How about re-producing a track from my “Journey” project…?

Slowly and surely, I’m starting to take “Journey” tracks produced with Reason 10 and revisiting them using Cakewalk.

Currently, I’ve been working on revisiting “Gotcha” — the first song on the project (when it finally drops!).

Here’s the current version, recorded in 2018 (shortly after “The Maestro Project” was released):

That’s a pretty good arrangement, actually.

New Toys

That said, I’ve adopted some new (or different) approaches, including a return to using Cakewalk as the DAW of choice (in lieu of not wanting to pony up $$ for a Reason 11 upgrade). FWIW, my approaches to arranging and production differ between Cakewalk and Reason

Additionally, I’ve added the following “toys” to my production toychest since August 2018:

• Scarbee Funk Guitarist
• Session Guitarist (Strummed Acoustic & Electric Sunburst)
• SSL Native Plugins
• Massive X
• Yamaha MODX7

With these additions, coupled with the pandemic “pause”, it seemed like a good idea to revisit the track, seeing what changes could emerge in an effort to make the track more appealing.

MOMENT OF REFLECTION / One of my biggest flaws is trying to be too much of a “musician” when producing, instead of using “music” to produce musical art.

So far, this new arrangement includes:

• Alto sax melody line
• Rhythm guitar (electric)
• Sampled drum hits (from Battery 4’s collection)
• Use of SSL FlexVerb plugin

It’s getting “there” and I like what I’m hearing so far.

Completely unrelated to the music-theme of this post — this is how my workspace looks in Cakewalk: