make it come off and sound good and like a full production piece. Everything has to be lined up properly, faded in and out exactly in the right places throughout the various tracks and so on. Then I have to adjust every pieces volume to their proper level for the piece I am creating which takes me forever and a day. Then, when I think I have everything sounding good, at each element of the process, it is saved. There are most likely in this one piece over 200 times I hit the save button on the various tracks. Then when I run through the saved piece and listen to it three or four times, I do my final tweaks, making sure everything it set right, I then add an effects track where I put various cymbals, hits, wooshes, gongs, whistles, bells and any other effects I feel will enhance the over all production. Once they are all saved in their proper perspective and relation to the piece, then it is ready for mastering each track. Once each track is mastered I save the entire piece as a .wav file and save it to a special folder on my computer.
Then the piece is ready for my final mastering, which I do in Sony Sound Forge using either Cakewalk or Sony mastering software (which I have created my own presets and saved). Then to ensure the final mastering sound is as perfect as possible, to my ears anyway, I do a final-final mastering in Izotope Ozone 5 where it gets its final look at 8 different aspects of mastering for music. And so, what you are listening to is maybe not me personally playing any of my guitars or my keyboard, you are listening to samples by others or even samples I personally created myself, through my various software programs. Some are listed below in this post. Also you know how you can buy samples on disc, well, I have hundreds of discs with samples and just searching them out for a new production piece can take me hours to find the ones I want to use, and other times I just generate one that fit the piece I'm trying to create.
So, this is how I do my music and I sure do enjoy it. There are songs and instrumentals on my Sound Click music page where I do play all of the instrumentation with just a little bit of samples in them, I even sing on one of them, but for the most part I really do like being creative with the work I am posting now. For me, I guess it is the challenge it give me and I'm liking the results of my efforts. I do still play my instruments at home for my wife and create a song or two now and then, I just don't record them, but I maybe I should.
Anyway, hope this helps you and others have a better idea as to what goes into the making of my musical creations. It would be much easier for me to just sit down and record a song, do some singing, edit and master a song, but then I wouldn't be able to create what I like so much creating. Thanks again for listening.
Peace and Blessings, John