Once you’ve taken the time to painstakingly perfect a creative venture, you’ve probably ruined anything about it that might intrigue others. That’s what I’ve generally found to be the case, and with this in mind, I’d like to present to you the latest Jose Nation musical offering in all of it’s imperfect glory: Rex The King. It’s the second volume in a line of songs I’m writing and recording for my nearest and dearest, and if you’re wondering if you’ve made the list, then you didn’t.

Go ahead and tak a listen by clicking on the little arrow thingy below, and then, do me a favor, click here, and just buy the goddamned song already.

And for all of the trouble-making assholes out there who refuse to use iTunes, here’s a different link to click.

This project was an interesting change of process for me, in that it was the first time I had taken a previously recorded chunk of music that had been kicking around my archive for a significant period of time—specifically the keyboard and guitar hook for the verse sections of the song—and actually turned the sparse idea into a finished product (I say product hoping this entices people to buy it). Actually, there was very nearly an entire instrumental piece written, but I never liked the bridge, and the guitar for the chorus was far too literal; was too close to the melody to be interesting. I ended up completely trashing the original bridge and chorus guitar, and re-recorded the guitar for the verses.

The biggest reason for doing reconstruction, besides the fact that much of the original material totally sucked balls, was because of a major change in workflow. I recently moved from GarageBand to Logic Pro, and after having imported the old GB files into Logic, I was all like, “ahh, you know, what the hell,” and just started deleting things—which, if you’ve never tried deleting things, you really should. It really gets the blood pumping and makes you feel like you’re living.

So Logic is cool and blah blah blah, and I don’t want to get all caught up in a DAW review here, because other people have already reviewed every aspect of the software much more thoroughly than I ever could. Yes, it looks like a big grey piece of shit, and much of it is far more complicated and redundant than it needs to be, but whatever. It gets the job done. Logic is the obvious choice for people who have moved beyond GarageBand for recording and arranging. Especially arranging. Honestly, I’m easy to impress. I started recording at home more than a decade ago with Cakewalk 3 or 4 (now Sonar), I can’t remember which, and all of the DAWs have come such a long way since that time. If only I hade the hardware and software available then that they have now. I was born too soon, dear readers. But that’s a different post entirely.

For the most part, I’m happy with this song. I’m not going to list all the goals here, because I’m a big believer in letting people listen to a track and letting them create the story around it for themselves. To me, if a song has the room inside of it to allow a listener to fit their own imagination, it has a greater chance of being successful.

I’m sure most of my close friends will hate it, but I’m curious what acquaintances and strangers will think.