When I say ‘we’, I am talking, of course, about all the wonderful people that are supporting my album project. When I say ‘did it’ I’m talking about making the goal of $5,500 to record my second album. You may have heard me mention the project once or twice.
Things really kicked into high gear when I posted this motivational video:
In a few short days so many people began to respond and support the project that I was quite literally having trouble keeping up with all the thank you messages. It was a moving experience to see just how many people got behind the project and said “your music is worth investing in.”
So the big question is “What am I going to do with all that money now?” Well…see I planned this little trip to the Caribbean. So see you later, suckers!
No, not really.
I’ve got a very tight budget to follow. Starting next week I’ll be putting down the scratch tracks. Scratch tracks are the ‘throw away’ guitar and vocal tracks that I put down to the annoyingly consistent sound of a metronome. This will be my world for a few days
Then I’ll sit down with my producer to determine how we should shape each of the songs, which parts to add, which instruments, where we should bring things in or out, and add any melodic or harmonic lines/rhythms that will make the song come alive. We will send out the songs to the appropriate players with chord charts and instructions and they will make up some parts. Once they have some solid ideas we get them in the studio and record what they came up with, tweak it, and keep working it until we all feel good about it.
Then the experience of the sound engineer really comes into play as we mix and master the tracks, mixing being the art of blending all the tracks to achieve one cohesive sound that doesn’t make one part stick out or fade into the background too much, and mastering is the even crazier art of taking that overall blend of tracks and balancing the individual frequencies of sound to have a pleasing shape to the ear. It’s an amazing process to watch. These guys will listen to a track and say “I think the 12-14 KHz range needs to come down by about .75 decibels.” I couldn’t have told you that, but when they’re done doing all their magic the track sounds a whole lot better!
After all that I’ll create packaging for the CD and start working on duplication. When I have a bunch of discs in hand I’ll start working on putting together all the reward packages…the CD’s, T-Shirts, Artwork, parties, and such.
On top of getting the album recorded I’ve now got
Music Videos: Favorite and The Greatest Divide
A Promo Video: 1-minute project summary
A Podcast Interview: ComposerQuest Interview
A nice Article: On the Rechord Interview
A funny Blahg: Blah, Blah, Blahg
A Food Blog Write up: Tokyo Terrace “Foodie” Menu and My Blog “Foodie” Menu
Free Preview Downloads: Favorite and The Greatest Divide CODE: uxxua
All of these things are going to be great for helping to move my career forward. This is how music careers get made.
It’s going to be a fun summer with all of you: celebrating, sharing the work, and most of all saying “THANK YOU” for helping me get this album recorded. I couldn’t do it without you. You guys and gals are the absolute BEST!!!
Congrats Tim!