What Have I Been Up To?

The lacquer for the vinyl version of Paradigms is being cut as I write this, one of the big lacquer guys in the world is working on it to ensure highest quality.
I made some more adjustments to the new site and store and the blog as you can see. It’s not an easy task to make sure the website and store work flawlessly on all devices, desktop, tablets and phones.

DVD Production-wise, I put together all the demos and videos to be included on the bonus DVD, only thing missing are the play along tracks. I’ve also made a nice compilation of some behind the scenes footage. Not too long, but still enjoyable.

I’ve been going to a print shop the past couple of days to make some more proofs, I want to make sure the cover and artwork print quality and colors are to my liking.
That’s all for now.
Back to work, no rest for the wicked.

-Shant

Masters are In

Here’s what I’ve been doing in the last couple of weeks. I completed the CD and Vinyl artwork, need a few last minute color correction and fine tuning before sending to production. We finalized the mix with Alex and the album was being mastered last week, I had to purchase some necessary UPC and ISRC codes to track the album information online, I started working on a new website design with the Paradigms theme, and it’s almost done; few last touches remain. I think you’ll love it.

I thought the band needs a logo so I made dozens of them, and then showed it to friends, they were meh, I made dozens more and showed it to friends, they were better but still meh, then suddenly on a sunny afternoon it came to me, so I made a dozen more, I’m not exaggerating, finally found the one! So I made a dozen more variations of it. Can you tell I’m anal?

Then I made some new art that will be used on merchandise (T-Shirts, guitar picks etc..) for you guys. The new Semantic Saturation Store is looking lit. I was running into performance issues on the store site, so I wasted a few more days trying to find some solutions, it’s a bit better now. Hopefully will improve further. I also had to make some extra artwork for the exclusive items which will only be sent out to you, the backers.

What else.. Oh, I’m putting together all the videos I’ve recorded of me during the album cover painting process, and of course I’m making a sped up timelapse so you don’t sit down for hours (days) to watch the entire process. This video will be available to you on extra CD that will be included in a limited edition CD package, among other goodies which I also have to put together. Unfortunately things don’t just come together on their own.

What’s next? The audio masters have *just arrived*, if everything goes well, I’ll sign a deal with a CD and Vinyl production company to start producing the CDs and Vinyls, but of course it’s not that easy, as vinyls need a different master, and I’ll have to wait for their input on whether we can fit the album on a single disc or two, which will increase the cost significantly.I need to sit down with Richard the director who’s working on a new music video, and we have to go through all the fixes we need to make.
But most importantly, coming up next is the big reveal of the album artwork and track-listing.

Stay tuned!
-Shant

Where’s the album already?

… You might ask, as I do myself every single day. Turns out making records is not as easy as it sounds, who knew? In the last update I mentioned Alex (sound engineer) who started mixing the album in October. Things dragged in December and January and Alex left to tour with his band in the last month or so. Musicians go on tour, who knew? Alex is now back and will commence working on the mix WHEN his new computer arrives. Kill me 🙂

Meanwhile, my dear friend Richard is (still) editing the majestic new music video for one of the tracks from the new album. Obviously, we won’t be able to release the music video if the song is not mixed and mastered yet. Having said that, I still haven’t seen a single second from the edits, but Richard is being optimistic and said “it’s really worth the wait” (his words).
The music video should be done by the end of March. <– See what I did there Richard? …. Richard? …. Wake up Richard.

This post is totally not a distraction to make you forget that I still have to finish working on the album cover and artwork. What’s with 2018? Did the government spray some laziness chemicals in the air or something?

Illuminati Confirmed!

Crap, I almost forgot!

My music is now on a new platform called Musicoin. Yes, it’s one of those crypto-currency (digital currency, Bitcoin) thingies; and if you don’t know what Bitcoin is, make sure you include the location of the rock you live under in your mailing address, at least you’ll get the new CD when it’s out; not sure what you’ll do with it though. 🙂

So, why Musicoin?

Unlike Spotify, or other similar industry giants who are destroying the music industry, Musicoin actually pays the artist 1 $MUSIC by a Pay-Per-Play (PPP) smart contract, and the best part is, you (the listener) don’t pay anything out of your pocket. So, who pays the artist? Miners (Mind you, they’re not human miners). And who pays the miners? Miners solve computational work to mine $MUSIC and they get paid for their work by the Musicoin ecosystem. Pretty smart, eh?

The numbers, what do they mean?

1 $MUSIC is currently worth 2.5 cents, Spotify claims that their average pay per stream is $0.007 which is a flat out lie, the real number is around $0.004 (that’s less than a cent, not even half a cent) which is also the average pay per play for other streaming platforms like Apple or Amazon etc… HINT: If you’re listening on Spotify, you’re not paying the artist, you’re paying the millionaires.

But what do I know?

Here’s my Musicoin page https://musicoin.org/nav/artist/0x89a42ed7a1367…

Go listen to some music and support artists directly.

I hope I’ll be back with better news next time

-Shant

Ding!

I know I’m doing a lousy job keeping you posted about the progress on the new album, I’ll try to fix that.

The album is currently being mixed by Alex Argento. We had some technical difficulties and had to find a solution, and we have. Alex was not feeling well lately, wishing him a quick recovery, and he’s also busy preparing to tour with his band Icefish.

Meanwhile I’m working with Richard Bastarache on a new music video for one of the tracks from the new album (Carousel of Death). The music video should be out by March if not earlier, with the album release following after that. No hard date, on the album release yet, as pressing LPs take a few weeks.

Slowly but Surely, Cheers!

-Shant

Time For Some Updates

Alex Argento‘s mixes started coming in as we speak, there will be some back and forth feedback before we get to the final mix, but we’ll get there.

Meanwhile we’re working on a fabulous music video for one of the tracks from the new album Paradigms, titled “Carousel of Death” with the amazing duo Richard Bastarache and Steph Miramontes Art. We’ve already shot in a few locations over three days, first two of which went great, and the third day… I don’t wanna talk about it right now, but we managed to pull it off; thanks to my wonderful wife Nanor Wazirian who’s organizing everything and doing her best to put together the music video.

I’m also working on the album cover, as you may or may not know, I’m painting the album cover digitally myself, it’s gonna be something out of this world, literally. And if you’d like to watch me paint, I have a twitch channel where I stream the painting process live, go follow me there at www.twitch.tv/metroprog.

Over and out!
Shant