Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Acoustica... and onwards

A realised a few weeks ago I've released 4 album in 12 months as of June this year.

The journey started mid 2016 with the beat & loop orientated "Sojourn" and culminated in "Acoustica" a reworking of tracks from my back-catalogue, all re-recorded on a nylon string guitar at 432Hz tuning.

Acoustica was a great opportunity to reinterpret and experiment with existing songs. It was all recorded in Reaper and all came together relatively quickly.

So having had such a creative 12 months I've decided to take considerably longer working on my next album.  A few reasons, firstly I'd like to continue to explore playing acoustically.  Secondly I'd like to add some strings, synths, keyboards etc. There's some soundscapey ideas I started to explore with "Sojourn" that I'd like to take further.  I really haven't made an album in this way since my 2nd release "Montage (music for a quiet space)". Thirdly, I'm also using Cubase (Elements) as my DAW. I've only ever used it for mastering so I'm excited about using it for a whole album.

Next year also marks 10 years since the release of Heartland (all recorded on a 4-track Boss Micro-BR and mixed in Wavepad and Garageband). Things have come a long way since then. So while there'll be no 10 year Anniversary deluxe vinyl reissue, in the not-so back of my mind I'm mentally sketching out plans for a special 10 year anniversary compilation album, to include pieces from various albums over the last decade With some tracks I've found the original recording stems (on 1 & 2 GB SD cards), so I'm looking forward to remixing some of the tracks.

The other thing is that music is changing and I'm doing a bit of catch-up. While Bandcamp continues to serve as my primary source for releasing material, I've started to release a few things on CD Baby which also makes some of my material available on streaming services.  Works in progress will still appear on Soundcloud, but it is hard to ascertain how long that platform will be around given the rumours of its possible demise.

Stay tuned...


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