As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I now have enough songs that I have created that I am ready to turn them into an album.
My goal now is to go back to tweak and fix each of the songs and get them all ready to put together and release as a full length album. I don't know if I'll go so far as to produce a CD. I don't know if I'll even turn it into something commercial. I'm still trying to figure all of that out.
I also need to produce an album cover. What good is an album if there isn't some type of artwork that defines its contents?
What I do have, at the moment, is the preliminary album title and initial track-list . You can find all these songs throughout this blog or on one of my Soundcloud sets here.
The potential title, is perhaps obviously: Another Fine Mess
The track list is anticipated to be:
01. Black Rock
02. Another Fine Mess
03. A Fan's Lament
04. Video Life
05. Saturday Night
06. The Ballad of Bruce
07. Turn Your Back on the World
08. Ordinary Day
09. Infinite In Between
10. Run For Your Life
11. My Dreams
12. Today's The Day
13. Marble Madness Medley*
(*This is intended to be a bonus track since it's not an original song, but merely an arrangement.)
That's every song I've finished in the past two+ years minus "Don't Want A Love Song" which sadly never quite worked for me.
So here I go to make an album. Let's see what happens from here.
Gather 'round and listen to the tale of Bruce "Ash" Campbell and his battle against the Army of Darkness. Bruce has to struggle against his complicated problems when all he wants is just to take some time off to enjoy the simpler things in life.
This synthpop song was inspired by the events of "The Army of Darkness" coupled with the musical stylings of some of my favorite late 80s synth-based bands such as Underworld (mk 1), Stan Ridgeway, and even a little Martini Ranch. It also includes the debut of my first acoustic instrument, the jaw-harp.
The song started out as a synth improv a couple months ago, just some playing around to see if anything could emerge. Initially it was just bass and rhythm. I had a melody more or less in mind, but needed to find some lyrical inspiration. I'm not sure what made me decide to couple the music with "Army of Darkness," but right when the first line came to mind, "Crash land on a real long day," the idea of Ash literally falling from the sky and crashing onto the ground coupled itself to the music and that's when I knew I had a story to work with.
So next I recorded some initial vocals and a few synth bits. My initial idea was to do something akin to one of my all-time favorite bands, Underworld. Or, more specifically, Underworld Mk 1--the late 80's version of the techno band when they were more Alternative Synthpop closer to INXS. The chorus and overall rhythm is definitely a cross between two of my favorite songs of theirs, "Underneath the Radar" and "Stand Up." Also, the deeper vocals and a bit of the vocoder harmony hearkens back to them as well.
From this point I fumbled around trying to figure out where to go next. Playing around with different sounds, eventually I found that the more plunky, banjo-like sounds really worked with the music. I hadn't intended to go with the country jamboree-style feeling initially, but the idea amused me. It reminded me a bit of some other synth-pop-country crossovers like "Reach" from Martini Ranch and a lot of Stan Ridgeway's stuff such as "Camouflage" and "Goin' Southbound." So I pushed the song in that direction, adding the banjo, jaw harp, and some extra ambient noises to make it feel like it was being sung/performed around a campfire.
All the synth sounds came from the Korg M3, Roland JV-1080, and Roland FP-9 digital piano.
I now have enough music to put together an album. This will be the final song to flesh out a full release. Unless I get some golden inspiration in the next few weeks that forces itself onto the album. I'm not sure how I'm going to publish/release it. I'm still researching that part.
The video is basically a slideshow of screencaps from Army of Darkness that more or less match the lyrics of the song, especially the verse portions.
This is a journal of my attempt to learn more about synthesizers and electronic music as well as a place to gather and sort all the things I'm finding on the web.
