Thursday, May 27, 2010

Finishing The Album: Step 35 - Sorting Through Photos

Today I went through almost my entire photo library in search of photos that I can use on the album cover. You know, in place of all those little tiny photos along the bottom?

I've got a ton of great candidates, and I think it will work out nicely.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Finishing The Album: Step 34 - Details on the cover art

I am actually working today. At the office for a Disaster Recovery test. For the most part, this just means I'm on the phone listening in.

So while I had some free time today, I did a little research online about the requirements of the grahpics for the album. Diskmakers has published a really nice FAQ that covers pretty much everything.

http://www.discmakers.com/templates/faq.asp#21

This is a link directly to the question of interest to me.

With a few new answers in hand, I think I'm ready to start assembling the final composition for the album cover. I am still in need of finding some photos for the artwork, and I am of mixed mind on this. On the one hand, there is danger in just swiping photos from the internet. If someone ever claimed ownership rights over those photos, that would be bad. However, seeing as how we're only doing 1,000 cds, I'm not sure this would ever be a problem.

I think my plan will be to go through my photos and see if I can find enough to fill in all the gaps. I probably can, though they will probably not be the EXACT photos i was hoping for. Who knows. I will see.

Anyhow, I'm going to try to find some time tomorrow to start assembling the artwork. i still need to generate text that will go inside. Not sure how that is going to come together.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Finishing The Album: Step 33 - Photo Release Form

Looks like as with most music projects, we have lost some momentum. I'm trying hard to bootstrap myself back up, but it's hard with all the other stuff going on in my life right now.

And Bill is even more under the gun than I am!

BUT, there is a breath of fresh air right now. Today I did a google search for a release form that I'm going to ask our man Jeff More to sign for the photos he has provided for cover art. I need to email them to him, get them printed and signed. So progress IS being made.

I have confirmation that Bill has recieved files, and has set up his mixing workstation. I am applying heavy and unnecessary pressure to Bill to get his mixes finished and submitted by EOM. (that's "End Of Month" for those of you who don't work for a corporation) I suppose I need to really get down to brass tacks on the album cover artwork, and make it happen. I will set aside some time this weekend to put together a final composite, minus the text.

I suppose that's it for now.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Finishing The Album: Step 32 - Files Are Mailed

I made my way down to the post office today and dropped off the two DVDs worth of source files for the album.

They should be in Bill's hands shortly.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Finishing The Album: Step 31 - Files Are Burned

This is really the last step in the big hand-off to Bill for final knob turning. Tonight I burned all of the source files and project files to DVD to be mailed out. The idea is that Bill will copy all of these files to his computer, pop open the most recent project file, and work his magic.

Any changes he makes, if he wants me to hear them, all he has to do is send me the project file. I then drop that file into the appropriate folder, open it in CuBase, and I'm off and running.

I also gave Bill my project manager speech today over txt message. Seeing as how he did not reply, I've got to believe he was unimpressed by my efforts to micro manage his time!! The basic message was "You've got until the end of the month to make changes. After that, tough toe-nails". The upside here is that any frustration Bill may feel over not having enough time to do "perfect" mix-downs is trumped by the fact that we are free to release an infinite number of mixes over the web, torrent, or whatever.

The problem as I see it is that left to our own devices, we will NEVER finish the album. The fact that the first one took us four years, and this second one has taken roughly 16 months longer than we had expected is proof of that. I honestly believe that we could tool around with this thing for the next two years and still not release it, if we allowed ourselves. I say again: Better to have a finished project that isn't perfect, than a perfect project that isn't finished.

Now, the natural counter to this is that Bill is a busy man. He's got a family, a job, and airplane, and a number of time consuming obligations. I get it. But here's my counter to THAT counter: will there ever be a day when that is NOT the case?? We must do the best with what we have got, and I believe the mixes are ALREADY really solid.

Ok, that's enough of me trying to rationalize my micro-manager stance. I hope Bill understands that my sole motivation is to get the album finished by the end of June.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Finishing The Album: Step 30 - CD In Transit

I dropped off the recently burned CD at the post this morning. It should be in california in a couple of days.

I think the next move is for me to find my 80gb external hard drive and transfer all of the files onto it, and then get that shipped out so Bill can do his knob turning voodoo. With Rockville being dropped, there's a chance all the stuff might fit on a DVD or two. I suppose that would make transfer a little easier.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Finishing The Album: Step 29 - New CD Is Burned

I lined all the songs up in iTunes, and got ready to burn a new CD. I needed to make some changes, and came up with this order:

On the road
april
Big Tin Truck
Armageddon Is Here
The Friend That I Once Knew
Bordered In Black
Above You
Drinks Are On Me
The Second Time Around
Girl #134
Let Me Be Your Guitar Player
Come My Way

The CD has been burned, and will be going into the mail tomorrow.

