Delusion's Master (album)

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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by Rainmak3r »

glowrak guy wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 9:18 pm
Rainmak3r wrote: Sun Nov 07, 2021 4:47 pm Hi all,
after what feels like forever, I can finally share my first "serious" album, which as the Call of the 80's EP is available both on Bandcamp and soon, via Distrokid, on Spotify/iTunes/etc.
Hi, great respect for your hard work, creativity, and I appreciate what brought on your 8) results. You tell the stories lyrically or otherwise, very eloquently, support them with instrumentals that grab attention and hold interest, and place it all in a sonic environment worth exploring.
That's a great compliment, thanks!
glowrak guy wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 9:18 pm Having worked on, and lived nears railroads, the intro and ending to "Lies" was much appreciated. As are the less than predictable contents/orchestration. My yard is full of happy crickets.
I've lived most of my life next to some train tracks as well, and I took trains 20 years in a row to go to university or work, so willingly or not (it's been a love/hate relationship) they've been quite there for me too :lol: I'm missing the happy crickets though, that would be nicer... I'm glad you liked those more atmospheric moments! I found those specific audio samples on FreeSound, which I often go to anytime I have something in mind that I think would fit well in a song.
glowrak guy wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 9:18 pm Distrokid is a welcome resource, and if you make new versions, the tools are there to update existing titles, with the speed of individual outlets uptake being the variable. I've discovered some of my own gotchas that slipped past my QA drone :wink:

Hope your release is the tip of an iceberg!
Yes, DistroKid was quite the surprise! A friend suggested it to me, and it was incredible to see the things it does for what is a relatively low sum of money (~20 bucks a year), allowing you to make your music reachable via so many sources. They do have many things behind a paywall too, but nothing I've felt I needed so far. The speed of publishing was quite fast too, this time: they said it would only get to Spotify in 5 days, for instance, and instead it was there the day after. I guess the 5 days only applies to when you first publish something, which I had gone through for the EP already.

Not sure if there's any iceberg, here, but I do have other things pending, so hopefully I'll have something new to share soon :D
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by folderol »

I've now listened to the whole album, and very much like it. I recognised one or two of the tracks, from them being posted here individually at some time :)
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

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folderol wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 11:31 am I've now listened to the whole album, and very much like it. I recognised one or two of the tracks, from them being posted here individually at some time :)
Thanks, I'm really glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, most were published already, even though some changed quite a bit. And after two years, many wouldn't remember having listened to them already anyway :lol:
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by Michael Willis »

It's probably time to comment, because I have listened enough times that Bandcamp is telling me "The time has come to open thy heart/wallet."

My favorite part is the eponymous piece Delusion's Master, all the way from the eerie clean guitar intro through all of the movements of orchestral prog rock. I particularly enjoyed the flute duet (or trio?) starting around 9:40. What's the faint jingling percussive sound that plays with the guitar and vocals right before that (around 9:30)? I didn't recognize it, but liked how it accented the other instruments.

I also enjoyed Ascension, Lies, Dreams, and Last Summer. The more metal-style tracks didn't speak to me as much, but that's just a personal preference.

I'm curious how you did the Drum Gizmo track. Did you program the midi track with a mouse, or did you record midi events from a digital drum kit? The reason I ask is because I recently started playing digital drums and I'm finding it fun but challenging to get the sound that I want.
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by Rainmak3r »

Michael Willis wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 9:00 pm It's probably time to comment, because I have listened enough times that Bandcamp is telling me "The time has come to open thy heart/wallet."
Hah, is that really a thing Bandcamp does? It probably means it's much better at selling goods than I am, as I don't really expect anyone to buy this, since it's freely available pretty much everywhere :mrgreen:
Michael Willis wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 9:00 pm My favorite part is the eponymous piece Delusion's Master, all the way from the eerie clean guitar intro through all of the movements of orchestral prog rock. I particularly enjoyed the flute duet (or trio?) starting around 9:40. What's the faint jingling percussive sound that plays with the guitar and vocals right before that (around 9:30)? I didn't recognize it, but liked how it accented the other instruments.
I'm so glad you liked that piece the most, as it's indeed the one I spent the most time on!

