Early November 2019 Images
All taken with an iPhone11 and processed with the MaxCurve app
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/maxcurve/id1048026594
Am beavering away on two upcoming album projects, not sure as regards a completion / release date as such – possibly early 2020.
Have had to do a ‘prune’ of older tracks on my Soundcloud page. Soundcloud used to be a good service and I was happy to pay for their ‘Pro’ subscription for years, but I think it’s very much lost it’s way now, so I’m keeping it just for free / unreleased / work-in-progress tracks.
I also recently made a montage of spatial* rain recordings for anyone interested in such things (* ambisonics to binaural). The effect works best on headphones.
Lastly, here’s a recent image from one of my favourite local places.
‘Indigo’ new album released today !
‘Indigo’ is comprised of a selection of tracks created from processed, generative sources.
The process for this album was different to my other releases – I created a pool of source material using generative blocks and ensembles in Native Instrument’s Reaktor. These were later processed, transformed and composed into the finished tracks.
I plan to release another two albums by the end of this year, which (again !) will be quite diversely different works.
‘Indigo’ is up on Bandcamp, as well as the streaming / download sites:
https://igneousflame.bandcamp.com/album/indigo
Edit of the track ‘Ogong’ on Soundcloud
Video on Youtube of the above:
Social media for independent musicians ?
Been mulling over this recently and my thoughts are, for an independent, ambient musician such as myself (i.e. not in any kind of major league !), I don’t really see the value of spending the time on social media to try to ‘raise my profile’. I should say I’m speaking here as an individual artist – I can’t speak for bands and the like.
I do have a YouTube channel and an Instagram account * (see links), as I have made a lot of videos to accompany some of my music and I am a keen ‘out and about’ photographer. I very selectively follow / subscribe / comment on these two. I did have a Twitter account for a week (couldn’t really see the point) and have never had a Facebook account (on principle !). I do have a Soundcloud page, but I use that as just a place to post tracks.
The time required to subscribe / follow / like people and posts is just not worth the effort in my opinion – bearing in mind the reciprocal and disingenuous ‘back slapping’ thing going on, which is not my thing at all. I do wonder how much real ‘connection’ is made on these social media sites ? I used to have a Myspace account and spent some time ‘curating’ that and did make some meaningful connections there through private messages, but I gave up on it as it started to lose it’s way somewhat and I realised that I had spent too much time on the networking side of it and now all of that is lost as it has long gone – which could happen to the current sites too.
Out of the blue, I get emails from people who say very complimentary things about my music, which encourages me significantly, this was also the case before social media existed too.
In conclusion, my view is that I would rather spend my time on my music. It may seem an obvious point, but that really is the primary thing – without good work, all manner of promotion is pretty pointless. I do do a bit of a ‘press release’ thing when I have a new album out, but don’t go overboard on it. My goal is to improve and release the best material I can. I have been releasing since 2003 and am very pleased that more people than ever are listening to my music.
(* Instagram seems to me to be a social media site using images (and videos) instead of words. Maybe that’s a simplistic view on it, I originally thought it was more akin to ‘flickr’, but on my short time there it seems much more ‘socially’ orientated than that)
There are always new exciting music software releases and naturally I’m tempted by these and think what they could bring to what I am working with, but I also try to consider can I make use of what I already have to achieve similiar results ? Of course, some things just can’t be replicated – instrument libraries etc. but other things can.
For example, I use FL studio as my primary DAW (digital audio Workstation) and because I’ve used it for years I am now pretty familiar with it. By thinking things through, I find I can (usually) recreate multiple effects and the like with things that I am already familiar with – combinations of filters / gates / delays etc. using a bit of ‘creative thinking’. Chaining effects together and re-ordering them was always something Brian Eno used to talk about regarding using the studio as an ‘instrument’ and it equally applies to the computer based studio too. Actually, I have found this to yield somewhat unique results too, as opposed to relying on a single plugin or piece of software to do it’s magic. Also I have to say, I find a lot of presets are often unrepresentative of what the plug in can actually do, delving into things further can produce more useful (to me) results.
So, there’s an element of ‘recycling’ and revisiting ‘old’ software that I try to adopt. I already have more than enough music software, a fair bit of that I never use and do I really need more, when I can make use of what I have ? Revisiting some unforgotten ‘hidden gems’ can be a pleasant surprise !
In the spirit of this post here is a fine device (a Zoom 8080) from the 90s that I have, which sounds better than modern plugins / similiar units in some settings.
2019 projects update
I am currently working away on a number of projects which I intend to release later in the year.
I’m mindful that it has been some time since my last album release and I intend to make 2019 a more productive year than 2018.
Horizon
All taken with an iPhone 8 plus.