While I was listening to the songs one more time, I noticed something that bugged me, which I had previously forgotten. On the acoustic introduction for "The Second Time Around", one the first sustained note, there is a little click. Maybe it's the pick hitting the pick guard or something. That always bugged me. So I went into cubase and removed it. nice. All set.

Finishing The Album: Step 28 - Finished The TODO List

It took about 90 minutes, but I attended to all of the to-do items that I found while listening to the album on my iPod during my trip to Manhattan.

Next steps and take-aways: load them onto your ipod again and give them a listen. I should probably also burn a CD tonight and get that rolling.

Finishing The Album: Step 27 - On The Road Polishing.

Filled with renewed enthusiasm after this weekends listening party, I raced home at lunch to not only try to figure out my exporting problems, but also to tackle the opening drum hits on "On The Road".

The way I have the songs laid out, OTR opens the album. I think it's a great opener because it's not only a strong song, but also because it really sets the themes up for the entire album. I also really like the fact that right out of the gate, it hits you with that rapid fire, machine-gun like drum intro. It tells the listener "this album ain't for jokes". It puts them on notice that this shit just got real.

Sorry, I'm channeling an album reviewer for "LA Weekly" right now. Please excuse the last paragraph.

BUT, with all joking aside, I still think OTR is a great album opener, for a number of reasons, the main one being that it's a great song. And sets the tone. ok, so that's two reasons.

But the thing that bothers me about it is that those opening snare strikes that I'm so proud of are a little unevenly spaced. It's very subtle, but it's there. It is uneven. I figured that if that is going to be the first thing an audience hears when they listen to this ablum, it had better be dead on.

I got home and had less than an hour to fix the drums. Luckily, it took about two minutes. I know I go on and on about how great CuBase is, but man... it just never disappoints. To make a long story short, I just took four of the hits from later in the intro and grafted them over the two spots where there was some problems. It's seamless, and it sounds great. Spot on.

I spent the next 45 minutes dorking around trying to figure out why the export functionality was so problematic. I still have not figured it out, but the work around seems to be closing the file, closing CuBase, then opening them both back up and exporting before doing ANYTHING else.

So that's one problem fixed. Just need to burn through the other action items in my todo list, and then I will be ready to generate another CD to send to Bill. I am hoping I can get it all wrapped up tonight.

Finishing The Album: Step 26 - Review and Notes

Lest you think I took the weekend off, allow me to correct this piece of falsehood. I did travel to Manhattan over the weekend, and had a total blast. WHILE in transit, I spent a good amount of time focused on my iPod listening to the latest mixdowns of the new album, and taking copious notes. Technology really is great. When we recorded our first album, we would have to mix the stuff down to cassette, then load it into the station wagon tape deck so we could listen to it while we went to Menudo.

Now, I just dump the whole thing on my iPod after exporting from Cubase, and I am up and running. I use my iPhone to type out notes, then I email them to myself so I can view them on the PC while I am making corrections. truly amazing times we live in.

Anyhow, after listening to the entire album two times, I came up with the following notes. Typo's included. These were typed out on my iPhone while I was walking or flying.

Album notes

Drum intro for otrh
More bell vocals on april
April can hear background singing on"and i thought that i heard you laughing"

Some slopppy bass drum on intro for btt.
Little more vocals on btt.
Drum fill right before drop a few shack
Very last cymbal crash seems a tad too early

Transition from armageddon to sta is a little shicking. Order issue

Drum hit right befor "as if thr thought hadnt croased" is a little off

Bordered in black is blank

Drym hits before "now the evenings rolling" on dribks. The one before the last "smoke filled roon" is perfect.

Drum fill bedore "i made a game" is choppy. Hits are timed right, but too much silence

Friend is blank

More fischer vocals on guitar. Needa more body.


The experience of listening to the album on the iPod is VERY different than listening to it on my PC. Not only do I have different speakers, but there is ambient noise in the room, the sound bounces around, etc. The iPod earphones are right in my ear. Also different being in an airport, the car, or an airplane. So while I do not use one specific environment as my test bed, I find that switching it up can reveal weak points.

As you can see from the notes, my focus was really on technical glitches. CuBase has some problems outputting sometimes, and I really need to be more aware of that. I would hate to go to the final pressing process and accidentally upload three minutes of blank noise, which would then appear on the CD. that would be bad.

Overall though, I think the album has REALLY come a long way in the past couple of weeks. I am REALLY down to the nitty gritty, and I am DEFINITELY in the nit picking phase. I believe that MOST of the technical flaws could easily be unattended to, and nobody would be the wiser.


Finally, in other news, while in Brooklyn I actually met up with an A&R guy from an independent record label. We had a brief discussion, but it was more of a "seed planting" effort, as I'm sure he gets that type of stuff every day. I'm not going to jam it down his throat, but when the final album goes to press, I will for sure get a copy to him. If nothing becomes of it, I'm no worse off than I am now.

Except I will be out one copy of the album.