02-21/22-09

[fluffy]

I have finally gotten an arrangement I'm happy with of the last song for my album that I've been working on WAY TOO LONG. I just need to rerecord the vocals until I can get the rhythm and pitch accurate within reason. And then I'll finally be done with the music part of this damn thing. 11 songs clocking in at a total of 32 minutes. It's a bit short for my tastes but the songs follow an excellent arc and it feels like a complete experience.

Of course I also need to make album art. I've had a design rattling around in my head for a while but I haven't gotten around to drawing it to see if it actually works.

I also have to figure out how I want to distribute it. I think I'll definitely be putting it up on iTunes and Amazon via TuneCore. I don't know if I'll do a short-run or pressed disc, if I even do a disc at all (but it seems silly not to).

3qotd: When's the last time you finished an album? How happy were you with it? How whole-hog did you go with the actual production of the album itself?

[Caravan Ray]

3qotd: When's the last time you finished an album? How happy were you with it? How whole-hog did you go with the actual production of the album itself?

I have just started my first one.

I am re-recording 12 old SF/Nur Ein songs to be released by the middle of the year. I am about halfway through the recordings, and have started talking to some local people to look after the mastering and maybe some mixing for me. My wife will probably do the artwork.

There will be a significant amount of pig involved in the production.

[Billy's Little Trip]

The last and only real album was with the whole band quite some time ago. It was done in 2 different studios by two different engineers and mastered with Digital Brothers that specialized in only mastering. I was very happy at the time, but now it sounds very dated. The album was Billy's Little Trip, fourteen stories high. Still to this day I enjoy the memories we had, the experience we had together and completing this album. In fact, one of the engineers went on to greatness and is an engineer, producer for a number of major lables. His name is Johnny K and his first big break was with Disturbed, but is credited to many others since. Very nice guy with an incredible passion. We still get a Christmas card from him every year without fail even after all these years.

[jimtyrrell]

Finally got that kidney stone out. Man that was painful. The stone working its way through the ureter was way more uncomfortable than the actual passing of the stone from the bladder though. I'm still pretty sore, but a Hell of a lot better than I was.

QotD: I did an album of drinking songs last February. My RPM plans were shot this year. I want to do another full-length CD for this summer. I'll record the songs at home as best I can, and then have Diskfaktory master them, I suppose. Songs I'd like to put on the CD: Sister Cocaine, God Hates Penguins, Brownie Points, Hey Ruth, Courage, Fight The Sea, On My Mind, The Blitz. I'd like to have 14 total, so I've got some writing to do.

[jast]

QotD: does an Album-A-Day count? No? Then no album so far.

[Spud]

Beer and Salad Days was our most recent.

If you're talking about the music, not much. I went back and remixed 22 SongFight entries to deal with certain issues that I had been hearing in them over the months, and to respond to reviews. No new recording, just some mixing.

If you're talking about the overall package, quite a bit. The Virginia Inn prepared a tray of lettuce for us to photograph for the back cover. We make labels for the beer bottles and set up the shot for the front in the corner table at the VI. The chicken itself is from an older photo. We registered the CD with CD Baby in order to get a bar code. Artwork was prepared for the disk itself, and for the cover, inside cover, and back of the CD case. Here they are, at about 1/2 size:

http://www.mightyoctothorpe.com/albumar ... dcover.jpg
http://www.mightyoctothorpe.com/albumar ... ecover.jpg
http://www.mightyoctothorpe.com/albumar ... adtray.jpg
http://www.mightyoctothorpe.com/albumar ... addisk.jpg

Disk duplication and printing was done by the Disk Faktory. All three of our CDs use the same basic template that was created for Information Overload, but most of them don't have the 28-page booklet of lyrics and Song Fight! reviews that that one does!

[JonPorobil]

QotD: Well, I'm nearly done with my FAWM 2009 album, 14 Stories. I'll probably take until FAWM 2010 to finish recording the arrangements and mixing and all that, and I still have no idea what I'm going to do for album art or distribution. But I'd like the finished songs to be good. Like, objectively good. Quite a task.

On my website, most of my songs are organized into "albums." Some of these are ad-hoc (there's an album for collabs and another for Frontalittle Squad stuff), two of them are AADs, and two of them I actually do think of as albums. The first one, Bad Attractions, is all Songfight songs (two of them re-recorded), and I think is a little more cohesive than the second one, Airplanes, which includes some Songfight material and some sidefight material, and was collected over a longer period of time.

I even have some album art for Bad Attractions, courtesy of Fishboy Rex.

[inevitableguy]

QotD: I've been working on my current album project for about 12 years. And I'm still not happy with it. I last finished an album (well, a demo EP) the last time I was actually in a band...circa 1997.

It's pretty clear that music is a hobby, not a career for me.

[Reist]

qotd: Over a year now ... but I'm real close to doing a new one.

[fluffy]

Beer and Salad Days was our most recent.

