EP Released!

Yes, its here. But not as I'd planned. I've released the first three tracks I've done as the whole EP.

I made this decision after spending a lot of time exploring, remixing, and experimenting with my first 3 tracks. Basically I came to the conclusion that I didn't like where the EP is heading. I really want to take a different direction, and keep exploring.

So I've released the 3 tracks that I've done, and called it, Elucidation. It means, to make clear, which is fitting because this EP has clarified, to me, what I like, what I don't, what my own strengths and weaknesses are, and so on. Sort of a self-clarification. Yeah, deep and stuff, ha!

50 cents is as cheap as bandcamp would allow me to offer the EP.  :)

A year in the making. I hope you enjoy it.

ERGO ALT - Elucidation

EP Progress 14

Spent the better part of last month attuning myself to the new speakers. Mixing my songs. Mapping out song 4, which needs a little reworking in the song structure. The Fall (song 2) and I Feel Alive (song 3) are really really really close to exactly how I want them.

I took a risk and reset all my mixing work for The Fall, and attempted a remix from scratch. It paid off. I managed a much cleared mix and, in the process, noticed that some of the samples I've been using aren't very good quality. So I've replaced the bass and the piano. I purchased Reason Pianos refill, some hyper-sampled grand pianos, from Propellerheads. They're are awesome by the way. The piano sounds cool now.

I also need to do some more work on The Fire in the Heart of Youth. Particularly in the drums. The samples are sloppy in the bass end and it muddies the sound. I'll attempt some drum replacement stuff. How dull.

Back to work!  :)

EP Progress 13

I've spent the past month playing with my new speakers. Remixing my first 3 songs. Yeah, so not a lot of progress to report on song 4 unfortunately.

I've also started doing my friend Amy's second song for her EP. It's called Safeway Parking Lot. I've learnt a lot of new stuff since I did her first song, so I will probably remix that for her EP release.

I've been uploading my songs to Bandcamp and listening to them all in a row. This is helping me to create consistency between the frequencies in each song, and to test out the flow of the tracks.

Now some technical rubbish:
I've begun noticing a technique that lots of artists use to create perception of space. I call it the 'cone of space'. I have no idea what this is actually called, if anything. Basically it works like this. Sounds positioned in the centre of the mix, have a low pass filter applied to about 400hz, whilst sounds in the side have a low pass to about 300hz. These vary of course, depending on the song. Anyway, this creates the illusion that the sounds to your left and right are closer than those in front of you. Something like that.

That's it for this month.

EP Progress 12

This fortnight I've been working heavily on Track 4. Recorded a whole set of vocals, then deleted at least half. I'm back again to that horrible iterative process of trial and error until I hear something I really like. I was making good progress, but I decided that I didn't enjoy listening to the song. I think that's important. I could churn out a whole heap of songs easy, but I find I keep asking myself, 'why would anyone listen to this twice'? Once, sure, but twice means a whole lot more. 

I think asking these questions is healthy. It obviously means I'm producing less than I could, 3 songs in 10 months (sigh), but it's for the best. Otherwise I wouldn't be proud of what I'm doing. I need to be proud. 

The vocals are key to this track. I'm trying to make them dark and gritty without sounding cheezy. No easy task.

I'll just keep working on it. The new monitor speakers are helping.

That's all I've got to write right now. 

Game changer

New monitors are Awwwwwsome! They add a new point of reference for getting a quality mix, and its an epic win here on all fronts. I feel like I have more control all of a sudden. So, I've gone back to Song 1 this week, The Fall. And I'm doing a remix for the EP. It sounds wicked already, I bloody love it. But I might have to resing 1 part, that's ok I get around to it later. I'll probably remix the other songs too.

So in retrospect, it was kinda stupid not to have studio monitors from the beginning. Good ones. And ALSO, good headphones. My monitors are KRK Rokit G2 5's, and I'm using the Shure SRH440 headphones. A potent combination. But I just didn't have the money when I started out.

Also, I decided I don't like the graphics for the bandcamp website. So I whipped up some new ones. The new ones are darker, and represent the core elements of my music. Stuff like, the power of the individual, but also isolation and loneliness that can come with that image, and darkness and beauty co-existing. etc etc. A little gothic perhaps, but not dark gothic. I've used some photo's a good friend of mine took.

It's fun, making the graphics. I like doing it. I should become a graphic designer!  ;P
Oh, and the 4th song is coming along. Sounds good, but still revising the lyrics here and there...
Here the look of the new site.

Studio Monitors!

YAY!!

EP Progress 11

Slow. That's how progress is. Very slow.

