With new headphones, new album in the works

Last month, I was finally able to get my hands on a new set of headphones:

The Sony MDR7506 Professional Large Diaphragm Headphones.  They’re an older model, but still of a professional caliber, and right within my budget.  And they’re rather wonderful; I’m really pleased with them.

So, while procrastinating on fiction writing, I’ve been rediscovering the magic the music composing, and have already composed two tracks, roughly ten minutes together, for my next album.

This album will basically be a collection of short musical pieces that each go along with a fairy tale I’m writing; I’m aiming for about ten to twelve tales in all.  The tales themselves will be released for free online (though I might put together a CreateSpace paperback, mostly for my own guilty pleasure).  The album itself will likely be released through my bandcamp page, with some corresponding YouTube videos.

Speaking of YouTube, I’ll probably "monetize" my channel sometime soon.  While I really hate subjecting viewers to ads, monetizing your account is the only way to get custom thumbnails on your videos, and I really hate the automatic default thumbnails on my videos at the moment; they look abstract and bizarre, and they’re not doing me any favors.  I’d like to have titles on there, and some recognizable "style" to them.  I still like using the Music Animation Machine in the actual videos, though, rather the fantasy art like some YouTube composers use; I find the Music Animation Machine’s visuals are just a lot more captivating and engaging.

Anyway, of the two tracks I’ve written at the moment, one is orchestral, while the other is a sort of bitter-sweet lullaby for harp and two whistles (tin whistle and low whistle).  Of course, they both feature my typical song-ish melody-driven style.  They still need some tweaking, but I’m very pleased with them so far.

The new headphones are simply excellent for composing work.  Looking forward to continuing the work.  Of course, this is only delaying my work on that book on melody writing, on which I’ve hardly made any progress since my last post, but becoming obsessed with the joy of melody writing again doesn’t hurt, I guess.

I’m also spending this week trying to get my internal clock back on a normal schedule.  Since college, my internal clock refuses to stay on a 24-hour schedule; it seems to be slightly longer, so it tends to slowly shift out of whack, until it’s almost completely backwards, and I have to force it back into some sort of normalcy, which neither my mind nor body appreciate as they fight against it, making me randomly tired in the afternoons, wide awake in the middle of the night, hungry and not hungry at random intervals, random headaches (which I get anyway, really), etc… lots of fun.