The flute part starts with one and becomes a duet, yes: the idea came after I had been listening way too many times at "Looking for something else" by Mystery, a truly beautiful longish piece where the singer often played flute parts too. I'm particularly fond of that part also because it allowed me to play a bit with themes for narrative purposes: the first flute plays the same theme as the vocal verses (Dunizel & Azhrarn), but when the second flute comes in, it transmutes into something a bit darker, which foreshadows that something bad is going to happen, as that same transmuted theme is played after the final tragic verse and before the finale.

The percussive sound you hear is a Celesta, played by VPO. I've learned to love it working on Lost Horizon, and it felt like the perfect instrument to double the voice and create an "ethereal" vibe for Dunizel. I originally planned to have the first verse sung by my sister, which would have probably made for a better effect, but unfortunately that wasn't possible.
Michael Willis wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 9:00 pm I also enjoyed Ascension, Lies, Dreams, and Last Summer. The more metal-style tracks didn't speak to me as much, but that's just a personal preference.
Yes, I've noticed that most seemed to like the more somber tracks. Many of my friends said "I liked 3, 5 and 7", so Lies, Out of the Void and Dreams, the more quiet and melancholic pieces. I have to admit I probably like those more too, as I do love sad and emotional music: same for the quieter parts in Delusion's Master.

I'm glad you enjoyed Last Summer too: I wrote that a couple of years ago, and I wondered if it could have seemed out of place in the album with that ukulele, but I like how it came out, and I feel being so short it could be a nice way to move to the longer epic at the end.
Michael Willis wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 9:00 pm I'm curious how you did the Drum Gizmo track. Did you program the midi track with a mouse, or did you record midi events from a digital drum kit? The reason I ask is because I recently started playing digital drums and I'm finding it fun but challenging to get the sound that I want.
I use Hydrogen for drums, which is pattern based and has a very easy way of writing parts using a grid, and allows your to easily duplicate patterns to create variations, tweak velocities and stuff like that. I tried doing it directly in the Ardour MIDI editor but to be honest it was quite the pain, while I never tried to do it live as it would be too complex I believe. Hydrogen typically uses drumkits that are supposed to play in Hydrogen itself, but there are some for Drumgizmo that basically simply send out the MIDI notes on the right channel to some external application, so it's easy to hook-up to other things.

Most of the times I configure Hydrogen to send to Ardour itself (recording the MIDI that way when I like the result), but for Delusion's Master, which was a larger project, I found it easier and lighter to do the writing by having Hydrogen feed Carla and load Drumgizmo there: once I was happy with a part, I saved it to MIDI and imported it in Ardour on the Drumgizmo track.

Thanks for listening and for the feedback!
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by folderol »

Rainmak3r wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 7:42 am
folderol wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 10:02 pm Only listened to the first three tracks so far, and seriously impressed with these.
It's late here now, but I'll be back! :lol:
Thanks, I'm glad the first part was good enough to get you hooked :lol:
Hope you'll enjoy the rest of it too! There's quite a lot of excellent Yoshimi in there :D
Yes. All good! Oh, and I always like to hear about Yoshimi being used - especially when I can't tell where, because that means people are really digging into it :)
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

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folderol wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 11:05 pm
Rainmak3r wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 7:42 am
folderol wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 10:02 pm Only listened to the first three tracks so far, and seriously impressed with these.
It's late here now, but I'll be back! :lol:
Thanks, I'm glad the first part was good enough to get you hooked :lol:
Hope you'll enjoy the rest of it too! There's quite a lot of excellent Yoshimi in there :D
Yes. All good! Oh, and I always like to hear about Yoshimi being used - especially when I can't tell where, because that means people are really digging into it :)
I think it's in all of the tracks, except Last Summer and (if I'm not mistaken) Out of the Void. In some tracks there's more and in others just a whiff, but it's there :mrgreen:

Edit: ah no, I think it's not in Dreams either, as all strings are Spitfire. But 7/10 is a good presence :lol:
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by Rainmak3r »

The nice thing about these publishing services is that they provide you some stats about how the stuff you upload goes. Bandcamp in particular gives you detailed information on the engagement, telling you how many people listened to the songs, whether they listened to each song in full, partially, or stopped almost immediately, etc. I'm saying this is nice, because it is, but it turns out it's also quite depressing :lol:

Just to share some info for statistical interest, from the data it collected so far, there definitely is a curve that tells you that my album loses listeners song after song: to be more precise, of all the people that started listening to it (Ascension), only half got to the third track (Lies), which means I lost a lot pretty much right away... after that, I lost more and more pieces along the way, until only 1 out of 5 got to the end. This is quite depressing already, because it seems to confirm people don't really like or can't be bothered listening to albums anymore, while it's the form I still enjoy the most: if they don't like what they hear right away, they just give up. I guess most are just people that opened a link I shared here or on social networks out of curiosity and then dropped it.

