I received my new monitors yesterday. Unfortunately, they are not the same model as listed in the auction. I have the TR6's now instead of TR8's. Rather than having to return them I've decided to hold on to them though, they still sound better than my M-audio 4-inchers. The guy selling them agreed to refund me $50, which makes the price I paid fair. So I'm happy. Next time I upgrade speakers I'll be going all out though.

As much as I like to work alone, I'm going to be getting some people involved in the making of this record. It should make for some pretty interesting results.

So far two people are confirmed as being a part of this project. A friend of mine who is working to get his own industrial band off the ground will be lending a hand on some of the writing, programming and guitar. Also, an old acquaintance from my high school days who is now producing some well made hip hop instrumentals (soon to have vocals added), is going to lend a hand with some programming as well, and possibly some backup vocals. As a trade-off, I may be producing a track for his album, which is a great opportunity as well.

There may be the possibility of others, but definitely not many more.

I posted this a few weeks ago on my vampirefreaks page, it sort of ties into my last post, so here it is:

Greed. It's apparent in just about anywhere in the world. But the kind of greed I want to talk about is the music industry, and the bands as well.

We all know that most record labels are run by corporate slime and are only interested in bands that will make the charts and sell lots of CDs. It's unbelievable that these people still can't grasp why piracy is causing so much grief for their still fat wallets. What's sad about this is that even record labels "in the scene" are acting nearly the same way.

I understand that they need to make their money, but charging $15 or MORE for a CD is ridiculous(I don't care if it is 2 discs, the second disc likely has nothing of interest anyway), and I do not blame the pirates for stealing. I also don't blame one of my favorite bands for not signing to a label yet, even though I'm sure they could.

But when I see a band(signed or unsigned) selling their CD directly to the fans at more than $10, especially with unsigned artists, it gets my blood boiling. I get that you want to get paid, but stop thinking you're some fucking rock star. Don't quit your day job. Go produce for Avril or some shit if you want quick cash. When did it stop being about the music?

Its might be a little early to be talking about album release, but fuck it. I don't expect that it will take me 3-4 years between releases like last time. The problem is, in the atmosphere of today's music industry, how does an independent artist with little fan base sell their music?

There's plenty of services out there: Snocap, Musicane, Tunecore(gets your music up on iTunes). The problem with all of these services is cost. You may as well sign to a label and get robbed, it's all pretty much the same, especially for the first two mentioned above.

I personally like the idea of a physical release rather than a download. It actually feels like you've paid for something, and as a designer, it lets me go nuts with the artwork. It can unfortunately be an expensive up front investment. One of the sites I was looking at offers 300 4-panel digipaks for about $1000, complete with CD duplication. Not too bad, but if it doesn't sell you're ripped off.

Burning them yourself used to be the way to go in high school, and it worked for a time, with lousy 20# paper liner notes. I wish I could find my old band's CD, that was just laughable. If I find it and my old release under a godawful name that I can't remember, I'll post them for free download. Good for a laugh. A year or so later I did the whole Staples CD Label thing. No case, no liner notes. Gave away a few copies and maybe sold 2.

For my last album I gave the internet a try. Used my own bandwidth and sold via Paypal. Again only sold a few copies. I posted it myself on a popular BitTorrent site(that unfortunately is no longer with us), and it was downloaded many times, but I haven't heard any comments, good or bad. Maybe they're afraid to admit to the artist that they've "stolen" their work? Even though I put it out there myself, and even posted a link to the torrent page.

Do people get turned off by completely instrumental music? I guess we'll find out once I get some vocals down and release some snippets to the public.

Maybe a combination will be a way to go:

Sell the CD on the specified release date, allowing people to pre-order to receive even earlier.

After a couple weeks or so, sell the mp3 version (192kbps quality). The reason for selling only a 192k version (and later) is because I will want the physical CD to sell rather than the download.


I have to work very hard to make this release something special. If it does not generate interest, then what's the point of even doing this anymore?

