First off Blissful Misery and Black Misery are basically combining once again under Blissful Misery.  Black Misery’s songs will not become ours as well.

I, Michael, will be playing lead guitar, and maybe doing some singing.  Jessica from Black Misery is joining the band as the lead or maybe co-lead vocalist.  We will be using our notation and studio programs to create our complete songs and then using them as backing tracks for whatever we happen to be missing in the band at the time.  We use a combination of 3 main programs, Power Tab, Guitar Pro, and Sonar PE to do this. In Sonar we use the Studio Instruments soft synths also by Cakewalk to get realistic drums and bass tracks, as well as some strings an key tracks.  We also have a lot of other soft synth instruments at our disposal that we use in studio and as live backing tracks.  At the current time I, Michael, am writing all of the music and vocal melodies, as well as a lot of the lyrics.  Jessica will continue to write lyrics as well probably.

So what’s on the agenda?

Yesterday and today I cleaned up the studio really nicely, and worked a lot on the studio computer. I got the computer running much better again, but may still have to do a complete restart on it at some point to get things to working better.

As for the website I will be working on a customized version of either the Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven themes for WordPress. I am going to try to get the site to look as close it’s current looks as I can.  The theme we are currently using I personally designed from scratch a few years back for the much older versions of WordPress. The theme has worked very well for us, but the advances in WordPress over the last 2 years has left the theme pretty much obsolete. By using customized version of one of these new themes we will be able to use many new features without having to have old obsolete plugins.  This may take us a few days or even weeks to finish. During this site development stage our site may go offline, look completely different, or even look completely screwed up.  In the end it will be worth it though.

Another change coming to our website is that we are going to be deleting our current forums located here on this server.  We may add or copy the forum over to the Unbounded Productions sever, but either way it will be gone from this server.  In removing the forums from this server we will be able to bring our fans more pictures and content even if they are streamed from the UP server.  As it is we are very very close to running out of room on this server.

E-Mail Updates. We do not use the blissfulmisery.com email addresses at all anymore.  If you for some reason get email from a blissfulmisery.com email address it’s most likely spam that we have no way of stopping.  The best way of contacting the band is via the contact form on the website in the community section.

Old songs and new songs will be played, written, and worked on. We have decided to not abandon anything we have done in the past, because we love playing and listening to those songs.  We may change up some parts of the songs, but we will still work on them.  However, our new methods may end up changing the site contents to only provide information on songs we’ve recorded, or contain information in different ways based on the song’s status. We are going to be working on The Demon Within, The Madness, Remembering, and probably one or two other songs. Also, we are going to be letting our fans pick 3 other songs that we don’t decide on to start with to work on as well.  We will give a list of the songs to choose from when we are at that stage.

Other things we are doing include fixing up equipment and getting things around the studio and office in better shape. My first project of this type is modifying my pedal board to include a second tier that will allow me to actually use the top row of pedals. As it is now the top row is lower than the back of my bottom row, and very hard to get to.  This will make things in practice and live situations much better.

For now that is everything I can think of.  I’ve had another great morning in the studio working on getting things setup, and can’t wait to get more rolling. I will be trying to post more updates and information as they arise.

However, today I am posting to let it be known that Blissful Misery is not dead. I really do not want to give out many other details at this time, but I wanted to let any fans out there know to be aware and watching for new updates to come from Blissful Misery. 

I can go on and say that Black Misery is merging back into Blissful Misery as it only feels right to me.  However, any old songs from either band or anything I’ve personally done in the past are currently going into the Vault Of Misery as I like to call it.  Weather or not we play any of these songs ever again will depend on our mood at the time. I have no idea if we will ever record anything else or ever get any shows to play at all. However, we are doing this for fun, and because my music runs so deep within the blood in my veins that I cannot live without playing.

If any fans out there make an requests we will hear you so don’t hold your requests for recordings or jam videos back.  If we can do it then we will do it, and I NEVER say that I cannot do something music wise… eh… Well except sweep picking… I just do it to damn fast for it to sound right. lol…

Oh by the way. Auditions? We are currently based in Hillsborough, NC. If you would like to jam on some covers (see list below) for an audition let us know. You must have your own gear, and be willing to travel to Hillsborough. We can also possible do a little traveling for some jamming, but we only go between maybe Burlington and Durham / Chapel Hill.  If you would like to audition or even just get together for some jamming let us know via our contact form or call / text Michael (me) at the Unbounded Productions number: 919 360 6268.

