Is This On?

Hey. It’s been a little while since I last posted. Over a year in fact. Hm. Well, some stuff has happened and some stuff hasn’t happened. This will probably be the first entry in a somewhat regular series, so I’ll save the juicy details for later. But let me get some broad stuff out of the way.

I don’t know if I exactly announced it anywhere, but my plan was for my next full-length release to come out in 2025. Yeah, that’s not happening. There’s lots of reasons for that. I’ll bulletize them below for now, and I’ll probably expand on most or even all of them in future posts.

• Mastering: I’ve been using the same music studio for over 10 years. I’ve been mostly happy with them over that time, and I wanted to continue using them in my workflow. But at the same time, I can say that it was downhill from the start. In the last year, it particularly took a huge plunge downward. I’m not sure if anyone has published an exposé of sorts about them, and I don’t know if I even want to, but I certainly could do it based strictly on my own real experience with them.
• Studio equipment: I had a consistent, trusty, lower-mid-range studio setup for about 5 years. It was a pretty average audio interface paired with an average pair of studio monitors. To make a long story short, the speakers blew up towards the end of production on Left Brain, and it took some time to get an upper-mid-range setup going for another round of recording.
• Recording chain: Somewhat related to the above point, I’ve kind of reluctantly moved on to using amp sims when recording guitar. That’s taken some time to adjust to. There are obvious benefits to it, but it still introduces pain points.
• Software authentication: I have an ever-growing collection of plugins and VSTs. All of them are completely legitimately purchased and licensed, but there was a period of time when a few of the key ones I rely upon stopped working because they wouldn’t authenticate in Reaper. I’m still not sure if the issue is completely resolved, but I was basically unable to work on anything for weeks until I kind of fixed it.

Those are probably all the technical holdups. There are plenty of other parallel roadblocks at play too including my site being taken down. It’s like I couldn’t sit down in front of my computer without something giving me grief.

Anyway, I’ll elaborate on at least some of the points further in the future, but here are some notes about the new album.

• The title probably isn’t too surprising if you inferred that it was intended to accompany the last one, but it will be entitled Left Brain (Green). With the previous album, I toyed with the idea of calling it The Purple Album or it being self-titled a la the Beatles’ White Album or something, but I ended up settling with a unique, untraditional name.
• It’ll probably have more than 11 songs. I’m currently eyeing 12 to make the final cut, but it’s possible that a song or two could be cut or added.
• My original vision was to be able to record Left Brain similarly to Right Brain, so that they’d have a similar sound. But my whole recording set up got upended, so that’s not going to happen. On a positive note, I think it will be objectively better sounding. I’ll get into the reasons why another day.
• I’m having fun and being more careful with song titles. Most of the songs, based on the lyrics, could have easily gotten a generic title. An example is a song that contains the lyric, “until there’s nothing left,” but there are probably dozens of songs on Spotify with the same title. So I chose to use a different lyric to represent the song that isn’t already someone else’s song. Another example is a song that has some German flavor to it. There’s a line in it that says, “A little German flavor never hurt anyone,” and I still might use that, but I’m leaning towards something fitting yet completely different and unique. I have a lot to say about song titles. That might deserve its own post.
• There are intentional similarities to Right Brain.
  • The first song is basically about the color green. It begins by me making it clear that it is not about drugs. And by the end of the track, I’ve explained which video game versions of Monopoly are the best.
  • There is a song about a cat. Last time around it was about Muggy Fluffernutter, an angry cat whose presence I enjoyed in my backyard. This time it’s about another stray cat who possibly intentionally mocked my masochistic tendencies.
  • There is a Blind Hate cover. It wouldn’t take fans long to figure out what song it is, so I’ll just say it’s “One Big Lie.” Fun fact: “One Big Lie” was the first song I wrote on my own that wasn’t intended to be performed by my band Blind Hate. The band’s fans may be aware of the fact that we had 2 versions: a short version and a long version. The long version included a part in the middle that ripped off the middle section of Nine Inch Nails’ “Starfuckers, Inc.” This song is basically done. I have constructed two versions of it, with and without that middle part. I don’t know if I’ll pick one or put both on the album. If you weren’t already familiar with the song, I don’t think you’d miss the middle part and you might even dislike the middle part if you heard it. But let’s be honest, I’ll probably listen to that song more than anyone else, so I feel like I should have the version I want on there, with or without the short version.
  • There will be at least one super old Robby Suavé song that was re-recorded for the album. For reference, on Right Brain, I reworked “I Am Lobo.”
• There are plenty of new/rare things about this new batch of songs as well.
  • There’s a skit track. To my recollection, I’ve only done this once before: “(S)awesome Intro” in 2008. I’m referring to them as skit tracks because there’s no music. It’s definitely not something you’d want to include in a playlist, but it will fit in perfectly if you listen to the album start to finish. I’ll also say that it’s supposed to be funny, but I don’t think more than 2 people including myself will find humor in it. Oh well.
  • As of writing this, Left Brain will have two instrumental tracks. I used to put out those more often in the early days. As time wore on, I found that my instrumentals weren’t interesting enough and were skippable. There are exceptions of course, like “You’re Ruining Society!,” if that counts as an instrumental, but most of them have been forgettable, if I do say so myself. Whatever ends up on the album should be exceptional, I hope.
  • I’ve posted dozens of times on this site, talked about my songs plenty, but I don’t know if I’ve ever admitted this: I’ve had this habit of inserting these odd, often awkward, short sequences in my songs. They’re usually 2 measures long with a kick drum on each whole note and minimal other instrumentation. I think the first time I did it was in “Everyone I Know Is an Alcoholic.” I use that method whenever I can’t figure out how to bridge one part of the song to the next. It technically serves its purpose, but it usually kills the momentum of the song. On this album, evolutions of that technique exist, but I’ve limited their usage. I’ve sort of made it my calling card, so I don’t want to stop doing it altogether, but I’ve made it a point to make these joining sections sound better and less frequent.
  • I think I’ve touched on this in the past, but I’ll do it again. Back in the day, I wanted all my songs to be at least 3 minutes long, and if I was able to make them 4 or even 5 minutes long, I was even happier. But my chops aren’t that great. It’s rare that my longer songs deserve to be that long. I will give a shout out to “Come on Home” though, which is on Right Brain. There are 2 distinct parts, and it almost feels like 2 different songs, so it being over 4 minutes long is fine. Anyway, my point is that with these new tracks, I’m not even really paying attention to how long the songs are (except for one song whose length is very intentional). If a song is shorter than 3 minutes…fine. If you think it’s too short, listen to it again. If it’s more than 4 minutes…also fine. If you think it’s too long, I don’t know, pause it, and listen to the rest later.

Okay, that’s enough. So yeah, the TL;DR is that I’m finishing up the sort-of-sequel to Right Brain (Purple), it’s called Left Brain (Green), and it’ll be pretty good.