Ok time to stop procrastinating and let’s just do this! Thank you everyone who has pushed me to do this on the forum and listening parties...
Thanks @megadead for the idea to start a thread here. I thought it would be good to open up this process for whoever might gain some value or insights from being part of it. It would be awesome to think of this as a community effort and I’m really humbled by the encouragement you’ve offered so far.
Firstly, I recognise that an album would usually only be viable for an artist with a well established, large and engaged fan base. I don’t have that so this is really just an indulgence. That said, I do aim
To try and publicise as much as is practical and see it as a way of kickstarting a new musical chapter for 2021.
I’m not in a great rush to get it out and have been trying to work out how ‘finished’ my tracks really are. I’m moving house in a few weeks and hope to make some upgrades to my studio space so open to the idea of treating the 2020 tracks as pre-production and putting some energy into getting this thing really polished. I’d also like to get into the live scene again so thinking of timing the release such that I can weave some shows into the launch process, so hopefully by the autumn if we get this pandemic behind us...
For anyone who wants to be involved, you are all welcome with no pressure or obligation whatsoever. Having said that, I firmly believe in the value of creative professionals and intend to pay going rates for any professional services such as mastering, artwork, PR, etc. and would like to utilise the amazing talent within the BC community wherever possible.
I think what I’ll do is post topic based replies in this thread, which we’ll develop through your replies to those. If that gets out of hand we can try something else. Off the top of my head, those topics will be:
Overall concept ideas for the album
Track list and song candidates
Artwork
Release plan
Final listening party
Promotional ideas
I’ll leave this post for any comments and feedback for a few days before I go any further...
@SPECTORAL @Elise Cabret @megadead @gary.franks @Stu Smy @Stu Watts @Tiarna Pepall @Dan Bariani @Gee Vee @Ohm Phobic @Matt 'Martiln' Tinkler (please also share with anyone else you think might be keen...)
YO yo yoooo First off as mentioned, YES so much yes!
I am more than happy to get involved in the following:
- Artwork (if what I do suits, at least!)
- Final listening party (I'm happy to help arrange a venue for this!)
- Promo ideas & Release Plan (I haven't had much exp with promo'ing music, but have had education in marketing so happy to lend a hand here. Also @Stu Watts knows a ton)
I love how open to the community your album project is. I'm looking forward to seeing this evolve :D
TRACK LIST & SONG CANDIDATES
Here's a list of all the songs I've done this year. They're mostly Beat Collective challenges but a few others as well.
I'd appreciate your thoughts on which are your favorites, what further work might need to be done on any of them, I could try and order them to tell a story of 2020, or try and make it flow musically or should I just put all the songs chronologically as a record of the year?...
Overall there are 19 songs here, so maybe even a double album? One with an electronic vibe and the other with more of an indie/rock feel?
All thoughts and ideas would be particularly welcome!
Beat Collective songs
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/odd-one-out
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/days-like-this
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/coming-up
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/lullaby
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/oceans
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/when-the-daylight
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/exit
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/snowing-in-melbourne
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/fireworks
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/counter
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/some-times-feat-elise-cabret
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/starlight
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/horizon-feat-ajs
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/wake-me-up
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/human-storm-beat-collective-challenge
Unfinished/not quite happy with
https://soundcloud.com/me-in-a-dream/empty-space/s-NM8v8
L.E.M.O.M compilation tracks
https://lemom.bandcamp.com/track/new-years-day-sleeplab-me-in-a-dream-cover
https://lemom.bandcamp.com/track/scorch-the-earth
@Elise Cabret song that I did some vocals on. I'd love to include this if you're ok with that?
https://soundcloud.com/howtostareatceilings/ticket-to-the-moon-bounce3/s-ibP5ERGf1dM
Hey Chris, sorry I swear I already wrote a comment on here? Did you have a different thread originally and now it's gone? Lol, I could just be going mad. Anyway, right now I'm making a playlist of all these tunes and I'm gonna go through them and maybe pick out 10 and a nice order for them, and then you can say HEY NO, THIS SONG IS MISSING, YOU'RE AN IDIOT, etc etc. There's definitely room for both an album and an EP. You know, release the EP first, maybe with some of the more esoteric stuff in there, and then the album. The Spotify algorithm definitely seems to like multiple releases over just one big release. But I have had approximately zero successes on Spotify, so who knows I can help with mastering if you like? Although tbh, your mixes sound incredible and could easily just get dumped into an auto mastering program like Ozone to do it quickly, and still sound great. But I do have some nice plugins that sound great on the master buss, and would be very easy to add a little sparkle if needed. I can also help with artwork too if needed? Clearly @Tiarna Pepall is incredible, but I could still help with the graphic design on top of her art or something. Even if you just have a photo you'd like to use, I can help out with design if needed Anyway, here's examples of stuff I've mastered and artwork/design I've done for other artists, if you want a look. https://bnjmnshw.wordpress.com/mastering/
https://bnjmnshw.wordpress.com/tag/artwork/
Alright Chris, here's my pitch. I haven't told any 2020 narrative with the track order, just what feels right and tells a story musically. To me anyway. I might be way off :) So my tracklisting for the album is thus. 10 songs, with a nice flow, starting with that Kraftwerk Autobahn style intro of 'Exit' (it makes me so happy), it carries on full of fairly upbeat stompers, starts getting emotional around track 5, starts dipping down into melancholy and drama, then comes back up to the nonchalance of 'Wake Me Up', before finishing on 'Raining in Melbourne' and that fantastic hopeful second half of the track, and punctuated finish. Feels like such a great album reminiscent of my UK youth. Doves, Primal Scream, Badly Drawn Boy, Super Furry Animals, I love it man.
