[Music] From The Lake - AVAILABLE NOW

a really long post

If you ever really want to use bass clarinet but it doesn't seem practical due to budget or whatever, please let me know. It's such a beautiful instrument and it would be a shame if you couldn't use it just because of some silly moneys.

Bassoon clearly supreme instrument tho

Are you offering to play bass clarinet for me or something

Bassoon > Bass Clarinet

I'm saying if you want a bass clarinet and you don't have a bass clarinet, I am a bass clarinet. Dush.

I always thought you were a didgeridoo.

AND WHO PUT THAT TINY FACE IN MY SIGNATURE

The bass gods

better run man OH SHIT

I always thought you were a didgeridoo.

AND WHO PUT THAT TINY FACE IN MY SIGNATURE

i am a lot of things.

I just wanted to let everyone know that there probably won't be any updates here for a while. There's been lots of changes and rescheduling, resulting in analog recording being held off until June - but boy, is June going to be very busy: drums, saxophone, trombone, tuba, and possibly some violin and piano. Other things will probably be worked on in the meantime, but I'm not going to discuss that right now since it's a bit up in the air, but hopefully the people I've talked to will be able to get some recording done soon (it's okay if you don't, for those of you who are actually members here and may read this - whenever you have the time, no rush... for now anyway lol).

For the time being, I'll probably put up another MIDI version of one of these songs.

I've also been going through all the unused music I've written for this of which there is quite a lot. Almost as much as the music that made the cut, I'd wager. The program I write in, Sibelius, also has a feature called "Versions" which lets you save a version of the score within the score for instances where you make changes but you aren't entirely sure you'll want to keep it or if you're like me and you just like to look back at how a piece of music may have changed over time. It's actually pretty interesting how drastically some of these songs have changed. Back when I first started this and it was a rock opera, I also wanted to include a lot of shifts in genre and for each song to be stylistically different one to the next. That's not something that stayed as changes were made, although it's still there to a degree. But it's really weird hearing some of these songs done in a flamenco style which then transitions into a surf rock style. Maybe that's something I should have left in. Oh well, there's always future projects

I may put together a post that showcases one of these evolutions later on with clips comparing the changes, etc. but I don't think that will actually be as interesting as it may sound to many people (and I imagine it probably doesn't sound that interesting anyway).

tl;dr TO BE CONTINUED (in June or maybe late May)

Dayum. That's a lot of instruments. o.o

Good luck to you guys! B) May June be an ever-promising month!

Take your time, by all means. You've definitely got a productive month coming, and we're all excited to see what you have.

Okay screw it, I'm gonna start tracking the loads of percussion for this thing. That was something I was going to do towards the end of production because I had to buy the library, but I went ahead and did it now because the idea of sitting and waiting until June to get anything done makes me fidgety. You might say I'm a bit of a workaholic. That's okay though, because, as you may see from the chart, there is a quite large amount of percussion. In fact it turns out that chart is missing a few entries on the percussion side and I'm sure I'll have some ideas for new parts as I'm getting it all ready, so this is good I have a month just to concentrate on this alone.

In other news, I decided to upload another MIDI demo track, Sun Reverie:

I was iffy, then it hit 1 min in, and I was sold    

I'm your number one fan

Spoiler for:

lol

Well the beginning is one of those bits that in particular does not benefit well from being a synthetic performance. Although even after it's recorded, that whole intro section will still be harder to digest for some than others because there are some strong dissonances and the home key is not established very well etc. There is actually a lot of strong dissonance and general "unpleasantness" throughout a lot of the songs, but up until now the demos haven't shown that much. That is not to say it isn't enjoyable, just that there are many parts that are intended to be difficult on your ear so that when moments like the one at 1 minute into Sun Reverie show up, they are much more welcomed and have a stronger impact. And then there are other musical reasons and stuff that I won't bother getting into right now because no one actually cares lol.

Glad you liked it!

So I gave Sun Reverie a listen, since it's been a while since I gave a track of yours a listen.

I have to say, the tone shifts around 1:00 and 3:00 are excellent and really helped me enjoy the song. I WAS rather neutral on the intro, to be honest, though considering how well done the rest of the track is, I think it's a great set-up, if just for the sheer contrast.

Exceptional effort, my king.

The intro will make more sense within the context of the entire project as a whole. Plus being unMIDIfied will help too. Even still, the intro along with a lot of other parts will be a bit harder to digest. This is intentional and I think/hope people will understand why and will still enjoy it. Not that anything is straight up atonal or anything.

Thanks!

Ohhhh I get it now. I uploaded an older version of Sun Reverie. I was wondering why the intro seemed to be a problem for people. The current version is not as dissonant and harsh as the one you've heard, though it still is to a degree.

So it turns out the studio I was going to use to record drums no longer exists. After a minor panic attack I managed to find another one that should do just fine. Drum tracking will officially begin June 11th! Exciting. Less exciting: Tuba will be recorded on June 7th, with trombone and saxophone to follow each Saturday after that. I was hoping to start recording violin at the end of this month, but for various reasons that will be pushed back. Perhaps the end of June, but will definitely start by July.

Also I've decided to cut another song, "Burdened Clouds of Mournful Gray". I'll probably work up a version of it to be included with the demos and alt tracks for those who donated, though it won't be a recording of live musicians.

