So what's been happening? Well, lets see...
Chaotica EP
Work has been increasingly intrusive on my social life and free time lately, working night shifts and weekends. This has led to a bit of neglect on promoting Chaotica, which in hindsight might not be such a bad thing.
The full EP is going through a re-master, with some tracks going through some more structural tweaks. After spending some time sitting down to listen to the EP after it's production and after leaving it alone for some time, I've noticed improvements that desperately need to be made.
For example, "Chaotica" and "Don't Scream" are going through an arrangement change at the moment. I'm going to try and shorten the two tracks a little bit and add some punch and dynamics to the drops in each song. "Chaotica" definitely needed some mixing, a little remastering and some sampling changes to the drums. "Don't Scream" was an issue of arrangement mainly, but still needs some serious mastering.
"Bright Lights" is going through a remastering process, and I'm looking to really beef up the bass a little more. Maybe some layering, and possible a couple of sample changes in the drum kit.
"The March" needs some tweaking. Again a little mastering and some synth pattern changes. The bass drum has also be swapped out for something a lot more "punchy".
"The March (Angels Remix)" is being left alone for the time being. That was a joint project featuring my brother's input, so I kind of want to leave that one alone.
Once everything is completed and finalised, I'll look at seriously promoting the EP as best I can. It may look like a busy night tonight followed by me trawling around Manchester city centre with some CDs in a ruck-sac.
New Stuff
There's some good new tracks going to be released after a while, probably appearing on the next EP after I've finished promoting Chaotica. Some new PrimeLoops.com sample packs have helped me with really creating some interesting new drum patterns and sounds creating a little more of a Junglist vibes to these new songs.
Currently, one has a solid title of "Deadzone". The other's project files are simply named "1" or "Drum n Bass Skin". In fact, there's four versions of "Drum n Bass Skin", all built from the first, and all extremely different.
I'm using a lot of classic bass synthesis techniques with this new stuff, adding some heavy distortion/overdrive and other effects to create some interesting wobble and reese bass synths.
For this new stuff I'm concentrating heavily on purely creating my own sounds, rather sculpting sounds from presets included within the many synth VST's that I have. So, after experimenting with bass and getting that to a gold standard, there'll be some more pads and stabs being generated and added in.
So, it looks like this new stuff is going to take a little longer to produce, but it's a hell of a lot more fun to write!
Anyway. That's it from me.
I'll let you know when the Chaotica EP (Final) is out. Bye!