The stats per song are quite dispiriting as well, since very few listened to the songs in their entirety. It doesn't even seem to be a length thing: even Ascension, which is 1 minute long, was only finished by 1/3 of listeners; many didn't even go beyond Bandcamp's 10% mark (people hated it after 6 seconds or so :mrgreen: ). Of course, the one that hurt the most was Delusion's Master, as only 15 people or so listened to the whole song (and the whole album), about twice as many listened to just part of it, and all the others turned it off pretty much right away, in the first couple of minutes. Considering how much time I spent on it, knowing that the vast majority of people didn't care much did hurt a bit, but I guess that was to be expected: very few people like, or have time, to listen to 20 minutes song, and even fewer would listen to Mr Nobody's 20 minute song.

I realize I shouldn't really care or think about things like these (it's not like I'm planning a career change in the music business 8) ), and I'm definitely appreciative of all those that did listen and provide feedback (here and elsewhere), but when you start thinking about the effort we all put in our work, it's hard not to feel the sting. It's like an observation Seinfeld made I can't remember where, talking about TV shows that for some reason fail and get cancelled: "how much must it suck to create a show, put it on a TV channel that people can get for free, and everyone just yells NOPE!" :lol:
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by LAM »

@Rainmak3r
I listened the whole album (just to improve the stats :wink: ), really good. I liked the "orchestral" tracks but my favorites are Fragments and, obviously, Delusions's Master that is like a mini-album in itself.

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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by Tenaba »

Rainmak3r wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 5:10 pm The nice thing about these publishing services is that they provide you some stats about how the stuff you upload goes. Bandcamp in particular gives you detailed information on the engagement, telling you how many people listened to the songs, whether they listened to each song in full, partially, or stopped almost immediately, etc. I'm saying this is nice, because it is, but it turns out it's also quite depressing :lol:

Just to share some info for statistical interest, from the data it collected so far, there definitely is a curve that tells you that my album loses listeners song after song: to be more precise, of all the people that started listening to it (Ascension), only half got to the third track (Lies), which means I lost a lot pretty much right away... after that, I lost more and more pieces along the way, until only 1 out of 5 got to the end. This is quite depressing already, because it seems to confirm people don't really like or can't be bothered listening to albums anymore, while it's the form I still enjoy the most: if they don't like what they hear right away, they just give up. I guess most are just people that opened a link I shared here or on social networks out of curiosity and then dropped it.

The stats per song are quite dispiriting as well, since very few listened to the songs in their entirety. It doesn't even seem to be a length thing: even Ascension, which is 1 minute long, was only finished by 1/3 of listeners; many didn't even go beyond Bandcamp's 10% mark (people hated it after 6 seconds or so :mrgreen: ). Of course, the one that hurt the most was Delusion's Master, as only 15 people or so listened to the whole song (and the whole album), about twice as many listened to just part of it, and all the others turned it off pretty much right away, in the first couple of minutes. Considering how much time I spent on it, knowing that the vast majority of people didn't care much did hurt a bit, but I guess that was to be expected: very few people like, or have time, to listen to 20 minutes song, and even fewer would listen to Mr Nobody's 20 minute song.

I realize I shouldn't really care or think about things like these (it's not like I'm planning a career change in the music business 8) ), and I'm definitely appreciative of all those that did listen and provide feedback (here and elsewhere), but when you start thinking about the effort we all put in our work, it's hard not to feel the sting. It's like an observation Seinfeld made I can't remember where, talking about TV shows that for some reason fail and get cancelled: "how much must it suck to create a show, put it on a TV channel that people can get for free, and everyone just yells NOPE!" :lol:
Oh wow, somehow I missed the entire stats page on Bandcamp. It's pretty interesting, although I wouldn't say it's anything to get hung up over.

I think it's pretty normal to not have a lot of full listens (which Bandcamp counts as 90% or more of the song), especially for longer songs like Delusion's Master. 15 people listening to a 20 minute song is quite impressive though, that's 5 hours of viewership. In contrast, Youtube's Analytics has a message "
47% of viewers are still watching at around the 0:30 mark, which is typical." on one of my songs, so you shouldn't feel bad about having incomplete listens, it seems to be the norm.