Always sucks when a convenient option (the studio in this case, of course) just up and disappears. :/

Glad you found a replacement, though! Violin it up, too, my brotha.

Starbucks seemed overrated so I donated to your project.  Happy Birthday music man!  <3 

Recording drums tomorrow and Thursday! Hopefully we'll get it all done in these two days (a huge undertaking). I just wanted to let y'all that donated know that I've taken all of your money and am using it for these two days.

Beyond that there isn't much else to say that I haven't been saying already: going to start recording tuba, trombone, saxophone on the 21st. We were supposed to start on the 7th but a lot of stuff kept coming up. The 21st is definite now. And I'm also trying to schedule some time to record violin around the 27th. I wanted to start on that a month ago, but stuff kept coming up. Frustrating, but understandable.

I have all but one percussion track done which is one of the ones I'm going to actually have to perform myself, and I've done a lot of synth stuff. I'm actually really excited about that because I made a bunch of my own patches and they sound really cool. I put a little demo together and showed a couple of people and they said it's the coolest thing they've heard in a long time, so there's that. I think mostly they were unaware that there was going to be so much electronic stuff in these songs since you don't really get that in the MIDI versions.

Anyway, super excited/nervous about tomorrow. Still have tons of click tracks to get ready before then, so back to work!

Recording drums tomorrow and Thursday! Hopefully we'll get it all done in these two days (a huge undertaking). I just wanted to let y'all that donated know that I've taken all of your money and am using it for these two days.

Beyond that there isn't much else to say that I haven't been saying already: going to start recording tuba, trombone, saxophone on the 21st. We were supposed to start on the 7th but a lot of stuff kept coming up. The 21st is definite now. And I'm also trying to schedule some time to record violin around the 27th. I wanted to start on that a month ago, but stuff kept coming up. Frustrating, but understandable.

I have all but one percussion track done which is one of the ones I'm going to actually have to perform myself, and I've done a lot of synth stuff. I'm actually really excited about that because I made a bunch of my own patches and they sound really cool. I put a little demo together and showed a couple of people and they said it's the coolest thing they've heard in a long time, so there's that. I think mostly they were unaware that there was going to be so much electronic stuff in these songs since you don't really get that in the MIDI versions.

Anyway, super excited/nervous about tomorrow. Still have tons of click tracks to get ready before then, so back to work!

yes that is what he said good job

I'd assume he's still busy with it or something's just fucking with his attention and keeping him from getting it done. People tend to be like that with projects.

I actually made another post after that one. I don't know why it's missing. I guess someone didn't like it. Here's the tl;dr version, from what I remember:

Recording progress chart updated! Looks like a lot is done but the chart is a liar, very long way to go.

Drums sound great! He had about two weeks to learn some very difficult and demanding music, and knocked out 17 songs in 2 days. Amazing work, but understandably there are a lot of mistakes I need to try and fix (unintentional rim hits, missed/hesitant notes, etc.). There's a couple of songs where I can tell he's just exhausted, so hopefully we can hide that fact a bit lol.

What we've pieced together so far sounds awesome. Excited to show people... but it'll be a long time before I have anything to show. I might put together some demos later on of what we've recorded so far for the people who donated, just as a little preview, but even that would be at least a couple of months away, so we'll see.

I actually made another post after that one. I don't know why it's missing. I guess someone didn't like it.

Nothing that I could see in the log. ;_;

Maybe it was Ghost Dog

Maybe I hit "Preview" instead of "Post" and then closed the tab or something.

Probably Ghost Dog tho

We are still progressing, inching forward ever slowly week by week. We're getting close to a time, though, that things are going to slow down drastically. This is not entirely a bad thing. All the musicians I've worked with so far have been kind enough to do so for free, but with the exception of two or three of them, their work is now done. But I still have many instruments left to record, meaning it's going to be time to start looking for musicians to hire. I knew this was coming, but I honestly didn't think we'd get to that point so fast! This is largely due to all the donations, which put our schedule literally a month ahead of what was planned. Once all the announced musicians get their work done, that will leave recording only 5 more people! For us that's a small number, but make no mistake, that's still going to take several months to get done.

At the same time, we've hit a bit of a bump in the road. I'm not going to discuss the reasons openly (they aren't really all that interesting or dramatic like you may think anyway), but I've had to replace the violinist. I'm still on good terms with the former violinist and it isn't anything personal or anything like that.  I've luckily already found a new one but recording him is going to take a long time due to how far away he lives.

As for what else I should post, I've been debating on what to include. I like to keep a bit of mystery, in a sense, as to what's going on and how the songs are turning out. But on the other hand, if I keep making boring long-winded posts then I'm probably going to start annoying people (if I haven't already), so here's a very rough, very early demo of one of the songs, "The Color of Space, The Color of Dread". PLEASE KEEP IN MIND that there are a lot of mistakes that need to be fixed, especially with instruments not lining up very well with each other. We haven't done any quantizing or anything to these tracks yet. There's not even any reverb. This is all raw audio and a lot of it hasn't even been mixed properly, except to avoid clipping and bringing parts done so as to not be obnoxious.  There are also many instruments missing! So if you have a comment such as "[x] is boring because nothing is happening" or "your drummer sucks" or "I can't hear the melody very well at [x]" or "your keyboardist sucks", save those comments until the finished version and see if you still feel that way. Any other criticism is welcomed though!