Hues, Vol. 2 is finished!  That is, the writing part of it.  Now it just has to sit and wait a bit til I feel like playing the part of sound engineer/mixer/mastering tech.  Should be ready for release in a few weeks, just in time for me to keep my Spring 2010 promise.  The result is a mellower album than Vol. 1, with an almost film soundtrack feel to the songs.

In the meantime, I'm laying the groundwork for the next project.  Hues, Vol. 3 is on hold for the moment.  Hell, this might not even be Fixate material.  I am restricting myself technologically speaking.  I don't have the money for a heck of a lot of hardware, so I'm going to treat my software as though it is hardware.  In other words, I'm going to treat this next project as though I only own a few different synths.  For drums, I'll be sticking only with Goldbaby's excellent 909 Tape sample collection.  As far as synths go, I'll be relying on the Blofeld, the soon to arrive Mopho, and a couple other softsynths to round things out a bit, as well as Kontakt for piano or strings as the need arises.  I'll also be using guitar heavily throughout this project.  And finally, my voice.   I'm still not much of a writer, lyrics-wise, but I should be able to make this work.  I'm going to be meticulous with this project, this is going to be my baby, my masterpiece.

Sonically speaking, been listening to a lot of classic rock as of late (Floyd, Zep, The Who, etc.).  Should give you some idea as to where a lot of influence is coming from.

Hit a bit of a snag with the fifth song for Hues 2.  May have to scrap it and start from scratch, shouldn't take too long though, I have some ideas.

Also, cover:

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.