I also agree on your point with albums. It's still my preferred format for music.

Just for fun, I compared my own Analytics pages. It seems there's a lot more complete listens, and less skips on Bandcamp compared to Youtube, although Youtube has a much larger audience in the first place. Youtube tracks audience retention at specific time points - and while most songs lose retention over time in this inverted logarithmic shape, it's funny to see spikes at points where there are comments or discussion on forums.

It would be pretty neat if there were an aggregate on the analytics of these sites from all artists.

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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by folderol »

FWIW one of the reasons I tend to keep albums fairly short is this sort of 'attention deficit'.
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

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LAM wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:44 pm @Rainmak3r
I listened the whole album (just to improve the stats :wink: )
:lol:
LAM wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:44 pm really good. I liked the "orchestral" tracks but my favorites are Fragments and, obviously, Delusions's Master that is like a mini-album in itself.
Thanks, I'm really glad you enjoyed that! The mini-album comment is interesting, as sometimes I do think I should have maybe split Delusion's Master in 4-5 songs, as a minisuite: it would have been more accessible, and many will prefer one part over the others anyway, making it easier for them to re-listen to just that.
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

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Tenaba wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:01 pm Oh wow, somehow I missed the entire stats page on Bandcamp. It's pretty interesting, although I wouldn't say it's anything to get hung up over.
Yeah initially it's a bit hidden, as all you see is a graph in a corner when you open the dashboard. The stats themselves are interesting, but so are the sources, which tell you where most of the listens came from (in my case mostly Facebook, so friends I have there). Too bad the map is behind a paywall: it would have been cool to check if my album had also been played, I don't know, in Papua New Guinea :mrgreen:
Tenaba wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:01 pm I think it's pretty normal to not have a lot of full listens (which Bandcamp counts as 90% or more of the song), especially for longer songs like Delusion's Master. 15 people listening to a 20 minute song is quite impressive though, that's 5 hours of viewership. In contrast, Youtube's Analytics has a message "
47% of viewers are still watching at around the 0:30 mark, which is typical." on one of my songs, so you shouldn't feel bad about having incomplete listens, it seems to be the norm.
That's a fair point! I'm not familiar with YouTube's analytics, but since it contains a lot of heterogenous content rather than just music, I guess it's harder to figure out what they mean. In general I assume getting past 30s means you managed to grab the attention of the viewer enough that on average they'll watch it all or most of it? (as otherwise it's likely they'd close it after 10s or so) I guess that's why most content creators there put lengthy and annoying intros that you have to sit through if you want to see what you opened the link for :mrgreen:
Tenaba wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:01 pm I also agree on your point with albums. It's still my preferred format for music.
I'm afraid we're an endangered species :lol:
Tenaba wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:01 pm Just for fun, I compared my own Analytics pages. It seems there's a lot more complete listens, and less skips on Bandcamp compared to Youtube, although Youtube has a much larger audience in the first place. Youtube tracks audience retention at specific time points - and while most songs lose retention over time in this inverted logarithmic shape, it's funny to see spikes at points where there are comments or discussion on forums.

It would be pretty neat if there were an aggregate on the analytics of these sites from all artists.
I guess YouTube viewers have less of an attention span on average, which is normal considering that as you pointed out the potential audience base is huge. People visiting Bandcamp do know they're getting music to listen to, and usually end up there on purpose rather than just browsing.

Aggregate analytics would indeed be cool, but that would mean all these services would need to expose them somehow (e.g., via an authenticated API) which I suspect most of them have no interest in (they'd probably want the exact opposite and keep you on their page instead). Even Distrokid doesn't have anything like that, I think, since the only aggregated info is how much money you made from each of the services (spoiler alert: it's 0 :lol: )
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by Rainmak3r »

folderol wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 8:18 pm FWIW one of the reasons I tend to keep albums fairly short is this sort of 'attention deficit'.
That's a reasonable approach! Even though I do feel like ~1 hour is supposed to be a good tradeoff for an album, even though many started going way beyond that as soon as CDs came out.
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Re: Delusion's Master (album)

Post by psyocean »

I will be brief - the album is masterpiece, progressive, sophisticated. It was interesting to listen to.
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