Hey, it's new blog time again because I have stuff I want to say.
It's been a little while since my last audio submission, and indeed my contribution to anything great on Newgrounds. As you may or may not already know, I was on holidays straight after I released Factory, and straight after that I was at work all day every day (except for the days that I wasn't), and when I come home, I just veg out and drool at the television. Well I have 2 more full days of work before I'm back to my regular 20 hour 3 day weeks, which I'm very much looking forward to.

So, I've got all this time taking me away from my music, have I done nothing? No, I've been doing stuff. All the time away from my music has given me the space and freedom to formulate concepts and ideas, so that when I get around to making music, it's better than ever. I've got more music now that I'm happy with than I've made over the whole of 2007. I've got about 10 songs in progress, and a couple of pre-existing songs that I'm hoping to finally compile into a decent full length original digital album. Overall, I've got 12 songs planned out, 11 are already under way or completed, and I'm aiming for a total running time of 60 minutes, but I'm at 30 minutes at the moment, and I'd say that I'm only about 20-25% complete. The thing that worries me the most is that this'll turn into another shallow commitment that'll never get done, like so many other things I've said that I'm going to do but are still sitting in the drawer.

Has it got a name yet? You bet it does, but I'm going to keep the track titles and all that to myself until they're done and up ready for the whole world to hear, except for the tracks that are already up here. I'll say that Factory will be in the album for sure, as will an extended version of part 1 of Carbon Baby, except that it'll have a different title. Part 2 will also be in there too, once it's finished, and it'll just be called "Carbon Baby", no different parts. It'll still flow on from part one, and I'm actually thinking about linking all songs with a bit of background noise transitioning from one to the next. And Pandora's Dance will be in there too, except that I'd like to improve the quality and make it overall more "presentable". A variation on my piano solo "Prologue" will be the closing piece. It's just a rearrangement, but I haven't started it yet, so I'm not sure what direction it'll take, but it'll also be taking a different name. Aside from those, I have one piece that is about half done, that was for the MAC8 Sorrowed Tears competition, although time is tight. The rest are all needing lots of work to complete.

I might be overly ambitious, but what I've got so far is 30 minutes of my best work. Some classical, some is a blend of classical and electronica, most is hard electronica industrial/DnB stuff. A few drum samples from Nav, a few from suspended-3rd-Chord, and inspirations varying from Daft Punk to Pendulum to numerous classical composers to authors such as H.P Lovecraft (horror) and David Zindell (sci-fi/fantasy). I'm eager to complete a few tracks and attempt to fine tune all of them, do a better job of mixing than I have done in the past. I really want to do a good job with this, and I hope it'll bring some people the joy it brings me, and I hope it will encourage more people to aspire for a greater quality. I'm not saying that I'll have some super awesome quality, I just want to make something tidy and catchy and totally riff-tastic. Keep your ears out for more news, I'll try and keep this updated.

Cheers.

WB

Update 1:
I thought it'd be nice to keep record of the progress of the songs I'm working on. Length, quality, that sort of thing. So a track can be completed length-wise, but all the components aren't in place yet, or it needs to be redone to fix flaws and issues. The tracks should be done by the 70-80% mark and the other 20-30% will be working out the kinks, so I'll probably submit the traacks at 80% completion to gain feedback.

Track 1: Carbon Baby (pt 1) [Renamed]- 2:24- 50% Complete
Track 2: Carbon Baby- 3:34- 30% Complete
Track 3: [Title Withheld]- 1:31- 10% Complete
Track 4: [Title Withheld]- 2:04- 30% Complete
Track 5: [Title Withheld]- 0:43- 5% Complete
Track 6: Factory- 5:01- 80% Complete
Track 7: [Title Withheld]- 5:02- 60% Complete
Track 8: [Title Withheld]- 2:21- 40% Complete
Track 9: Pandora's Dance- 2:36- 60% Complete
Track 10: [Title Withheld]- 1:38- 15% Complete
Track 11: [Title Withheld]- 2:58- 40% Complete
Track 12: Prologue Rewritten [Renamed]- 2:01- 20% Complete

Update 2: Haven't doone too much more, but I've scrapped the riff I had for track 3, and I've now got the beginning to a chilled, old skool electronica sound, which I hope will evolve into a Daft Punk type catchy beat. I can now say that I'm really satisfied with the material in the first 6 tracks of the album thus far, and I'm confident that I can flesh them out into decent songs. The last 6 tracks are generally a lot softer and more classical, but we'll see how they turn out, I might end up reworking some of them. I'm still not sure whether to include Pandora's Dance or not, it feels a bit out of place...