After some experimentation, I've been able to get a decent tone with a direct line into my Firebox and running Amplitube. For the recording process it looks like this is how I will work with guitar. I think my pedal board will work for live and for just fucking around. Another factor that may have played into it might have been that I was just playing to hard. For recording I don't need to look like a rock star strumming like mad. Got over a hurdle, guitar parts should be recorded very soon.

It'll also be helpful to use the hardware effects while writing, since Amplitube won't be running and eating up the CPU (which it LOVES to do). That should be less of a problem once I get my new PC up and running after the holidays:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 (dual core) 5000+ 2.6Ghz, could easily be overclocked to 3.0, if I need it.
2GB RAM
80GB System/Program Drive, 250GB Audio Drive
19" Widescreen monitor, maybe bigger if the prices are down by then.
My Firebox of course, and my new Events.

Just scored a used pair of these bad boys for around $300($499 retail). Should be a welcome upgrade to my $150 M-Audio's.

Enemy - A mostly piano driven track, slower paced, with more synth sounds coming in as the song progresses

intro track - You can hear this on either of my music pages, a pounding march-like drum throughout while things build on top until a climax at the end. Features the midiNES's Noise Channel.

noisy2 - a mostly complete track, very "radio" friendly. I'm probably going to restructure it and change some sounds around, it needs to be a bit more aggressive.

frozen - also on my myspace/vf pages. noisy, yet polite. distorted organ sounds, but also soft piano as the song progresses towards an ending breakdown that I am immensely proud of.

untitled1 - the "desert theme" of the album if it makes the cut, which I think it will. I've been making a lot of use of the pitch wheel and portamento lately. It brings a more natural sound that I feel is right for the direction I'm heading.

untitled2 - probably my most diverse sounding track to date. use of several samples of ethnic instruments, while still sounding very modern with a growling bass synth

violet - a mostly dead track, very hip-hop sounding drums and bass. I'm hoping that a collaborator will be able to help me breathe some life into this, it has some potential.

* All of the above titles are either tentative, or simply the title of the project file.

Going to toy around with some cable/pedal configurations today, perhaps I can locate the black sheep in my setup. I have some suspects, some older looking pedal patch cables that came with my Ibanez. Some of the things I may try:

1. Guitar > LBM Pedal > Firebox, just a short chain to see how that sounds. Though I may have to throw the EQ into the mix, since that really makes the LBM scream.

2. Guitar > Firebox, with Amplitube loaded on the computer. Cut out the middle man, this will probably be the ultimate way to see if the problem is in the pedal setup. I could also give a few different cables a try to see if I need to throw any out.

3. Synth > Pedal board > Firebox. I'll try to get a gritty dirty tone, similar to guitar distortion and see what kind of result that gives me.

With any luck this shouldn't take me too long and I'll have time to do some writing and recording tonight.

This week has been incredibly inspiring for me, a nice break from a severe case of writer's block that has been plaguing me for almost a month now. I've got some good ideas down for 3 new songs, bringing the total of "in progress" pieces to about 7, which is pretty good in my opinion. Now I just need to finish them. I was jamming guitar along to one of the tracks, tentatively titled "Enemy", and decided I would try and get some of it recorded so that:

a. I wouldn't forget.
and
b. May as well record while I'm still feeling prolific.

While I'm playing, the guitar combined with my stomp box setup sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, upon playback of the recording, it just sounds like a muddy mess. So I spent a lot of time(that I could have spent writing more music) trying to figure out what the problem might be. Was it the guitar? My pedals? Cables? I believe I can rule out the pedals, since I messed around with Amplitube and still had the same results. The good thing about Amplitube is that I can record, and still tweak the effects afterward. I may still be able to make this work.

If any guitar players have any other thoughts, please let me know. I have an Ibanez Fuzz and a Little Big Muff Pedal. Perhaps I need to get away from the fuzz distortion?

This will be the first of many photo updates along the course the album's recording process. I hope you enjoy this in depth look into the way I work. I will also be posting written entries as well.