Another listening session(s) & trailer under work

Early this morning I did new bounces of all the eight songs and listened them twice through in peace. To get the feeling how they feel now with what I think will be the final drums (like stated yesterday). Sounds really enjoyable, I'm satisfied, yes. Well, I thought I'd go into working with lyrics then, but suddenly I got the idea to start crafting the trailer (which I've been thinking for weeks already, certain idea for trailer) and I followed the intuition right there.

I spent the whole day working with the trailer which grew into monstrous space oddity of sorts. It contains also some ambient soundscapes which will not be on the album itself but it gives bit different feel to trailer and ... well, a trailer is a trailer. My video editing software is rendering the full hd version of the trailer as I write this, but I think it'll go into youtube tomorrow at earliest. It's a piece with multiple (emphasis on multiple!) video clips layered on top of each other etc. Probably the heaviest trailer I've ever done for my projects from processor's point of view ... well, it's certainly also musically heaviest trailer I've done so far.

I have a feeling I'll work with lyrics tomorrow as it's friday and the trailer might well go online tomorrow - if that happens, I'll announce it here.

Finetuning beats' sound

I haven't yet continued with writing the rest tales, but instead I've spent some day or two tweaking the drums' levels, listening, tweaking, listening again, tweaking again ... etc. It paid off as tonight I got into point where I can say that now the overall sound of drums is good. Clearly was good to have a break (before these tweaking sessions) from listening the tunes so that I could finish the tweaking in a satisfying way.

Soundwise speaking the material is now pretty much completed - just lacking the vocals of course ... and possible some guitar solos in case if there's space for them. Gotta see how it goes only after lyrics are completed, vocals fully arranged and recorded. If there will be any solos, they will be recorded as the very last thing. Yeah.

I think having a little break from writing lyrics will help me crafting the missing pieces. Though there will be a full week long break from any of this during next week ... but one week feels like nothing considering it's way over 5 years since debut album came out, ha!

As the final point, here's a quickie screenshot of one song within studio software, part of the song in a partial view - just to show that some songs do contain bit more "space elements" and in multiple layers, too. Some songs have minimal space elements, then there are songs like this. See the sh... errr ... pic with your own eyes.

Written into forms

Took a few days break from it all and today has been really productive day when it comes to lyrics. Lost count of how many / what exactly I worked on today, since I touched bit everything here and there but ... the main thing is that currently I have lyrics completed for five songs already. Yeah! Only three more songs need lyrics. And it feels just exciting to be able to craft some more tales. Song titles so far are also something that make me grin. Each of the five lyrics have already final titles to them.

And it's not just that but I've also listened the certain songs with arrangements in my mind - and yeah, I've done preliminary arrangements for pretty much all the five songs' lyrics, too. Feels really good, once again. The lyrics deal with more or less matters related to science fiction, space, science, time, space travel, ... tales varying from not too wide scale into kind of gigantic scale, depending on viewpoint. There are also little connections to some other projects I've done ... evident to me, but not at all necessary to other people.

It's like one ancient album title goes: Another perfect day.

Listening ... to the signs

Incantation's gig was pure awesome. That's that. I was out of town for the weekend, but if you thought that would mean taking more break from M4D, you thought wrong. ^_^

I took the songs in their current form with me to the weekend trip, and listened the set once through out there with headphones. Not in one listening session, but few separate sessions.

How was it? Something to fix? Well, I didn't find anything that would need fixing, but instead felt really satisfied with the music and the stage of songs currently. Yeah.

Visual evidence included.

Gotta continue with them lyrics next.

Break with icing on it

For a change I haven't done anything concrete today for the release, if not counting dreaming & thinking about some lyrics for the remaining songs. Didn't get into writing yet, just letting the thoughts develop & evolve into something worth writing down. Plus there's no rush, I've progressed more than I thought I would have about a month ago.

So, today could be labelled as a break. What's the icing for the break? It's the entertainment moment of  the summer I'd say; going to see the one and only Incantation tonight in Helsinki. Yeah! \m/_

EDIT: Here's evidence of Inc entertainment. Why, since it's death metal and not doom metal? Because Inc has truly awesome DOOOMY moments hidden within their (otherwise amazing) death metal songs.

Diving into lyrics

I thought I would not continue tonight, but ... I thought wrong. When inspiration comes, you grab it and get creating. And so I started working on lyrics about an hour ago. At first I finetuned the first lyrics carefully as they felt they needed some tweaking. After that I got good ideas how to finish that cosmic tale.

Then I got idea for song title, those first lyrics. Song title gave me idea for tweaking the end of those lyrics 100% and it felt instantly awesome. I continued into the second lyrics I started some day or two ago. The flow started right away and I finished those lyrics quite soon - they have certain theme to them and I like how the certain kind of scientific vibe comes through there. As it happens, being scientific gave me idea for the song title and another instant gratification happened. Done!

So ... I thought that was it, but while joking about some matters I had another idea coming in, a different kind of lyric idea (compared to previous ones) and I went right to work on it. Ten minutes later I had third set of lyrics 100% ready as well as the song title, too. Whoa! And this one I really like, twisted little tale. Might even know what song these lyrics are meant for. Have a strong vibe they'll fit ...

Onwards through the greedy compressor  ... (as them O.L.D. once put it).

Completed the 4th space trip

Just finished going through all the songs once again, yes. Took few hours all in all, and about all the newly recorded space elements found their place like it was planned (which it certainly wasn't). Satisfied again, yes, guessed it right. :)

Funnily in some cases there was true coincidences; some of the samples I recorded intuitively, not just fitted perfectly into their places, but the sample lengths happened to match perfectly the earlier samples' length too. Huh? Yeah! Almost spooky. Considering that the samples length vary from 10-20 seconds into something like 200 seconds, then new samples happen to fit precisely ... wow.

I'm now only listening the whole package through in its' current form. If there's still some volume fixes needed to be done for the ambient elements, that shall be done before anything else gets done. The next real step is quite likely the lyrics. I've already started with that (two songs' lyrics are almost completed) so that's where I'm heading as I get this current listening & checking (for possible fixes needed) session done.

Great progress, really satisfied yet again. I didn't even imagine I'd have time to do some vocal tests today, but I also did that. So ... yeah! ^_^