aldaraia

Progress and Regress

It seems to me, going back through and reading through all of my previous posts, that it must be some sort of magical to follow this blog, watching someone go through such bipolar moods all of the time. To the point: I am in much better spirits than I was in the last two updates. I need to bring myself to do this weekly again.

In an effort to get myself working more, I have stopped stressing about writing so much, and have instead adopted the opinion that any work I put toward finishing a song is work toward the album. Anything to move forward.

To that end, I’ve started reassessing where all of the “finished” songs are now. Root and Stem has gotten a major overhaul, many of the guitars through most of the songs are being redone, Geneva is being rebuilt from the ground up. I also have a couple new songs brewing. Right now I am making progress and in a great mood doing it.

I am just going to keep this one short, as I plan to do another, more in depth update on Saturday. Just wanted to post something, because it has been a while.

(Source: modulo23.com)

I Return

Firstly, I would like to apologize for my lateness. It’s been a rough couple of weeks in the personal part of my life, and at the time I felt as though dealing with those issues was more important than Aldaraia. How wrong I was. I will do my best in future to not take two weeks between posts, partially because I feel like I’m gaining a little bit of a following on this blog because, but mostly because the lack of accomplishment has driven me into a horrible, gut wrenching depression, whereas posting on this blog made me look at the things I hadn’t been getting done and encouraged me to actually get work done. Again, my apologies.

Now, to business.

Some of you followers may be aware that my “day job” is acting as recording and mix engineer/producer for local bands/artists or bands/artists who come across my portfolio site and want me to work for them. Recently, I have taken on Earthgrazer as a client, and will be mixing their upcoming four song EP, if they are content with the preliminary work that I do for them. This, ideally, will not eat into Aldaraia time, and instead will eat into Reddit time.

I am telling you this because I am going to outline my to do list for the week:

Mix Risk: Risk has been sitting in my to do pile for months. Every time I attempt to mix this song I get distracted or angry about something and never get anywhere, and I feel like this song being unmixed is a huge hinderance to my forward momentum. 

Mix The Day We Died: I recently redid the vocals for The Day We Died (recently in Aldaraia terms being a couple months ago) and haven’t yet had the opportunity to work them in. The bass needs to be re-recorded, and then I can finally get down to putting this behemoth together. 70 tracks is hard to get on top of.

Write Two New Demos/Experiment: After hours spent deep in thought, I believe I have once and for all come to the root of my recent writer’s block, and it is a tremendous let-down. My inability to write hasn’t been creative difficulty, inability to come up with something new. It’s simply been laziness. I’ve determined that recently so much of my time gets spent finding something to do, and never doing anything important. When writing And When The Sky Was Opened, all I did when I wasn’t working was either read, eat, or sit at my keyboard or with my guitar, coming up with new ideas. Now I just spend time on reddit, walk around looking for stuff to do, take a nap. I’ve lost that drive that was in me, and I can’t say what pulled it out of me, but I believe that it was stagnation. Even after AWTSWO was released I was working, but then I went to visit my family in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and being trapped in the mountains for two months without any privacy and without the full facilities to which I had access before I left sucked that motivation out of me. When I came back I was stuck on that routine of shitty food, reddit, nothing to do all day so I’ll just find shit to occupy my time.

So, I need to get myself back into the habit of working all the time. No more tedium. No more distractions. Block reddit, block facebook, turn off the phone and do some damn work. By the end of the week I am going to have 2 new demos, regardless of length or quality. I am also just going to take time to fool around on the keyboard or with my guitar just making sounds, not necessarily taking them anywhere, but just doing it for the hell of it to get myself into the habit of doing it.

The last bit of stuff to do is work on Earthgrazer’s EP. So far, in my opinion, it’s gone well, but I am currently awaiting their reply to my first mix. If they’re into it, this will be a fairly big chunk of the coming weeks, but considering the anger and drive I feel in myself right now, more than I remember feeling in a really long time, I will be getting a lot done soon.

