Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #myalbum, aggregated by home.social.
My primary goal for the album was simply to continue my development as a creator from my last release -- to make an album that was better written, better sounding and more indicative of where I was at creatively. And I hoped to build on my successes with the last release -- in terms primarily of number of listeners/stream, but also in terms of sales.
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Here it is, my final #PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary! Time for the post mortem, where I look back over the whole thing. This should be quick, I think? Guess we will see.
I spent five months on the album, more or less, including all the pre and post production. That was about a month or so longer than planned but it was worth the extra time.
LINK: https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/album/psychedelic-ghost-stories
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And that is it, the tale of making the album! One more thread incoming, a post mortem looking back at everything two months (ish) after release... then it's time to start on the next album!
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#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
And I actually kept my first mastering pas! It wasn't perfect but I was frankly exhausted and more than ready to be done. I was concerned I was going to start making things worse if I kept at it, so I released it! (Art is never finished, merely abandoned.)
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum #Mastering
Once I had some mixes I was more or less comfortable with (and I definitely have things on every track I would go back and tweak... but it was time to let them go) I transitioned to #mastering. And if #mixing felt like occult science, mastering was the purest of dark arts, just complete black magic.
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum #Mastering
Side note: Jesus did I realize what I mess I am when composing while trying to mix! I am going to try to be more organized in the future (like, for example, not putting a bunch of foley into a drum track just because I have some open pads on the drum program) to save myself some trouble...
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#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum #Mixing
I finished up my mixes around Jan 23-24, somewhere in there. It was basically two full drafts. Did a mix of everything, did some test listens, then a round of edits and revisions, then more test listens. Then I was ready to master!
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#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum #Mixing
Seems obvious... hell, it *is* obvious, but it hadn't occurred to me until I heard it in one of my half ignored mixing tutorials and then it was like OH DUH. Anyway, that was the main key to me getting this done. Just knowing where to start and a rough plan to follow was like, 90% of the battle.
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum #Mixing
1) determine the most important element(s) of the song; mix to those. 2) Stick to tools and processes you understand* 3) always trust what your ears are telling you, even if it contradicts what you've heard as the "right way" to do something.
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
I almost forgot I have to do a #PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary entry for...#mixing and #mastering! Not the sexiest or most exciting part of putting out an album, but a pretty gods damned important one.
Here's the link, judge my mix and master: https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/album/psychedelic-ghost-stories
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
And I think that's about it for this one... Guess I'll append another post if I think of anything else. As always, happy to answer questions about this or any other track any time I can.
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
Oh, should mention the water theme came into play during sequencing too, when I realized it made perfect sense for the river to flow into the seas (the previous track is "Dream Vessels on the River of Time" and this one starts with seaside sounds, of course). That made me happy.
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#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
The final key element I haven't mentioned is a #Morphagene based #ModularPatch that I used to create a performance of an old #FieldRecording I made of some kids on a tire swing. It blended in amazingly well with the wild vocal pad-meets-didgeridoo sounds that most of the track hinges on.
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
Of course, that was on December 3, with my "everything must be done" date being Dec. 15. One of the last few to come together, honestly.
and that's it for this track. Please feel free to ask any questions (and if you already did while I was typing this out, I'll get to them shortly.) Just two more tracks to go!
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
Time for a #PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary only about five days later than I had hoped to get it done LOL. We're on the 7th song of the album, "Dream Vessels on the River of Time," a particularly weird one even for the weird "side" of the album. It started off nearly all modular plus a few samples and kind of kept shifting and mutating until it ended up where it is.
https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/track/dream-vessels-on-the-river-of-time
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
We're in the home stretch of this #ProductionDiary for my album #PsychedelicGhostStories. We're on track 6, the title track, "Psychedelic Ghost Story." This is probably my favorite tracks of the album (not really a coincidence it got the nod for the album title).
https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/track/psychedelic-ghost-story
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It's almost midnight on a Saturday, so what better time to pick up the #PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary thread? None. None better time. (My music is late night weird mood music anyway, y'know?) We're now onto track 5, "The Inscrutable Oracle of the Night Cafe." The two key elements of this song's origin are the #AndalusianCadence, and the #ObliqueStrategy that says, "Go to an extreme, move back to a comfortable place"
https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/track/the-inscrutable-oracle-of-the-night-cafe
And that's just about it for this track. It's been called out as a favorite or standout track by a few people, but honestly fewer than I imagined. Just goes to show you never know what is going to resonate with people.