For covers to jam to we will play with some Metallica, Breaking Benjamin, 3 Doors Down, Black Sabbath, and Nightwish. If there’s something else you’d like to try ask and well see what we can do with it.

• Metallic: The Unforgiven, Enter Sandman, Master Of Puppets, Fade To Black, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Nothing Else Matters
• Breaking Benjamin: So Cold, Home
• 3 Doors Down: Here Without You, Be Like That
• Black Sabbath: Paranoid, Iron Man
• Nightwish: Nemo

Well I’m out, and planning on having one hell of a head banging rocking out time today with some covers and old tunes.

Why? I’m just tired of it, and ready to move on with my life in other ways.

I had so many plans for Blissful Misery and Black Misery, but unless I have a new spark of interested I doubt that I’ll ever complete any of those plans.  I’d like to thank all of the fans, family, and friends for the long years of support. It’s been a blast.

There is currently no music for this song, but it will probably be written soon.

For payment methods we are able to accept credit cards via Zazzle itself. I think they may accept PayPal as well, but I’m not sure yet. However, for anyone wishing to pay with a check or money order we will accept them, order your products, and have them sent to you when the check / money order has cleared in the bank.
We will be making an order form and instructions page soon for this.

Anyone wishing to buy something before then just use our contact form to let us know and a band representative will get back to you ASAP.

We also have several old stores on Cafepress, and we will be updating all of those very soon. Some of them may be deleted, but updates in some way will happen. Each shop on Cafepress follows a theme due to the service only letting one of each product be used per shop. Zazzle is great in that it lets you do what you want. The only fall back right now is that Zazzle doesn’t have CDR production / printing. We will continue to use Cafepress for anything of that sort most likely.

Now go find you an awesome Blissful Misery shirt or hat and wear it proud!

• Unbounded Productions: http://www.youtube.com/unboundedproduction
• Black Misery: http://www.youtube.com/blackmiseryband

We decided to split the accounts, because we wanted to be able to have the Blissful Misery account devoted to Blissful Misery.  This should of happened long ago before we ever posted any other stuff on our account, but at that time we didn’t have the plans that we do now.

Right now the official Blissful Misery website  is being brought up to date. We still have a few things to get fixed on the site, but it should be done pretty soon.

I’m itching big time to get to work on the music again, but my plate is pretty full right now. I am working on a huge project for Unbounded Productions besides the band websites. However, starting next week I’m going to be taking at least one day a week to do nothing but work on music. This one day next week should be all I need to finish the new rewritten version of The Madness.

Ah, Yes, There it is! The Madness!

Like Blissful Misery The Madness has had an extremely long journey as well. It was the original title track and theme for the first 2 Blissful Misery EPs and first planned album. There’s been 2 versions of The Madness already released, but we won’t really mention those again.

The song has been one of the bands and fans favorites since it was originally written in 2002. While a total bitch in the studio the song is great to play live, and was always one of the high points in the few small shows the band played.

The Madness not only will be recorded from scratch when Blissful Misery enters the studio, but I will be making at least what I like to call a “Guitar Demo Video” for the song. I’m also hoping to get a real video for the song made as well.

Once the band’s venture in the studio with The Madness is finished the song will be released digitally on the internet. I’m also hoping to have an acoustic version of the song to release at the same time or soon there after. If both are recorded then a Single for The Madness will be released as well.

So what about the original The Madness Album?
Well, The Madness Album plans were scrapped. However, if and when all of the original tracks set to be on the album are recorded and released as single songs the album will be put together and released.

Blissful Misery is now working on a song by song policy, and is not working via schedules. This is felt to be the best approach to the band’s studio music, due to so much other stuff going on as well. As the title says It’s Maddening!

I’d like to now take time to thank everyone that has supported the band, and it’s music, over the years. Thank you so much.