D. Lee Jackson

Words and Music

“Geisterwolken” the Single is Out!

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Geisterwolken Cover ArtGeisterwolken, my new Hard Rock / Heavy Metal single, has dropped! It was released today, May 6th, 2022, on Bandcamp, Amazon, Spotify, and all major streaming platforms around the world, thanks to CD Baby‘s distribution service. You can reach it by way of my HearNow link service at https://leejackson.hearnow.com – bookmark that link to have all the major links on one page.

Geisterwolken (“Ghost Clouds”) is my biggest experiment at Hard Rock / Heavy Metal to date. It was inspired by a cloud formation I saw while riding home one day in 2021. You could practically see the ghosts streaming amongst the thunderstorm clouds in the distance. The genesis of this music immediately jumped into my head and stayed there until I got home, where I could get it into the computer.

Special thanks go out to Kittyhawk for the cover art, and to George “The Fat Man” Sanger for his help in fine-tuning the track.

 

Commissions, Hospitalizations, and a New Single Upcoming

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Geisterwolken Head SoloThis has been a month of mixed news so far. As the post title would indicate, I’ve completed a couple of commissions, been in the hospital a couple of times, and I’ve got a new single due to be released soon. First things first, though, we’ll cover the completed commissions.

To be precise, I’ve completed two commissions since my last blog update. The first was for Mr. Corey Burton of Australia, who commissioned a piece that I’ve named DeadBeard Fantasia. The other was commissioned by Mr. Dan Douglas in the U.K., who is working on the “Duke Smoochem” mod project. His work is titled Double Decker Chase, and can be heard right now on Mr. Douglas’s YouTube work-in-progress post. Both pieces will eventually appear on my Commissions page in full, hopefully sometime in May. I want to heartily thank Mr. Burton and Mr. Douglas both for commissioning me to write their songs!

Onto the health matters. I’ve spent more than my fair share of time in the hospital this month. On April 15th, I was admitted to a local hospital for extreme swelling in my legs, as well as for severe pain in my right arm related to my neck surgery (radiculopathy). I was given intravenous diuretics, and over the course of the next few days wound up losing 17 pounds of water weight from my legs. That’s over two gallons of water! I was also given strong painkillers for my arm, which is still bugging me after my release from the hospital.

A few days later, I underwent outpatient surgery to remove a screw from a toe on my left foot. It had been implanted to correct a “hammertoe” condition in my big toe last year, and was in the process of trying to work its way out through the tip of my toe. The doctor removed it without problems, but my arm began acting up on me again in the recovery room. Time for more painkillers. Sigh. I’m told that physical therapy will help my arm, so I’m going to start it as soon as I can.

My final note concerns a new single I’ve got coming out on Friday, May 6th. It’s called Geisterwolken, which translates to “Ghost Clouds,” and it’ll be released on Bandcamp, Amazon, Spotify, and all other major streaming platforms. I’ll announce it here when it’s out. In the meantime, allow me to leave you with a preview of the cover art for the song. I hope you will enjoy it!

Geisterwolken Preview

New Commissioned Single Out Now

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Ereis Overture Single CoverThanks to commissions, it’s time to announce the release of a new single! This one is dropping today (Friday, January 28, 2022), and it’s the result of a client by the name of Mr. Peter Campi, who wanted music that sounded like the works of composer Miklós Rózsa, with a little bit of John Williams tossed in. Mr. Campi wanted something that evoked the sounds of the sinister side of the Roman Empire, but in an outer space setting, all within 3 1/2 minutes. Not an easy job to fill.

The end result is a work that I’ve named “Ereis Overture.” I will let you guess at the meaning of the word “Ereis.” The overture pushed me in ways I’ve never been pushed before. First, I had to unleash the forces of a pair of virtual instruments I invested in last year but have never used until now. These instruments, created by Aaron Venture, were his Infinite Brass and Infinite Woodwind virtual instruments. They’re quite the powerful beasts, and I fear I haven’t tamed them – I’ve only managed to get into the same arena with them, thanks to the help of a new piece of hardware, the TEControl USB MIDI Breath Controller. I also had to learn how to use the percussion part of another virtual instrument library, that being the Sample Logic Virtual Ensemble Trilogy. (Fortunately, I caught a break when it came to the strings – they were supplied by the Mighty Roland SC-88Pro.)

I wasn’t alone on my journey through this piece, thank goodness. This time, I had a special beta team helping to guide me as I wrote and produced the overture. This secret group of folks, who I call the Night Hawks (in homage to the late drum corps out of Houston with which I marched in 1984), worked with me on the project for several weeks, and they were incredibly helpful. I’m recruiting new members for the Night Hawks as I transition into work on my next commission. The recruiting is taking place in my Facebook discussion group.

Anyway, Ereis Overture is officially out on Bandcamp! I hope you’ll purchase a copy, but if you’d like to hear a preview, here’s a player for your listening pleasure: 

New Single – “Ant Farm Melee”

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Ant FarmMy newest single has just dropped on Bandcamp! The song is called “Ant Farm Melee,” and it was written as one of my contributions to the Ultimate MIDI Pack project on Doomworld.

The Ultimate MIDI Pack is a pack of MIDIs made by Doomworld members, which aims to replace all MIDIs in The Ultimate Doom and ensures that all MIDIs in the game are unique. The project was led by Ivan Stanton (northivanastan), and I am eternally grateful to him for inviting me in. You can grab a copy of the Pack and the MIDI files therein at this link, including the MIDI file for my song.

Ant Farm Melee falls into the hard driving rock genre. The original MIDI file for it was written in Cakewalk by Bandlab, my MIDI editor and DAW of choice. I originally used the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth built into Windows 10 as my sound source when creating the MIDI file, since it was the least common denominator when it comes to which sound source end users would have available. For this single, I sent the playback of the MIDI file through my Roland SC-88Pro Sound Canvas and recorded it back into Cakewalk by Bandlab, where I mixed it using some plugins out of the MEGA Bundle from Plugin Alliance. I did final mastering in Steinberg’s WaveLab Pro 10.

You can get a high-quality 96 KHz / 24-bit version of the recording from this Bandcamp link for $1 per download. Make sure you download the FLAC, WAV, or AIFF format files to get the full high-quality experience, since MP3 and OGG formats are compressed at lower frequency and bit rates.

Grab your copy today!