I've got a new job which I've been settling into. It will pay the bills, and hopefully I will soon buy some monitor speakers to help me mix. It's kinda funny that I've been able to get so far without monitors. I've been mainly mixing through headphones, which is not ideal. I'll go shopping for them soon, yay. Big yay.

I've also been teasing out vocals for my 4th track. I laid some down, and they almost work, but I need to aim for something better. So I'll be working on them tomorrow (it's a public holiday, woo hoo!).

Finally, I've whipped up a bandcamp website for Ergo Alt. It's hidden so no-one can see it just yet. I need to take some artistic photos to help develop it further. The background needs to look spiffy, and fit the mood of the EP.

That's all for the news this month.

Here's a screen shot of the draft bandcamp website. You can see that I've titled the EP 'Elucidation'. I'll write about that next time.

Spiffy.

Bandcamp

I prepared a Bandcamp website this week, for my DJ Ridonkulous track, to test Bandcamp out. The website is amazing, so easy to use, and they help you embed a player almost anywhere! I love it. Check it out.

I'll definitely use Bandcamp to distribute the Ergo Alt EP when it's done. It's just brilliant, way better than iTunes. They also allow me to price the EP however I like. So I will be able to set the price to donation only. However, if it becomes popular, Bandcamp can automatically implement a different pricing scheme. I'll manage that when, and if, it happens.

In other news, I managed to get a job which will help fund me until I finish the EP. The down side is that progress will be a little slower from here on. I'm cool with that. I hope you guys are cool with that.   :)

Vocal Production

I'm just posting a link to tips on vocal production today. It's the most comprehensive article I've seen on the topic.

http://www.propellerheads.se/substance/record-u/index.cfm?fuseaction=get_article&article=part10

If you're serious about vocals, read it.

Enjoy.

EP Progress 10

Reverb Equalization. Not incredibly important, but very useful to clean up your mix. Thankfully, parallel processing makes it simple. Route the reverb to its own dedicated mix channel and EQ it.

This week I've been working on the final track to the EP. It's still early days for this track. In fact, I wrote this song as a sort of spin-off from The Fall, but then it evolved. I added new bits, and now it sounds absolutely nothing like the idea genesis. This track is total experimentation.

I started with a basic piano bass-line ghost track. Added a crazy experimental beat using samples. Then started tacking on bits of other songs I'd been working on. And it sounds ok. It's weird, but I like weird. I'll keep working on it.

I wonder if, by the time I'm finished this EP, a year will have passed. I think that's ok, isn't it? There are no rules after all. Actually, I think that's pretty normal. Lots of great bands can take 2-4 years to do a full album. A few months ago, I met a guy at a music producers conference who had been working on his album for 10 years. 10 years!! That's possibly a little too long.

I'm hopeful of getting a job this week. Fingers crossed.

Ergo out.

My little M-Audio Oxygen8 v2. A producers must have. Great portability.
M-Audio, please sponsor me...    :)

EP Progress 9

My poor long neglected blog, how have you been? Don't cry, I'm still here, and still working on my 4th track, slowly tho. I've been job hunting a lot this fortnight, which doesn't leave a lot to report on my music.

I've finished most of the core musical elements for this new track. Started singing recently, but still working on lyrics and vocal melody. I really like what I have so far though, which is great. I'm trying to use different tones in my voice for this song.

I had a mate come around recently, and I explained the song and played him a little. His reaction was 'oh cool, so it'll sound sort of like Nick Cave'. And although that's probably not 100% right, it's pretty close I reckon.

Also, I've started using a new mixing technique for this song. Parallel processing of reverbs. Basically, its the routing of any reverb unit output through a dedicated mix channel. Then I can apply pass filters to really shape the sound of the reverb. In this case, I'm applying low pass filters to about 700hz on hall reverbs which makes them sound really roomy (large).

I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I should just run everything through its own channel!!!!   :)

I wonder how many channels my software can actually run....  I should know that already. GAH! Ok well I just counted how many channels I'm using, and I'm up to 60 channels so far with this song. That's a lot, but I think I used at least 100 for The Fall.

I don't think this song will top that.

Lots of channels. And knobs. And stuff.

EP Progress 8

Songwriting can be so frustrating sometimes. I spent the better part of a week trying to put together 'Vassal', a new song I've been working on. It was sort of an experiment using a part of my software that I haven't used before. 'Blocks'. Using blocks to build songs. More info is here if you're interested.

Anyway, so after a while I decided that I absolutely HATE the song, and it will never see the light of day. Block music is perhaps better suited to repetitive styles. I dunno.

