#productiondiary — Public Fediverse posts

Did you miss my stream yesterday? Well, it lives on as VOD, which I have embedded on my website (because why drive traffic to YouTube when I can drive it to myself?). Catch up on the making of "A Hidden Room in My Mind Palace" from my recent album:

https://www.etherdiver.com/2025/08/28/production-diary-mom-a-hidden-room-video-breakdown/

#ProductionDiary #HowItsMade #MusicProduction #TheMechanicsOfMysticism #music

New album #ProductionDiary! After an untoward amount of time spent futzing with the second track, I finally set it aside earlier this week, then spent a couple days or so working out a way to move forward.

I landed on setting up and recording some jams, with the intention of slicing them up and building tracks out of/on top of them. After a day's worth of setup and troubleshooting, I came up with this:

https://youtu.be/9Hsh3e3LKzw

#NewMusic #WorkInProgress #modular #Strega #NewAlbum #Jam #Synth

The title is a twist on a Joseph Campbell quote (if you google my title, you'll find the OG quote). It's long been a favorite of mine as a longtime enthusiast of deliberately triggered mystical experiences. When I fed it to the #AIOracle, it spit out this magnificent bastard, and it felt predestined that this was going to Be An Important One for the album.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary

#Songwriting #MakingMusic

#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade

Honestly, the "acid" elements ended up pretty low in the mix, relatively speaking, and too murky/weird to be actual "acid" so it's not terribly important. In any case, by the time I was this far into the song I had a pretty good idea what it was going to be/what image I'd pair it with. The title is a phrase I've been working on/with for a while, and it generated such a great image I knew it would be on the album.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary

#Songwriting #AI #AIOracle

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.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary

#Songwriting #MakingMusic #AI #AIImages #AIOracle

#MusicProduction #Workflow #HomeRecording #HowItsMade

#EtherDiver #MyAlbum

Oh, a few more notes about the #arrangement. I used an #Arturia #MicroFreak patch called Ice Knife (available in one of my patch banks at etherdiver.gumroad.com) through the #Catalinbread #Echorec; it's the percussive, wavery unison synth that you hear a lot. Also a lot of #effects on most everthing -- #MPC effects on a lot of the samples, #onboard effects from the synths that have them.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary

#Songwriting #MakingMusic

#MusicProduction

So I'd #sequence parts via #MIDI to various external #synths and #DrumMachines, then record those onto #tape (specifically 1/4" reel-to-reel) and sample off the tape in realtime (three-head decks are the best). Some of those got used as is, some got cut up to some degree, and/or mangled with additional effects. I did a similar thing with the #modular, #syncing and #sequencing via #CV rather than MIDI.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #HomeRecording #MakingMusic #MyAlbum

In other words, it felt like a very natural progression of what I was already doing in so many ways. I spent hours dumping potential song titles into the Night Cafe and occasionally tweaking the results. and reoutputting an image. To be clear, on ALL of these, I didn't use any prompt or additional text or instruction beyond the song title. I didn't even really tweak the other settings! Just typed in a tile and hit enter.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #Songwriting #AIUse #AIMuse

For context, I have long used various #oracles, #GenerativeTools and other, similar resources as a source of inspiration and structure. I have a #DiceGame I created to determine all the basics of a sing: key, tempo, etc. I use Eno's #ObliqueStrategies constantly. And of course in #modular I use stuff like #TuringMachines and the #rungler all the time. This let me use a similar approach with titles/themes.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #Songwriting #AIMuse

Mentioned it yesterday, too, but I #cleaned all the #TapeMachines in the studio, selected the #tape I was going to use -- most notably, I broke the seal on a vintage reel of TDK Audua Reel-to-reel tape that I think is like worth $50+ sealed because, hey, why are you going to own a bunch of NOS reel-to-reel tape if you aren't going to use it to record the album tied to turning 50? (Incidentally, that's about how old that tape is.)

#MusicProduction #PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary

So yesterday I covered most of the #philosophical stuff, today I'll briefly cover the actual actions I took to get ready.
First, I #cleaned up the #studio. Obvious, but crucial. I know how cluttered and wrecked everything is by the time I am done recording an album, so I know to start clean and well organized. In process I discovered a few adapters and things missing and tracked them down so they'd be on hand when I needed them. See, #cleaning helps.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary

One of the less obvious, most useful things I did in this phase was make a bunch of decisions about the process/direction of the album. These, along with the material I was using to generate and shape my ideas for writing (a whole separate thing I'll get into at some point), ended up #streamlining the process considerably.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#PreProduction #ProductionPhilosophy

One of the less obvious, most useful things I did in this phase was make a bunch of decisions about the process/direction of the album. These, along with the material I was using to generate and shape my ideas for writing (a whole separate thing I'll get into at some point), ended up #streamlining the process considerably.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#PreProduction #ProductionPhilosophy

One of the less obvious, most useful things I did in this phase was make a bunch of decisions about the process/direction of the album. These, along with the material I was using to generate and shape my ideas for writing (a whole separate thing I'll get into at some point), ended up #streamlining the process considerably.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#PreProduction #ProductionPhilosophy

One of the less obvious, most useful things I did in this phase was make a bunch of decisions about the process/direction of the album. These, along with the material I was using to generate and shape my ideas for writing (a whole separate thing I'll get into at some point), ended up #streamlining the process considerably.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#PreProduction #ProductionPhilosophy

One of the less obvious, most useful things I did in this phase was make a bunch of decisions about the process/direction of the album. These, along with the material I was using to generate and shape my ideas for writing (a whole separate thing I'll get into at some point), ended up #streamlining the process considerably.

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#PreProduction #ProductionPhilosophy

I made a list of stuff that had to be done to make this work. From basic stuff like a plan to #update all my #firmware and clean my #tapeheads to working out #sample sets, #drum sound palettes, and #synth patches to writing out my #themes and #charting the #influences I wanted to incorporate. (I have PAGES of notes generated during this process. Would be good to get #feedback on how deep I should go here.)

#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #PreProduction #Planning