The Prodigal Sounds

I have this fantasy that Album #3 is a blank slate, with no material left over from previous sessions or unfinished projects.

In reality, I have lyrics and musical fragments that I’ve been working off-and-on over the last few years. I usually get my ideas while out cycling, and it is no trouble to pull over, whip out the iPhone and record the fragment into the Voice Memo app. Later, back in the studio, I transcribe the lyric into my notebook. Sometimes I’ll open my Scrapbook project and add another piano track with the melody.

That’s cool. On the plus side, these new songs will hopefully start out being actually sing-able in my comfortable range, as opposed to many projects in the past where the music came first and the melody second and was almost always not pitched comfortably for my voice. So that’s a good thing.

Outside of these lyric and melody fragments – some of which have expanded into pretty complete stand-alone song ideas – I still have a comprehensive library of musical ideas that date back to those Grey Lynn flat jam sessions in the 90’s, converted to mp3 from C60 tape cassette.

I still feel that this situation qualifies as a “blank slate”, as far as Album #3 is concerned. Every track is going to start with a new empty project, and not an existing one, worked on in years past and put on the back-burner due to lack of time, interest, energy, ideas, whatever.

Even “The God Program” from our current release was conceived back in 2003 and much of it laid down in 2007. (And consequently re-recorded, but that’s par for the course.)

So, I’m looking forward to never again having to sit back and listen to a newly recorded section of music, and say “dammit it just doesn’t have the magic of that older demo”.

*Record Scratch*

…Yeah. That was nice while it lasted.

Back in 2002 I didn’t have any plans to resurrect “The Prodigal Sounds” as a music-releasing entity, and instead explored some other new music ideas with the tentative goal of putting it out under another band name. I had three longish instrumental thematically-related pieces recorded in “pretty complete demo” form, but only titles for the other three or four pieces.

I’ve related elsewhere the story of how I got back on track with Prodigal Sounds and the “Fruit of the Steel Tree”, and consequent to that, this other project was shelved.

Long story short, I think I’m going to incorporate the music from this old project into the songs of Album #3, or one of them anyway. The music seems to fit. It’s worth a try.

So, will it be a concept album?

A better question, should it be an “album” at all? CDs are not selling much these days, it’s all about streaming and playlists and bullshit like that.

Personally, I prefer the idea of a curated collection of songs, rather than emitting the occasional single on some indeterminate schedule like a chunk of U-238.

So, yes, there will be an Album #3, unless I give up or expire before it is released.

And I do have a concept for it, although it is of a subtle nature. Tangential, even.

Well, at long last, album #2 has been released.

My previous release, Fruit of the Steel Tree, was my best effort to realize the music that Walter and I wrote back in the 1990’s.

This new release, The Inevitable Obscenity of Autonomous Weaponry, includes a few tracks from that same period. I’ve perhaps taken more liberties with them this time, relying on my own vision.

The other tracks are all “new” in the sense that they are based on material I wrote since Walter and I stopped collaborating on music, from 2003 to 2019.

You can find out more at the album-specific pages I created (see the The Inevitable Obscenity link in the blog top menu above).

I used CD Baby as my manufacturer/distributer and due to COVID-19 related circumstances, I’m not sure exactly when and how this will be made available to purchase. It *should* appear on Amazon at some point, and although CD Baby has closed their online store, they do have copies in their warehouse for distribution.

The physical package is nice: an eco-sensitive cardboard wallet:

The artwork came out nicely but I acknowledge I used a sub-optimal font point size on the smallest text. It seemed ok in the PDF but I should have realized that white-on-black in print would be harder to read. Oh well, no big deal. The information (and more!) is all available online (see link above).

Digitally, the album is now up on Spotify and probably other streaming services as well. Yay!

Okay, so the timing for this release isn’t great: as I write this, we are still under a County Public Health “Stay At Home Order” due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the economy is taking a nose-dive. Folks just aren’t going to have the disposable income (or the will to spend it) that they did a couple months ago.

Originally I’d planned for this to be out in 2019 which would have been nice, but it didn’t happen.

