I am considering making an album… I guess with a twist.
Music, and the ability to hear, speaks very strongly to my heart due to my own experiences.
My questions would be along the lines of how to structure an Album, how i can create with a defined goal in mind using an all-VCV workflow (except foe the recording part)… how to incorporate my experiences relating to the subject of hearing into the Album?
How would you achieve the above? And on a budget, and be noticed enough to have a decent chance of being released?
Interesting Post ! I’m actually working on an album involving Vcv Rack. My guess would be, record some of your patches, and later, release them as an album
Just like any album, it’s good if you stick to one genre of music.
I was thinking of releasing on Bandcamp. AFAIK it’s free to release music there, and with the right genre tags, you can get some exposure, and maybe even small revenues
I know a few of us here released albums on bandcamp, maybe they can tell us more about their experience @ablaut@Omri_Cohen (your names came to mind , if you have 5 minutes to tell us… )
Yep, Soundcloud is pretty dead since they tried to become Spotify. Bandcamp is definitely the place to be to post albums. Soundcloud for one off tracks.
You can also get your album on things like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube etc by using something like distrokid which is about £25 a year I think.
I hope I don’t come across as too negative, it really is an amazing platform. Just don’t expect to post an album and everyone to love it and buy it without any work
Oh of course. I know that it does take marketing on my part to sell the album.
Now that I found a decent platform or platforms to release to, now i gotta figure out how I am gonna structure the album and how i can make each composition reflect whatever I want to convey. This would be the more time consuming part imho.
I remember form my childhood a very powerful album cover from Manfred Mann’s Earth Bands the Roaring Silence. Artwork could be one way to express your vision.
Other things you can explore are the sounds of tinnitus in a musical way. Very doable with synthesis and VCV Rack. Emotions, challenges, adaptation, overcoming, discrimination, joy, empathy… whatever your life experience these can all be expressed as musical ideas that can be plotted into an album structure to tell a story.
Of course there are song titles and album names, maybe make them all braille with no explantion to make the hearing think and experience what it’s like to loose something.
You could also try to team up with a local amateur interpretative dance group to see how they would respond to your music and experience, maybe even create a little show at your local community centre that way deaf people can be included too, contact the local paper or news channel.
I think there are lots of things you can do to promote your experience, it will take some lateral thinking, probably a lot of virtual door knocking but if you believe in what you are trying to do chances are other will too.
I’m not sure if this is the kind of advice you’re after just some ideas that may may spark other ideas.
Good luck with your album, if something is heart felt it usually comes out its the music.
What drives interest on Bandcamp is supporters and comments shown at the bottom of the album page (such as here, without wishing to get into self promotion: https://roomofwires.bandcamp.com/album/white-transit). This took a lot of hard work sending out free download codes to magazines, websites, radio shows, Facebook groups etc etc. But it does result in other people on Bandcamp discovering it and recommending it to their friends etc etc.
Well, most Indie labels these days use Bandcamp anyway, and so the same thing applies. Although, depending on the size of the label, it obviously gives you an immediate audience.
