A couple of days of music admin. First, tada! Burn of God is complete. I've had enough of tweaks this way and that. I have mixed feelings about it today, at times liking everything and seeing it, for the most part, as the artwork I envisaged, an exploration of a subject in a way rare for music, something Bergmanian, dramatic, and different. At other times I dislike it, but then see it as a transition album. It has many firsts; it's my first album where almost all of the tracks include sung vocals. The majority of my music has been instrumental to date, but now, I can't imagine going back to that, or to something easy.
It's also my first album which includes live guitar, though I can barely play a note on the instrument. This month I've started to practice guitar, though. Learning any instrument is a matter of commitment, to learn it or die! No grey areas or limp ideals! All artists should be learning new skills as well as showcasing existing ones.
I've heard today that War is Over is also complete and has started to appear on platforms like Google Play, and we have some important Fall in Green performances booked for this year. I'd like to do something special with the Apocalypse of Clowns album, and create something rounded and complete, with a psychological dimension, like my Burning Circus collection. I wonder if we could create something fantastical, like a classic Genesis or Marillion album. The challenge with fantasy is making something that people feel is about them, but that's the challenge of realism too.
Another thing I've done today is work on a new noise gate algorithm based on my compressor code. My existing gate uses a volume tracker of fixed intensity, and when this goes below the threshold, fades the sound out by a certain 'decay' slope, and when above, fades it up by a certain 'attack' slope. My new one uses separate attack and decay slopes for the volume tracker, but a fixed 'bite' for the gate. One difference is that I can adjust the relative volume of the gated and ungated bits, even amplifying or inverting the signal of either to create odd effects. It's an experiment. I'm unsure if this new 'Hypergate' will be useful at all. I hardly ever use noise gates, only really for special effects (gated reverbs perhaps, and I can put them in parallel with a second track, to so-called 'duck' a mix, even then, very rarely, the need for a duck is a sign of bad composition).
Here's the final Burn of God cover. It will be out on March 20th.