If you're talking about the music, not much. I went back and remixed 22 SongFight entries to deal with certain issues that I had been hearing in them over the months, and to respond to reviews. No new recording, just some mixing.

If you're talking about the overall package, quite a bit. The Virginia Inn prepared a tray of lettuce for us to photograph for the back cover. We make labels for the beer bottles and set up the shot for the front in the corner table at the VI. The chicken itself is from an older photo. We registered the CD with CD Baby in order to get a bar code. Artwork was prepared for the disk itself, and for the cover, inside cover, and back of the CD case. Here they are, at about 1/2 size:

"Lyrics by fluffy porcupine" and the link to my old site (for WWNMOIS) is kind of funny.

Artwork-wise I think I've got a serviceable (if not perfect) front cover and inside panel. Just need to make a tray card and I'm all set. Mixing-wise I just need to master the album as a whole (Rhymes With Lucia is somewhat quieter than everything else, and listening to things as a whole it's more because the rest of the album is too loud, not because Rhymes With Lucia is too quiet). So I'll have to go through and tweak things (probably as straightforward as bringing my final limiter down by however many dB louder they are than RWL) and re-bounce everything, which is at least pretty straightforward to do (I hope I don't fuck something up).

[phetal]

hunnnnng over. will never go away.

QOTD:
No serious albums. Pretty much the only legitimate recording we've done has been our songfight stuff. I have buttloads of hip-hop beats, a few gag albums we recorded in one or two days, and a smattering of other things we've done for fun... but aside from a dozen dangling demos and a couple more complete tracks, we and I have very little music that approaches albumworthiness.
i.p. has considered pooling our songfight tracks together (once we get a couple more we're happy with) as some sort of schizophrenic ep, but it would make a horribly incoherent album.

My goal is to have a solo or solo-ish but with friends album by summer. But this may or may not happen.

[Lord of Oats]

I acctivated my Walmart card and my Big Lots card today. I learned that the people on the phone are really pushy when you have a charge account. I have major credit cards, and I've never been given an unrelenting sales pitch when I called them. I suppose people with charge accounts are more vulnerable, and better candidates to buy services they don't need. OR IS IT just that HSBC and GE Money Bank are horrible banks from hell? It's strange how they have so much to say about one service, and when you finally convince them you don't need it, you get to go. I wonder if they try to sell you something different every time you call. LIMIT ONE HORRIBLY LONG, UNRELENTING SALES PITCH FOR SOME UNNECESSARY SERVICE PER CALL, S'IL VOUS PLAIT.

[roymond]

Forgive this message from the Chiapas travel agency:

We just got back from Chiapas, Mexico. Here are some photos. The high light was a river trip down the Usumacinta River (border between Mexico and Guatemala) to Yaxchilan, an ancient Maya site. Palenque is also frickin' amazing and San Cristobal is a very hip town. The boys were wonderful troopers and had a blast hanging with cool adults and 12 girls from the Lower East Side Girls Club, who arranged the whole thing. My friend's wife founded the girls club, and he was on my team when I was working in Mexico City a couple years ago.

Before the boat trip to Yaxchilan:


The temple on the acropolis, Yaxchilan:


Palenque:


There was also some really cool stencil graffiti in San Cristobal:

[Billy's Little Trip]

Very cool, Roy! I'm guessing your boy in the orange shirt spilled something on his green one and had to change, lol.

[HeuristicsInc]

awesome, roy! the temples are amazing. m's brother might get sent to guatemala next, so maybe we can hope to see the temples (is that in mexico tho?).

the last album i finished was "Live from the middle of nowhere"... ouch, that was in 2006. i have a Tapegerm album done but not the art. i should just finish it!
And the Dollar Bill & the Inkpoints album is real close to being full. Need to re-work a couple of songs, though.

I did go whole-hog on production except I'm not that good at album art design.
-bill

[fluffy]

Roymond, every time you go to Mexico you make me want to go to Mexico too, what with your photos and such.

[roymond]

awesome, roy! the temples are amazing. m's brother might get sent to guatemala next, so maybe we can hope to see the temples (is that in mexico tho?).

Guatemala has its own temple awesomeness. We stayed on the Mexico side of the river, though, except one beach landing, so technically, I've been to Guatemala

Roymond, every time you go to Mexico you make me want to go to Mexico too, what with your photos and such.

Then just do it.

We're planning some crazy scheme like taking a year off and living in 4 or 5 places around the world for months at a time, home schooling our kids. San Cristobal will be one such place. And Australia, Japan, maybe Greece or Italy...

[fluffy]

Roymond, every time you go to Mexico you make me want to go to Mexico too, what with your photos and such.

Then just do it.

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of things I want to do but it always seems like a juggling act, and also I'm terrible at traveling (although for something as picturesque as the Yucatan I could probably just wander around and take photos for a week and be satisfied). My main downfall is that I really hate traveling alone, but I also hate tour groups, so I need to actually make friends with other people who want to do stuff.