Happy holidays! One of my goals for this past year was to record and release an album of music, totalling at least thirty minutes and ten tracks. I accomplished that goal! You can listen to and buy the album on Bandcamp and it is also available on most streaming platforms as well.

I wrote about the album on Lines, a forum centered around music, computers and synthesis that I am a moderator of. Briefly, though, I wanted to collect some thoughts about it here as well. I set myself a constraint for the album: I wanted to use only the Max4Live devices that I created that serve as polysynth, monosynth and drum synth. When I sat down to finish the third track, I discovered that it wanted vocals, and was surprised to discover that I didn’t hate the sound of my own voice quite as much; as a result there are vocals on seven of the ten tracks.

One of the gratifying parts of creating things like the synthesizer plugins is learning and being surprised by them. I was very pleased to discover the range that these plugins have.

Partway through the year, Lines users @sixolet and @nonverbalpoetry released sacred cyborg harmony, a script for the monome norns that allows you to harmonize vocals à la Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek. I was super inspired by this script; it appears on three of the tracks, and I bought a mic stand in order to better use it.

The album was mixed and mastered by my friend StephTheGirl, who did a truly incredible job making my demos sparkle and shine.