Hey guys and girls of GMC,

I thought I would make a little thread dedicated to the album I'm working on. I'm aiming for it to be my official debut album.

Some years back I wrote some songs and released a demo album on YouTube. It was originally 5 individual songs, but I then stitched them together, included some new material, added vocals and it ended up being one long 49 minute song, which you can hear here:



And an even older demo:



I have since thought about re-writing it, taking it apart, abandoning it and a lot of other things, but then it came to me that it would probably be better to take it apart again, work with some of the original 5 songs, of which a couple have been scratched, and try and create an instrumental album with shorter songs instead, much as was my original plan back in 2016 or so.

Last night and today I finished writing the 8th song for the album. I have 30 minutes and 33 seconds of music now. I was gonna aim for 45 minutes, but looking at albums in similar genre (such as Cynic's Focus and Traced in Air) which are only about 35 minutes long, I realized that maybe that was a good length.

Furthermore I got a bit carried away and looked at production cost of getting vinyls made. It's expensive, but reading about it, it would seem that at 33 RPM you can "only" have 18 minutes on each side if you want the best sound quality. If you put more minutes in you risk decreasing the sound quality. This leads back to the 35 minutes I was mentioning before. But how cool would it be to have the album on vinyl? It seems though that most places you need to order at least 100 vinyl records produced. This can cost 1500+ US dollars or more, from what I have been reading. So maybe some day in the future. I also need to find an artist to do cover artwork, but that can be found on Fiverr for instance.

So, with that said here are the titles for the 8 tracks I have so far:

01. Take Off
02. ~88 Days
03. Deep Blue
04. Galileo's Discoveries
05. Trojans
06. New Horizons
07. Charged Particles
08. Trapped in Ice

I still need to write one or two more tracks before I start recording. We talked about the songwriting process in Gabriel's thread, where I also mentioned that I work in Guitar Pro 7.5 to write my songs. I jam on the guitar till I come up with something I like, write all the ideas, instruments and such in that program, then export the midi of the instruments I cannot play and use VST instruments in Reaper. This is the same way I made the above demo album and the same way I made the following track (it's called 87.969 in working title, but will probably be named "~88 days" later on):



As another little teaser here's a GP7.5 file (right click and save as, as the forum doesn't like the format yet) of Trapped in Ice. It will maybe allow you to understand how I work better:

 08_Trapped_in_Ice.gp ( 100.89K ) Number of downloads: 270


I will try and update this thread with my progress of working on the album. If you have any questions just ask

Here's the link to my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/cloudburzt

This post has been edited by Caelumamittendum: Aug 15 2020, 12:01 AM

Congrats on your impending first release! I've always enjoyed your original music. It's technical and groovey, which is great as sooo much music seems to be unable to balance these elements. It's a lot of work to be sure but it's worth doing imho. Are you planning on doing a release with social media push etc? Or is it more of a creativity thing for the sake of creation? Nothing wrong with either one of course. Just depends on what you want to do. I'd love to hear that singer from the band you shared a while back, the lead singer has a very james hetfield vibe. I wonder if he would sing on a track for a fellow countryman?

I'm planning on doing the big push on social media too and everything

I forgot to post the link to my facebook page. It's here: http://www.facebook.com/cloudburzt

That's also going to be my artist name on releases from here on: CloudburzT.

I once talked to him about singing on one of my tracks, but he was asking about 500 USD for one track. It was a bit too much for me

1) Awesome that you're gonna do this!
2) Realistically and w/o too much fidelity loss, you can do 23 minutes per side with vinyl. That's been the average since the late 1950s. But ...
3) Mastering for vinyl is a whole other ball game and if you hate the 'test' pressing, you're gonna have to do it (and maybe pay for it) all over again.
4) I'm all for cool product (I love records) but unless you know you're gonna sell at least 90 of those 100 pressings - that's a lot of money to be sitting in boxes taking up space in your house.

I can be quite the analog snob when it comes to guitars, amps and pedals but with recording platforms and delivery mechanisms - digital is the way to go.

*Every project I've been involved with (in the last 25 years) that pressed vinyl has been ultimately disappointed because they didn't get it mastered properly and they used a cheap pressing company.

Keep it in the digital domain. Physical 'product' is never coming back in any meaningful way. That ship has sailed.

This post has been edited by klasaine: Aug 15 2020, 06:15 AM

1) Thanks!

2) Yeah, I keep reading about the loss, but kept reading 18 minutes was a good aim.

3 and 4) While I said I was gonna go all out on the social media push in my reply to Todd, I'm not expecting to make any money or money back on this, but of course sitting on a lot of those records kinda suck. That's why I've also been considering going the kickstarter route, if I can generate enough hype around it. I know a few friends who have said they would be supportive, but I can't force them in the end. But yeah, Kickstarter is a thing I've considered for something like this too.

I just kinda like vinyl records, that whole package and such. But it's probably a "snob" thing more than anything else.

And given my financial situation, if I dismiss the Kickstarter route, I'll likely go digital at first. I know I play a niche genre (or even a niche in a niche genre, because my compositions are not full of heavy exciting riffs or crazy fast solos), so it's always gonna be a struggle. Then again I never thought I'd even reach 500+ plays on a video and have 23/0 like-ratio on the same video.

If anything going vinyl route would be more so because I think it's "cool", rather than any idea of it being on it's way back. Though, with that said, it has become a bit more popular again here in Denmark it seems, but it's a very specific crowd.

Nice Cael!! I could follow all this moments and progress thanks to our work at Gab's Army thread. I'm very happy to know that you are now having like a new beginning.

I like the new name, and ideas, all great things are coming my friend. Keep us updated!

Finished writing another song, but I feel it should not be the final song of the album. This one I just finished is called "Ocean World" and it is a very chilled out track, mostly clean guitars. It's a calm before the grand finale.



Yes, looking back at my thread and threads such as the creativity workouts have helped a lot It hasn't been a straight forward journey, but I'm really proud of the compositions I have so far for this and I hope it will sound great in the end.

For anyone interested in a small snippet from the 5th song "Trojans", here's the end of it actually recorded:

 Trojans_Ending.mp3 ( 1.37MB ) Number of downloads: 73


This post has been edited by Caelumamittendum: Aug 16 2020, 07:31 AM

Very cool. I dig the Petrucci vibe!!!

You nailed the Petrucci sound, that's for sure!!

Petrucci is definitely an influence, so I'm glad you can hear that.

It sounds great mate! What are you using for recording/mixings? Are these any Reaper templates? I'm not sure if you told me about that.

Yes, this was recorded in reaper, but not with a template - well, it's my own "home-made" template. I don't know that much about mixing, so I just tried to make it sound good

I used Omnisphere, Trillian, Superior Drummer 3 (with Progressive Foundry expansion) and some compression, mastering plugins and just some presets that I thought made it sound good.

When I start mixing I will use the Systematic Mixing Guide, I think.

Also, with that said, I have finished writing the 10th and final song "Voyagers". Next up is the recording phase

Interesting!! I've never heard about that Systematic Mixing Book...

I have heard good things about it, but I haven't read it yet



This post has been edited by Caelumamittendum: Aug 17 2020, 05:15 PM

Super congrats! Great to see it moving forward. Can't wait to hear more!

Video update

And just a little bonus video.

Nice Cael! It's cool to be able to follow this project from the first day! Please keep on sharing this vids and updates.

All the best!!

Very cool stuff. What are you using for your green screen work? It's a very clean key. Looks great and sounds great! You are really making great progress!