Sometimes inspiration comes out of nowhere. And in this case, it came from a Slack conversation at work between my coworkers, Rob, Andy, Tom, and myself. Somehow it steered into Rob being blue, and I popped up a picture of this little known character from the Movie, “TRON.” He is blue and kind of looks like my co-worker Rob…
Well… Really only the beard. Rob's a much better looking fella.. ;-) Next thing you know all of this started going off the rails, and this pic was recycled with crudely inserted pictures of Rob's face on this guy, and then we started talking about him being blue again, and he ended up having his face pasted onto a SMURF! You know how it goes... Sometimes you need to pass the dregs of work by with a little wacky, out of nowhere, humor. Which is exactly what it all was. Co-workers blowing off steam with some laughs. But somewhere in there, Rob himself said, all would not be truly complete unless Joe gave us an electronic banger to rep this conversation. And in my head one word stuck out… RobTRON! Dude, that's an awesome name! And it kind of fits with the theme of my album… The Robots are Coming! Thus the idea of RobTRON was birthed (Lol!). So before I go any further, I give you the completed track… RobTRON (and yes, there are Rob Easter Eggs all over it!!):
Feel free to skip this next section for some album updates and news if you don't want to get into nerdy synth/production talk.
So let's talk about how this track got put together a little. The idea was one thing, but getting the music going was another. I really was not thinking of going in the Synthwave direction this ended up at. But then as I was reviewing old plugins that I wasn't using anymore, I found this free one called “ODIN II.” I never used it on anything. I remember having a hard time finding where to load up the presets and just let it fall by the wayside. So I decided to spend a little time exploring. And when I finally found how to get to those pesky presets, the first sound pointed me to EXACTLY where I wanted to go with this:
Sorry for the lousy audio quality. It was just a quick demo I made of the sound when I first discovered it several weeks back. Sometimes an entire track can be crafted around a well created sound! Good job Odin folks! After I worked out a chord progression, I needed a cool Prophet style 80s lead. And that's where my Sequential Prophet REV2 (pic) fit the bill beautifully!
The next thing I needed to do was personalize the track. It used to be that you would spend hours scouring through tons of samples to find that perfect sample that would fit your song. And it still happens. But now with AI, I can have an AI generated vocal sing whatever I want. So for this instance I used one of my newest plugins, Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro. And the “V" isn't for the number five. It's for VOCAL. And this thing really can be manipulated like a voice synthesizer. But now it gives you human sounding voices that can sing whatever you want. The question then became… Well.. What do I want it to say or sing? I just needed a simple phrase to get this going. And of course it had to be, “Activate: RobTRON!” So I selected my AI voice, and got to work. I really like the way the AI sings, “RobTRON” so I left that alone. But I vocoded/roboticized the “Activate” part using another plugin to inject robotics into it. I also needed to spend some time figuring out how to automate the voice signal so that it is sent between the vocoded and non-vocoded signal. So in the end the word, “Activate” was vocoded and the word “RobTRON” was sung without the robotic effect. See below to see the AI plugin in action:
A few things of note on the above video. The green bars in the grid are the actual vocal parts. The text within the green bars are the lyrics and the text above the green bars are the phonetics. There is an actual table with specific phonetics that tell the AI how to pronounce a word. It does it automatically when you type in lyrics but sometimes needs to be adjusted and changed for bad pronunciations. Then if you notice on the right side you can do additional modulations to the voice… Making the vocal more clear, subdued, adding falsetto, making it softer, or more powerful, etc. You can tailor the vocal however you want. To teach it what notes to sing, you can either sing into it from a mic and it will translate the notes and give you the part with the AI voice, or you can play the notes through a MIDI keyboard (which is what I do), and then type in the lyrics manually. The white line waves overlayed on the green bars, are showing you dips in pitch and vibrato, which can also be adjusted within the plugin. I will be exploring this tool further on my next album, “Into The Broken Nothing.” Yes, that is still going to be a thing. As soon as this album is done, I may end up diving right into that one! More to look forward to from Masterjoda75! And with that, let's get into some album news…
Just last week I finished creating my final track for the album, “Ch1pTune.” So the composition/production portion of the album is finally finished, and now the final tracks are moving through the mixing powerhouse over at The Vacation Village in Downey under Byron Kane's careful eye and ears.
As you read this we are currently mixing and reviewing “Sairax Rising.” And “Ch1pTune” will be right on it's heels when it's done. But in talking with my artistic colleagues I've come to realize I may need to alter my approach to releasing these tracks a little. The initial thought was for me to release a few singles off of the album, and then leave the rest to be listened to when the album is purchased. But the bottom line is, most people don't listen to albums anymore. And they also don't seem to purchase albums anymore. In fact, there were many instances where people bought my album on my website, but didn't know how to download it and how to get it on their devices to listen to. In the end, I think the album will mostly be for me, and those who appreciate listening to music that way still.
As a result of all of this, I'm going to release the majority of my songs on YouTube in the next month or two, like you've been seeing. So I will be creating more music videos. Which I do enjoy doing.
However, there is still a place for the “official” distribution channel. Maybe not so much getting them on Apple Music, Spotify, etc. As my numbers on those platforms are abysmal! But getting my tracks up on social media platforms such as, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. When my music is used under a reel on one of those platforms, I get royalties. And those are the only platforms where I actual saw myself making reasonable money.
Finally, once the album is out, I will be making a “Long-play” release of the entire album and put it up as a video on YouTube. That way a person can put the album up, and let it play in the background as they go about their work or study. I did the same with my first release, “Pandemic Blue.” And enjoy playing it as I work. You can check it out here and save it so you can enjoy yourselves..
This was a jumbo Blog! Well, I hadn't put one out in a while, so this extra long one makes up for it. Thanks for reading and thanks for your support. Hold onto your hats, because you're going to get a tidal wave of Masterjoda75 content rolling in soon! Thanks for reading!
-Joda
Listen to and purchase my music here: https://jodaproductions.com/links
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