Category: composing

One Giant Leap For “Derivations”

Posted on 2020-02-11 Written by D. Lee Jackson Leave a Comment

music-score-mouse A major milestone has been met in the production of my upcoming second album, Derivations. I’ve finished primary composition of all ten tracks for the album! That happened a couple of days ago, and I put what I believe are the final tweaks into place this afternoon. I still have fades and mastering left to do, plus I have to master the tracks separately for streaming services (Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, etc.), so the release is not ready, but it’s massively closer to completion.

One aspect that I will need to take care of is album cover design. I want to have a CD cover done that is “derived” from the Calibrations artwork. With this, I could use your help, fair readers. Who would you recommend that can handle the entire CD Baby submission package from their templates? That includes the cover, the liner notes, the CD label, and the back cover? My budget for this is flexible. If you know anyone (I’ve already checked Fiverr), please contact me via the comments section. Thanks!

In other news, NotCon at Sea is coming up on Monday, February 17th! We’ll be driving to Galveston the day before, so I’ll probably create a test CD of Derivations to see how it works in the car stereo. I expect that it won’t work on the first pass; if it does, it’ll be a miracle. (My wife and I will also be practicing our karaoke selections for the final night of the cruise Karaoke Party during the drive.)

Stay tuned here for more Derivations news!

New Album Coming in 2020 – “Derivations”

Posted on 2020-02-01 Written by D. Lee Jackson Leave a Comment

CDSeamless Almost two years after the publication of my first album, Calibrations, I am now ready to announce the upcoming release of my second album, Derivations.

Dictionary.com defines “Derivation” as:

the act or fact of deriving or of being derived.
the process of deriving.
the source from which something is derived; origin.
something that is or has been derived; derivative.

I see Derivations as an extension of Calibrations, with Calibrations being the source.

When finished, Derivations will contain ten tracks (I’ve got eight in the bag now and am working on number nine), including the previously-released single, “What It Shall Be.” The completed album will be released for physical CD and streaming distribution via CD Baby. Later, high-resolution versions of almost all of the tracks (more on this as the release date approaches) will be released via the Bandcamp service.

The CD will be released prior to the end of 2020 (with any luck, significantly prior to the end of 2020). Watch for updates and further announcements!

Words and Music – Update 2019-08-02

Posted on 2019-08-02 Written by D. Lee Jackson Leave a Comment

Now that we’re in August, it’s time for a quick update on how things are going.

Words:

Sergeant Marcos’s Rescue has been through a couple of rounds of revisions, thanks to a critique on Scribophile. It’s a better short story now than before.
I’ve added an extra chapter to Tapper. That brings the chapter count to 35 and the total word count to just over 97,000. It’s a desperately needed chapter in a crucial spot, even if it is less than 100 words in length. Still, it was worth going to the trouble of renumbering all of the other chapters beyond it.

Music:

It’s been a bit more difficult to work on the Music section than it has been on the Words section. You see, I spent a good deal of time traveling from Dallas, Texas to Des Moines, Iowa with my wife in order to see an IndyCar race, and while I can bring my Words with me, I can’t very well bring my keyboards and my music composition computer. I’ve also had downtime due another lumbar rhizotomy procedure (a.k.a., radiofrequency ablation of the nerves of my lower back), but that only explains more recent absences from the workstation.
Still, I have managed to complete the first phrase of a new song for the second album. It’s in fact a tribute song—more I can’t go into yet—and it involves two pianos playing off against each other in an andante 3/4-3/4-4/4-4/4 pattern. I have yet to program the tempo changes to make it sound as human as possible (yes, I mouse everything into the computer), but once I do, I think I’ll have quite a nice piece.

Thank you for reading, and watch this space for further updates!

Words and Music – The Site Motto At Work

Posted on 2019-07-14 Written by D. Lee Jackson Leave a Comment

Revision Ten of my novel, Tapper, has been completed and has been uploaded to Scribophile. This is the version that I hope will be the last major rewrite. Of course, there will be tweaks made to the new material, but I don’t anticipate wholesale changes. They won’t be critiqued for at least the next six weeks, due to the way The Ubergroup on Scribophile works, so I finally have some free time.

My first revisited project has been my second album. I’ve put it off for a long time now, and it’s high time that I gave it some attention. I’ve only got four tracks complete to date. Track number five is now under way.

I had some delays due to some hardware in my sound setup going on the fritz (an old Mackie 1202VLZ mixer feeding two channels into a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2). I wound up replacing both the Mackie and the Focusrite with a Steinberg UR44 six channel USB 2.0 interface. It was a bear to set up, but once I got it going, it sounded great. It also allowed my son, Nathan, to rip out about half of the cables from my patch bay. My mixer rack is a much cleaner area now. I was also able to recalibrate my monitors (i.e., pro-level speakers) to a state that they’ve never been since I bought them.

My second revisited project has been Sergeant Marcos’s Rescue. Now that I’ve finished the Tapper revision, I can attack the rewrite of that short story at my leisure. I intend to work on it when I can’t work on Album #2 (e.g., when my wife is washing clothes or doing other noisy things around the house that I’m physically unable to help with, when I’ve got musical writer’s block, and so on). I got a lot of really good advice from my critiquers, and I intend to make the most of it, using as much time as I need to get the job done.

Words and Music. Working on both at the same time. That’s the idea behind this web site, and the idea behind how I spend my days when I’m able to function. Wish me luck.