Two final items to discuss: RPM and That Night, A Forest Grew.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Richard Lainhart’s work over the past few weeks, particularly his later work with the Buchla 200e. The man was a mighty composer, and a fantastic human being, and I regret not having the opportunity to meet or work with him. As a result of my listening to his music, I have decided to, potentially, undertake the RPM Album-In-A-Month challenge, working only with the new version of my Reaktor modular synth Modulo. I will state right now that I do not expect to complete the challenge, considering the fact that I have an album to work on, but I do expect to release what I do complete for Aldaraia, as it has been almost a year since my last release. 10 songs or 35 minutes. It’s possible, just unlikely that I will complete the task.

With regard to That Night, A Forest Grew, I am done considering a potential release date. It would have been nice to release the album on July 1st, 2012, but I have decided that I will finish this album when I believe it is done. This does not mean that I am delaying the release, just that I am not going to rush myself. Instead of that, I plan on working on a bunch of music all at once, occasionally assembling those pieces into releases and then releasing them to sate my, and my fan’s appetite. This album is pulling a lot out of me, emotionally, and I do not want to take the chance of releasing something that does not meet the expectation that I have of it.

I do not expect this album to take another year to write, and I am still shooting for July 1st, 2012. When April comes around, I will begin more seriously assessing what I have completed, and if I feel what is done is the ideal representation of the concepts upon which this album touches, considering the time I’ve put into it and the facilities available to me, I will hand the tracks to Jason for sequencing in May, mix through May and June, and release it in July as originally planned. Otherwise, I will probably push it back by 6 months to January 1st, 2013. I do not want to keep pushing this album back months at a time. I have no idea how long I will be in this emotional state, how long I can continue attempting to write this album. If I feel I have crossed that line, where I’m no longer writing this album and have moved on to another one, I will reassess what I have, assemble it as best I can, and release it in the form most appropriate to it.

We’ll see.

(Source: modulo23.com)

Happy New Year

Firstly, I would like to apologize for the wait between blog posts. It has been a very hectic two weeks, what with Christmas and New Years, but thankfully this time is over and I can get back to work without interruptions.

I won’t say that the resolve from my last post has carried perfectly, but that may and likely is a result of the complicated state of my personal affairs the past few weeks. I fully intend on taking the next 2-3 weeks to shut down and get back to work because I am feeling the itch more than I have in a long while.

I have 1 new song demoed, 1 scrap of an idea that’s been stuck in my head, and I am going to try and get something new demoed or sketched out every few days so I can get some of these new ideas out.

I apologize that this post is all bones, no meat. It hasn’t been a productive two weeks, as I’m sure is the case with just about everyone. I can say with certainty that the next post will have more to discuss.

Resolution

It was not a good weekend.

I was browsing Reddit when suddenly a great tidal wave of self-realization hit me. How much time have I wasted when I should have been working on the album in some capacity? How many hours of every day went into watching Mystery Science Theater instead of writing? How many browses through the same links and pictures on Reddit? I’ve been working on the same album for two years, and while ultimately that’s not bad in and of itself, I have so little to show for it. I should have twice the number of completed songs, should have artwork done. I should be further along. I am not afraid that the album won’t be done, but honestly I am a bit afraid that it’s not going to be up to my standard when I hand the music in to Jason in March.

I know I’ve essentially written this post before, but right now all I can say is that I am recommitting myself. I cannot stand this feeling of having nothing to show for 24 months of “writing.”

In other news, after discussing with Jason my writing process, I think I am going to take the next few months in another direction. Since the start, I’ve expected Jason to take my demos and put them in an appropriate order, and recently I’ve begun to feel that it’s hindered my writing momentum. It doesn’t leave me a structure to fill, so I just kind of wander aimlessly, musically. I have no idea of a beginning, middle, or end, and I feel like it’s killing my ability to consider the structure of an album, so I’ve decided to approach the task differently, and redefine Jason’s job in the process.

The album will be comprised of two parts, and each part will be comprised of five songs. Of course, each song will have alternates, and Jason’s job is to determine where alternates should be placed, and make adjustments within the parts, with regard to structure. This frees me to write an album, and focus on structure and presentation, which I believe will provide me with appropriate limitations to foster a more structured and creative writing process. Now I can think in album terms, not in song terms.

Hopefully this new resolve, and new structure, will help push me along to finish the album up to my standard so I do not have to delay it another time. 

(Source: modulo23.com)