The idea had been growing in my brain for some time: TRUE force. All the king's men cannot put it back together again.
Alright, yeah, that's maybe a little dramatic. But the idea part is right on. For a while now I've been toying with actually putting together an album from my finished work thus far... unfortunately I've spent an equal amount of time worrying about things like "cohesion" and "singularity of vision." I'm acutely aware that my output this past year-and-a-half (or so) has been all over the map stylistically, and that's made me worry that I haven't developed my sound enough, that my artistic vision is still too out of focus (great metaphor, me!). I thought that I'd figured out "my thing" with tracks like "No Time For A Change" and "Forever And Never Again," but after a long overdue return to songwriting in earnest, I find myself going in completely different creative directions all over again. This has forced me to conclude that, at least at this point in my musical development, I need to embrace a broader style as a positive attribute and not try to force myself into a single conceptual box.
Which brings us to The Album. In a lazy moment I did a little craigslist browsing to see what audio mastering costs these days (I say as if I knew what audio mastering cost "before"), and lo and behold- a guy offering free mastering for liner note credit! Assuming this was much too good to be true I shot the guy an email, to which he responded quite positively: he liked what I've put together and was willing to master an album's worth for free. Now, I'm well aware that generally speaking you get what you pay for, but I can't come up with what scam this could possibly be a part of. Is they guy going to take my music and sell it to a label? Doubtful he'd have more luck than I have =). At very worst the mastering job could be shit, but that won't leave me any worse off than I am now. And the possibility of finally doing this has gotten me off my ass about putting together a real album tracklist. Here it is:
- Undelayed By Reflection
- Forever And Never Again
- Process of Illumination
- Mr. Sniggles' House
- From A Platform Above
- South Without A Candle
- It's Come To This
- Your Eyes Sparkle When You Cry
- Fixed Action Pattern
- The Distant Glow
- No Time For A Change, Pt. 1
The one thing I'm still deciding on is whether to include the full version of "Process of Illumination" or the shortened (to a mere seven minutes!) reedit I've been using for performance. Guess I'll A/B the two and see which I like best. In any case, I'm now undertaking the process of going through each of these tracks and taking care of any last-second tweaks to the mix before sending them off for mastering. I get the feeling that, hard as it'll be to call these songs really, truly finished, it's going to be a cathartic experience to finally do something meaningful with this music I've poured so much of my self into.
5 comments:
What does "mastering" mean in this digital day in age? -aaron
Bonus track?
Mastering puts the final "polish" on the song- it's basically the final stage of EQ, compression (audio, not digital) and volume leveling that's applied to the final stereo mix. It can actually make a huge difference to the clarity, punch, fullness, etc. of the sound, and consequently requires a great deal of skill and usually a great deal of expensive equipment. Mastering studios are built in physically "tuned" rooms that are designed to present audio as accurately as possible, since it's all about adjusting the subtle nuances of the sound.
Lots more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering
What is the story with the EPs on Amie Street? They look pretty awesome (<3 symmetry) but why not one big album?
Yeah, I've been really inconsistent about the whole album thing up to this point. The EPs on Amie Street were a compromise: I hadn't felt ready to release something monolithic (which would be so very final), but I wanted to put _something_ up, so multiple EPs were my compromise.
Now that I'm actually spending time putting the final polish on my old tracks and getting them mastered, I feel a little more comfortable with the idea of an album. In the end though, it's all just due to my neuroses about actually calling things finished =).
In short,
Post a Comment