So I've moved onto one of the older songs that I began writing a little while ago. I think I had draft titled it '21st century love song'. It's in the style of underwater rock. Kind of melancholy but also rocks out, old school style. Hopefully it adds a nice contrast, and something new, to the song styles I've already used. Bowie-like.   :)

Oh, and I also started working on my Ergo Alt website. Sneak peak below. The little booklet will be visually interactive, sort of. There's still a lot of work to do on it. I also recently discovered bandcamp which I'll probably use to distribute my music too.

In other news, my friend Amy, who now has a cool blog, is going full speed ahead with her EP. She wants it completed by June. Indie pop is usually pretty simple music so she can probably do it. I think she still wants me to help produce it. Unless she wins lotto and can hire a pro audio engineer. She also picked up a bit of work making the music for an iPhone game which is really cool. She'll be a very busy bee for a few months.

EP Progress 7 and thoughts

I'm working on 3 new songs simultaneously now. Two will make it onto the free EP. Not sure which yet. They'll all very different from each other, just like my first 3 songs. I might end up finishing them all first, then deciding what 5 tracks work. We'll see. So many thoughts....

I was listening to some albums today, High Violet by The National, and King of Limbs by Radiohead. I was really struck by the 'maturity' of the music and lyrics. My music, in contrast, feels a little 'younger'. I was going to write 'juvenile' but that's the wrong word. I really admire maturity in music. It's hard. It requires patience. It requires restraint. Those qualities are particularly hard to induce as a new artist.

Restraint is a particular quality I'm interested in, particularly in the musical 'engineering' aspect. I don't have this ability yet. The ability to engineer a song to make it sound like it's holding back that little bit. Like it could explode at any moment. I've been mastering all my songs with an 8-band parallel compressor and tending to force frequencies through the speakers too much. I'm also having trouble allowing dominance of the vocal range frequencies (200-700 Hz). When I try re-mastering the EP before I release it, I'm gunna try restricting the music to this band, holding back on volume a bit, and allowing transients (~+1kHz) to define sonic space.

Enough jibber-jabber.

Mini tech demonstration

I whipped up this little video, just to demonstrate how my music software works. Hope you find it interesting.

EP Progress 6 - 3rd song done

Hooray. I finished my 3rd song today, and I've uploaded it to Myspace and Jango. I hope you enjoy it.

I'll admit, it feels a bit strange everytime I finish a song. It's like, that feeling you get when you say goodbye to someone. That little voice that tells you 'you need to move on', and so forth. Pretty strange. Or maybe, completely normal.

Anyway, I'm another major step closer to the 5-track EP. Once again, this track was a huge learning curve for me. Next post, I'll try a little desktop video walkthrough of how I put together the new song.

In the mean time, I hope you enjoy 'The Fire in the Heart of Youth'.

Laters.

EP Progress 5 - New song nearly done

Hey Hey! It's getting longer between posts these days coz I've been working non-stop on my latest song, among other things. And I'm happy to announce that I should be able to release it on Jango next week!! YAY! The only other thing to say is that I've changed the title. It was going to be called 'Get up and skate girls!'. But I've ditched that title because those were going to be lyrics in the song, but got ditched coz they sounded crap. That's songwriting for ya!

Anyway, so I'm not 100% sure yet, but I think the new title will be 'The Fire in the Heart of Youth'. But I've yet to let that title sink in...

In other boring news, I took down the Tunecore widget from the side of my blog (it was on the right), coz they only let you play songs that I've distributed on iTunes (which is a bit annoying, blah blah, yeah I'll get over it). Jango does a great job with sound quality, so no probs there.

I've also been working with Amy (see last post) to fix some issues with her home studio, but unfortunately we're only making slow progress there. So her next track will be some time away I suspect.

That's all I have to say right now (SAD!), so here's a photo of me having a beer to cap off this post! Notice that I have that producer 'look' now. Yeah!   :P

producer hair....  producer stubble....  he's probably a producer

Amy's Single - Release

I'm proud to report that Amy's single, 'Too Drunk To Kiss' went on sale today, it's --> available on iTunes <--. And she has a little indie video clip that she did to go with it (taken on an iPhone!). I'm really chuffed to have been able to help her produce this song. It's a great song, well done Amy.

EP Progress 4 and new project

Ha! I've already changed my mind on a bunch of things from last post. Including scrapping the final song, and replacing it with potentially one of two others. I keep hypothesising what the final EP will look like, but to be honest, it's probably still too early to tell.

Anyway, I've come up with two new ideas for songs, so have been working on those, as well as the other two existing new songs. They're sounding pretty cool. I started some vocal work on 'Get up and skate girls'. I wrote 16 lines of rapping, tried it out, then scrapped it. Wrote some new lines, sang those, edited them, and they seem to work. It's an iterative process. At least, that's how I'm developing some parts of this song. Other parts are pretty clear in my head. I need to lay those parts down asap.

