|
|
Preparing for an Album
If you’ve been checking my musical Facebook page at all, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been wanting to get going on some album, but I haven’t been successful in doing so yet. Over the past month, I’ve really been listening to myself to see what kind of album I feel most like doing, and it keeps coming back to doing an album of video game covers.
I had originally planned to stick with one game and cover my favorite tracks from that game, but doing a catch-all video game cover album with a combination of new covers and reworked old covers (and there are a lot) seemed like the most enjoyable way to go.
I had planned on doing an album like this last fall under my Amaranthine Skies project, but there was too much going on with “A Chip off the Shizz Block, Volume One” and “Nevar Say Die! Compilation, Volume Three” at the time to be able to make enough time to do an album. This year, “A Chip off the Shizz Block, Volume Two” is already in the bag and “Nevar Say Die! Compilation, Volume Four” is about to go into the post-production stage with about four months left in the year, which will give me ample time to put something together.
The only thing potentially holding me back is the sheer amount of tracks that I want to cover! I’ve combed over all of the old lists that I could find (there are more around here somewhere), and I’ve surely got enough material here for at least five full-length discs like this. Some of the old choices have dropped off the list due to changes in my musical style, but a lot more new ones have shown up for that same reason.
I’ve been listening to tons of VG music over the past week and not only is it taking me back to all those enjoyable times spent gaming when I was younger, but I’m still amazed at the sheer amount of great compositions I’m finding from a plethora of different games. The technology may have limited the sounds, but it likely increased the compositional creativity.
With so many compositions to choose from, I’m going to try and balance things as best I can with about half of the songs being new songs and half being reworks. Anyone that has followed my history of covering video game tunes knows that Wood Man will be on here, though I’m thinking this will be the last time I go to that particular well. This will be my fifth time covering it, though the last time I did was in 2005. I may revisit it again in 2015, but I can’t say for sure.
I also want to balance things out between the systems quite a bit, though NES and SNES will likely be the most dominant of the systems. The tracks from other systems are few and far between on my lists, though I’ll definitely do or rework a few of them.
As for the recording of the album, I’m going to work on songs as I go along and arrange things as I need to. I fully expect to record things I won’t be using on this album, though hopefully not too many. They can always be saved or cleaned up for the next album, used as Dwelling of Duels entries, or released on compilations if need be.
In any event, I’m ready to get going on this album, so I’m going to spend the rest of this month sifting through my lists and start to work in September. I’m hoping to finish up by sometime around my birthday or Christmas so I can have everything ready to go by MAGFest 9 in mid-January. Wish me luck!
Discuss this post at The Forum of Jason Vincion!
Posted on August 28th, 2010.
External Links
• A Chip off the Shizz Block, Volume One – A Chip off the Shizz Block, Volume One – CCN016 – Concatenation Records
• A Chip off the Shizz Block, Volume Two – A Chip off the Shizz Block, Volume Two – CCN022 – Concatenation Records
• Dwelling of Duels – Dwelling of Duels
• Nevar Say Die! Compilation, Volume Three – Nevar Say Die! Compilation, Volume Three – CCN018 – Concatenation Records
|
|
