After many many many years of talking about putting together an album, the time has finally come. I’ve got too many songs written that have just been sitting around, doing nothing except occupying my website, and it’s time to do something more with them!
This album is going to be a collection of most of the songs I have written over the last few years. Rather than just compile all of them together, I have decided to rerecord most of them. There are several reasons for this, the first of which is quality. Some of these songs were thrown together quickly, and never really given the attention they deserve. Others were recorded and produced fairly well, but after listening to them for a while, I think I want to do something different. There are also a few which I don’t own the rights to the recordings (Mr. Terrible and Nothing), so I will be doing these over from scratch, which is actually a great thing, because my studio has improved significantly since I recorded these songs, and they are going to sound better than ever when finished.
The Album Progress Nov 24, 2011
Earlier I put together a big chart to keep track of the progress for each song. I’ve got about 18 songs on the list, and my guess is 15 or so will make it onto the album. Most of them are written, although there are a few which are only half done, and 2 which I haven’t even started on yet. The goal is to have all of the songs written and recorded in the next couple of months for an early Spring release of the record.
I’m going to press physical copies of the CD, so that one day when my kids are older, I can show them the boxes of unsold CD’s in the basement and tell them about the days when I wanted to be a rock star… er, well, I don’t know about the rock star bit, but there will be physical copies of the CD, and I’ll be putting it up on itunes and all of the other major digital music stores as well.
If you look at the chart right now, it doesn’t look like much is done. Many of the songs already have some of the parts recorded, but I didn’t want to start checking anything off until I had a chance to sit down with the session files and make sure that the parts didn’t need any changes. I’ll be posting about each song with some more detailed information as I begin working on them.
The artwork for the album is still undecided, but I’m thinking I might do a painting of some sort, and that painting will be sold off to help fund the mastering and pressing of the record. Who knows, maybe I’ll have so much fun working on the artwork that I’ll give up this music stuff and start painting for a living.
This is pretty exciting for me, the last time I released and sold an actual album was right after I graduated from High School. Funny enough, one of the songs from that album is on my list. It’s one that I’ve been thinking of redoing for a long time, and it’s going to get it’s chance to shine again for this record (unless it doesn’t turn out well, in which case I’ll pretend like it never happened). In addition to working on the album, I’m planning to put together videos about the songs and the recording process, as well as more music videos for some of my favorite songs.