I've also been working with a musical friend of mine, Amy, to produce her first song. She has a website. After hearing about my project she got inspired to make an EP of her own, with my help as a producer. She wants to call it 'Spare Parts'. The song I've been producing for her is call 'Too Drunk To Kiss'. Her stuff sounds kinda like Lilly Allen. It's full of sassy humour and attitude. I really like it.

Amy recorded the key song parts at her home, sent them to me over Dropbox, and I pieced them together and added production details. Then we worked together on making it a quality product. The process was awesome, so much fun. I really want to do this for the rest of my life. The song came together in amazing speed, within a week, and it sounds fantastic. I'm really getting the hang of being a producer now.

Amy and I discussed marketing philosophy as well. The need to have the complete package together before release. It would consist of, a product (an EP), a website, at least 1 youtube video, artwork, and marketing material. And lets not forget, cash. Cash to dump on radio station plays, and other things, to help promote the product.

That's enough ranting for today. I was supposed to write something technical. Bah, maybe next time.

EP Progress 3 - Philosophical Rant 6

I had a few thoughts today about the EP, so figured I'd write them down. I'm noticing a natural progression in the structure of the EP. There's a pretty clear theme. Thoughts. And Love. But generally, just thoughts. Love kind of sneaks its way into all the thoughts. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's me telling myself something. It's like this EP is a reflection of the stuff that goes in and out of my head in any single day, or a moment even. So I had the idea of naming the EP 'Chaotic Tangents'. But I'm not entirely convinced on that title yet, because the EP isn't necessarily chaotic. Perhaps the original thoughts were, but then some part of my brain has ordered them.

For example, here's a draft tracklist with associated concepts:

The Fall - is dark but hopeful. It originated from ideas of dependency and redemption and that sort of stuff. 

I Feel Alive - is about recovering (from trauma perhaps?) and then living in the moment.

Get Up And Skate Girls! - is about sort of about self-reflection in a way, looking to the past and future, and defying the expectations of others.

21st Century Love Song (draft title) - is about rebellion or finding identity, and freedom. 

All Around Me (very draft title) - is supposed to be an epic conclusion, or I suppose, a transcendence.

There's sort of a pattern there. Or at least, an ordered collection of ideas. Not exactly chaotic, so maybe my EP title needs more thought.

I think next post, I'll write something technical instead of philosophical. Explain something about the sounds I'm using, and how I made them. In the mean time, I gotta record some vocals!

Cheers!

EP Progress 2

A few bits and pieces to report. I've finished the core elements of my third song this morning. I'm really happy with it. Now I just need to put the vocals in. 

I'm pretty sure this track will be titled 'Get up and skate girls!'. I might change it if it doesn't work for the finished product though. I got the inspiration for the song from a street mural. I may use this picture for the song artwork, since I can have artwork attached to each song on the EP. So then if you listen to the EP on an electronic player, like an iPhone or something, the art will match the song playing. I saw that Trent Reznor did that for the NIN album 'The Slip'. It was the first album I'd even seen someone do that. Yep so, anyway, this 3rd song won't release as a single. It will join the other 4 tracks on the EP which will be released for FREE. Yes, free. 

I'm actually really happy with the idea of releasing it for free. It's sort of liberating in a way. Just knowing that anyone who wants to listen can. I've been thinking about ideas for the website. I'm preferring the idea of having a single page with a graphic, the download button, and a donate button. Nothing else to click or interact with. Just really simple. I hope that people will be coming for the music, not the website. 

Get up and skate girls!

EP Progress 1

So what do you guys think about in the shower? Aside from the obvious sexual fantasies you all have. Don't deny it!

I've been working on my tracks and I find that, after a good sleep, in the morning shower I write songs in my head. I've had this partial tune in my head for sometime, but have struggled to get inspiration to complete it. Finally this morning, in the shower, I completed the tune. I mean that now it actually sounds like a song concept I can build as opposed to a little tune you'd whistle in the street. That got me thinking, I wonder what other people think up in the shower?

Ok, so anyway, this new song will be the 5th and last song on the EP. I want it to be ultra epic. Something that leaves people in awe, speechless. Something that leaves them wanting more. Or wanting to play the whole EP over again. I'll work on it today and see how I go. I play the first 4 tracks to myself all the time. I love the way they flow, undulate, through the EP. Tracks 3 and 4 only contain the basic elements, but the effect of the music is there.

I've also had a few job interviews over the new year. I really need a job, pronto. Zero money is not a cool way to be. Hopefully I get something really soon. Fingers crossed.

Oh, and happy new year to everybody!  :)