Afterthoughts, vol1

So, ... some time has passed and the dust is starting to settle once again. Time to write some afterthoughts about "Cosmic time foundation". This will be a longer writing ... Let's start with the clearly more boring subject (huh?), namely technical viewpoint.

Am I happy about the album, how it turned out technically speaking? Actually I am quite satisfied. It could had been better in some ways, but these things are pretty much just some minor details. First of all, the lyrics were rather long and at times technical, kind of, I thought I had lots of time for recording the vocals, but I do think that I might have been able to do better vocals with more time. Not talking about the way the vocals are / sound, but simply some timings / sync details. There are some sections in some of the songs where it could had been recorded better. And the same goes with background vocals - considering it was first ever recording for her, it went well - but it was also demanding since it was all new action for her. It was a good starting point though, and promises good for the future, methinks.

Still from technical viewpoint; Afterwards I was quite annoyed by the embarrassing fact, that I didn't have a simple pop filter for my vocal microphone. Yes, ugh! ... and yeah, you can certainly hear it from listening the album, too. Even that I managed to tone down worst "xplosives" from vocals (often simply by recording again and again), but there are sections in some of the songs where it annoys me personally, listening to the album now, afterwards. You'll be able to hear "xplosives" at times, and also some other sounds that could well had been filtered out with the help of decent pop filter. Well, in past I haven't recorded vocals myself (or I have, years and years ago, but with extremely lofi style, hardly serious music projects) so yeah, another lesson learned; I will buy pop filter in the near future, you can bet on that. And it's not just about this M4D project, but naturally any project with vocals. I guess is also tells something that I even had one nightmare'ish dream about listening to the opening track of the album and being horrified about how bad the vocals sound (and also that I was singing something that I shouldn't had been singing, I was really happy when I woke up from that "nightmare"). Ha!

I also noted bit too late some minor details (still technically speaking) in the programmed drums. Or the way I programmed some of the drums. I could had done some very small things bit differently, because I didn't think some of the things through and it made mastering of the album notably more demanding & sweaty. What happened was that I used some drum samples twice at the exact same moment - thus creating a double times louder sound. I didn't think it would be problem when I was doing that, and I honestly thought I had a good reason doing that, too (getting certain kind of natural sounding impact) but in the end ... it was bit of a problem, oh yeah. The album might have ended up being mastered a nod louder if it wasn't that drum programming detail. My mistake, yeah, and another lesson learned - though at the same time it's not that serious; I do rather have an album sounding in a way oldschool in the so-called loudness department instead of trying to "win the loudness war" = make/master as loud sounding album as possible. No thanks. Perhaps this little drum programming "error" actually served me right in that way. But I will not repeat that formula in the future, though.

Okay, ... that's the technical viewpoint pretty much. Let's see, ... what viewpoint could this be called? Viewpoint of how I personally feel about the material musically speaking, how it turned out musically, etc. How it feels sort of compared to debut album musically, etc? That's what I'm writing next ... later. Perhaps already tonight, but in these coming days anyway. Stay tuned.