Oh, I am interested in having this one remixed into a full on techno track. We'll see if I actually pursue that.
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#Songwriting #MakingMusic #Remix #techno
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This one has a lot more going on in the effects department than most of the songs on the album which is why it took so long for it to come together -- until all the effects were in place and relatively tuned, nothing sounded quite right. Used all my sends and most of my insert slots on this one. Nothing too weird, just lots of delay and mod fx.
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
Those elements took a lot of tweaking to get them all working together but I am happy with the final shape. It didn't fully come together until it was all polished, mixed and ready, so it gave me some anxiety -- there was NO WAY I was releasing this album without this track on it -- but it all worked out.
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#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
Many of those samples came from a freeware synthesizer program called #Bitfxr that randomly generates 8 bit style sounds. Some came from the depths of my library. All were chosen for a certain inhuman/cold/robotic vibe.
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#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
There's also a collection of the weirder sounds a #Korg #VolcaDrum makes in here -- all manner of weird squidges, burbles and blaps. Those and the Alpha Juno stuff came during the production phase, on the respective #InstrumentDays. The rest of this is all samples, some treated by the #Morphagene.
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#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade
#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
Drums are from the #TR6s and all the fills use the weird fill stutter effect that it does, which I thought sounded delightfully inhuman/robotic. Lead is a #Arturia #MicroFreak sound I made, as is the robotic voice saying "machine" in various different ways in the second half. Fake guitar in the first half is an #opsix patch and a #Hydrasynth patch layered together.
But despite that, I knew I would be able to make enough material to do an album around this concept, and I started combing through notebooks for title ideas and running them through the Night Cafe's Stable Diffusion model and started planning the schedule for the album. I started #PreProduction officially like three or four days later I want to say.
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My first thought was to do an entire #industrial concept album around the singularity/robot uprisings/AIrmageddon but I pretty quickly decided I would bore of that before it was done, and decided to simply incorporate that as one theme among many -- it would get a track or two, but no more.
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#Songwriting #MakingMusic #Inspiration
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
I quickly settled on "The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse" for a variety of reasons (the prompt images were solid, and the title referred to an old project of mine that had been sunset) and that made finishing it a breeze. I've seen probably 200+ zombie movies so writing a song about the impending and inescapable zombie apocalypse was a breeze.
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#MyAlbum #AI #AIImages
I ended up generating way more good images/titles than I could possibly use on the album (45+ at this point) so I essentially had a lot of direction/framing without songs attached yet, and a song that I had abandoned because it lacked a clear direction or narrative framing to guide it to the finish line... A nice fit.
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#Songwriting #MakingMusic #AI #AIImages #AIOracle
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
Well, when it came time to look for orphans I could rescue and incorporate into the album, this was one of two that I deemed very likely and decided to concentrate my energy on. (The other did not make it; I'll go over it briefly in a wrap-up thread at the end of the #ProductionDIary.) As I recall I pretty quickly settled on a title/image(s) for it
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I don't have any notes from the early stage of recording this, but I recall the basics. I know I made it the day I took my shitty #ElectricGuitar down to two strings and tuned them a fifth apart for instant power chords anywhere on the neck. I had so much fun playing that I decided to make a track around it.
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
The #ProductionDiary marches on! Tonight, let's look at track 3, "The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse" from #PsychedelicGhostStories. This one breaks our weird little pattern from the first two tracks, since it wasn't even written/recorded during the recording phase -- it was an orphan I rescued and finished for the album.
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
@adrianco Most of my delays are used as insert effects on individual tracks, or applied to subgroups. I use lots of different delays with subtly different settings, again to keep things just a little off putting and unsettling.
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#Songwriting #MakingMusic #QAndA
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#EtherDiver #MyAlbum
You ready to learn some of my #songs inside and out? It's time for the #PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary song-by-song breakdown. First up, the first song on the album AND the first song I recorded for it (how often does that happen?), it's "The Waking World Pushes Its Way Into Dreams."
https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/track/the-waking-world-pushes-its-way-into-dreams
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