yeah, i'm fixing some panning issues i previously missed altogether and going to just double that last guitar to get some more definition.

on the one hand, i want to get the backing tracks right because i'm going to export it to wave when i build the guitar parts up. i don't want to deal with trying to get the equipment to play back midi and audio at the same time with decent latency. the external mixer i bought was designed for audio, and can handle a heavy load of it at low latency, but isn't responding well to a stack of 30 vst instruments running sequences. if it was a different project and i cared more, i'd dump the load off to external hardware. i have an extra head (for an electronic kit) that can function as a drum machine. but i know it'll just be easier *and more stable* if i bounce the midi into one audio track and build fresh from it. that means i want to get it right. i mean, i can always go back and redo it but....

on the other hand, i don't really care a lot about what the guitars in this version sound like. it's more of an experiment for me, for future reference, to see what i can actually do with the technology nowadays.

'cause the reality for years was that you could get pretty good pianos and flutes and violins out of synths but there was simply no way to get a guitar to sound good at all except to play it through an amp. then there were amp simulators. and now they've got giant databases of samples that you can hook the sequencer right into and that sound relatively good.

the acoustic sound is better than it used to be, but still not so good. i'm getting the impression, though, that plugging a sampled paul into guitar rig and triggering it with a sequencer has the potential to provide some otherwise unattainable sounds, simply by the nature of what a staff of music is vs what a fretboard is. where the possibilities get really fun is mixing that approach with live playing...

so, i got what i wanted out of that. but this track needs live playing and that's what i'm more interested in.