Amberwolf's Music Studio Technical Stuff

[amberwolf]

Your music has always been more enjoyable to me then Philip Glass!

It's good!

Thanks!



I think if I could get more people to listen to it, I might get enough people that liked it to have a sizeable audience.... Back when i was able to play at conventions I had a few dozen consistent fans, but that was pre-internet, so there wasn't any good way to provide them with new stuff except for the once-a-year times I would see them at the cons (GallifreyOne in LA, and Leprecon/Coppercon here in Phoenix).

But my live playing sucks compared to what I can do in the computer, since I can fix my many many mistakes and work on ideas I cannot physically play (most of them). The problem is that just sitting there in some public place editing music as people walk by doesn't gather much of an audience, compared to playing live; I've tried that too. And they gather *different* audiences (though the editing one is much much smaller; only those very few interested in how stuff is made, not really in *what* is being made).

The "analytics" on soundclick and bandcamp are pretty primitive, but they show me enough to tell that I don't have many repeat listeners, even though I have it set to allow 100 free listens before they'd have to buy it (none have ever come anywhere close to that), and the only hits I get are when I post a new one here or on the cakewalk forum. (well, every so often someone listens from the new-piece posts on the haibane renmei forum (cff-ssw.net) but that's very rare). Before twitter was eaten by the monster and destroyed / made unusable, I would occasionally get a listen from new-piece posts on there, but it wasn't worth the time posting there even before it was eaten.


I know that what I make isn't most people's cup of tea, so I don't expect that most people that listen once will come back for a second one, or listen to a second song if they don't like the first, but those that do like it seem to really like it.

Have you ever contacted any local collage radio stations to see what it might take to get a little radio play?

I have yet to receive a reply from just about anyone or anyplace over the years. The few that did reply either would tell me they're not accepting submissions, or that I don't suit their style, or some other polite way of telling me to bugger off.

None of my stuff is exactly mainstream, or well-done, polished/produced like the crap on the "radio", so I don't blame them.

(and my communication is wierd, so that probably deters them too)

So far the couple of people that have "volunteered" to help with promotion, like Marty above, don't think I should make my own music, but should just make stuff that would be popular and easily promotable like copies of whatever other people are making...and that would be pointless.

 

[amberwolf]

I've updated the Aftermath of Sunlight:
A slightly remixed version 052325 000001 000073u is here:

Aftermath of Sunlight [1] by Amberwolf



BTW, this (Pre-Cast Shadows) is it's companion track, still very much a WIP more even than Aftermath of Sunlight:

Pre-Cast Shadows (Aftermath of Sunlight Pt 2) by Amberwolf

It's built on hte percussive section from Aftermath of Sunlight; so far only has the first minute or so of what will be something longer.

Most likely these will become a "single track' at some point, or a matched set, or something...whatever they call it in real music when there's several related pieces of music that go together but can be listend to separately. Movements?

 

[e-beach]

I've updated the Aftermath of Sunlight:
A slightly remixed version 052325 000001 000073u is here:

Aftermath of Sunlight [1] by Amberwolf



BTW, this (Pre-Cast Shadows) is it's companion track, still very much a WIP more even than Aftermath of Sunlight:

Pre-Cast Shadows (Aftermath of Sunlight Pt 2) by Amberwolf

It's built on hte percussive section from Aftermath of Sunlight; so far only has the first minute or so of what will be something longer.

Most likely these will become a "single track' at some point, or a matched set, or something...whatever they call it in real music when there's several related pieces of music that go together but can be listend to separately. Movements?

A movement is an appropriate term for it so long as they have linking ideas. Think of any 1970's rock opera you can remember. Queen, Pink Floyd, Yes, Alice Cooper, The Who, they all had albums which kind of had movements. Plenty of opera is like that but they have acts. A classical peice like Vivaldi's Four Seasons comes to mind.

As far as listening to the "songs" separately that has become standard for a couple of reasons. One, the obvious one is due to the need for radio stations to sell advertising space. However since radio stations are now competing with streaming services the other reason comes into play, the listeners attention span. If the goes longer then 3 1/2 minutes people get board and look for something new.

 

[amberwolf]

BTW, this (Pre-Cast Shadows) is it's companion track, still very much a WIP more even than Aftermath of Sunlight:

Been trying to work this one out; feels like every change I make pushes it farther from where I originally intended it to go. Not sure where it is headed now....

Pre-Cast Shadows (Aftermath of Sunlight Pt 2)




Also added both to Bandcamp:

Aftermath of Sunlight


Pre-Cast Shadows (Aftermath of Sunlight Pt 2)

 

[amberwolf]

Added cover art to The Beaten Dog

The Beaten Dog, by Amberwolf

track by Amberwolf

amberwolf.bandcamp.com

It is still hard work to get what I want out of it, but the perchance.org image generator is generally better (than any other "AI" image generator) at following what I tell it, and most importantly, if I use the same prompt and the same seed number, I can generate as many variations of the same image as needed, slowly refining the prompt to refine the specific image, instead of getting a whole new set of random images every time "generate" is clicked like happens with every other one.

The one thing it lacks that would be better is a way to "like" and "dislike" each image out of the set that's generated, so that process could also be used to refine an image down to the art I actually intended to create.

The one above took about four hours of refinement (only about 10 to 30 seconds to generate images four at a time, each time, most of the time spent on refining the prompt over and over)...but the first half hour was "wasted" before I discovered I could reuse the same seed / prompt to get the variations, after I found the most hearbreaking variation of the random ones that best followed my prompt and needed a way to just improve that.*****

The hardest part was bringing myself to type in and *ask for* an image of an abused animal. And suppressing my tears and heart throbbing when I saw what came up each time.

But this is what this song is about, all those lost fuzzy souls out there that aren't lucky enough to escape this kind of horrific monstrosity, and I want those seeing the cover art to feel what the song is about if they don't get it from the song (which someday I want to revisit and "finish", but to do that I have to "show" the abuse in the song itself, and that is harder for me to do than I thought it would be).


****there are a few others that were contenders, but this one most makes me feel for it, want to get it out of there and hold it and make it all better, and I'm hoping that is what comes across to others as well. Some of the others below: