Well, in my last post I mentioned being stuck on a couple songs for the EP.  I've since decided that one of them is a lost cause, and needed to bring in a ringer.  Enter "Enemy"(temp title).  Before the conception of Hues 1, I had a lot of unfinished ideas on my Myspace player, mostly done in Reason.  The most finished of these was "Enemy", which also happened to be a favorite of anyone willing to give a listen.

Last studio session I ripped almost all of the MIDI into Live, to replace the synths and piano with my more powerful arsenal of VSTs.  I did however keep one Reason synth intact, if only because of the massive modulation, and it already sounded too badass to change.  Long ago my friend Hunter helped me out by writing and recording a guitar part for the outro portion, and I still have that original audio.  Used to sound kind of iffy, but fits right in with the new synth sounds I've chosen.

1 song to go.

It's been about 2 months since I ordered the parts for the second half of my arduinome 128.  Finally getting around to getting it together.  Over the weekend I've soldered the bright orange LCDs (in contrast to the blue of the first half already built), and put the 64 diodes in their proper place, ready for soldering.  Hopefully I'll get that soldering done by the weekend and get the thing wired up before Easter.  After that, I just need to look into the enclosure, which means a trip to home depot for supplies.  Going to be awesome when it's done, and will make a great production and live interface with the help of the LiveControl app.

I'll be posting up album artwork for the new EP.  We're in the home stretch.

That's where I'd say I'm at on Vol. 2.  3 of the songs are at or very near completion.  One's about half way done and I'm a bit stuck on the other.  Got some new toys to play with tonight (namely Sylenth), so maybe that will give me some ideas.

From Vol. 2, almost done with this one.

If Hues, Vol. 2 gets released before the end of Spring (which it should), that puts it at around 6 months from inception to release.  Not bad, I'm getting better at getting shit done.  So the goal would certainly be to keep this up, and have Vol. 3 finished by the end of fall.  Where to then?

Beyond a physical release encompassing all 3 volumes into one, I'd like to get some more rock influence into my work, and ultimately, vocals.  I think Vol. 3 might be able to help me bridge the gap there, and even Vol. 2 (there's some guitar sneaking in there).  Now, I'm not a great guitar player, so what's there will either be pretty minimal, or will be played by guests.  "Enemy" will likely resurface during this time, though by then it will probably need a little work.

I'm a proud owner of a Palm Pre, and it looks like today they'll be adding video recording capability in their latest OS update.  Great news for me, as I don't have any way to record videos currently.  Possibly some studio videos on the horizon.

I never really know what direction I'm heading musically until I'm already halfway down the road, so to speak.  But if, after Hues 2, that road leads immediately to Hues 3; I'll be thinking about combining them all into one 15 track album, and getting them made into physical copies for sale at shows(hopefully soon)/online/freebies to friends & family/etc.  Probably cheap too, around $5-$6.