Since the last blog post, “Final polishing” of the tracks took longer than expected because I kept finding little things I wasn’t totally happy with. This is actually an infinite process because there will *always* be things that I think I could improve, and my tastes change over time so it’s a moving target. The trick is to apply the law of diminishing returns and identify when it is time to Let It Go.

At this point, I think I chose appropriately. It’s out there now, anyway.

What’s Next

I’ve uploaded two videos on YouTube to accompany the release: A studio “play-through” for Paradigm Shift and a second one for Cathedral with “behind the scenes” text captions.

I intend to create a third video for The Toks Invade before putting the project to bed.

I’m going to be preparing a Bonus CD (well, EP maybe) with alternative versions of some of the tracks. I’ll make this available digitally via BandCamp, no physical CD for this.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been working on new lyrics and some musical ideas and it really does look like there will be an Album #3. But that’s for later.

I’ve completed recording. I’ve been mastering the tracks in Presonus’ Studio One, because it has this great “Project View” that I haven’t seen in any other software.

This allows me to set volume levels, frequency equalization, and cross-fades across all tracks, to ensure that they sound like a unified collection.

I still need to burn a CD and play it in a variety of locations but I think I’m close.

Next steps will be to finalize the artwork for CD duplication, and also upload to Bandcamp and/or CD Baby for distribution. This is going to be primarily a digital release but I do want some physical CDs to give to friends and family and anyone else who really wants one.

About 50% of these tracks are old music that Walter and I worked on together, and the rest is all (relatively) new.

Track List:

1. EULA (0:31)

2. Working the Paradigm Shift (8:42)

3. Listen (12:52)

4. The Toks Invade Bogland (4:57)

5. Cathedral of Hosts (3:27)

6. Enlightenment (6:06)

7. Omnipotence in 17/8  (2:58)

8. Priority Interrupt (2:07)

9. Head Crash (5:18)

10. Cathedral (reprise)  (1:12)

11. Introspection in G / Tubular DLLs  (6:57)

Tracks 5-10 are a continuous suite, so there is a choice to be made here about whether to break it up into separate tracks or keep it as one long track, for digital distribution. On an audio CD you kind of get both as it cross-fades between tracks cleanly. (usually).

I guess the right answer is “both” which is actually feasible, to have two different versions of the album up on Bandcamp. Or maybe just an additional bonus “EP” for the single-track contiguous version.

I’ll mull this over. In the meantime, stay safe folks. Don’t go viral.

When the heck was my last post? October? Ouch. Well, I’ve been busy, working on the album. Much progress has been made.

Also, I’ve created a new Cakewalk Theme called “SteamPunk” to inspire creativity and in the process, written a how-to guide on theming.

Here’s a picture of the introduction to the final track on the upcoming album:

I realize that gives nothing away but does give an impression of the new UI theme: Slate, oiled bronze, leather, with gilt highlights.

Steampunk.sth

Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer on Themeable items in Cakewalk.pdf 
(updated 03/2020 to version 0.9.5)

Back to the studio; this album’s not going to finish itself.

Front Panel:

My nomenclature, from left to right: F1 – F4

Rear Panel:

My nomenclature, from left (top) to right (down) : R1 – R7

Type (according to XPS 8930 manual):

 ID   Description                 Speed    Connected 
 --   --------------------------  -------  ----------
 F1   USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type C         5 Gbps  
 F2   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps
 F3   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps
 F4   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps

 R1   USB 2.0                    480 Mbps  Keyboard
 R2   USB 2.0                    480 Mbps  Mouse
 R3   USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C        10 Gpbs
 R4   USB 3.1 Gen 2               10 Gpbs  Scarlett 6i6
 R5   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps
 R6   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps
 R7   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps  MIDISport 2x2

Here is a report from USB Device Tree Viewer 3.3.6:

Quite by accident I seem to have connected the Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 to its own dedicated high-speed USB hub, which I’m guessing is optimal.

However, we should remember that the USB port on the Scarlett is only USB 2.0. So we’re hopefully gaining some isolation or immunity from interference, but no throughput gains. Chances are we may have another device that could leverage the 10 Gbps speeds…