Note: a remixed version of this song is now available here ^[1].

Ah, sweet “Defiance.”  I’ve gone through hundreds of variations and modifications of this theme, but still I love the original incarnation of this piece.  Yeah, it’s repetitive; yeah, the layout is awfully simple; yeah, that’s a weird techno-ish sound in the middle of what should be a solid rock song.  But somehow it works.  I don’t know how, but this song still rocks (and I’ve heard it probably a thousand times).

Getting a solid distort guitar sound out of raw MIDI is tricky, but I think “Defiance” succeeds.  My goal for the near future is to produce an mp3 remix of this using real guitars.  I’m not sure where I got the idea for the swayed power chord that comprises the whole first half of the song; I think it most likely came from listening to too much Disturbed or Godsmack.  The 2nd half – in case you haven’t already figured it out – is a straight adaptation of the bridge in Vertical Horizon’s “We Are.”  On a random side note, Everything You Want was the first rock album I ever bought.  Weird.  Anyway, I love the riffs VH pulled out of that album, and “Defiance” borrows from them as a kind of twisted salute to a good band.

Rock on, 40-year-old dads.