And then the preceding EP might go a little something like this. 6 tracks starting with the banging 'Some Times' (what a great intro to Me in a Dream that "COME ON" is) with some more electro bangers, and finishing on the heartbreacking 'Scorch the Earth', giving quite a good feel of your range in anticipation of the album.
I thought the 'Ticket to the Moon' collab with Elise might work best as a standalone single, as the production is quite different to the other tracks, and as good of a song as it is, I couldn't get it to sit right in either playlist. You might do better though. All in all, I think there's a nice flow to both playlists, with the album feeling especially nice to me. Anyway, I had fun putting those playlists together, but don't feel obliged to go along with any of it! It's lovely stuff man!
Hey Ben, thank you so much for such thoughtful, insightful and thorough feedback. Totally agree that separate releases make sense from a strategy perspective, although I did make a deliberate choice to throw strategy to the wind in 2020 and just focus on creativity. But I think the flow is working well as you've suggested, although I may think about swapping Horizon and Counter for Oceans and Human storm, that way the EP has a more electronic vibe and the album is eclectic.
As for artwork, I really love your work and I really dig @Tiarna Pepall's stuff too. I love the idea of a collaborative effort!
For mastering, I did most of the tracks via Landr for speed and cost but I was contemplating having it mastered together. Having said that and after doing some A/B comparisons with @SPECTORAL, I'm starting to change my mind about the quality of algorithmic mastering... I think I'll defer that decision but thanks for offering your services!
Really enjoying listening to these playlists... Christmas has come early.
I know I am somewhat out of date with all the latest production styles but to me these tracks sound so much better to than the supposed ARIA album of the year by Tame Impala. Anyone with me on this?
Aww thanks Doc! I don’t mind a bit of Tame Impala but I must admit I found his last album a bit self absorbed. it didn’t really resonate with me, although clearly it does with millions...
So... My current thinking looks like this:
EP release with a bit more of an electronic vibe with some human emotion themes running through. I think these tracks are pretty close to ready so I'll look at launching early in the new year (no point releasing much over Christmas I think) Tracklisting as follows:
Some Times
Fireworks
Oceans
Human Storm
Lullaby
Days like this
Then the Album, later in the year and hopefully supported by live shows (with a band) and may have a bit of a narrative/concept feel with more of an indie/rock texture. I'm thinking of even doing a few interludes to tie it together more, tracklisting goes like:
Exit
Coming up
Odd one out
Starlight
Horizon
Counter
When the daylight
Wake me up
Snowing in Melbourne
Great idea using the forum for this dude. I'm all-in. I would love to get into a listening sesh when I have some time later and help you with
Track list and song candidates, hells yeah. And yep, to the above RE: mastering with Landr. They've currently got a Black Friday sale 35% off the yearly HD unlimited, it's totally worth it, buy it. Even if you end up using Ben or others to master some tracks, having the option to get like, 8 track wavs mastered in one night in your studio thanks to the HD 24bit/48KHz++ full algorithm is so handy. But if you're a gun with Ozone maybe you can do just as good a job. I definitely cant lol. I can vouch for @megadead's mastering though having blind A-B'ed his own Megadead remix of an upcoming EP track against LANDR and his was better ;-)
I can offer my thoughts on a Release plan, im no expert here though. But what Ben said above about Spotify and regular releases is so true. It does help with Spotify Editorial pitching if you can mention a rollout plan. With that in mind, if you're not wedded to the idea of an album yet, consider doing a triple/3-part EP, 5-6 tracks per EP, and have them all linked by some title structure/art theme/concept, split to drop every 3 months or something. So the previous EP builds hype for the next part and so on. A great example was John Mayer who released his Search For Everything album initially as 3 split "waves" containing 4 tracks each. (Later, he had his distro rename Wave 3 as just the whole album and added all the past tracks on it, but you wouldn't need to do that).
Promotional - at least, what I've found works well for playlisting, blog coverage, and what to not bother doing. But make sure you're prepared with SOME budget for this, and timetable in some hours for urself close to and just after release. It's a huge topic and best discussed over a virtual or real-life coffee/drinks :)