Time to talk about the making of my album. I hope even if my work isn't to your taste, you might find this useful as a document of home music making, whether as a source of inspiration, a resource for problem solving, or a cautionary tale.
I'm going to tag these with a series of things which might fluctuate, but I'll tag every one with the album name #PsychedelicGhostStories and #ProductionDiary, so you can follow those tags, or those tags together if there's a fancy way to do that.
Eventually I will collect/edit these all into a blog post, or proper liner notes perhaps. Something along those lines. So you all get to enjoy the first draft.
Also! I am absolutely taking questions and you don't even have to wait to ask until I get to the part you are curious about. Just make sure you tag me so I see them.
#HowItsMade #MusicProduction #PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#EtherDiver #HomeRecording #MakingMusic #MyAlbum #Workflow #MusicProducer #MusiciansOfMastodon
This album got its genesis in early September of 2022. I had been promoting my album #TalesOfEtherspace for a little over six months at that point and I was kind of over it. My 50th birthday was six months away, and realization of one's #mortality starts to become a companion of sorts. I knew it was time to make a #NewAlbum.
https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/album/tales-of-etherspace
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #PreProduction #Inspiration
At that point I had a handful of tracks I had started and stalled out on on the #MPC, an ever evolving master story for my work and a small handful of musical/sonic ideas I wanted to pursue. First off, I wanted to take some more time on this album. Due to my #ADHD I can really only do things with a pretty serious #structure and hard #deadlines. Lucky for me, I can honor my own deadlines, but only with a constrained time span.
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #Planning #PreProduction
I've managed projects of up to a year before! But that seemed a bit excessive for an album. My two proper albums (meaning they were created together time wise with the intention of being an album) were both done for prior #RPMChallenge so they were done in 28 days. That was exhilarating and both times I think the results were excellent+ for the time constraints, but that some more time would be better.
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #Planning #PreProduction #ProductionPhilosophy
Also, my #mind like neat, clean sets and lining up with major events/calendar changes to work with, so it was easy to settle on three months of actual album work, with the remainder of September, two weeks officially though it was more like 19 days when I started, reserved for something I wanted to try out: a #PreProduction phase. Basically, time to get everything cleaned up, set up and ready to go to make the writing and recording process go smoothly.
I made a list of stuff that had to be done to make this work. From basic stuff like a plan to #update all my #firmware and clean my #tapeheads to working out #sample sets, #drum sound palettes, and #synth patches to writing out my #themes and #charting the #influences I wanted to incorporate. (I have PAGES of notes generated during this process. Would be good to get #feedback on how deep I should go here.)
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #PreProduction #Planning
One of the less obvious, most useful things I did in this phase was make a bunch of decisions about the process/direction of the album. These, along with the material I was using to generate and shape my ideas for writing (a whole separate thing I'll get into at some point), ended up #streamlining the process considerably.
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary
#PreProduction #ProductionPhilosophy
Even the simplest thing, like "I'm going to use this tape recorder and this tape for the main recording process" ended up being clutch. I only had to make creative decisions, not technical ones, and the creative decisions were so shaped by my underlying #philosophy that I'd spelled out, they were often quite simple as well.
#PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary #ProductionPhilosophy #PreProduction
In terms of #TechnicalPhilosophy, I wrote down three #guidelines (I developed/realized/formalized two more later, once recording was in process; I'll talk about those as part of the recording process). Those were:
1) This is an #MPC album. We will write and assemble it in the MPC.
2) Record it by bit, layer by layer; writing is a process of accretion/sedimentary.
3) This is a drum machine album; driven by drum machine beats+composition
Starting from the top: This is an #MPC album. I am committed to the DAWless thing -- though the MPCs are more like a DAW in a Box, really -- and wanted to reaffirm that commitment and focus my brain on the possibilities of the machine, so any time I wasn't sure I wanted to do something a non-MPC way, I did it the MPC Way. Ultimately I decided to mix and master entirely within my #MPCOne. The album you hear came out of the MPC that way.
@etherdiver I've done this for my next set - all produced inside my Digitakt. It took me ages to get there, and it is a huge compromise (I can't use modulation on my Blackhole or LFOs on my Juno, nor adjust the drums in realtime (at least not in the same way) but I have simplified the process, and only need to carry around one box. I can also focus... I need that.
