Wow. It looks like I might make it. I just wrapped up The Golden Age (track 6), putting me just over 25 minutes. The NaSoAlMo criteria is 29:09, so I’m pretty sure I can squeeze Julia, Revisted out in the next couple nights to get the required time in. I really, really want to finish the entire album this month, but that would mean cranking out 4 or 5 more tracks by midnight Thursday. Not impossible, but I’m getting a little crispy around the edges. Perhaps that’s where the point of this kind of exercise truly is to be found – digging in deep and finding some mojo when you’re certain you’re fresh out. We’ll see – I’m not abandoning hope yet, just recalibrating…

I also just had my first major “wow” moment WRT my own art. I sat back and listened to The Golden Age, and I can say without false modesty that it’s a pretty damn good piece. Feels good, I must say.

E-Phonic – MP3 Player

Interesting looking Flash-based embedded mp3 player – y’all will probably see this in action here before too long ;).

p.s. – while you’re there, grab Drumatic and RetroDelay. Those are both ace plugins.

Texhnolyze just might be the kind of anime I’d like.

So here’s a full update on the current status of my album Julia:

1. Julia’s Dream – done
2. Mr. Right – done
3. Cabal – done
4. Julia Knew – done

That’s 4 down, 7 to go. Next up is track 5 – Dr. Bennett’s Machine, an interstitial instrumental that I should be able to bang out on Sunday. Track 6 is Golden Age, and I’ve got a pretty good idea how I want it to sound, so it might happen on Sunday, too.

Today was a surprising day. I spent about 4 hours fiddling with samples for Cabal - stitching bits and pieces of stuff together to get the sound I was after. That took way longer than I expected it would, and I’m not sure it’s quite nailed yet, but it’s close. After that, Julia Knew pretty much just fell out of my head. I should re-track the bass part, I don’t normally play with a pick, so my dynamics were a little ragged. I’ll attend to that if I have time, otherwise that can wait ‘til after the end of the month.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I am recording these in order of their appearance on the album. I’m trying to take advantage of the process to create a sort of chronicle of what I’m learning. Anyhoo, it’s 3am, time for this amateur rockstar to crash…

…gettin’ there. Julia’s Dream and Mr. Right are done enough, Cabal is about half-finished, just needs a bit more knob-twiddling. I have most of Candles of Industry in my head, just gotta commit it to tape (so to speak). All the in-between bits, well, we’ll find out when we get there, won’t we?

Here’s hoping everyone’s enjoying the holiday weekend!

Grr… 4 hours after setting out to record what I worked out yesterday for Mr. Right, I’ve rearranged half the lyrics, cut a third of the verses, dropped a chorus, and added a bridge. It was turning out to be nearly 7 minutes just to fit all the lyrics in, and it just doesn’t need to be that long. Admittedly, it is turning into a stronger song than what I started with.

Anyways, I have a scratch guitar track and the beginnings of the keyboard and drum parts down, and the vocal melody is pretty well fixed in my head, so with any luck, tomorrow night I can get a good guitar take or two, vocals, bass, and maybe tighten up the drum programming.

10 days to go – good thing three of these are instrumentals…

I got the first track for Julia recorded this weekend – Julia’s Dream. This marks the first time, ever, that I’ve written, arranged, performed and recorded an original piece of my own. I’ve done spacey improvs, I’ve done covers, and I’ve done a host of material with my good, good friends in OVO, but this was a first.

Hardest part? Singing. I’m not convinced I have a decent singing voice (although I’ve been told I do), so committing to tape took some psyching myself up. It’s gonna require another take or two – I was a bit congested Saturday night, so I sound kinda stuffy.

Second hardest part? Poems ain’t necessarily songs. I wrote all the lyrics for Julia in a vacuum, with no musical preconceptions. Interesting things happen to words when you start attaching them to music. Once I realized the words had to evolve, and allowed that process to flow, it was actually a whole lot of fun.

So then Sunday I started working on Mr. Right. I think I have the progression and melody worked out. Only problem is, the guitar part requires a better guitarist than me (the fact that I’m a crap guitar player notwithstanding). I spent most of the day practicing the changes off-and-on, I think I can nail it if I do the verses and choruses in separate takes, then glue it all together with bass/keyboards.

w00t! The first release of XT2 has been announced! If you don’t already have EnergyXT, go get it. It is, admittedly, a bit daunting, esp. if you’re currently using a more “traditional” sequencer (Sonar, Cubase, etc). However, the amount of horsepower this sucker packs is well worth the learning curve. If nothing else, get it for the fact you can host it as a VSTi and take advantage of it’s kickass modularity and routing.

That is all.

Whew! 41 minutes behind schedule (technically it’s the 16th, now), but I made it. All the lyrics for Julia are done, and I’m pretty happy with the piece as a whole. I’m sure some things will get tweaked as I start putting the music together, but so far, I’m succeeding in writing something I’d like to hear. As Dan has quipped “If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like.”