Hues, Vol. 1
1. intro(no title yet)
2. all saints day (temporary title, started recording Nov. 1)
3. 4am
4. violet (will probably be renamed)
5. acadia (will probably be renamed)
6. enemy

1.

As for release date, it's still pretty up in the air. I'm looking at an early 2009 release date, probably in the 1st quarter.

Firstly, I'm disappointed in you, Pennsylvania. You can probably guess why (hint: it's about politics).

Down to business.

1. The move was successful and I am very comfortable in my new recording space:

2. I'm no longer using Reason as my primary musical program. I'm moving on to Ableton Live and VSTs, and loving it. I feel renewed inspiration now and am really digging in. I absolutely adore the Tension plug-in that came with Live, since I'm a sucker for a plucked string sound, and putting all sorts of effects on it.

3. I've been really messing around with the Ebow lately, and getting some crazy feedback sounds out of it when held a certain way, it's really cool and I need to just record myself fucking around for later use.

4. I'm going to work on a cover soon. It's a well known song, or at least it should be. The band is still recognizable today, and the song is from the early 90's. I can't really think of anyone else covering it, honestly. Everyone can send me a guess. Or just wait.

5. More and more lyrical ideas are coming to me. I may finally be settling into having to be a lyricist. I just hope they sound as good sung as they do on paper, or on the computer screen in this case.

6. I'm going to stop being social soon and really concentrate on the work ahead.

It appears that the latest Nine Inch Nails release, "Ghosts I-IV", is going to be a HUGE success for Mr. Reznor. I couldn't be happier that this type of business model finally seems to be working well for someone. Sorry Trent, I only bought the $10 version, because I don't have a Blu-ray player and honestly, we both know that the multi-tracks will hit the torrent sites the day it reaches someones hand. That said, the printed book would have been very cool to have.

Onto my point, and why I'm posting this in a blog that solely pertains to my own musical endeavors. Just a couple weeks ago I was pondering over good ways for an independent artist to release music today. One of the ideas I posed was selling a pre-order of your physical CD along with an immediate download of the mp3s. Oddly enough, I was thinking around $10 as a fair price for this, CDs are too expensive nowadays. Now I'm not saying that my idea was stolen or anything, anyone could have thought of it, but it is nice to see that it can work. It just remains to be seen if it will work for someone who isn't as well known as Trent Reznor.

Unfortunately, it's looking more and more likely that I will have to stick with digital release only for now. Now if my fanbase starts to drastically grow when I start revealing vocal tracks, then maybe I can go back to this original plan. I figure as long as I were to sell at least 100 preorders, I could still do the physical release.

More music on the way, for now enjoy a demo version of "Enemy" on my Myspace or Vampirefreaks page.

Saturday I went over to my friend Hunter's garage studio. I am collaborating with him a lot on my next release, since he is far better at writing guitar than I will probably ever be. He and I have both actually been in quite a rut lately, struck with a case of severe writers block. It's looking like I might actually be breaking free from that a bit. While I was waiting for him to come down, I had opened up one of my songs and just hit play. Minutes later I was beginning to structure the song, which I had been sitting on for months now. Maybe the change of scenery was all I needed to jumpstart my creative drive. There is a part in the song where I had wanted guitar added, and Hunter wrote the perfect part for it. Since his studio is undergoing some changes and is not quite set up to record, I simply translated it to MIDI and saved it to bring home with me.

Guitar for the song (the file is titled "Enemy", but the final song title will probably be no where near that) will likely be recorded tonight or later this week. I have been looking through my lyrics for something for this song as well. The structure of the song isn't the usual verse-chorus-verse and so on, but I should be able to find something in my mess of lyrics.

This song is probably going to be the last track for the CD. It just has that feel.

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?

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.